ethics

Presenting Violence in the Classroom

Submitted by Michael Roberts 22Jan
Still from Alain Resnais film Night and Fog

I teach a Literature class called “Banned Books and Novel Ideas.” It is one of the most popular courses in English at the University, with eight sections being taught this semester. Undergraduates prefer this course to others, I assume, because the title suggests something controversial, risqué, or explicit about the course material. Or at least it does to me; I think that a course on banned books should explore the history of controversial literature and take the reasons for banning books seriously.

Confessions of a Teacher with Bias

Submitted by Meredith Coffey 20Oct
This photograph zooms in on a white and orange Whataburger sign that reads, "For the safety...of our customers and our team members. Please remove...your Halloween mask at this time. Thank You!"

I spent a great deal of my first year teaching Rhetoric—last year—discussing bias with my students. Time after time, I reminded them: everything you’ll read has some kind of bias, but that’s okay, because bias isn’t inherently a bad thing. Though it is, I pointed out, a thing you’ll need to take into account.

Community and the Rhetoric Classroom

Submitted by Eric Detweiler 13Aug
Photo of Jeff and Britta from the sitcom Community

Jeff Winger is Socrates’ worst nightmare. As an former lawyer disbarred for having a phony bachelor’s degree, and whose central skill on the NBC sitcom Community is manipulating others’ emotions with his words, Jeff bears out almost all of the concerns Socrates expresses in the Phaedrus and Gorgias about what can happen when training and skill in rhetoric is divorced from a strong moral code.

Trust Me, I'm a Teacher: Some Reflections on Teacher-Student Power Relations

Submitted by Eric Detweiler 13Aug
Stick figure comic from XKCD

Let me immediately note that I’m not intending to demonstrate universal truths with the following anecdotes. My intent is just to share a couple of particular rhetorical situations and the reflections to which they’ve led.

Licensing

Creative Commons License
All materials posted to this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. We invite you to use and remix these materials, but please give credit where credit is due. In addition, we encourage you to comment on your experiments with and adaptations of these plans so that others may benefit from your experiences.

 

User login