Sociology of the Anarchists - Gozips.uakron.edu - The University of ...

Discussing and writing assignments
Focusing on facilitating discussion in addition to lecturing seems only logical from an
anarchist perspective, and there's probably few teachers who'd say that discussion cannot
be helpful to learning. It takes a skilled teacher to fairly, justly, and dynamically facilitate
discussion, and I've been in awe of more than a few in my life. It takes skill and
experience to not just talk over students and to wait for them to give feedback—it's
teachers who usually monopolize the discussion. Keeping that in mind is important.
Finding ways to gain the trust of students, empower the quieter students, and to inspire
them to find an interest in the topics taught probably takes a lot of vigilance and planning.
It reminds me of McKeachie's earlier comments about how some might view group work
as being lazy and an attempt to get out of lecture planning work; but that in fact it's even
more work to plan group work. I imagine discussion facilitating takes just as much preplanning
and discipline. I've facilitated meetings before, and it's a lot of work—to allow
for a diverse participation in discussion, to keep the discussion on-track and oriented
toward the group's goals, and to help the group reach it's goals. Facilitating a class
discussion has to be just as much work. But, as with the organizations I've been a part of,
the class would probably really benefit and feel very useful, empowered, active, and
engaged as a result.
Learning student interests and finding out their opinions (possibly at the beginning of the
course) seems crucial for discussion in class. For me, I think we should be tailoring a
large part of our discussions and lectures to things that are either important to students
(whether all of them articulate it or not—e.g. many students are political, but intentionally
avoid talking about it) or things that interest them. Not to suggest that we avoid the core
concepts we teach, but to make them relevant and to either integrate their interests into
our lectures OR to integrate our lectures into their topics (that'd be bold, huh?).
I appreciated Bidwell's (1995) practice of not necessarily feeling the need to grade all
writing assignments and that we should focus upon helping (to a limit) students improve
writing skills. The informal writing students do can be really helpful, especially if there's
a relationship of exchange with the instructor that is focused upon improving their ideas,
but at the same time removes the pressure of students to do mediocre, acceptable, and bythe-book
work. She's probably correct in arguing that an instructor might not want to
outright say that such assignments won't be graded, otherwise students might not take
them seriously (I imagine I might not, in certain circumstances), and view them instead as
a learning opportunity.
Teaching social movements
I would like to (and have already) teach social movements. I feel that social movements
are the one place that intersect (as Alain Touraine argues) with all the various subdisciplines
of sociology. The topic is often found at the end of introductory textbooks
because it summarizes the efforts to deliberately (or inadvertently and spontaneously)
address the issues of class, race, gender, sexuality, power, capitalism, et al.
[ Williams 102 ] [ this is a draft. do not cite. ]