I always believed that having a sense of humor was a great asset for a teacher. So, as chairman of an English department search committee, I had the magnificent idea that I would ask each candidate to tell us a joke. When I sprang my request on the first interviewee, gasps filled the conference room—not just from the candidate, but also from my shaken colleagues. “You can’t ask that”; “If I were asked that, I never would have gotten this job”; “I don’t know any jokes”—were some of the comments from my colleagues. Well. scratch that idea.

No kidding!, at 6:20 pm EST on February 9, 2008

I assume that this is a satire

If Terry Caesar’s essay isn’t a satire, then I have no idea what he is talking about. I have taught 30 years, usually in super sensitive areas (rape, abortion, suicide) and humor is a central part of my delivery. It has won me several awards, and usually listed by students as the strongest part of my course (probably because they are bored by the teachers who follow Caesar’s advice). The same is true of every other top teacher I know. Context is essential mainly in that if students think that you are their enemy, they will interpret what you say poorly. If you are thought to be a teacher looking out for their best interests, then you can sound just like one of their friends. They don’t let their friends insult their racial heritage, of course, but they do prefer humor.

marty, at 9:50 am EDT on August 1, 2005

Marty, you’re absolutely right. I have no idea what the author is talking about, unless this is satire. I don’t know of any campus where jokes have been banned (unless your only definition of a joke is something with ethnic slurs in it).

Anna, at 10:22 am EDT on August 1, 2005

I don’t think Caesar means that jokes are legally banned in such language, but rather he is writing of the context of jokes and the increasing sensitivity which, rather than strengthening the community is laying bare its very weakness. I’m perplexed as to why this is so difficult to see in the article. Beyond an enacted “law” are the other realities. We can tell jokes—I sometimes do—but they are likely to be self-depricating or so “safe” as to be really funny only in the confines of a classroom (where anything might be funny to a student). The issue is not that we’re not permitted. As the article, itself states, we can think of a hundred thousand times when jokes have been told without incident, but we’ll remember the one when a student marches to the dean, and we’re left to write an apology letter or else be disciplined. If this hasn’t yet happened at your school, count your fortunes.

I first heard of public backlash regarding jokes when Bryant Gumbel, years ago, was caught telling an “off-color” joke when he mistakenly thought the cameras had stopped rolling. I don’t remember what the joke was nor do I care. I just remember the scandal. And so it goes also with the space of classrooms and the authority of teachers.

I also find intriguing the underlying question of community and authority. Instructors now have much less authority than we used to. Some even have pre-assigned, departmental syllabi and essays. Standards have always been there, but only recently that I know of has so much authority been given up to defining the moments of classrooms. Such regiments have likely been one of many causes of this loss of authority.

But this also speaks of the over-sensitivity of our culture as a whole. And again, this is what I see at the center of the article. And so is it my authority to chastise the student for telling a racial/sexual/ethnic joke or to revel in his/her freedom to do so. Are the words really that important? In comp. classrooms, yes; all we have are words. But as a relatively powerless authority figure, am I subject to penalties for an utterance of my student that offends another? That is deemed “hate speech” (whatever the hell that REALLY means)?

In this generation of teaching, most teachers I know continue in fear of a student’s complaining to a dean, because so often, the student’s sensitivity trumps all else. So can I tell a joke, since by definition, a joke often exists at the expense of someone? Someone has to look foolish; the identity of joke characters must be universalized, most often as stereotypes. Someone’s sensitivity must be offended, and as the article states, I never know whose.

Ultimately then, no joke of any sophistication can become part of a classroom lesson, because as a result of politicization of classrooms, they are simply held together by bonds not strong enough to contain the joke.

AWM, at 12:04 pm EDT on August 1, 2005

Re John Bonnell’s comment,

I don’t know if it was intended to be so, but what he wrote was pretty funny, taken out of context:

Many students, of course, are not sure what “fellatio” means, and such ignorance can complicate the flow of classroom intercourse.

Taj Moore, at 2:49 pm EDT on August 1, 2005

No kidding!

Yes, indeed, American campuses can be such a humorless, ugly places. I agree with Spina and Caesar about what the sense of “community” does to the possibility of appreciating a joke. Also, I think some people added something to the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” WHINERS ESPECIALLY WELCOME.

Why is it that everyone has to take offence at everything? For crying very very very out loud! This gets soooo tiresome after a while.

Another possibility for accurately describing this country is: “Land of the free and of the easily insulted.”

Or, my pain is bigger than your pain. Or, “This dress/tie/shirt makes my pain bigger, because you notice I have a dress/tie/shirt on.”

P-l-e-a-s-e! I don’t think what the article portrays is a satire; it is documentary. If you are a lucky starred professional who can tell jokes and your classroom is a perfect heaven and you are free too, GOOD FOR YOU. ENJOY IT WHILE IT LASTS.

