Every year, every semester, there they are: the barely visible, the unobtrusive, the ones who hardly register, who barely leave a trace. There they are, every semester, filing into my classroom, sometimes staking out corner positions, sometimes not. (Sometimes they will attend, sometimes not.) They will not speak, they will show varying amounts of interest in classroom proceedings; they seem curiously bemused by, detached from, all that seems to be taking place around them. I try to reach out, sometimes with carrot, sometimes with stick. My success rates remain mixed. Every semester, some students come and go, and as finals and grading come and go too, I realize we could both say about each other, “I hardly knew ye.”
I do not think these students are just slackers or anything like that. Many, I’m sure, are introverted, shy, withdrawn, reluctant to speak up in a room full of strangers and a person of authority and risk their silent ridicule; yet others are victims of a bureaucratic arrangement which ensures that they have registered for a class because it was: a) an onerous degree requirement whose rationale they do not understand; b) an eligible elective that worked with their work-and-personal-and academic schedule. Whatever the reason, the student in question is present, and yet not.
Every semester, some measure of guilt and self-doubt with regards to this situation afflicts me: Did I try hard enough to reach out to the student concerned to find out how they were finding the readings and class discussions? Did I just concern myself with the ‘easy cases’ and shrink from the true pedagogical challenge at hand? I feel this especially acutely because I know that on many occasions someone who has seemed quiet and distant all semester long will suddenly reveal, in the course of a one-on-one conversation in my office–perhaps following a paper review session or something like that–that great depths lurk beneath that placid exterior. Sometimes it is evidence of a sparked interest in, and actual engagement with, the readings and classroom discussion; sometimes a minor personal remark will help me realize why this student maintains the distance he or she does. On these kinds of occasions, I feel a flush of shame run through me for having thought unkindly about this human being–one as conflicted and confused as me.
Whatever the reason for this failure to establish communication and contact with my students, every semester ends with some melancholia and regret on my part. I will probably not see them again; they will go on their own way. We spent fourteen weeks together, meeting twice a week for seventy-five minutes, but we didn’t ‘get to know each other.’ I sense an opportunity lost, one never to return. I know I’m a finite being with finite resources of interest and energy–intellectual and emotional; sometimes I do not have enough to take on board all the challenges my student raise. I know that as a teacher, I’m supposed to play additional roles as well–an amateur therapist and social worker at times. Failure in those roles needn’t be an indictment of me as a teacher but I wonder if I fail in the basic human dimension of failing to show interest in those who come into contact with me for an extended period of time. It’s a thought I will take forward with me to the next semester, already visible on the horizon as this one winds down.
Samir Chopra 