Teaching, Learning and Judging

Excerpted (pp. 166-168) from "Teaching, Learning and Judging: Some Reflections on the University and Political Legitimacy" Winston E. Langley

Achieving Against the Odds: How Academics Become Teachers of Diverse Students
Esther Kingston-Mann and Tim Sieber, Eds.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001

…Before the last-mentioned examination, two events took place which helped me; and both-one involving an American student and the other a Japanese student-took place in the course on Political Economy. In discussing the international monetary order, I had begun by noting the mystery which has often surrounded money and how its functions frequently confuse people. Then in discussing one of those functions-that of money serving as a medium of exchange-I sought to have members of the class think of some other entity which, in part, had for them served as a medium of exchange. In doing so, I thought I could use their examples to further elaborate the function under discussion. For a few seconds no one responded, then a woman who always sat in the back of the classroom and had never uttered a word in the course said: "Food stamps; that's my money!" (It turned out she was on welfare.) A few of her fellow students laughed, but I immediately took the opportunity to use her example to make the point I wanted to: that although food stamps served as a means of exchange, its exchange function was limited. It could only purchase food, not unlike a theatre ticket which can only be used in exchange for a scheduled performance. Money, on the other hand, represents the one commodity in any given society which is universally acceptable for all other commodities. Had she dollars rather than food stamps, she could exchange those dollars for anything she desired; she would not be limited to food. In addition, I went on, although states are said to be equal and, as such, can create their own money, in international society not all monies are equal. Some, like food stamps, can only be exchanged for limited purposes--to purchase goods within the societies of their origin; others, like the US' dollar, are internationally acceptable and can be used as a means of exchange everywhere.

The countries collectively called the Third World, I informed the class, have currencies that are generally spendable (exchangeable) in those countries only. And before I could proceed to say that those countries, like food stamps recipients in the US, are unfree to use their currencies to purchase international goods and services they desire, the student whom I will call Yvonne said: "Women are the Third World". While pausing to disguise my pleasant surprise at what I considered, among other things, a rather apt metaphor, I asked her what she meant. She said that most of the people with whom she associated were women on welfare. And she thought they were as unfree or as limited in relationship to that for which they could exchange their food stamps as the Third World.

Yvonne had set the stage for my discussion of the political economy of freedom, of equality, of social class, and, indeed, gender. Besides, given my own conception of the Third World as less of a place than a condition--a condition of relative powerlessness, vulnerability, inequality, and limited freedom, I could and did readily use her metaphor to discuss both the officially designated Third World and the condition of "third worldization" within and between countries. Yvonne helped me much more. She pointed me in the direction to understanding , at least in part, the previously-mentioned relationship between knowing and judging.

I had been very surprised that Yvonne, who had done so poorly on the mid-term test, was able to grasp the concept of money as a means of exchange (she also successfully grappled with the other two major functions of money) so well that she could anticipate the direction of my lecture and, most impressively, construct a brilliant metaphor out of it. So pleasantly surprised was I that, following two more lectures on the global monetary order in which her performance in class discussions was nothing short of spectacular, I asked her to visit me in my office. She made the visit; and when I asked her to explain the difference between her recent performance in class and the results of the mid-term test, she told me that once she saw the link between the means of exchange and food stamps, she felt she was "on safe grounds". And she was able to "see and evaluate" immediately the exchange relationships. She assured me that she knew the answers to the questions I gave on the test--the very answers we had reasoned through in the class discussions following the return of the corrected exam. But she could not "appreciate" the facts and the issues well enough to answer them. When I asked her what she meant by "appreciate," I found that she meant to assess, to evaluate, the fix value, to order, to decide, to judge. Because she was on "safe grounds", because she could "appreciate" the issues of food stamps and the exchange function of money, she could judge.

The insight she gave me resonated with what a Japanese student, who was also having problems with the examination's format, had told me. He indicated that to make refined evaluations, he had to compare most English words with their Japanese counterparts, just as he had had to do in assessing the prices of goods in dollars.(He first had to appraise the price in yens.) He also said that, in the case of English words for which there were no Japanese counterparts, he could not assess well, although I know his knowledge and academic use of English was superior to that of most students in the course. When I compared what other students had said from the previous semester (such as "I was prepared, but unprepared" or "I can't explain it, but I sat there with all the answers in my head"), the information from the Japanese student, and the insight from Yvonne, I found support for the tentative conclusion about the difference between knowing and judging. Perhaps the difference, I told myself, had to do with "being on safe grounds". In short, using information with which students felt "safe" may be the key to judging, and that safety may be found in using materials from the students' own life experiences--not by way of an occasional factual example, which everyone does, but as a central part on the process of reasoning through the elaboration of concepts.

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