Regrets: I Have a Few (On Teaching)

I read Carl Hendrick’s “Ultra-Processed Minds” and I find myself wishing I could start my teaching career over again, and refuse to give so much away to “coverage.” Eventually, I was speeding through 2500 years of theater history and literature in a single semester, an impossible task, and doubtlessly a blur to students. Even when I was fortunate enough to spend an entire semester exploring a single playwright, I would cover a new play every two days. Instead, I would like to teach what Maryanne Wolf calls “cognitive patience” and what Keats called “negative capability” and the value of contemplation. Even then, that would have been a resistance to our culture of speed and superficiality instead of an adaptation to it.