Cathy Davidson’s The New Education has me thinking about the spatial-material axis of learning. How is learning affected by proximity, and what shape does this proximity take? I couldn’t agree more with Davidson’s claim that “the lecture is broken, and so we must think of better ways to incorporate active learning into the classroom” (Davidson, 248). The hierarchy of the lecture-theatre places the professor at the center of the classroom’s universe, with their students below, above, or generally at the periphery. Even in seminar-style classrooms, I find that many professors find ways to recreate the hierarchy of the lecture theatre by physically positioning themselves across from the majority of students or by dominating the conversation by speaking more often and for longer than everybody else. In these ways and more, professors perform the master-student binary that disallows a mutual exchange of knowledge (or what Sha Xin Wei calls “synthesis”) between professor and student (Davidson, 143). So even in a seminar classroom, where everyone might have a “seat at the [same] table”, as the saying goes, the Professor’s seat is usually more prominent so as to allow students to more easily pay attention to what they have to say.
The master-student binary also belies the fact that a university is its students, and that professors – even excellent, innovative pedagogues – could not be professors if students did not populate their classrooms and their advisory spaces. Of course, professors have developed some level of mastery over their subject or subjects by way of advanced degrees, but does an advanced degree always signal greater knowledge than can be gained outside of the university, or does it simply signal different knowledge – a different way of knowing. I enjoyed reading about the development of a new Digital Sociology program through Virginia Commonwealth University, and how Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom recruited the program’s first cohort from professions that “have been hurt or altered dramatically by technology” (Davidson, 129). These students did not just study under Dr. Cottom, but rather shaped the program that Dr. Cottom led.
Every department, new or old, should be paying attention to how its students are contributing knowledge and innovation to its field, how its students teach its professors, and how to ensure that this work does not go unacknowledged. At the conclusion of her “Future of Learning” chapter, Davidson writes, “[Current college students would] love more support connecting the abstract academic subjects in their majors to everyday life” (Davidson, 253). I would argue that support for students in connecting theory to everyday life should reflect the material and spatial realities of everyday life, like the fact that some students “walk [ten miles] from Flushing to take one class and then walk back [ten miles] to get to their part-time, minimum wage job” (Davidson, 61). If the ideal end goal of the new education is “not only to adapt to a changing world but also to change the world,” institutions of higher education will have to work towards changing the material realities of a world in which most labor goes unpaid or severely underpaid, leading to the degradation of the status of certain kinds of labor in the world – where lawyers are seen as more important than refrigerator repairmen (Davidson, 61) just as professors are seen as more important than students. Davidson cites John Mogulescu, the Dean of the School of Professional Students at CUNY, “society has to do its part and make sure those jobs are worth having, that the people who do vital, important work in our society are compensated for that work” (Davidson, 69). Institutions of higher learning need to do more than establishing interdisciplinarity between STEM fields and humanities fields, as exciting as that would be. In order for everyone to have a seat at the table, whether that table is at a four-year research university or a community college, institutions of higher learning need to find ways to create spatial and/or digital proximity – and solidarity – between professors and students, and this means addressing material obstacles to proximity and solidarity by compensating students for the work they do beyond scholarships and grants. The model of “We have your back. And your books. And your Metro card” should extend to every student at every institution, so that any student has access to the material and spatial resources to attend any institution (Davidson, 64).
Davidson, Cathy N.. The New Education. United States of America: Basic Books, 2017. Print.