June 23, 2009

Reread Forster’s A Passage to India for my Humanities class, reminded what a masterwork it is, but also how it adds cadenza after cadenza, undercutting the sense of an ending as it undercuts a host of other expectations. My fury at the English made it almost impossible to finish this time. I read out of the book I used as an undergraduate at Hiram, full of the most jejune notations. In better handwriting than I have now.

A student brings his disappointing exam to me and asks, “How can I do better next time?” I resist the temptation to say, “have the right answers.” Later I wondered if I should have resisted it. Maybe it’s wrong to let people think their shortcoming is a matter of style or “studying the wrong things,” when it is in fact fully of substance. High schools lead students astray by implying there is something to success in college more important than mastering the material. The endless, and to me quite infuriating, barrage of questions about style and length in assignments from people who have never asked a question about subject matter indicates that the conception exists, that if you can just fathom the professor’s stylistic prejudices, actual mastery of the matter is irrelevant.