Class Consciousness

"During the last class, as far as I could tell, I was the only person that didn't participate in the class discussion.

I actually showed up with some notes, quotes and some ideas that I wanted to discuss, but I quickly became engaged in an internal struggle regarding class participation. I started feeling like we were obligated to add to the discussion, basically, just to get points for participating. I hope you don't mind my saying that, I think as a result, the discussion kind of sucked. The credit that we receive is supposed to be based on the discussion. However, as long as our discussion is based on credit, it's going to suck, and ironically, we should then deserve less credit.

Even though I didn't add to it, I was listening to the discussion, and I heard somebody mention class consciousness. It got me thinking. We are literally a class, and we are engaged in this social contract: the format of the class. We give sovereignty to our instructor and legitimacy to the format of the class in exchange for two things: to get credits, and to learn and grow as people.

However, as I said before, if we have discussions for the sake of credit, we are engaging in a class format that actually compromises those two goals. (that is, discussions based on credit suck, because there is an incentive just to say whatever for credit. As a result we learn and grow less, and deserve less credit). According to Rousseau (...I think), because we give legitimacy to that contract, we are capable of changing it. Moreover, it would be profoundly ironic, in studying Rousseau, not to revise a social contract in which our incentives are compromised. It would be like students in a fascist nation chanting together in class, “In a free country, students do not repeat their lessons in synchrony.” They would get credit for knowing the material, but it would be a specious knowledge, devoid of the actual understanding that the credit is meant to represent.

So anyway, for me, this idea of class consciousness sort of evolved into classroom consciousness, and through classroom consciousness we can revise our social contract in the classroom. Let me turn to the text for a sec to anchor what I'm saying. By not talking on Monday, I was essentially objecting to what I perceived as a law: talk and get credit. On pg 140 Rousseau says about laws, “silence (in this case, talking) is presumed to mean tacit consent, and the sovereign (us) supposedly gives constant confirmation to the laws it does not repeal while able to do so.” Thus, in continuing to participate in a credit based discussion, we give tacit consent to the laws of our broken social contract.

Now that we have classroom consciousness though, we can all object and repeal this law. If we were all to engage in my method from Monday, non-participation, we would force our professor's hand in giving us credit without participation, because it would reflect badly on him to fail the entire class. However, in doing so, we would compromise our more important goal: to learn and grow. So instead of passively and counterproductivly objecting to the counterproductive “credit for participation” rule, we are forced to actively forge a new social contract in which the discussion belongs to us, instead of being dictated by credit. This is only possible because of our newly found classroom consciousness and if we are willing to accept universal credit (or possibly lack there of) for the discussion as a whole. If someone else says the point that you were going to make, it would be equivalent to you having made that point. The need to interject irrelevant or inferior information for the sake of recognition would disappear. I believe discussions would thrive in these conditions, and that's why I am not afraid to accept that, if we have a B discussion one day, then we all get Bs for the day, because I believe these conditions are more likely to produce A discussions.

I have some other stuff to say, some of which is actually about the text, but I'm no longer interested in getting credit for a monologue. My only concern is facilitating the best possible discussion. So now I want to pass the mic."

...gonna give this speech in our class discussion tomorrow... What's wrong with me?

In fact, what the hell, Rousseau? I think we've underestimated this guy's role in the American and French Revolutions. His writing really doesn't make me feel radical or rebellious. Yet, on the first day of discussion, I refused to participate, and on the second day of discussion, I am going to incite my classmates into overthrowing the entire structure of our grading system.

..And now I understand why it was banned..