A Word on Teaching

The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a piece in one of its usual veins, with academics fretting about student non-engagement and non-preparation; in this particular case, their frequent failure to complete, or even try, assigned reading. I commented:

The real “answer” to so many sincerely troubled pieces here at the Chronicle is the same: Teaching is futile, and you are operating in an existential void, so get used to that. Edward Gibbon said it perfectly more than 200 years ago: “The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.” You will never “reach” most of your students, although you have to act as though you could. Many of them will never “do the reading,” because for whatever reason, they have no interest in doing so. Many of them are taking the class to get credit for taking the class, not to learn the material the class is ostensibly meant to convey. Thus it ever was; thus it ever will be. So you, the teacher, should do what you think is best — knowing in your heart of hearts that it makes all too little difference — and get on with the business at hand. As with so much of life, the effective path is difficult to find precisely because there is no effective path; the important thing is to develop the proper Stoic attitude that will see you through.