Tomorrow I'll be taking part in Practical Pedagogy's roundtable discussion, Out in the Classroom, discussing whether, how, and when it is useful or desirable to out oneself to one's students. There are even fliers!
I'll probably post my preliminary thoughts later today, after I do some mathing. It looks like I'll be the token science geek among the humanities folk.
Technically, I do have a degree in physics. How crazy is that? All kinds of hella crazy, that is how. I am such a total incompetent in a lab setting. The number of solid-state electronic components I destroyed...Those things can really stink up a room if you burn them out.
THAT EVENING: Let's brainstorm!
First off, there's a huge difference between being out to one's students and being out to one's colleagues. As I see it, at least. The grads and faculty in the math department are people I work and talk and party with: of course I'm going to be out to them. But with students, the whole character of the relationship is totally different. Mathematics instruction at an undergraduate level is often, and would almost have to be, rather authoritarian, top-down. The instructor has Truth sloshing about in their head, and aims to regurgitate it into the beaks of their downy little chicks. It isn't a dialogue. As such, I generally try to keep my personal life out of the classroom. I think many, if not most, of my fellows do the same. There have been students I've gotten chummy with, but those have been exceptions rather than the rule; from a purely personal standpoint, I wouldn't particularly want to share much about my private life with anyone I wasn't chummy with. And it's a math class. The subject matter is all completely impersonal. One doesn't want to distract or detract from the math.
From a purely pedagogical standpoint, I see no reason to make anything of one's sexuality when teaching mathematics.
At the same time, though, I do think it'd be quite nice to have a more visible gay and lesbian population in mathematics, and in the sciences generally. Visible, that is, to outsiders. I knew from a very young age that I'd end up in a scientific or technical field, and by the time high school was coming to an end, I'd picked physics. I wondered, at the time, if I might be 'the gay one,' the one homosexual in the entire department. And, as far as I know, I was, for a while. (We did eventually get another homosexual, I believe my junior year; poached him from Iowa State. Wonderful chap. I've still got one of his dreadlocks.) It's an odd sort of feeling. The whole outsider thing, you know? Which is not to say there's anything wrong with heterosexuals. Some of my best friends are heterosexuals. But. There isn't yet a strong public perception of the sciences or of mathematics as being welcoming to the openly queer, and that can be discouraging or disheartening to queer types (or "queeros" if you will) thinking of going into exactly that sort of thing. It was, a bit, to me. I presume the experience generalises somewhat. It seems like a sensible way to fix this would be to get more mathematicians living obviously queer lifestyles.
Which is where I come in. I'm in a position right now--broad-minded department, liberal city, West Coast--where I can be as homo as I want to be and it's not going to do me any harm. But what can I do without distracting from the math? So far I've mostly smiled a lot and raised my eyebrows. There has to be some more efficacious technique...I can try to let my inner fag peek out while I'm lecturing; it seems so far like it's only a very few of the gay students who catch on to that. But then, they're my target audience, aren't they?
Or are they?
Posted by aloysius at January 31, 2005 12:49 PM | TrackBack |