Editor’s Note: “Social Theories, Student Realities”

Teaching that begins with experiences distant from those of students devalues the personal experiences of students, contributes to an uncertain self, and academically constructs a person who cannot reflectively judge. This is particularly easy in international relations, which has had a tradition that says efforts to make the general public understand it is a waste of time. To teach students effectively, however, one must begin with some of their personal experiences so that they can have the sense that it is "safe" to use those experiences as a basis for judgement in things considered important by persons (like professors) who are viewed as significant. By teaching students in this fashion, the professor simultaneously does a number of things. She helps the student to link the personal with other experiences that are not personal; she helps the student to see and hear his or her own voice in distant persons and things; and she helps the student understand that it is out of the aggregate of specific experiences that general conceptions are constructed and to which those conceptions must return to ensure their continuing validity. Further, she will help students understand that their own reflections (which they author and for which they can safely claim authority) can become part of the modes of thinking that characterize university--as earlier defined. Residing in those reflections on their experiences, there may be something new in nature--something to be added to the human conversation.... --Winston E. Langley, "Teaching, Learning, and Judging: Some Reflections on the University and Political Legitimacy" I was quite fortunate recently, while editing the present issue of Human Architecture, to be reading and reflecting on a collection of wonderful essays by an array of teacher-scholars across diverse disciplines at UMass Boston. The book, Achieving Against the Odds: How Academics Become Teachers of Diverse Students (Temple University Press, 2001), edited jointly by Esther Kingston-Mann, professor of history and director of the Center for Improvement of Teaching (CIT) at UMass Boston, and Tim Sieber, associate professor of anthropology in the same institution, was kindly extended to me by Louise Z. Smith, Interim Dean of Liberal Arts at UMass Boston, as a welcoming gift for the occasion of my forthcoming appointment in Fall 2003 as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at UMass Boston. I must say that I could have easily epigraphed the present editorial introduction using an excerpt from any of the essays in the volume. I could have, for instance, begun from that of Estelle Disch, professor of sociology at UMass Boston, whose disciplinary location I share and her pedagogical application of C. Wright Mills's "Sociological Imagination" (i.e., the ability to link personal troubles and public issues) nicely echoes not only my own teaching style, but also the spirit of what Winston E. Langley eloquently expresses above regarding his experience of teaching political science and international relations at UMass Boston. However, in the spirit of welcoming diversity (in this case in terms of dialogue across disciplines), I chose to begin with an excerpt from Lengley's chapter in the volume. Although the issue of achievement against the odds in the midst of a diverse student (and faculty) population in an urban public university such as UMass Boston is the central theme of the book as reflected in its title, what drew my attention across all essays of the volume was the common strategy adopted by all in meeting that challenge--a strategy that is quite similar to my own teaching style as reflected partly in the purpose and mission of the present journal. The common strategy is that of taking up the challenge of diversity among students and faculty by establishing a dialectic between the common public issues brought up in course contents and the diverse personal troubles of both the students and faculty as explored during the semester. …