Teaching in the South panel

The conference I attended last week was focused on teaching--not always pedagogy, but most of the presentations I heard had some comment on teaching relative to the topic of the paper. I liked that aspect of it. But I attended a panel that bothered me and I can't stop thinking about it.

The panel was titled "Teaching in the Southern Region: Ideas for Engaging Students," and it consisted of a moderator and four panelists. They weren't reading papers but instead having a roundtable discussion in which the moderator participated as much as the panelists. I will say that I appreciated the handouts they distributed with classroom activities and assignments that were actually quite good. But the overall conversation was troubling.

The panel began with an attempt to characterize the "typical" Southern student. That should have been the red flag for everyone--how can professors really believe that this is useful? The disclaimer that these were "generalizations" was not sufficient--these were derogatory stereotypes. The discussion began with the idea that college students from the South come from backgrounds of homogenous culture and that their ideas, beliefs, and preconceptions about the world had not been challenged much. Okay, I can work with that. From there, it turned into the idea that students from the South are racist (and apparently all white!), closed-minded, country-music listening rednecks. And they all go to the same church. Nice. Are these really professors talking here?!

I felt very defensive of my students. I couldn't believe that the panelists really held these beliefs about the students that they taught--how unfortunate for their classes! I considered walking out, but finally formulated a comment. Unfortunately, the discussion was dominated by a couple of people and I was not able to get a word in--I am not willing to yell over people to be heard at a professional conference. This has been bugging me ever since.

The hopeful incosistency here was that the actual teaching strategies that they offered were quite good and did seem to give the students more credit than they were given in the conversation I heard. One panelists proudly described the creative and innovative projects that her students had submitted--projects that demonstrated the thoughtful engagement that the "typical" Southern student described there was incapable of.

I feel the need to do something about this, but there's really nothing I can do except remember it. And I can use this medium to say that, while it is true that some students in any region may come from homogenous cultural backgrounds and that their assumptions may have never been challenged, it is a gross injustice to assume that they are unwilling or unable to engage in new ideas. Give them some credit! College is the place where people learn to challenge their beliefs and ideas--TO LEARN! As teachers it is our responsibility to facilitate that and to constantly learn from our experiences, whatever region we're teaching in. Yes, I have had bad experiences with students and there can be certain challenges that are more prominent in the South than in other regions, but to go into a classroom with such dangerous stereotypes is sabotaging the class before it begins. We're teachers, for goodness sake!