WDL 7 Uncareless Love

Today was my very last day of regular classes.  The 38 remaining students in philosophy gave short oral presentations on their own definitions of romantic love, comparing their views to one of our writers.  I loved hearing their ideas because they gave me a vision of how much the culture has changed since I started the course.  There were far fewer people this quarter  who expressed a belief in "the one" than there used to be.  Also far fewer of them express belief in the value of marriage than did thirteen years ago when I created the course.  And I was happy to hear so many references to Emma Goldman and Simone de Beauvoir. 

I've really been impressed with this final philosophy class, especially their willingness to grapple with ideas.  Almost every day I had them work as pairs or teams to answer questions related to the readings of the day.  While I won't claim that all of them actually completed all the readings, I will say that many of them did dig deep and almost all of them thought through the core concepts after they were laid out in class.

There must have been something good about the way I ran the class this quarter because I had only two drops -- so I have 38 final papers to read as well as 38 short answer final exams.

Add to this the 5 team and 27 individual final papers in the Small Group Communication Class and the 20 final papers in interpersonal and I'll be busy this weekend.

It will be good to finish up the quarter with my least favorite aspect of teaching, the grading.  Because if I were to actually finish with one of my favorite parts, witnessing students presenting their heartfelt understanding of the world, I would just be far too sad at graduation, my last working day.

21 WDL St. Augustine and Patrick Lanning and OMG

WDL = Working Days Left

In my Philosophy of Love and Sex class the textbook (The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love, ed. Solomon and Higgins) has a selection from St. Augustine's The City of God in which Augustine argues that "before The Fall," before Adam and Eve sinned against God in the Garden of Eden, men were able to control the behavior of their manly organ with their intelligence.

"for we read in Scripture, 'they were naked and not embarrassed.  And the reason for this is not that they were unaware of their nakedness, but that their nakedness was not less base because lust did not yet arouse those members apart from their will . . ."

Sadly, After the Fall, God punished Man be taking away his power over his organ of generation.

St. Augustine and the Devil, Michael Packer, 1492

"Human nature, then, doubtless feels shame at this lust, and right so.   For its impulses, which subjected the sexual organs to its impulses, is a sufficient demonstration of the punishment that was meted out to man for that first disobedience."

And because of this, Augustine notes, sometimes the sexual organs desire what we should not and then refuse to work when they are legally and morally obligated to do so.

While I would broaden this particular vision of sexual potency to include the desire of women as well, I think it clear that sexual harassment policies are developed to help those people who don't have control over their naughty bits to GAIN that control.

From what was reported in the Bend Bulletin this morning, as well as rumors that have been floating to me from various ports, Patrick Lanning seems to have been someone who was challenged by the need to keep his manly parts safely ensconced within their polyester container.

I read the story by Tyler Leeds (muckracker to the local edutainment industry) this morning and must say I was dismayed by the tawdriness of it all.  So I have a few comments to make.

1.  If the person on whom Lanning made his advances was someone over whom he had hiring and firing power then the case is pretty simple -- he should not have made the advances he seems to have made.  And he should have known that this was a no-no if he ever took any basic sexual harassment training.

  I see from their website that Chemeketa Community College has the traditional anti-sexual-harassment policy.  Their website, however, unlike COCC's sexual harassment website, does not talk about an online course or required training.  I've taken the online "training module" and got a 100% on my test.  It's not that difficult.  And it's a helpful source of information for those times when the issues involved seem on the border of "private practice" vs. "public OMGWTF".

2.  On the other hand, if this female who made the complaint has some job security (i.e., if she's not under his direct command OR if she belongs to a staff or faculty union) then the issue is quite a bit muddier.  It's possible for people who don't have direct control over each others' livelihoods to get confused about what's appropriate in the sexual sphere.

Of course, another aspect of the case that makes it messier is her reported use of nonverbal messaging.  This is one of the comments I found utterly bizarre.   "After he began rubbing her entire back, the claimant said she squeezed his knee “as a way to tell Mr. Lanning to stop.”' 

