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Interview with Rita Pougiales

Recent Teaching History
Health and Human Development; 2000-1
The Balkans in our Times: Land, People and Mythos; Spring 2000
Sacred Places; Fall 1999 - Winter 2000
Enduring Stories; 1998-99
Millennium: On the Brink of a New Age?; 1997-98
Public Education; Fall 1996 - Winter 1997
Doing Work; Spring 1996
Placing Yourself; 1994-95

Recent and Current Areas of Interest

My original interest in anthropology of learning and education has become clearer over the years. A few years ago I would have said my main interest was culture: trying to understand what is cultural about our lives. I was and am interested in what it is about the groups that we live in that help us understand why we think the way we do, why we say the things we say. Over the years of my teaching, I have been interested in the way education and learning intersects with culture and with knowledge about culture. I feel that every year I have become a more and more interested teacher. I have become fascinated with the forces and dynamics that both shape our individual lives and our work together in the programs. I work very hard with what students can learn about themselves and what that learning says to them and how it helps them understand the world. The program then becomes a model of the act of cultural awareness and self consciousness. I want students to recognize that there are cultural processes at work in individual lives and come to recognize the exercise of power in their lives. So there is a rationale for students to pay a lot of attention to their lives. Sometimes the exercise of power is crystal clear and people feel it every day, but there are lots of places where there are cultural processes, involving power, exercising themselves in our lives in ways we don't recognize. I am real interested in students coming to understand that.
When I use the word "culture," I don't mean the simple reductions to ethnicity. The word that I see as synonymous is history. I don't think that our current understanding of culture as a way of life, as something that's static, or as a base of identity is really very helpful. Most of our lives are much more complex than that. Culture as it is popularly used almost interferes with our ability to understand ourselves. Our culture is what we grow up with, but it then becomes what we live with. It becomes our biases and shapes how we learn. And this isn't just the facts, but the way people are raised literally shapes thinking, the patterns of thinking. Culture, learning, and education come together. We grow into a society. We learn to accept beliefs, ideas, practices, ways of doing things, all that we inherit from our history, from our tradition. Growing up with this shapes how we think, shapes our language, shapes our view of the world and becomes the basis for what people learn, how they learn, what they think is important, what they allow into their minds as new ways of thinking. So peoples' lives in a culture are as much, or more, about the details and practices of a group, rather than individual psychology. Learning is less a psychological phenomena than a cultural phenomena: it is the way the world gets presented to people. The person in some way is an aspect of a culture. We as students and faculty within a program carry the cultural practices within us. So when I think of my work as a teacher I am not thinking simply of the material of the program, but that the very exercise, the very activities of our program are cultural phenomena. Thus who speaks, how they speak are all a part of it. As an anthropologist my subject and my teaching have become a way of looking at the world.

Are there particular authors/artists/thinkers whose work you interested and which you often ask students to examine?

Clifford Geertz and Paul Rabinow have been critical in helping me make the process of thinking about culture a self conscious one, a reflective one. Paulo Friere has been very influential. He is the person who has helped me think the most about the concept of culture and learning. Foucault's
Discipline and Punish has been enormously influential. C.Wright Mills has always been a big influence. There are literary folks who practice this cultural awareness. Virginia Woolf, Jane Smiley, Alice Walker, John Berger. These are authors who go inside and get the details. Literature is looming larger and larger as a source for understandings about culture. It is a vehicle for paying attention to the details of everyday life, and in those details considering what larger forces are at work.

Are there specific areas of interest or issues you want to work with students on in the current year?

The thing that is most critical is for students to come to me with a topic where they are willing to take something that is well accepted and think anew about it. I am interested in working with students who are willing to suspend their most sacred beliefs. I am less concerned about what students know already, than in whether they have an interesting question they want to learn more about.

Specific Skills, Competence, Techniques:

The first thing is how to carry on a decent conversation and to try to get at the intellectual and cultural biases in a piece of work. I have found myself getting more and more involved in seminar, asking questions and pushing people, because I am interested in the students coming to understand the biases , both the authors and their own, that are embedded in this work. I try to help seminar members understand better what to do with a book. In terms of skills this is about learning to read well, talk well, and then write coherently about the material. In some ways it is very basic, but it is the practice of learning.
I spend a lot of time on writing. I think I find writing the single most important activity we do in programs. It is even more important than speaking because it is something that every student can do. They can do it at their own pace and do it in their own way. Writing is the place where my interest in students' learning about themselves as cultural actors intersects with the content of the program. It is their most concrete, deliberate effort at responding to the material and ideas. Writing is often what makes ideas memorable to students because the process of thinking and writing together is the process of creating their world.

