One of the full-time faculty at Heavenly Gardens having fallen ill, the chair called to ask if I would substitute in her course on world mythology. There’s some possibility that she may have to sit out the semester, in which I case I would end up teaching the rest of the course.
Well, sure…long as it’s not freshman comp! This will pay for the Thos. Moser chair I bought in hopes of easing the excruciating back pain.
So yesterday morning I showed up out there. Some 25 people are registered. This is the fourth week. The students have missed a week and a half of class, during which several papers were due, none of which have been collected. A 1,000-word paper is due in the next two weeks, and it has yet to be explained to the students — nor is there any clue in the syllabus as to what it should address. The students turned in a pile of papers, which I need to read by tomorrow morning! And of course I have choir tonight and a meeting at the crack of dawn tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I have to read the textbook, catch up with what the stoonts have been reading, and then try to get ahead of them.
And as I’m reading the damn thing’s introduction, what do I find but a lengthy passage positing, with a straight face, that ancient Greek societies were matriarchies until 2400 B.C., when their way of life was supposedly extirpated by invading tribes. The entire two-page section, wholly undocumented with not so much as an allusion in the narrative to some proof of this assertion, suggests that Greek mythology reflects a traditional pre-Bronze Age matriarchal arrangement.
Holy sh!t.
I go to look this up and discover that by 2007, the idea had been discredited. So I’ll have to spend half a class period referring them to Cynthia Eller’s Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory and explaining how this particular crackpot hypothesis came about.
Wow. A textbook whose introduction promulgates a defunct and patently false second-wave feminist theory is not exactly designed to promote confidence among the students.
This could be a challenge…
The ailing faculty member’s syllabus is quite good, by the way: elaborately structured to train students in good study skills, which sadly lack among our constituency. It led me to think about how different mine would be, if I had been asked in advance to teach the course: a difference engendered by the difference between full-time and adjunct hiring practices.
Welp, I’ve now been sitting here for almost two hours. I’ve written a lecture and this post, with the result that my back and hip hurt so much I can barely walk. Given the amount of work pounding down at me, it’s unlikely I’ll be back here for the next couple of days.
So…enjoy life! 😉
Sounds like a good course. Maybe subbing is a way to evade/avoid comp!
My advice: don’t fight the textbook. The students probably didn’t read the intro anyway.
The chair DOES love you.
Yeah, except she’s assigned these “Reading Review” essays…SEVENTEEN OF THEM!!!…over the reading assignments, and wouldncha know, she assigned the introduction.
Moan. I don’t know. It really is a second-wave feminist idea. The third wave, far’s I can tell, quietly ignores it. The book was published in 1997 (WHY do we not have a newer edition?). I think it’s probably worth pointing out to them that by 2007 the matriarchal society theory had pretty much been abandoned.
What I hope is that if I can convince him I can do a decent job on this course, he may let me take on more lit courses over time. Of course, the adjuncts are pretty much chained to comp courses.
You know, he really is a very nice man and an exceptionally good chair. Guess we should keep that quiet lest it prove to be the kiss of death…who, after all, ever heard of a great English department chair who also behaves like a human being?
I would love to teach one day.
But I’m an accountant, so matriarchal societies would probably not come up organically.
Ha ha!! 😀 Well, you certainly could drag the conversation around to how well (or not) women fare in accountancy. It would be a welcome relief, I’ll bet, from the discussion of the international accounting rules.
If you have a master’s, you can teach in the community colleges. Adjunct positions are pretty easy to get. Also, most community colleges have a provision to hire professionals with substantial real-world credentials to teach technical subjects such as accounting. The CPA, I’m sure, would qualify you handsomely.
nothing like having to teach out of date info! Glad you got some work though and I hope it goes well!
Sounds like a treat, an overwhelming treat! Good luck and I wish you all the best!