The Academic Approach®

For the purposes of discussion, allow me to coin a word: Eblivion: The condition or quality of lacking conscious awareness of ones surroundings due to the distractions of electronic devices.

Understand, my coinage is not inspired by Luddism. Rather, I hope to contribute to a broader discussion of how the instruments that digitally connect, inform, distract and entertain us affect our consciousness. Specifically, I want to reflect on what these effects mean to a teacher trying to model a deliberate and engaged–as opposed to distracted and eblivious–approach to both academic materials and life itself. Before returning to the idea of

eblivion and the eblivious students it begets, I need to briefly touch upon a matter central to my pedagogical philosophy; I need to offer some thoughts about being deliberate. The etymology of the word deliberate makes clear that the action it denotes demands patience; delibrare: to weigh, to balance; from de + libra, latin for scale. Think of the word’s literal meaning: to carefully hold a balance in an effort to ascertain a specific relationship between things. Picture deliberateness by holding before your mind’s eye the image of that most cherished goddess, Justice herself, glorious Justice (much abused of late here in our homeland) holding the precious scale.

Any worthwhile critical-thinking pedagogy employed in the classroom must be founded upon a model of being deliberate. For example, we are being deliberate when we insist not only that students substantiate their assertions about a text by citing a specific passage but also that we turn to the passage and analyze it together within the context of our discussion. In modeling being deliberate in this way, such a pedagogy tries to demonstrate not just how one ought to approach language and the process of understanding and discussing a text–really understanding–but also how one might approach any object worthy of scrutiny.

The act of weighing, of measuring, of getting it right, demands patience, reflection, substance, and honesty. So, when confronted in our daily lives by all of those things that ought to be weighed, might it not be wise to take the time, be patient, grow still, and deliberate like Justice herself. Significantly, this would require us to turn off, in alphabetical order, our e-mail, i-pod, t.v., x-box, and you-tube. I say this not as a Luddite, but as someone who is fascinated by the beauty and the chaos and the power of our e-culture, and as someone who strives to teach students how to think more deliberately than they are asked to in most of the spheres of their lives.

In the silent and image-deprived aloneness of unplugged being, we can deliberate, we can escape, however briefly, from the static field of cultural distractions in order to reflect critically upon things. We can step out of what Theodore Adorno called the “iron bath of fun.” We can examine our lives and our culture, which just so happens to be the most powerful and globally disseminated culture in the history of humankind. We can ask if not examining, if not knowing is bliss, or if perhaps such ignorance might be blistering, cynical, narcissistic, or destructive?

We should ask our students to deliberate in silence and away from the force field of the images flashing on the screens of their laptops and all those other devices that they hold in the palms of their hands. We should ask them to weigh things that matter. We should ask them to try, both intellectually and ethically, to understand things the best they can through thoughtful deliberation.

Objects worthy of deliberation? They are infinite. They are everywhere. Increasingly, they are right before our eyes as we become more and more a visual culture—as we increasingly make, disperse, receive and absorb images. It is not the real world that we see—it is a mediated world; this mediation is worthy of deliberate, critical observation.

As teachers, it is our responsibility to make an effort to educate our students in such a manner that they learn not only how to think critically about the academic topics introduced in the classroom but also how to remain critically aware of what they experience as they immerse themselves in the world that flickers before them on their devices’ small screens. Such a pedagogy would lead students away from eblivion and towards a deliberate and critical awareness of the world.

Academic Approach