Report of the Task
Force
on the Relationship between Graduate Education and the Undergraduate
Curriculum
Section
3
M.
Williams
on
J.
May's idea of a more "intentional and structured course of study"
Some Random Commentary and a Heretical Idea
I strongly recommend that graduate programs find some way to
link prose comp. courses with standard prose surveys; this will ideally
involve instructors' getting together to plan how they will reinforce
each other's lessons (e.g., identifying Ciceronian examples of the
constructions to be emphasized in coming Latin prose comps). I also
think that grad instructors would do their students a huge favor by
trying to link their other courses as well. We simply cannot assume
that students will come out of undergraduate programs knowing the
connections between Alexandrian and Augustan poetry, for example. Some
awfully bright kids just do not get exposed to this sort of knowledge
for a number of reasons, not all of them bad. The first semester of
teaching observation is just that--letting students sit in and observe a
master teacher at work; perhaps they could do this for the instructors
whom they will be assisting in a later semester. If we take seriously
our duty to prepare competent teachers as well as scholars, we will have
to become more intentional in this area. Pay the students to do this,
or else let them count it as part of their course load; it would be even
better if the instructor could meet, either formally or informally, with
the grad students before or after class to discuss their questions on
pedagogy and course content. Nothing like having to explain why you do
something to make you figure out the question beforehand. Perhaps
after a semester of doing this, both the instructor and the students
will be better prepared to assist one another in the spring. I would
end the first year with some kind of diagnostic test in the languages;
those who did poorly on this test would be required to do some kind of
remedial (or should I say developmental?) language work in the summer
between the first and second years of study. Such courses would also be
open to all students, of course. Otherwise, there could also be an
opportunity for more independent teaching for those students who were
advanced enough in their languages not to need so much review.
Although I have
already
urged instructors to link
courses, perhaps students could also be encouraged to write joint
research papers, to be graded by each instructor, or maybe even
*defended* in the presence of both instructors.
Maybe such a defense could
even be
substituted for the
traditional M.A. defense. It could even be a start to the sort of
Geistesgeschichte course that Claude Pavur was arguing for a few weeks
ago; it would be especially useful for those interested in late
antique/medieval studies. Assuming such a course-pair were implemented,
it could provide a T.A. corps for a large section of mythology, and
maybe even equip some students to handle mythology sections on their own
over the summers. (Oh, yeah: second-year students in this scheme would
be allowed considerable freedom in summer teaching between their second
and third years.)"