One of my primary tasks as a department chair, and I often think it’s the most important responsibility I’m charged with, is to promote within our department an atmosphere that enhances the possibilities for learning. At any given time our department has at least a dozen or so individuals new to teaching: GTFs, adjuncts, and junior full-timers. The department as a whole is charged with helping them develop them as teachers. Most new faculty care a great deal about what they’re doing, and pay close attention to the environment and culture around them. For the most part, though, they’re in no position to distinguish clearly between ironic chatter among senior colleagues that good-naturedly disparages our students and mean-spirited spewing of bile that frankly disparages our students. Yes, these may seem like quite distinct registers to us, but the distinctions are rarely obvious to novices. Junior faculty who are exposed to regular disquisitions on the failures of our students, their unworthiness, their lack of commitment and preparation, etc., are more likely to absorb such attitudes toward students themselves.

I’m hardly suggesting that we shouldn’t vent frustrations with particular students or class periods we’ve just taught. But there’s a difference between giving voice to a frustration and creating a general aura of disdain. I would of course defend anyone’s right to feel however they feel about students, and to express themselves, but this doesn’t keep me from believing that it’s my responsibility to work at fostering a general sense of respect and appreciation for our students. There’s a contradiction here, I know, but then they’re everywhere, aren’t they?

Also, many years ago there was a shift in the schools away from the specifics of actual battles to more emphasis on how the wars themselves were connected to the flow of history.

Furthermore, I agree that lack of knowledge of a specific event, no matter how significant to faculty members, does not mean that the student lacks all understanding of the social, cultural and political issues that the event represents.

That being said, I believe that there is a fundamental difference between how a professor handles these matters in the classroom (i.e., what is pedagogically sound) and how a professor discusses these matters with his colleagues. Just because someone bemoans the alleged ignorance of his students in the classroom on certain matters, does not mean that the professor treats the students with disdain or a lack of respect. (Though, arguably, disdain towards students in any context is unacceptable.) Also, frustration with students’ lack of knowledge of certain matters does not connote, necessarily, disdain for the students themselves. One can be frustrated that students lack understanding of certain political and historical matters without bearing any ill will for the students themselves.