Tagged: syllabus
Teaching Radical: Subverting Top-down Normalities in the Classroom
These are reflections on being a radical (to be precise: an anarchist) and teaching at a university. They are personal and subjective. I do not claim to having been very successful. My teaching was much less radical than I always dreamt of. This is annoying, because I think radicalism—the willingness to look at the roots of social phenomena—and a critical approach—contrary to an uncritical acceptance of the given—are necessary attitudes for serious social scientists; that differentiates them from ideologues and theologians. But I hope my teaching so far has not been totally pointless, I hope it had at least some subversive consequences, and I hope my reflections are of use for good people.
An approach to integrating anarchist-communist politics into introductory physical geography
by Turiddu Kronstadt
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When hired at an entry level university post, whether postgraduate, precarious, or tenure-track, one is often confronted with teaching courses beyond one’s background and/or interests (besides a complete lack of or very limited institutionalised pedagogical experience). That was somewhat the situation for me when I started teaching entire courses by myself under the ever deceptive title of Teaching Assistant. If I wanted a stipend (any stipend, really, at that point) and avoid being encumbered with even more loans than I had already accrued, I had to accept whatever was thrown at me.
It happened to be a lab in introductory physical geography (see syllabus here). I had no college-level teaching experience and had just decided to move away from physical geography after my MSc, so as to concentrate on social theories. The prospect of becoming a dishwasher for tenured faculty unwilling to teach introductory courses was not only irritating (and one must quickly learn to hide such irritation under such relations of power), but overwhelming. It would and did set me back in my studies as a result of having to dedicate many hours to a subject that was to me of little interest at that point. At least I had studied enough physical geography to be competent and to make the (it turns out) typical error of piling readings and gratuitous complexities in the curriculum, all for the sake of completeness and, ultimately, to cover up intense self-doubt or insecurity regarding my competence. Regardless, my involvement in anarchist and other anticapitalist groups (e.g., founding the short-lived Atlantic Anarchist Circle, joining the IWW) could not have been further removed from my institutional education work.
Class War University 