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Being a Lecturer, Being a Friend?
By Dr. Paul P. Roche, PhD.*

He carried my luggage. He helped me to move houses. He lent his car for our holidays. He stayed awake for the better part of a night next to the telephone awaiting my calls to know the fate of my family (with two young children) traveling to join me. They were stranded in Rome due to a strike by Alitalia staff, and he took me to Schwechat (Vienna) airport towards the early morning hours to pick up my family members when they finally arrived, exhausted after the ordeal of having to wait a full day at Rome's Da Vinci airport. And after I had completed my Ph.D. at the University of Vienna, he was there in the same airport to say farewell to us when we boarded our KLM flight to Toronto on our maiden journey to our new country, Canada.

Wouldn't you call him a good friend? I bet you would. Besides being a close family friend, he was someone much more precious. He was my Assistant Professor at the University of Vienna, my lecturer on African Religion, Social Research Methods and on other subjects in ethnography. His name is Dr. Manfred Kremser, and we address each other on familiar terms, calling each other Du in German.

The Vienna Experience

Is it possible to have a lecturer who is a close family friend, though he was not so at the beginning? The other professor at the same University, Dr. Gabriele Weiss, used to greet me with a kiss in the corridors of the University when we met before classes or when we just ran into each other. She had visited me at The Melanesian Institute with her boyfriend when I was the Editor and later researcher in Goroka, between 1985 and 1990.

The younger Professors in Vienna cherished their relationships with some of us students whom they especially liked, or those who came from a professional background and were much respected. They treated us with a great deal of esteem and a refreshing sense of collegiality. In fact, my Doctor-Father, (the Professor who was my guide for my dissertation as he is called) used to address us as "Herr Kollege" (Mr Colleague). This was done with a slight bow of the head in greeting and shaking of hands depending upon the occasion.

The Madang Story

Coming as I did from such a hallowed atmosphere of equality and affection between staff and senior students, I found it hard to keep the prescribed or expected distance from the students here at the Divine Word. What I realized much later was that the Institution had held on fastidiously to the matriculation mentality (MM) and had not yet put on the mould of a University. This was indeed confirmed by various independent sources here who have had varied international educational experience before coming here.

Such an MM was completely alien to me, and its paternalistic world of aloofness and unquestioned authoritarianism were what I had left behind thirty five years ago. However, these attitudes were integral to the system here, and my position as lecturer suffered an identity crisis, because the model lecturers I had in my University days were warm, friendly and affectionate people. For instance, during my master's degree studies at Poona, India, one of my professors was ill. He came over to my residence to invite me to his house to prepare notes for one of the topics he was to teach the next day. As I was doing that, his wife prepared dinner for us. After I had completed preparing the notes from many books, I was playing with his eight-month old daughter until lunch time. (I wonder if that daughter of his, who might probably be a mother herself somewhere now, would ever know I was babysitting her when I was her father's student all those years ago? By the way, the class students appreciated the notes they received the next day, not aware of the source!)

At other times, our lecturers had invited some of us for dinner, or we had invited them over for dinner or functions. We were interacting with each other as human beings. We shared a strong bond of affection, even during as well as after our classes and course work. On more than one occasion, we persuaded our professor to have the anthropology class in the University park, and we surprised him with omelette-sandwiches we had brought!

Intellect and Emotion

Is there a place for affection and sentiment in the classroom? Yes, says Dr. Cynthia Cone, an award-winning University lecturer from the United States, who was interviewed in the Bulletin of the National Association of Student Anthropologists (Volume 9, No. 4, 1994/95). Her article in the issue impressed me immensely: "Learning from the Heart: Emotion and Intellect in the Classroom." The points she had raised for making the classroom a successful learning experience are worth remembering. (They are being paraphrased.)

1. Put yourself in the position of students: their thoughts, feelings, solidarity, survival…etc.
2. Draw on the knowledge from students.
3. The Process of teaching and learning must take priority over content.
4. Consider the classroom as a whole unit of experience.
5. The Classroom is a place of trust, where one can take risks.
6. "Provide the class with materials and structure--to lead the group through a process of discovery, where like the acts of a play or the chapters of a novel, each topic, unit or project, builds on previous ones." (op. cit. p.5)
7. Pose the problem, and supply some of the materials.
8. Constructing courses around problem-solving: Engaging student experience as course content.
9. What the students find valuable, or useful, is accomplished by moving with the students through a narrative of critical incidents.
10. The students are teaching the teacher and the teacher is learning from the students in the whole process.

