I'm The Teacher, You're The Student: A Semester In The University Classroom

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable chronicle of life in the college classroom
Review: From the pen of a senior professor of history at Emory University comes this entertaining and readable chronicle of a semester in a college classroom. Patrick Allitt's students in his introductory American history course are bright, well-to-do and in the upper echelon of college students today, which makes their frequent foibles all the more distressing. To anyone who teaches or who has taught at the university level, Allitt's descriptions of their frequently terrifying ignorance of basic American culture, let alone English grammar, will raise rueful and knowing smiles. To his credit, Allitt is willing to put himself in their shoes, describing his struggles with an introductory Spanish course which he took in Spain in painfully vivid detail. From this experience he professes to have gained some sympathy for the difficulties many of his students must encounter as first-time learners. Still, that doesn't prevent him from liberally quoting howlers from his weaker students' papers and exams, and describing incidents that do not put them in a particularly flattering light. Occasionally his unsparing depictions made this reader uncomfortable--how much prior consent did he obtain from his subjects, who frequently are made to look foolish, to say the least? The book also reflects the structure of the typical semester, in that as it approaches its end the writing is marred by seeming haste and skimped detail. Overall, though, this is a well-written and engrossing popular chronicle, though I doubt it will add anything to Allitt's scholarly reputation.

Rating:
Summary: Decent read
Review: I'm a college professor and read it primarily looking for teaching advice. Although it does not offer significant insight on improving teaching techniques, it is a decent read and reasonably humorous (especially if you teach college students). The book provides an interesting chronicle of one semester for one class, but it does not provide much insight regarding the struggles of balancing multiple classes, teaching, and service requirements. As a final note, he is frequently very harsh when describing the students. This harshness is often justifiable, but readers should realize that student maturity is not always at the level one would expect or hope.

Rating:
Summary: Exceptional Book
Review: Professor Allitt has written an entertaining book that will delight almost anyone who has had the privilege of a liberal arts education at an American university. The book is organized around a single semester of the professor's class on post-bellum U.S. history. He provides a lecture-by-lecture account of his teaching experience, with enjoyable digressions on the various issues that are the joy and bane of a teacher's life-tardy students, lazy students, students who have yet to master the fundamentals of English grammar, and, every so often, that diamond in the rough who writes cogently and provides a fresh perspective on a complex issue.

There are three things, however, that set Mr. Allitt apart from so many of his colleagues. First, while chastising his students for their mistakes-one of my favorites is the student who wrote about Teddy Roosevelt who, after charging up San Juan Hill, went on to lead the United States through the Depression and the Second World War-he is quite empathetic, patient and forgiving. He is quick to praise them when they do well. And instead of simply railing against the inadequacies of today's college students, he is quick to note the many demands on their time and the pressures they are under.

Second, he is not above second guessing his own judgments and wondering if there isn't a better approach to solving a problem than the one he has chosen.

And third, he employs a somewhat unorthodox teaching style. He employs certain techniques- such as requiring students to draw on a blackboard some of the objects that are part of the day's history lesson (e.g., a locomotive)-that are at once quaint but also quite effective. In addition, instead of relying on the safe, but boring, standardized history texts, he includes on his reading lists historical novels that convey the mood and articulate the issues of a particular era.

Alas, I must report that Professor Allitt is not infallible. At one point in the book (I think around p. 125) while discussing the period music he has chosen to share with the class at the commencement of a lecture about the 1920s and 1930s, he eschews Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue because of its excessive utilization by Delta Airlines in its TV advertisements. If the good professor spent more time watching television instead of reading books, he would know that it is United, not Delta, that is exploiting the Gershwin melody. I suspect, however, that he will wear this criticism as a badge of honor.

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant, Must-Read Book
Review: Professor Allitt offers an edifying and entertaining look into what actually transpires within the classroom of one of America's leading universities. He exposes, in painful detail, students' lack of geographical knowledge (being unable to fill in all fifty states on a map of the U.S.), their confusion over historical figures (conflating Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt), and, most painfully, their inability to express themselves in clear writing. And yet the reader can feel how much Professor Allitt loves these pupils...and revels in teaching them. He enthusiastically exposes them to the history of our country, tries (in vain, it would seem) to teach them to express themselves, and forces on them an accountability for their assignments that is sorely lacking in many American academic environments. In addition to all this, he has written a book that is impossible to put down. When I finished it, I ordered 5 more copies to give to friends.