Professor Mayhew’s recent take on the topic:
Teaching is transactional. The instructor is not feeding information to the students, teaching them that information, but interacting with them. A third element is the text in the class. The text is not inert, but active as well. For example, yesterday we were reading Olvido García Valdés, one of the best Spanish poets of the day.I could see the students rise to the intellectual level of the poetry itself, and it was wonderful as their comments got more and more brilliant.
One student brought up the idea that this poetry was “elitist,” because it required a certain level of education to read and understand. Well, we are an elite, even to be in a graduate classroom reading anything at all, even non-elite poetry. For me elitism would be despising those who are not in the classroom with us, feeling that we are special because we get to spend our time like this. To call ourselves “elitist” for this is a wretched sentiment.
Elitism is a theme in his online life. His many posts on this subject are illuminating.
