{"id":14342,"date":"2017-10-12T12:26:16","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T19:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=14342"},"modified":"2017-10-12T12:26:16","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T19:26:16","slug":"confessions-of-a-professor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/confessions-of-a-professor\/","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of a professor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf a book is less a book than it is the whole of the discussion about it, we must pay attention to that discussion in order to talk about the book without reading it. For it is not the book itself that is at stake, but what it has become within the critical space in which it intervenes and is continually transformed. It is this moving object, a supple fabric of relations between texts and beings, about which one must be in a position to formulate accurate statements at the right moment.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Pierre Bayard\u2019s compelling text, How To Talk About Books You Haven\u2019t Read, <\/em>resonates with me.\u00a0 I have to admit, I am THAT professor. I like to pull content and resources from many different places, which essentially requires me to skim a lot but not read all books in their entirety. You may be wondering, \u201cIs she a hypocrite?\u00a0 Does she expect students to read?\u201d \u00a0These are valid concerns.\u00a0 I think the most accurate answer would be \u2018I expect my students to ENGAGE in their textbook – which is very different than reading the textbook cover to cover\u2019.\u00a0 If I expect a student to purchase a book, it will definitely be used in and out of class. \u00a0I will engage case examples, in class activities, require discussion posts on critical thinking questions from the text and highlight important content in the text.\u00a0 I will expect students to have access to the text to glean resources (when and if needed).\u00a0 However, I will not test a student on irrelevant information.\u00a0 I believe my most important role as an instructor is to take students from consumption (of information) to application. \u00a0Developing critical thinking skills within each student is my ultimate goal.<\/p>\n

As a student learner, I have always aspired to be conscientious.\u00a0 Through each of my degrees, I made valiant efforts to read texts cover to cover.\u00a0 What I discovered through the years is that there’s a little bit of content I need<\/u> to know out of the textbook, but there’s a lot of reading that isn’t relevant to what I want to learn or how I want to engage with the book. Our LGP reading selections the past two weeks have really set me free \u2013 free from guilt, and reinforcement of what I already practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo liberate ourselves from the idea that the Other knows whether we’re lying\u2014the Other being just as much ourselves\u2014is thus one of the primary conditions for being able to talk about books with grace, whether we’ve read them or not. In truth, of course, the knowledge at stake in our comments on books is intrinsically uncertain. And the Other, meanwhile, is a disapproving image we have internalized based on a culture so exhaustive, and whose importance is so firmly drummed into us in school, that it impedes us from living and thinking.\u00a0 But our anxiety in the face of the Other\u2019s knowledge is an obstacle to all genuine creativity about books.\u00a0 The idea that the Other has read everything, and thus is better informed than us, reduces creativity to a mere stopgap that non-readers might resort to in a pinch.\u00a0 In truth, readers and non-readers alike are caught up in an endless process of inventing books, whether they like it or not, and the real question is not how to escape that process, but how to increase its dynamism and its range.\u201d[2]<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

This quote is brilliant, but I had to read, and re-read it many times to feel like I could speak to its intentions.\u00a0 In social work, we use the term \u201cthe other\u201d to refer to the person who is \u201cperceived by the group as not belonging, as being different in some fundamental way. Any stranger becomes the Other.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 I feel that this quote attempts to address the shame connected to non-readers and their ability to speak to content of books.\u00a0 I love the creative freedom that Bayard promotes by encouraging an \u201cincrease in dynamism and range\u201d.\u00a0 Academics in Higher Ed are frequently that \u201cdisapproving image we have internalized\u201d when thinking about \u201cknowing all there is to know\u201d to discuss a book.\u00a0 One way I personally strategize when creatively discussing a book or topic is to fervently read journal articles.\u00a0 Journal articles are new, fresh research where someone(s) have dug into a plethora of literature and collected pertinent and relevant information (and they are much shorter and give great research for counter arguments and rich discussion)!<\/p>\n

\u201cThe paradox of reading is that the path toward ourselves passes through books, but that this must remain a passage. It is a\u00a0traversal of books\u00a0that a good reader engages in \u2014 a reader who knows that every book is the bearer of part of himself and can give him access to it, if only he has the wisdom not to end his journey there.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Bayard makes a profound point when he discusses the concept of traversing (according to dictionary.com the verb transversal is defined as \u201cto pass along or go across something; cross\u201d).\u00a0 I want to view reading as an act of discovery (the act of detecting something new, or something “old” that had been unrecognized as meaningful).\u00a0 Truth cannot end with one textbook.\u00a0 Truth comes from reading further literature which either supports your belief and\/or challenges your belief.\u00a0 Truth is having the wisdom to keep journeying to learn more, skim more, gather as much information as you can from as many sources as you can.\u00a0 Only then can one be true to oneself and speak well about a book you haven\u2019t read.\u00a0 AND for all you avid readers who can\u2019t forgo a book in its entirety, CNBC (not the fake news) reports Warren Buffet\u2019s reading routine \u201ccould make you smarter suggests science\u201d.[5]<\/a> \u00a0“Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Bayard, Pierra, \u00a0How To Talk About Books You Haven\u2019t Read<\/em> (Bloomsbury: New York), pg 150<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Bayard, How To Talk About Books You Haven\u2019t Read<\/em>, pg156<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> http:\/\/academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu\/english\/melani\/cs6\/other.html<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Bayard, How To Talk About Books You Haven\u2019t Read<\/em>. pg178<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2016\/11\/16\/warren-buffetts-reading-routine-could-make-you-smarter-suggests-science.html<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2016\/11\/16\/warren-buffetts-reading-routine-could-make-you-smarter-suggests-science.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf a book is less a book than it is the whole of the discussion about it, we must pay attention to that discussion in order to talk about the book without reading it. For it is not the book itself that is at stake, but what it has become within the critical space in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[477],"class_list":["post-14342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bayard","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14346,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14342\/revisions\/14346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}