Hmmm...where did I put that magic wand?

I think there are times when every individual wishes that they were part of the fairy tale world of childhood stories. We long for a place where difficulties are solved by singing mice and a flick of a magic wand. As a mom and wife, I have days where I search the couch cushions, hoping that my magic wand fell between them and made me think it wasn't real. As a grad student, I have days where I am convinced an office mates found it laying around the office and confiscated it. I am sure that instructors have similar sentiments. The desire to make students learn what we are teaching them (or attempting to teach them) is innate for those (at least most of those) who reside within the four walls of a classroom. We thrive off of feedback and examples of applied learning, less because we hope to expand our fields of study, but more because we want the reassurance that what we are doing isn’t a waste of our time. (Regardless of what we are paid, the titles we possess, the kind of fancy cars we drive, the most valuable commodity in our lives is time.) It is this self-gratifying idea that makes Patrick Hartwell’s discussion of “magical thinking” so poignant. We yearn to believe that “students will learn only what we teach and only because we teach” (Hartwell 205). Such strong desires are the nuts and bolts which formulate our personal value systems, the ideologies which define not only us as individuals, but the messages brought across in our teaching as well.

I believe that each instructor does possess a type of magic wand in the form of the ideology with which he or she teaches. (By this point it should be clear that EVERY instructor, professor, preacher, teacher, parent, or student has a guiding ideology.) I think that each ideology is custom made, that an ideology cannot be replicated, that no single ideology can be the same for any two people. Like the wands in the Harry Potter books, each is unique and special. The bond between person and ideology is tightly formed, nearly unbreakable. In some instances (here you will see that I am a big believer in fate) maybe ideologies choose their people like wands choose their wizards. The problem with the ideological wand is that (unlike an actual visible magic wand) we (typically) don’t wear our ideologies on our sleeves. (I guess Harry Potter doesn’t wear his on his sleeve either, but you get the point.) I can’t look at someone and relay their personal ideology word for word. I doubt that most individuals can explicitly define their ideologies for others. As instructors, however, we need to move toward a point in which the identification and description of our ideological inclinations can be made visible to our students. Hidden ideologies lead to poor assessments. Hidden ideologies result in breaks in the line of communication. Hidden ideologies block definitions which can develop meaning. Hidden ideologies bar the pathway of learning. Hidden ideologies represent individuals in denial, individuals afraid to address their own beliefs, individuals afraid of themselves. Should we be shoving our ideologies down our students’ throats? No. But we should be making them aware of how we think, what we feel. Otherwise the only ideologies they will ever learn to respect are their own.