From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
Subject: Re: Persona
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 19:30:02 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In <703046145.F00001@ocitor.fidonet> Tim@f4229.n124.z1.fidonet.org (Tim) writes:

> Fra Tadhg Liath unto "Edward V. Wright" (Nicholas, is that you?)

Well, now, that would put this discussion into the more philosophical,
"what is a persona?" category, wouldn't it? :-)
 
> EV> There seems to be an underlying assumption here that a good teacher ought
> EV> never to withhold information from a student.
 
> No, merely that this is an inappropriate pretext for doing so.

What makes it inappropriate?  The fact that the instructor used a fiction?
(I don't think that if she was a real Medeival lady and couldn't answer the
question because she really wasn't allowed in the room, you would have the
same objections.)  I can't tell you how many times I've answered a student's
question with, "I don't know, what do you think about it?"  Which is usually
an out-and-out lie -- I almost always do know the answer to the question,
although I think it's more important for him to think about it for himself.


> Well, it was certainly effective in reinforcing my conviction that such
> persona games are absurd.  My difficulty is not with the subtlety but with 
>the offensiveness; were I a student in that class... 

If it's your conviction that persona games are absurd, I don't see why
you would choose to attend a class that was advertised as being taught
in persona.  And if you wouldn't attend the class anyway, I don't see
why any of the instructor's techniques should offend you.

  
>I would find thoroughly offensive a statement
>that *implies* (whether it states it or not) that the teacher knows and is
>deliberately not going to say.

The statement was something along the lines of, "There's another form of
poetry, but I don't know anything about that because it was only discussed
after women had left the room."  I don't see how "I don't know anything
about that" can possibly be construed to imply "I do know about that."
The fact that the teacher gave a person reason to excuse her ignorance
rather than a real-world reason implies that she *might*, in fact, know
more about the subject than she's letting on, not that she *does*. 

 
> Is this so unnatural a reaction? Am I being oversensitive? Would NO ONE
> ELSE in this situation be as angered as I would be? If so, then I guess
> it's just me being peculiar (again); if not, I'd appreciate hearing some
> other viewpoints.

If something about a teacher's style angers you, then the obvious solution
is not to attend any of her classes again.  If enough people are angered,
she will soon get the message.  However, if this is all it takes for a teacher 
to offend you, then you must have led a very charmed life or spent most of 
your academic carreer being offended.  

I remember one professor who told us on the first day of class that, if we
had any questions about his lectures, we should take them to his teaching
assistance because he (the professor) did not like to answer questions from
undergraduates.  (This is not my interpretation of his reason -- it's what he
stated.)  His lecture style consisted of reading directly from his notes, often
with his back to the class while he drew on the blackboard with one hand and
held his notes in the other.  On one occassion, he mixed up the notes from 
two classes.  As he read, he changed subject in mid-sentence from the embryological
development of the liver to the song organ of birds.  He did not notice that
the sentence made no sense grammatically or semantically -- although he was the
only one in the class who didn't -- and continued on for two pages, until his notes 
switched back to the subject of livers.  At that point, he finally noticed something 
was amiss, did a double-take, realized what had happened, and continued on talking 
about the liver, never apologizing or even acknowledging the mistake.  This is the
same professor who, legend had it, reconciled a difference between his notes and a
cat on the dissection table by announcing that "the cat is wrong."

And this was not the worst professor I ever had.
 








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