A Higher Education Teaching and Learning Philosophy

Helping students swallow seeds from which beautiful tomorrows will grow

In the revised application form for promotions, staff in my university now are required to outline their teaching and learning philosophies. As I completed  mine, I reflected, for the first time really, on what my teaching and learning philosophy is. As it just happened, I had been processing the final portfolio assignments of one of my literature classes. Through this activity that I came upon an appropriate analogy, the analogy of swallowing water melon seeds. The analogy captures well what teaching is about for me. The student wrote [with some modification from me] in concluding the portfolio:

Studying literature is like eating water-melon. Your first action will be to carefully remove the seeds before every bite. But seeds are the most significant things from which beautiful tomorrows will grow.

Reflecting on the philosophical insight of this analogy makes me see how meaningful this is for me as a lecturer. The act of teaching and learning to me becomes an art often times of making knowledge (the seeds) palatable to help students comprehend (swallow) it, and then observe the students’ growing appreciation for it (the sprouting and rooting of seeds).

Considered in the context of current questions about the purpose of universities, to me, the analogy underscores the view held by many students and indeed by other groups both inside and outside the university that not all programs or units or components of knowledge in a program are useful or relevant.  They treat these programs or units, mainly in the social sciences, as ‘the watermelon seeds’ that on first instinct are to be dug up and flicked off or in the least unwillingly tolerated as having little utility.

The challenge for the lecturer, and indeed the university at large, is to make these ‘seeds’ palatable for the students and others to swallow now with the certain knowledge that they will come to enjoy the sweetness of their fruit later in life. These ‘seeds’ have value not just for the individual but for the society at large.