Comedy (3rd 300 word post for the week)

Yeesh. I wasn't certain I was going to get this one in on time, and the standing rule is that if I don't, nobody else has to. Dratted rules and accountability.

We're...I'm using comedy in the classroom this semester. In the past I've worked with hands-on (rather than text-bound) research and community service requirements both as ways of digging into a project-based course. I'm a firm believer in active pedagogy and project-based learning so I'm always looking for new ideas that help us get into the material.

This semester, I've built my 101 around "Beg, Borrow, and Steal" as an active and project-based way of putting plagiarism into (and hopefully out of) action. One of tools I'm using to get into that idea is comedy.

For me, comedy is one of the great unifiers. Although we don't all have the same sense of humor (please, oh please, spare me another minute of the Three Stooges in this lifetime), chances are good that given an assortment to choose from, everyone can find something that generates at least a giggle. I'll confess to preferring over-the-top word play and physical comedy to the more subtle choices, by the way. Give me Wallace and Grommit, Shaun the Sheep (both Aardman), or a Christopher Guest movie (A Mighty Wind is my favorite) and I'm a happy girl.

Here's something interesting I observed, though. For all of our adult (and forgive me, my students, because in this moment I mean "adult" as over 30 because we're your educators and parents and thus see ourselves in the role of shaping your lives. Hubris anyone?) assumptions about the current generation of traditionally-aged students, one thing I've learned is this:

Walter Matthau in Bad News Bears was right about that "assume" thing.

For the first comedy-based assignment, I posted 5 clips starting with Abbot and Costello and ending with Eddie Izzard for my students to interact with. I assumed, foolishly, that the entire class would gravitate toward the Eddie Izzard; that it would be the hands-down favorite. I was wrong.

It turns out that young, contemporary audiences still like The Three Stooges, and that Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch is a classic no matter who is watching it. Once again, I find I've done my students a disservice by assuming that they're interested only in what is now and immediate. That by failing to acknowledge that they more complex than the media or my colleagues make them out to be, I am no better than the media or my colleagues. And for this I am apologetic and appalled. I can own this.

The good part, however, is I like that I'm constantly learning from them, even when it means my assumptions were dead wrong. I can own this, too.

We watched the Marx Brothers in "Duck Soup" last week. Next week, we're watching a more contemporary movie. I'm looking forward to reading what they have to say about the movies. I expect I'll be surprised, enlightened and, yeah, amused.