What are key qualities you look for and techniques you use to assess and help students assess their work?

I will take the example of writing. The writing I am trying to promote with students is work that connects something they know well or feel strongly about and some bigger idea. When I look at a piece writing I try to follow my gut reaction. I read trying to find the heart of it. I am looking for the most interesting phrase or most interesting sentence. Typically what I feel is the heart of an essay is not developed by the work as a whole; that is the point where I begin my critique of a student's writing. Essays are for me the best vehicle for the kind of teaching I try to do.
I am really interested in people developing an idea and to go step by step constructing the pieces of the argument. In some ways it is old fashioned, but I am trying to make these "old fashioned" tools of argument and analysis relevant for the student.

I try to take student writing seriously. I tend not to be too critical of what they are getting at, but I say "If this is what you are getting at, do it well ." Thus a lot of my comments are questions and suggestions about connections to the work we have done. I don't say to students "That's a bad idea." But I do push them to really think the idea and its implications. But I also say "trust yourself." Its a juggling act. I often say, "There is something here, but you haven't got it yet." The issue is for students to take their own hunches seriously, but to subject them to rigorous thought. I use writing groups and try to make the act of writing a public activity. That makes the place of writing in the program so different.

Teaching Style:How would you characterize yourself as a teacher?

I really like to teach as a team member. I like to work with my team mates so that we work well together. This is really important in working with students. I think the best thing we can do for students is to give them a team of people who are interested in each other, who enjoy each other, and carry on our work in front of them. Demonstrating this to students in public is really important. One of the things I think is the most important about this college is that students learn that learning is one huge good conversation.
I see myself inviting people to the table. I see myself as quite welcoming of students and I like to conduct activities and seminars so that students feel welcome. But then to get serious about it. I come across as nice and pleasant. I want people to feel that they come into their work. That welcome has to be there, to get people over a hump. But once there I want people to work hard and seriously. I don't think of myself as harsh or tough on students, but I do try to ask hard questions of students in decent, respectful ways. More and more I have not hesitated to say to students "I think you're wrong." But I say it as "I think your wrong and let's keep going with it." I am conscious of not dismissing people or marginalizing people.

I believe that seminar is for students, but they can't really do that well until they know something about how to get at a book. The seminar can become more and more of the students' place as time goes along. I actually find myself impatient often times at the beginning of programs with what students bring to the books. Its almost like this material is too important in my mind to take that casual approach to it. It seems to me, especially in Core programs, that students aren't equipped to know what to do. So I find myself balancing my responses because I do believe strongly that students have to come to the material, exercise their judgement, try things out. And at the same time, I am aware of having a much clearer role in direct teaching.

What types of students tend to do well with you?

I have endless energy for people who are taking their work seriously. I get swept up in this whole process and I want to be there and engaged. So if students are not doing that, I am not as good a teacher.
I like to work with groups who want to get at ideas. My standard is, "Are we collectively getting anywhere?" People need to be really engaged with the group. Even the most shy people do have a responsibility to find a way to share their ideas with the seminar.

What types of students have a hard time with you?

People who don't get their work done! I get real impatient and real annoyed with people who don't take their work seriously. They have got to take it as seriously as I do. I don't want to work with people who are just fulfilling their requirements. I can't work with students who think they have the answer. There is no place in my programs for people who aren't willing to consider the alternatives and the complexity of culture.

What do your student evaluations say about the way you come across to students?

Usually they talk about how supportive I am. Students comment that they feel personally supported and that I intervene usefully in seminar. People sometimes want me to do more, although not as much lately. Some people want more lectures. Students find me pretty available and I use e-mail a lot to communicate with students.

Expectations about Contracts, Internships, and Evaluations
What qualities do you look for in a student who comes to you for work in a contract?

Students need to have a good question and an interest in seriously pursuing it well on their own. I tend to shy away from contracts until students have had a year or two of college. For internships, I look for links with their previous work. Internships can provide a lot more structure than individual contracts and that is really helpful for most students.

What information do you want to see when a person comes to look for a contract?

I ask them to answer the question, "What do they want to learn?" If they have a good idea about what they want to learn then what they need to do to accomplish that learning becomes more obvious. Sometimes I want to look at previous writing. And I'll often want to talk with an previous faculty member.

Interviewer: Matt Smith

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Last Updated: March 15, 2007