Logan Smith, at 6:31 pm EDT on August 1, 2005

Teachers Use of Humor

Terry Caesar’s article about the perils of joking in the classroom hits home. I use humor a lot in my teaching, and it makes it much better. I have won an award for outstanding teaching. But, I do not neglect content. It would be easy, I suspect, to be entertaining but not to teach, but I would hate doing that. On the other hand, too many teachers are humorless or close to it in the classroom, perhaps using very dry humor on rare occasions. There is a reason for this, besides the personality or teaching limitations of the relatively humorless professors. Academia has become increasingly puritanical and increasingly political over the years. Thus, humor can be taken as offensive to some group, and especially if they are one of the protected groups—women, certain minorities such as Blacks, Hispanics, etc.—a complaint can get a teacher in big trouble.

While it is good that teachers are made to be more sensitive about not offending people, the overly-sensitive students should not be supported in their puritanical or political complaints when the humor is really, no big deal. That is a judgment call, but I am sure the call has been changed over the years in a more repressive, puritanical direction.

One comment to Caesar mentions that he teaches about rape and other sensitive topics but is able to use humor. Perhaps. I doubt that most could do this and get away with it, but perhaps this person has figured out how to do so. As one person commented, the issue is whether the students see you as the enemy or not. If not, you have license to say certain things that you could not say—without possible penalty—if you are seen as the enemy. But, you never know. A religion teacher at one university was accused of sexual harassment because he said that Arab countries would have no concept of “date rape.” Later, the two complaining students amended their charges to say that he repeatedly raped them. When it was shown that some of their charges could not be true, due to the university being closed on certain dates when the alleged rapes were supposed to have occurred, a university administrator who was helping lead the charges against him said “I am an advocate, not an investigator” and she continued to lead the charges against him.

I recall, years ago, talking about rape in my psychology class and trying to avoid all humor, lest I be misinterpreted as not taking rape seriously. I allowed myself only the slightest of humor. Yet, when I got my student evaluations one student misinterpreted what I said, and claimed I had not made rape seem like the big deal that it is. Among other things, it accused me of saying that rape was an alternative life style (which I never said; I had talked of alternative life styles) and said “Perhaps you should be raped, then you would understand rape better.”

OK, this is one example of a student who misperceived things. There are other examples of how the slightest of humor is taken to be offensive. And, there are some professors who have had their jobs threatened or ended due to use of humor. Instead of calling it simple humor it can be called “sexual harassment” and in today’s puritanical, political atmosphere, the person’s job may be gone.

Conclusion: Humor in the classroom can be powerful and can make learning better, as it makes students more motivated. They enjoy the class more, are more likely to attend and want to attend, and, hopefully, learn the material. But, humor can also be a time bomb. You never know when someone might be offended by what you joke about, even if your joke is mild. In today’s increasingly puritanical and political campus world, humor can come back to hurt you. My advice: use it, but use it carefully.

Author’s Note:

Russell Eisenman, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Psychology University of Texas-Pan AmericanEdinburg, TX 78541-2999

e-mail: eisenman@panam.edu

Russell Eisenman, Ph.D., Humor in Puritanical and Political Universities at University of Texas-Pan American, at 4:28 pm EDT on August 2, 2005

Humor in Teaching

I can’t imagine teaching w/out laughter and humor. But it took me awhile to learn enought about the uses and limits of humor.

University humor is skewed towards mocking. It’s associated w/ the culture of critique. Or so it seems to me. Humor among colleagues is often satire or irony. I guess it’s always been so, though somehow I want to blame Mort Sahl.

So, my first lesson in using humor was to never ignore the effects of power differentials in a classroom. What I say & model has different impact. I should be cautious in using humor as a tool of persuasion — pointing out the deficiencies in others’ arguments, especially students.

As was suggested previously, self-deprecation is a useful tool, but not for someone who’s insecure in his/her authority. To invite students’ humor towards yourself requires a great deal of self-composure. To permit students to turn on others (or do it yourself) is bullying.

There’s little funny in being the target of a prof. My 1st week in law school, I attempted a poorly-conceived answer in Property. The prof looked up my name on the seating chart and then asked whether I had considered an occupation requiring manual dexterity as I clearly lacked the wit for law.

I’ve discovered that his observation was pretty commonplace in the old-timey law school, but I wonder if he was attempting to intimidate, amuse or what. But it’s an extreme version of the misuse of “humor” as a form of control or humiliation. Is it too PC to argue such uses are abusive and inappropriate in a classroom? Probably not from the perspective of the targets.

In a baseball movie, Bang the Drum Slowly, the team’s manager intervenes when a verbal joust gets too heated by saying “give is give and take is take.” So, as profs, when and how do we Take as well as Give in matters in humor? Does our use of humor open additional perspectives vs. shut down dialog? Does our humor result in embarrassment, rage or humiliation?

Finally, getting balanced and open feedback in teaching is very difficult – so, knowing how students perceive our humor and its purposes is not easily achieved. My foundational goal in teaching is to establish trust between myself & the class. To the extent I succeed, and it seems always partial, I’m less likely to be misinterpreted and more likely to get the benefit of the doubt as to my intentions.

Mike Sacken, prof of educ at tcu, at 1:34 pm EDT on August 3, 2005