The ADD Method of Teaching

Leroy Huizenga, who wrote one of yesterday’s “On the Square” articles , sends the link to an interview on teaching, media ecology, and related matters with a former colleague, Wheaton’s Read Suchardt . Among the questions and answers:

What makes a good teacher today? How do you manage to command attention in an age of interruption characterized by information overload?

I think the answer to that question is precisely how Marshall McLuhan became both a.) a good teacher and b.) a media prof instead of an English prof. He told an awful lot of jokes (some really corny) and talked an awful lot about current events, about what was on the radio or TV or newspaper of that particular day. So I think that’s part of it, to engage the student where they are, which is immersed in the daily wash and flow of that day’s media.

The challenge now is that it’s harder since being “current” no longer means knowing the news of that week, or even that day, but rather being up to the very minute with the latest “breaking news feed” and the Twitterstream and the like. So I don’t compete with that, even though I check the Drudge Report and other blogs daily for news of the day before entering the classroom. I assume an aggressive distractedness and deploy an A.D.D. method of “Now . . . this” bullet point delivery while delivering my lectures in what I call a “stand-up tragedy” mode.

More than anything, I let them know that things weren’t always this way, that they don’t have to be this way, and that they have a choice about how they engage their world, their media, and their life. I try to teach from McLuhan’s dictum about somnambulism, that nothing is inevitable if we are willing to pay attention, but that if we continue in our self-induced trance, we will become enslaved. Those who get it find it refreshing and encouraging, and those who don’t find it really good theatre.

Anyone who has taught, lectured, or preached knows the problem. You have to concede something to your hearers’ inability to or dislike of hearing in order to get them to hear what you need to tell them and to help them learn to hear better than they do, but by doing so you risk encouraging them in the attitude you’re trying to change. You often feel like saying “He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” and let the others fare as they may, but then you remember that some of those in front of you can be awakened but won’t if you don’t concede something. It’s not an easily solvable problem.