Sphinx

My secret is out: someone in the jazz composition group happens to have an interest in Greek tragedy, came across one of my old appearances on In Our Time and mentioned this on the group chat. By an unfortunate coincidence we were doing modal composition this week, and suddenly I was threatened with explaining the origins of Dorian, Mixolydian etc., and that could lead into further discussion of Plato’s ideas about different harmoniai and their effects on the soul, and the relation between ancient Greek musical theory and what we now understand as modes… Derailment threatened – however conscious I am of the risks of taking over the conversation, could I really formulate a short answer to such a question? Thankfully someone else asked a question that derailed the class in a completely different direction, rather more music-related if somewhat esoteric, and I was off the hook.

Probably I’m being over-sensitive – feeling an extra responsibility, as a teacher, not to mess with another teacher’s lesson plan. I’m actually quite happy with derailments in my own seminars, as (except after a particularly bad insomniac-cat-night) I feel confident about my ability to pull things back on track before they go too far off piste, to recognise when a digression is serving the overall purpose of the class and when it’s all going a bit too Herodotean – and when it’s great for one person but completely tedious for everyone else. And of course I have the advantage of being older and more pompous than any of my students, and it’s relatively unlikely that we’re going to venture into areas where I have to defer to an uncomfortable degree to their expertise on anything – and if we do, well, who gives out the grades..? Managing an adult education class for a bunch of hobbyists with their own claims to authority in different fields – I am not the only academic in the group – is a whole other thing; once it’s decided that the Greek theory of modes is relevant, who other than me is going to shut me up?

As far as my own teaching is concerned, however, it’s the derailment that I’ve really missed – or, at least, the absence of derailment epitomises the deficiencies and difficulties of doing all this stuff online. There have been times this year when I have come very close to doing a Heath Ledger “Why so serious?” thing – except I know how flat that would have fallen. Everything is so serious. No one says anything that isn’t well-informed and carefully thought through – which is one reason, I think, why students have widely felt that we are demanding much more of them this year; we’re not, but they now feel much more obliged to do more of the reading, perhaps because it’s much less obvious to us that someone is avoiding our eye (even more of a problem if not everyone has their camera on), so they feel more at risk of being called upon. But doing the extra reading isn’t making them any more likely to say things without prompting, perhaps because putting up a virtual hand or even just turning on the microphone seems just that bit more formal, and on top of that everyone is nervous of talking over anyone else – maybe because the sound is just flattened out, rather than different voices being audible even if talking at the same time.

And this is a major problem. It’s not just that discussion is slower and more awkward, it’s that it’s much thinner; there are simply fewer contributions, and while the number of substantial contributions is probably about the same, they’re more isolated and disconnected. Some of the best discussions in the past have arisen from throwaway remarks, or even jokes – and we don’t get either of these any more. When first introduced, Padlet sometimes recreates that spontaneous and frivolous element, but then people start taking that too seriously; ditto the Chat function. It’s another variant of the Creepy Treehouse problem; if I tell students I want them to behave like typical students, that amazing combination of excessive sincerity and complete abandon, nothing is better guaranteed to kill the mood. But the net result instead is that we’re all much too adult and sensible, and that then limits the possibility for anything really interesting to happen.

None of this is a complaint about my students; their resilience and good humour in these astonishing and appalling circumstances have been awe-inspiring, especially the final-year students who don’t have any hope that next year might be better. I can’t imagine how ghastly this year would have been if they hadn’t stepped up to such an extent. But no one is pretending that it’s been normal; what’s been interesting, but also distressing, is discovering exactly what has been missed or lost. I do think we’ve successfully covered the core material – perhaps even better than in previous years, precisely because I’ve been covering it in pre-recorded lectures rather than having to remember to do it in class when I’m always open to being distracted by something less familiar and less interesting (because less familiar).

No, this isn’t about making the class interesting for my benefit. It’s the crucial point that, certainly by the final year, university study is not about consuming a mass of existing knowledge as an end in itself, but about using it to develop new ideas and perspectives – and about realising that this is not just a matter of doing the hard yards of research and thinking, but occasionally also the serendipity of a daft throwaway comment that actually opens up something new. My role is not just to open their eyes to new ideas, but to reveal the potential of the ideas they have produced themselves, even by accident. Sometimes you need to derail everything in order to find a new direction – when derailment is the necessary answer to railroading…