Lecturer Sues School Claiming Anti-Intellectual Students Created Hostile Working Environment
Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional expose, which she promises will "name names."
The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.
Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.
Ms. Venkatesan's scholarly specialty is "science studies," which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, "teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth." She continues: "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."
This can't be the whole story. My gut tells me that she was hitting these kids with material that was too advanced and foreign for them and they flipped out. I belive that being a student requires you to keep an open mind but to also be critical of the ideas you are presented with.
Some students can be so thickheaded and belligerent that they ruin a class. I remember some from freshmen comp that refused--more or less--to acknowledge that symbolism even existed as a literary idea. They adopted a sort of Howard Stern-ian attack mode whenever subtext was mentioned.
This article is woefully incomplete and actively hostile to the teacher. I'd be curious to hear more from her side.
Comments
I don't, I mean, a professor saying "they'd argue with your ideas" like that's a bad thing is suspect. Certainly the article seems biased but having worked with freshman before, any argument is better then what you normally get, blank stares or apathy.
Posted by: kilian | May 8, 2008 11:21 PM
Argument and discussion is essential, but it obviously has to be led and directed by someone or it devolves into Springer-esque attacks on the other person's character. The arguments put forth by today's youth may get nastier quicker (can we blame the internet on that? I think we can. Refence the "douchbaggery" discussion on web blogs and their need for moderators), but it still falls on the Teacher to control the class and class environment. She sets the tone, she decides what's acceptable and which way the discussion needs to go. If she can't do it or was somehow offended/initimidated, she shouldn't be there.
That's partly why I never pursued a teaching career - I really don't want my job to be arguing philosophy or literary theory with 18 year olds. Few of them are humble enough to separate themselves from their ideas long enough to consider another point of view.
Posted by: milt | May 9, 2008 09:21 AM