A faculty perspective: Danna Walker

School of Communications faculty member Danna Walker weighs in which this take on her experience teaching in the General Education program:

I told my students in the general education course that I’m teaching this semester -- Dissident Media (COMM-275) -- that it was okay that we were looking at our topic in a “broad-brush” way. It had occurred to me only a few weeks into the semester that we had already gotten through a lot of historical material, including the labor press of the early 1800s, the righteous indignation of William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper -- The Liberator, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony’s The Revolution, and several other historical dissident newspapers, all the way up to the Black Panther started by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. We were more than halfway through our text, Voices of Revolution, by AU Professor Rodger Streitmatter. I started to worry that we were going too fast, even though we were “on task” in terms of the syllabus. I guess I get concerned when things go too smoothly in teaching; it’s unfamiliar terrain for a fairly new teacher like me. But when I realized that with each chapter the students were taking the initiative to relate the historical facts in the book with the theoretical underpinnings we had studied in the beginning of the semester, I knew I didn’t need to justify the approach of the class anymore. They were discussing ideology, hegemony, Juergen Habermas and other high points of critical theory with relative ease. I felt -- with what I had to admit was almost certainty -- I had evolved into a full-fledged General Education teacher.

Yes, I had to concede that I had fully internalized the six program goals. What I interpret that to mean is that while I’m happy that my students are being exposed to the rich history of dissident newspapers, I know that the students may not always remember the FBI’s effort to shut down the counterculture newspapers of the 1960s or other details about specific presses. But I trust that they will recall that the dissidents who produced the publications and helped change society were critical thinkers and social activists who had the courage to challenge the dominant ideology of their time. That’s something students can take with them, and, even, perhaps emulate in the larger world.