What really is a syllabus? Is it a tool or a manifesto? A machine or a plan? What are its limits? Its horizon? And who is it really for? And what would happen if you took the syllabus as seriously as you take the most serious forms of writing in your own discipline?
It鈥檚 so familiar. The first day, the first class meeting, the noises, the competing interests of choosing seats and choosing neighbors, the geometry of students and backpacks, tools, food, books. For you, it鈥檚 curtain up. You鈥檝e brought with you a set of handouts, the ones you quickly say are also and always available online in the course learning module. You distribute the handouts, making eye contact as you do it鈥攅veryone is so young, and the class is more diverse each time you steal a glance. You鈥檙e looking for their response, even before they鈥檝e read a word of what you鈥檝e set down.
You remind yourself that your students are there for one of two reasons. Either they have to be there, or they want to be there. Either your course is a) required of everyone or maybe required in some specific track, or b) it鈥檚 an elective. You know that neither category guarantees an easy ride, and you wouldn鈥檛 want it any other way. Teaching is hard. One of your goals is to have the students who have to be there want to be there. Another goal is surely to make students who choose your course tell others that it was amazing, that you were terrific. Teaching is hard, you tell yourself again. Knowing that is part of being a teacher.
You feel the electricity of performance, the responsibility of winning students over to your discipline. You run through what you鈥檙e going to say this hour in a distracted, internal monologue. A few moments later, and the class has settled down into what looks like an attentive reading of the handout. It feels as if it鈥檚 your moment to lose: students poring over the little world you鈥檝e created for them, a place where the hierarchy of the university鈥攜our mastery, their innocent but open-minded ignorance鈥攊s mediated by a simple document and the set of rules to which it conforms. Their eyes turn to you. Electronics are stowed. You pick up a piece of chalk. House lights down. You begin. You will be at that blackboard, chalk in hand, for sixteen weeks, and during that time your voice, and your brilliance, will fill the space.
You begin talking, but something strange is happening. All your expertise seems to have left you, and you鈥檙e jabbering on in what you recognize as a steady stream of amateurish nonsense. But that鈥檚 not the most horrifying part. What鈥檚 truly frightening is that the students are looking at you as if you鈥檙e making perfect sense鈥攐r, more accurately, as if it doesn鈥檛 matter whether you鈥檙e brilliant or banal.
Then the alarm clock goes off and you wake up. It鈥檚 four a.m., still dark, and you don鈥檛 have to be on campus for another two weeks. You spent last night fine-tuning your syllabus one last time and in the process ratcheting up your own anxiety.
You鈥檝e just awakened from one version of the Academic鈥檚 Performance Dream. In the dream-class, you were about to tell the students something for sixteen weeks, which might be fine if your course were a one-way transmission to an adoring audience and nothing more. You wouldn鈥檛 really teach a class that way.
And yet you鈥檙e beginning to concede that the dream that woke you is more or less a critique鈥�your critique鈥攐f your own teaching, your unconscious mind accusing you of a particular kind of earnest, hardworking鈥攚hat to call it?鈥攍aziness. You鈥檙e half-awake now and recognize too much of your own teaching style. It isn鈥檛 a horror show鈥攆ar from it. Reasonably genial, largely inert, a series of solos in which you enacted knowledge of the subject, underscoring memorable points with chalk, points dutifully copied by a silent room of students whose own thoughts remained locked away for the semester or at least until the final exam.
The sun鈥檚 coming up, and your morning resolution is not to teach that way again. You鈥檙e not even sure what kind of teaching that was, but it felt deeply incomplete. You鈥檙e awake now and, breaking the rules you鈥檝e set for yourself, you鈥檝e got your laptop open in bed. You鈥檙e anxiously looking over that syllabus one more time. Is it too much, too little, too complicated, too filled with arrows that point the student to side roads? Could you read your own syllabus and make a reasonable guess as to what the course wants to accomplish, as opposed to what your department鈥檚 course catalogue says that the course studies or describes? Could you recognize what the course challenges students to do? And how exactly would you, the teacher who wrote that syllabus, follow through on your own expectations for students?
Dreaming or waking, these questions never seem to go away. Teachers aim high. Big targets, big goals. A class that sings with intellectual engagement. Rigorous but fair grading, and each student doing better than you had hoped. The gratification of giving the exemplary lecture to a room of attentive students. Your own delight in the difficulty that comes with thinking seriously about things that count. All good goals, which, taken together, add up to an ideal of the teacher-focused class. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e a star!鈥� says somebody in the hallway, possibly without irony.
But stars are bright, distant things, and the light they throw off is old, old news. What might it mean to teach now, to shine now, in the present, close to the moment and our students? This question is about more than diversity or age or ethnic sensitivity or a sympathetic engagement with the complexities of gender, or disability, or any of the other qualities that distinguish person from person. First or last, teaching is inevitably about all of these things.3 But to be present asks that we do so much more. Our students, hungry for something that starry light can鈥檛 provide by itself, need from us not just knowledge鈥攅ven knowledge tempered by sensitivity鈥攂ut craft.
The myth of Prometheus鈥攖he Greek name means 鈥渇orethought鈥濃�攖ells us that this most generous of Titans stole fire from the gods and brought it to us clay-built human creatures, functionally kindling life in our dark world. Teaching in the present is a bit like stealing fire. Here, o starry teacher, the fire is your own but briefly. Teaching is renouncing the glamour and assurance of the well-executed solo and sharing that light with your students, moving the focus from something we鈥檝e long called teaching and giving the torch to learning. You can teach by yourself, or at least tell yourself that you can, but you can鈥檛 learn (let鈥檚 for a moment allow it to be a transitive verb meaning 鈥渢o make them learn鈥�) by yourself.
Modern English learn has as one of its antecedents the Old English form gelaeran, which meant 鈥渢o teach.鈥� This etymological paradox isn鈥檛 a paradox at all, of course. If teaching is the thing that happens when students are learning, subject and object come to be bound together, like Aristophanes鈥檚 conception of the sexes balled up inseparably in The Symposium, a M枚bius-like continuum of teaching and learning, enacted by teacher and student.
We begin to discern the contours of this perplexing space of learning when we awake from the dream (it was always only a dream, never a solid reality) of the masterful teacher delivering knowledge. We can map out something so complex only by making a concerted effort to describe its nuances, conundrums, its areas of density and lightness. We perform this mapping and engage in this forethought when we compose a syllabus, but only if it is indeed an attempt to map the space of learning. Which means that, as we鈥檒l say in several ways throughout this book, a syllabus isn鈥檛 so much about what you will do. It鈥檚 about what your students will do.
This essay is an excerpt from Syllabus: The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document That Changes Everything by William Germano and Kit Nicholls.
William Germano is professor of English at Cooper Union. His books include Getting It Published and From Dissertation to Book. Twitter @WmGermano Kit Nicholls is director of the Center for Writing at Cooper Union, where he teaches writing, literature, and cultural studies.