This episode navigates one professor's thinking about higher education in the 21st century; from growing student mental health concerns, to radical shifts in classroom delivery, to the pandemic, Professor Christopher Schaberg talks about his book, Pedagogy of the Depressed published by Bloomsbury Academic.
The book asks us to think about many questions facing higher education today. How in our technologically-driven world might we enact what Paulo Freire in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed imagined as reading and writing the world?
How in the midst of our post-pandemic response, do our current and evolving concepts of a well-rounded education and the potential of the humanities help us think critically? What does it mean to teach with Zoom and asynchronous classrooms beckoning and how do we reflect on and respond to the conditions of learning in light of collective trauma we’ve all been through?
Schaberg writes, "Call me naive, but I still believe in what we're trying to teach our students: critical thinking. I've critiqued this phrase before, because it became a meaningless buzzword for so long, but now I find myself rallying around it again. If we hold critical thinking as a skill and as a mindset with which we want to imbue our students, how can we adopt such patently suspicious practices in the name of teaching?"
When reflecting on teaching during the pandemic, he writes:
"But now I am the screen. We're all screens, as we communicate on Zoom or Google Hangouts. We command attention or black ourselves out if we don't want to be seen doing whatever else it is we're doing during class. All the micromovements and momentarily redirected eyes of classroom phone navigation have been mitigated".
Christopher Schaberg is Director of Public Scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis, the author of ten books, and founding co-editor of the book series Object Lessons. His writings on education and contemporary culture have been published in Inside Higher Ed, Sierra, Public Books, Slate, and the Atlantic.
Music for this episode was written and performed by singer songwriter Ashtyn Barbaree. Barbaree hails from Northwest Arkansas and is currently on an international tour with her album, Sent Through the Ceiling. The theme song for this episode "High Hopes" was written by Ashtyn Barbaree and Lacy Hampton, performed by Korey McKelvy, Ashtyn Barbaree and Lacy Hampton.
Thank you to poet Sandra Simonds for the reading of her poem "April." Simonds, an award-winning writer and professor, is the author of nine books of poetry including Triptychs and Mother Was a Tragic Girl.
Generous funding for Arts & Letters Radio was provided by the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
This episode is dedicated to Professor Michael Kleine, a amazing teacher and friend to all who met him. To learn about Professor Kleine's scholarship, visit the A&L episode Searching for Latini.
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