Shut up already

Professors profess. Look, I am not a fan of the "sage on the stage" kind of professor who stands up in front of a class and talks and talks and talks for the full length of class and then walks out at the appointed hour feeling smug and self-satisfied that the students' thirst for knowledge has been quenched. It has not. They have taken notes at best and slept through the thing at worst. Why would they come if they could just get the same boring shit on YouTube for free? They can even speed up the player to make it less miserable. I put most lectures online for this very reason. If you can listen to me talk about why you should never not use a double negative in double speed and you can follow along, you should. You know you best. I know this stuff. You know you. You know how to learn. Odds are, you know that you don't learn by being talked AT. Higher education is full of people who are never wrong. Well, it is full of people who think they are never wrong. They are wrong, all the fucking time. They are wrong to think that preaching is going to make anyone learn. If preaching worked, no religious based school would ever lose a student to unwed pregnancy. Some things need a lecture. I get it. Some things need to be said plainly and in a certain order. I get it. However, there is a way to say all that and have it be fun. When I show students how to do MLA or APA citations, after about 15 minutes of hearing my own droning voice, I get sick of me and want me to shut up so I turn it into an activity. They do it as a team. They write it on the board. They move around. It is effective. It works. I've seen the results. Teachers teach.