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September 1997 · Previous · Next   PDF

I. As lite entertainment for bored college students

By Mark Edmundson

Today is evaluation day in my Freud class, and everything has changed. The class meets twice a week, late in the afternoon, and the clientele, about fifty undergraduates, tends to drag in and slump, looking discon-solate and a little lost, waiting for a jump start. To get the discussion moving, they usually require a joke, an anecdote, an off-the-wall question—When you were a kid, were your Halloween getups ego costumes, id costumes, or superego costumes! That sort of thing. But today, as soon as I flourish the forms, a buzz rises in the room. Today they write their assessments of the course, their assessments of me, and they are without a doubt wide-awake. “What is your evaluation of the instructor?” asks question number eight, entreating them to circle a number between five (excellent) and one (poor, poor). Whatever interpretive subtlety they’ve acquired during the term is now out the win-dow. Edmundson: one to five, stand and shoot.

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SEE ALSO: Aims and objectives; Career as college teacher; Education, Higher; Education, Humanistic; Edmundson, Mark

Response: December 1997, page 6 · December 1997, page 6 · December 1997, page 6 · December 1997, page 8

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