Ok.  I've studied nonverbal communication for over 30 years and sexual communication for 15 and nowhere have I ever encountered the claim that squeezing someone's leg anywhere -- ankle, knee, or thigh -- was an indication that one did NOT want the sexual attentions of the other to desist.  Squeezing a knee, traditionally, is associated with the desire to have sexual attentions continue.  How could she not know this?

Not only is her nonverbal communication kinda iffy, but her colleagues report that she seemed positively responsive. " Executive Dean of Student Development and Learning Resources Jim Eustrom stated it “appeared to him that they were cuddling and (seated) very close to each other.” At a later interview, the claimant said of her colleagues’ observations that she did not feel uncomfortable with Lanning’s advances: “Well if that is what they saw, then it must be true.”"

 So if she was afraid that she would lose her job, I can understand why she might fake her positive response to his come-ons.  But if she wasn't afraid, if she was part of a staff or faculty union, this just seems goofy to me.  Of course, it's always possible that she is a person with a brain injury or problems with cognition and is not able to monitor appropriate and inappropriate nonverbal communication in the "collegial beverage consumption" situation.

Of course, I still believe that Lanning should have come clean.  I am one of those people who believes that sexual infidelity is not an indicator of a lack of leadership skills.  One may fuck around like Casanova and still be a decent executive.  (See FDR or Catherine the Great)  But one needs to OWN that behavioral worldview and choice.  Lanning, like Bill Clinton before him, should not have lied to those who had an interest in his leadership abilities.  He should have been open about his leave of absence and the reasons for it.  What is problematic to me is the hypocrisy and prevarication (and possible coercion) not the depantsing itself.

Of course I also understand that someone with "nontraditional" values around sexuality will have trouble getting a job placement in a society that has developed from a history of puritanical protestantism.  Nevertheless, one should either own up or shut up if one is seeking a job or talking with the American people.

We are all fallen and most of us, both men and women, have had trouble with our naughty bits at one time or another.  But just because such thinking and behavior is common, doesn't mean we should participate in it every time the potential for seduction raises its beautiful but scaly head.

33 What we talk about when we talk about tests

 

A.  Titania and Oberon are the longest married couple in Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Shakespeare provides the following insights into marriage by showing his audience that

1. Even though they have sex with others they get back together at the end.  “Hand in hand with fairy grace, will we sing and bless this place.”
2. Betrayal can extend as far as giving your wife drugs to play a trick on her: “And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes, and make her full of hateful fantasies.”
3. Married people don’t live as individuals but have groups of friends and followers who can have some impact on the marital relationship.  “But room, fairy:  here comes Oberon.”  “And here my mistress, would that he were gone!”
4. When married people separate the world around them can feel their pain and becomes confused and crazy.  “And this same progeny of evils comes from our debate.”
5. Marriage is challenging and difficult but long married people like to see others getting married.  “So shall all the couples three ever true in loving be:  and the blots of nature’s hand shall not in their issue stand.”

This was a multiple answer question on my Philosophy of Love and Sex midterm.  Most of my students got part of it incorrect.  Every response was correct.  Some students got the answer wrong because they didn't read the directions for "multiple answer" questions.  I'm not sure why the others got it wrong.  As with most of my objective tests, when I hand it back I'll give them the option of making arguments for their points of view on any missed question.  If they can explain their reasoning in such a way that they show me they understand the material, then I'll give them the points back.  

The purpose of a content-focused objective test is to

a.  determine who has been doing the homework.
b.  see if students know how to memorize course material.
c.  help students engage more deeply with certain aspects of the course material.
d.  make life easier for the person grading.
e.  amuse the creator of the test.
f.  punish people who don't have a good memory.
g.  punish people who don't have good study habits.
h.  make it possible for someone not involved with the class or subject matter to grade the test.
i.  make it possible for a cold heartless machine who doesn't give a rat's ass about any of the students in the course much less the subject matter to grade the test.

45 Goodbye Andrew the Chaplain

Ten years ago the Bend Bulletin called me the "Anti-Cupid" after interviewing me about my love education courses.  A photographer visited my class on a day I had students competing with Valentines.  The photos show me acting like a game-show host.  One of the games I used to have students play was based on the work of Andreas Capellanus, Andrew the Chaplain, a medieval priest who wrote a book of "advice" called De Amore.  This is a core text in the study of "Courtly Love" as Andrew gave facetious advice (that he denies in Book Three) about how to love another adulterously.

