Links
Archives
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
|
Syllabum Omnium
This semester’s classes have now begun, and silently, in the background, the Syllabum Omnium grows. Over the years I’ve noticed that, in line with other manifestations of writing in English studies, course syllabi have gone from two page lists of reading assignments to forty page paragraphs of confessions, entreaties, threats, deals, praise, riddles, riffs. Some of these things look more like Math syllabi than English, given how popular the business of breaking grades down into smaller and smaller increments has become (“Students will receive 3.2% for attendance; 15.8% for contribution to discussion...”). Perhaps it’s because many universities now require professors to put copies of all of their syllabi (and assignments; and exams) in their Annual Review packet, but a decision seems to have been made that in lieu of a tenure manuscript a book-length syllabus will do. To be sure, there have always been a few professors who long ago went cosmic. They decided that in order to teach, say, the nineteenth century novel properly, you need to require students to read twenty such novels (“There’s just so much great stuff!”), plus forty essays about them; and then you wouldn’t be responsible if you didn’t escort the class to the National Gallery to view some Turners; and then, since you can’t really understand the whole deus absconditus thing without reading Nietzsche, you need to add The Will to Power to the reading list at the last minute. These are the professors you see hasting out of the library with fifteen books falling out of their arms and with a panicked look on their faces: “So many books to read, so little time! I’ll just read this batch tonight.” Cosmic professors have always had humongous syllabi. But the practice is now general, at least among English professors; and, as always, it’s the students who suffer. Instead of a focused, selective course presentation, students endure a flurry of paper, percentages, and prattle. It’s true what a lot of our colleagues in the hard sciences say: English professors can’t think straight. |