Explanation

I am preparing to teach a subject that I love – a way to view the world as a series of interactions between the people on it. (This, as a clarification, is only because of my alignment with one philosophical train of thought over the other variations.) Teaching any topic, whether it be sociology or anything else, is hard when you love it so much.

This sounds dumb, I think. So many people I know love music. Adore music. Are obsessed with music. So how do you teach someone, from scratch, what music is? And how do you teach someone about music in an objective way without revealing too much about your personal inclinations in the teaching?

It’s hard, right?

The generic, “hip” illustration of sociology is to review tattoos. The suggested method is to ask students who have tattoos to raise their hands and to ask and then to discuss with people how social acceptance and stigma associated with tattoos over the years has changed. After all, I have two tattoos but no one thinks I am a biker, a witch or a whore. (No one thinking the last two is debatable, I suppose.) The same conversation could be had with piercings and the changing social acceptability of body piercings and men getting pierced.

The challenge for me is that I cannot use myself as an example and I cannot use people close to me as examples. It’s hard. I can explain what I mean to one person – just between me and them. Explaining it as a PROFESSOR is totally different somehow. And much more challenging…