How to Make Classes Work, Step One
Dec. 13th, 2019 08:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingThe classroom should have windows.
Every class I’ve taught in a windowless classroom has been difficult.
This is by design.
A built-in feature of the postwar modernist architecture used for a lot of schools and other public buildings in the United States is that it facilitates certain types of social control. For example, if you put students in a room with a low ceiling, poor lighting, no windows, and acoustic features that mute sound, it has a soporific effect. This is meant to make students sluggish, thereby minimizing class disruptions like, you know, a student asking questions or formulating their own ideas.
If this sounds dystopian to you in theory, let me assure you that it’s even more dystopian in practice.
There’s not much I can do about this, to be honest. The last time I tried to request classrooms with windows, I was told that the only time slot available was Saturday morning at 8:00am. The shortage of classrooms at large universities is also by design, even at well-funded flagship state schools located in depopulated areas with declining enrollments. The purpose of this artificial scarcity of basic teaching resources is to keep both students and instructors in a subservient position, but that’s a much longer essay that I have no patience (or emotional energy) to write.
Still, I guess I can at least keep asking. There’s no harm in trying, right?
Every class I’ve taught in a windowless classroom has been difficult.
This is by design.
A built-in feature of the postwar modernist architecture used for a lot of schools and other public buildings in the United States is that it facilitates certain types of social control. For example, if you put students in a room with a low ceiling, poor lighting, no windows, and acoustic features that mute sound, it has a soporific effect. This is meant to make students sluggish, thereby minimizing class disruptions like, you know, a student asking questions or formulating their own ideas.
If this sounds dystopian to you in theory, let me assure you that it’s even more dystopian in practice.
There’s not much I can do about this, to be honest. The last time I tried to request classrooms with windows, I was told that the only time slot available was Saturday morning at 8:00am. The shortage of classrooms at large universities is also by design, even at well-funded flagship state schools located in depopulated areas with declining enrollments. The purpose of this artificial scarcity of basic teaching resources is to keep both students and instructors in a subservient position, but that’s a much longer essay that I have no patience (or emotional energy) to write.
Still, I guess I can at least keep asking. There’s no harm in trying, right?
