Have you ever felt like you were sitting front row at a church service, directly in front of the lecturing pastor who keeps making eye contact to ensure you're getting his message? Except, when you realize where you're at, it's not a church, a mosque or any other place of worship -it's a classroom. And the one lecturing is not a Rabbi, not even the Pope -it's your teacher.
Maybe you've been in an English class where your professor is more concerned with Bush and Kerry than he or she is with Shakespeare and Emerson. Suddenly, English becomes more like a presidential convention. And, were you asked to share your opinion? Not once.
Three words might come to mind at this point: freedom of speech. Don't professors have the right to free speech just as much as students, teaching aids, janitors or the homeless man walking down the street? Isn't it their job to introduce new viewpoints in a way that makes us climb out of that tiny box we knew before our college years?
The answer is an unwavering yes. There should, however, be one condition. In the classroom, we need a teacher, not a preacher.
An economics professor can produce a lecture as equally dramatic and inspiring as Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech if he wants. The professor at your 8 a.m. class has a right to tell you why semesters are better than trimesters or why knock-off Louis Vuitton handbags are just as good as the real thing.
They have the right, and let's just admit it: there is always time to discuss random issues, and oftentimes these are the most relevant in our world. They are the subjects that concern us as students, the matters that we are aching to talk about with someone other than our roommates.
There really is no better place to initiate discussion than in a classroom, especially at a school full of diverse opinions. It might not fit in with the syllabus, but then again, the best lessons in life are not so much written and rehearsed as they are lived and discussed.
However, a preaching session will be met with a lack of interest and blank stares. The look in our eyes alone is practically begging for something more, some type of interaction. Give us anything because no matter how uncomfortable the wooden desks might be, our eyes begin to shut and our attention is lost when we merely serve as an audience.
Audiences are found at Super Bowls, The Phantom of the Opera and John Mayer concerts. To locate an engaging crowd, look no further than your very own classroom.
Suddenly, the stadium seating doesn't seem so bad because professors care if we think gay marriage should be legalized or stem-cell research should continue. In the midst of tests and term papers, it's these conversations that slowly but surely help us to break out of the four-walled room that seemed so inescapable before. The professors who do involve us in the great debates and discussions about life have succeeded in giving us more than an academic education. They have provided us that and then some.
Now is not the time to sit idly and watch as headlines and events pass us by. Younger generations will one day read about these moments in history books and ask about how we lived andwhat we witnessed first hand.
If we're lucky, we will be able to tell them that we shared our opinion in a classroom with professors who cared enough to listen. We will show them that our voice did not fade in college. It grew in strength and conviction, and it stayed with us through our adult lives.
Besides, if you want to sit back and enjoy the show, you could always get tickets and go see John Mayer on tour.
-Mara McCormick is a junior advertising major.
Send her an e-mail at mara.mccormick@ohiou.edu.
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Mara McCormick
