Salon.com: Fall! Pumpkin-flavored everything aside, those of us (un?)fortunate enough to be still mired in academia are thick in the frenzy of a new school year, which means — imagine now a glittering Hogwarts-esque montage — fresh papers, fragrant books, hallowed halls, shiny wooden seminar tables, and the inevitable frisson of making eye contact with your hot professor. Those of you already graduated and gainfully employed, feel free to reminisce. The intellectual charge, the heady thrill of transgression…
8 comments:
This is quite an article to be found on the Green Page, but in its broader teachings it definitely relates to our lives in theatre, and the plays that we make happen. Everything we put on the stage has a story of some kind, whether fiction or nonfiction, but each of those stories that we put in front of an audience is not truly real. The audience is watching people act in front of them; it is a superficial display that requires plausible deniability for the audience to buy into the experience and enjoy themselves. Often this involves plots that cover topics that would never exist in real life. Topics that the audience is passionate about, or that the people desire at heart but know can never happen in real life may be portrayed onstage as though they are real, and thus the audience is free to go about its daily life free from worry because their needs are satisfied by living vicariously through the fiction of books, stage, and film. We all desire to live outside ourselves now and then; these forms of entertainment make it possible.
This article is more then just a story of students falling for teachers but the idea behind it being a good storyline. Which it is an incredibly inciting plot, how the relationships starts to how it is continued through classes and secret meetings to its final demise. It makes for a good show but also leads young teens to think this is something they want. I like to watch the love story that is Ezra and Aria in Pretty Little Liars but it is not something that should be promoted and deemed as okay. I really like how this article tackled this subject and gave it an interesting way to analyze this problem.
I'm going to play devil's advocate with the previous posters. I don't think this article really said much of anything. The article did a good job of summarizing the mediums in which the common plot line of student-teacher relationships can be seen, and specifically what tv shows or books those plots can be found in. The author said student-teacher relationships are a bad idea in actuality. This is something that most people know as common sense, but the article did nothing to delve deeper into the reasoning behind the attraction of such a story line or why it's a bad idea in real life. It would have been interesting to hear those views.
The same thing can be compared to employee-employer relationships. If the author of this article had gone into the reasoning of why it's a bad idea, then those concepts could be applied to why it's a bad idea to date your boss.
On the other hand, I do know a number of couples who met as a student and teacher in a classroom, and they're still together 25-30 years later, so who's really to judge?
Back in high school, I used to help pre-med students at Georgetown University by participating in mock-physicals, sometimes portraying a student who is in a relationship with a teacher, and I have also heard rumors about my own high school teachers partaking in those kinds of relationships. Actually portraying said student was an interesting experience because each time the doctors viewed me as naïve or victimized, which is a completely different way I actually felt as the student. Nevertheless, a teacher having romantic/sexual relations with a student completely crosses the line and invalidates their authority as a teacher. The fact that I heard rumors about my own teachers back in high school also made me view the teacher in a different, much more dehumanizing way. Honestly, teacher-student relationships are entertaining to watch on film and even to hear about through gossip, but the results of those relationships in real life never seem to result in a happily-ever-after.
I agree with Jess. This article made some pretty big claims without actually saying pretty much anything of substance. Regardless of personal opinions on the matter, I would be interested to read something that details the reasons why students become attracted to professors, and furthermore why the authority factor seems to play such a major role. I would like to see some evidence from specific cases, the famous and the not-so-famous. Because we've all seen it in the news, but I'd be interested to find out how it ends in a situation where nobody, or at least not many people, find out. Does it ever actually work?
This is an interesting article to be found on the Green Page, but at the same time, I think it is relevant. I think that in an institution that has both a grad and an undergrad program, it really has to do with the age of the student. In some cases, young professors can be the same age as a grad student. Therefore, I think this is something that can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. I would say that it is not a huge issue if the professor is not the one teaching this student, but it definitely becomes a sticky situation if the professor is one of the students teachers. For example, we have a fairly young professor in the acting department, and if he/she were to be interested in a grad student of a similar age, I'd say, "go for it!"
I have had several teacher crushes starting from when I was very young, but the thing is, I was too young to be inspired by pop-cultural references. The article also discusses the desire for a thrill and the yearning to do what we are not supposed to do. I'm just going to put it out there: I have always liked older men, and I began liking teachers in early middle school. This had nothing to do with thrill. The article fails to discuss gerontophilia and father/mother complexes. It is noted that some youth are attracted to parent-like figures. We deem them trustworthy, protective, and friendly. In school, students spend the same amount of time (or more in some cases) with teachers than they do at home, so a more-than-friendly relationship is possible. There is also the mental attraction. An older, intellectual mind that is capable of holding an interesting conversation can be seen as more appealing than the mind of a teenager. I have never watched Pretty Little Liars or Friday Night Lights, so I cannot comment on these modern references. I haven't seen many references to this subject in television shows or books, but I think it is an important issue to confront (realistically). I also think there is a difference between a student-teacher relationship and predatory pedophilia, and I think many accidentally combine the two. As one who does like older men, I find it hard that society deems these fall/spring relationships unacceptable.
I think that student/instructor relationships are something that is (unfortunately) becoming more and more common (again) in this era of higher education. It’s become so much a part of higher education culture that there are even fairly well known Internet references to it, the best known being the College Musical number “I Wanna Bone my TA.” (Google it if you don’t believe me).
I think that as our society begins to be more open to atypical relationships and partnering, we may start to see the strange student-instructor combination happening more and more, especially, as the article mentions, because this situation is being glamorized in books, film, and television targeted at the young adult audience.
Post a Comment