I stopped doing the full-on competitions in class when I realized that in order to have the course labeled a "Western Culture and History" course, it needed to have more on the background of the philosophers.  Competitions take a lot of time to be run well.  So over the past ten years I've added more lecture material.  Nevertheless, I still enjoy student activities that allow some "fun."  Yesterday, after my introductory lecture about feudalism and the chivalric code, I had them play with their understanding of Andrew's advice by earning participation points doing the following activity.

 






"Ask Andrew"

•Pair up

•Imagine that Andrew is a contemporary advice columnist.  (Look especially at list, p. 67-8)

•Write a short letter asking for relationship advice.  Be prepared to read letter aloud with Andrew’s response

Once the letters were written, they needed to be performed.

•First, read the letter aloud so the class can hear it.

 •Before you give Andrew’s response, ask if anyone in class thinks they know the answer. 

•Call on anyone who raises their hand.  Let them answer. 

•Then, say either “yes” or “no” and give your planned response. 

I think my students did an  awesome job with the activity -- they had fun and saw the relationship with contemporary thinking.  AND, it was fun for me. 

48 "Love is a kind of war . . .

. . . and no assignment for cowards." 

Thus is Ovid's opening of the Ars Amatoria translated in Solomon and Higgins The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love.

Today in philosophy I talked about Publius Ovidius Naso and the context of love and marriage in early imperial Rome.  We also covered St. Paul's writings on marriage in First Corinthians, both the harsh and the beautiful. By harsh I mean his idea that people should be like him, celibate, and avoid any kind of sex (1 Corinthians 7).  By beautiful I mean first, his insistence that husbands and wives are equal in the giving and taking of sex (1 Corinthians 7).  And second, of course, I mean 1 Corinthians 13 which I can't read aloud without crying.  I said as much and a young man volunteered to finish the reading after I started to tear up.

Reading Ovid again made me think about my high school second and third year Latin teacher, Mr. Barrans.  I had such a huge crush on him, though as a youngster I did not perceive him as being a particularly good teacher.  He let people chatter in class and didn't keep us focused and task oriented.  I much preferred the tougher profs in those days.  But for some reason I became wild about him.  I can remember sitting next to him at an all school event in the gym and allowing the edge of my sandal to just barely touch the "waist" of his heavy black Oxford.  I became so turned on that I thought my head would explode.

Did he know I had a crush on him?  I don't remember whether or not I ever actually told him before I left school.  I do remember he gave me special assignments in translation.  He had me translating Catullus my junior year.  Did he say, "These might interest you?"  And that year he also occasionally let me have brief access to his classroom immediately after school so I could make-out with my senior class boyfriend for a few minutes in a "private" space.  During my own senior year, there was no actual fourth year Latin but I do remember taking a stab at both Ovid sexy poems and Virgil's Georgics and then finally giving up Latin.

Was it "right" for my Latin teacher to have me translating poems such as the one below?  As an old teacher now, I would say, "no."  But then I'm the kind of person who doesn't have personal relationships with students. Perhaps he thought he was reaching out to a trouble youth in the only "language" she knew.

Catullus 5

Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Horrible Ending of the Quarter

Last quarter ended terribly and I just haven't wanted to blog about it.

First, there was the problem of my Philosophy of Love and Sex class. Reading their final analyses, I realized that at least half of them were leaving the class invested in the same old belief in "true love" they had when they entered. I feel like King C'nut, trying to hold back the waves of noxious ideology and like him, I think I just have to turn back that work to a higher power.

Second, there were the two exploding teams, one in each small group communication class. Two teams did not check up on their paper writers and suffered at the very end of the quarter when in one group, the writer stole two thirds of the paper and in the other, the writer didn't even turn the paper in. This is a terrible betrayal of other students who, basically, allowed themselves to be betrayed. I spent much time online on my Ipod Touch dealing with each issue.

I was on my Touch because we were off to New York on March 21 where, among other stories we consumed was South Pacific, a play that celebrates "true love" in that "at first sight" 1940s fashion and reveals it in all its awe-full glory.