The thrust of the whole article is that students be given priority in supplying experience and course content for successful teaching. And no teacher can be presumptuous enough to think that she or he knows everything about the subject and that there was nothing more to be learned from the students. That would be not only a gross pedagogical error, but would indicate a clear evidence of intellectual arrogance, an unmistakable weakness that is not conducive to effective teaching.

Dr. Cone' argument centers around the idea of "play". This enables incorporating experiences and allows for taking risks. We do not learn well from people we do not like very much. It is a forced, mechanical learning. However, if we respect our teachers and like them as persons, the learning process is immeasurably rich and rewarding. We shall remember such a learning experience all our lives, as I remember my Professor friends in India, and those mentioned above, Manfred, Gabi and of course, my Doctor-Father, Prof. Dr. Dr. Karl R. Wernhart of Vienna University.

A collection of faces or a cacophony of voices?

In this sense, considering a class as an amorphous, indistinct, collective unit is to lose the precious individuality and authenticity of each person in the class. One of the mature students at the University, who is also a nun, whom I interviewed for this article, said that a good lecturer "should be interested in each and every individual student." Another student said that the lecturer should be "able to categorize the students and understand their behaviour." She added succinctly: "They have to love their students, and they have to love what they are doing!"

Instead of pontificating on the qualities of lecturers, the ideal method of obtaining feedback is to ask students themselves. Most of those whom I interviewed stated that the lecturer should: 'put himself or herself in the students' shoes'; 'come down or go up to the level of students'; 'should know the methods of teaching for our level'; 'should have time for students for private discussions'; 'there should be a two-way communication'; 'must be always well prepared'; 'must challenge the students'; 'knowledge should flow from the head to the board; not just throwing words, but talking from experience'; and, 'should vary teaching methods, involve the students so that they are not bored'. So here is a fair sampling of students' views, which represent what is expected of lecturers.

Among the students themselves, there are the high and low achievers, and those who are struggling to cope, and others who are a bit lost and searching for a motivation. In the myriad crowd that may make up the student community, we cannot forget the beauty and charm that lie beneath the surface in each student. With their internal struggles, problems and difficulties, especially those problems that beset them during adolescence, we have to transcend evaluating people only through their answer papers and assignments.

Swept off their feet, or Living in the clouds?

Students fall in love. Though this might mean some pleasant distraction for the student (a good lecturer would be perceptive and be aware of who is going through such a phase. The lecturer might even close one eye and permit the indulgence of the student closing both the eyes or being up in the clouds instead of the classroom). The other, more positive aspect to this wonderful feeling for the student is that he or she suddenly finds himself or herself in the center of a magical world of being wanted and loved. This, in turn, can make all the difference in concentration or finding meaning to life, in the short term or in the long run. Demonstrating sympathetic understanding rather than showing disapproval over dropping grades or poor performance is probably a better approach, and the student coming over to explain his or her problem is a clear proof of a lecturer's humanity and availability.

This human element is what some students have stressed in their statements again and again: 'A lecturer should talk to students as friends'; and, 'outside the lecture room, one should be a friend'. This harks back to what we have been saying all along, with which hopefully Dr. Cone would concur, that this essay on classroom interaction has also contributed student input. It is my experience that narratives of real-life incidents arouse student attention enormously, and personal revelations and life stories (the element of 'risk-taking') brings a magnetic response of affiliation and emotional closeness between the listeners and the storyteller.

And here comes the 'risk' of revelation: My father, who was an outstanding teacher throughout an extraordinary career of teaching and managing schools, had developed an excellent rapport with his former students, who would visit us and pay their respects to him, even long after he had retired. Among his first students was someone closest to us: our mother. And most of his students, motivated by my father, went on to become hugely successful in life. Some of his children were his students as well. Interestingly, as far as I can ascertain, the first of his students ever to go on to receive the highest academic credentials was this writer, his own son. He passed away last year, and I dedicate this essay to him.

Conclusion

To conclude, can a lecturer be a friend? The examples of Manfred and others listed above confirm the possibility. And here at the Divine Word University, I have been fortunate enough to be rewarded with affection, kindness and respect from most of my students, which I shall cherish all my life. And in these lines, I would like to thank them for such richness of love and fondness they had showered upon me. Like the indelible memory of so many of my teachers and University lecturers, who had elevated me and treated me as an equal and loved me and my family, I do hope that the times we spent here together would be enduring and cherishable. When all else turns to dust, and we shun the images of impudence and recoil from acts of arrogance, only our most soothing memories will be those of our friends and good colleagues of a bygone time, even if they happen to have been once our lecturers.