I was surprised to learn of the role that individual choice in course planning (by both the professors scheduling the course and by students choosing courses) played in reducing opportunities for “community” to develop among even those freshmen who lived in close proximity to one another. Nathan identified the US cultural values of freedom and individualism as some of the larger driving forces behind organizing university course offerings in this manner. I found it illuminating to consider this very one-the-ground reflection of cultural ideals at play – ending up by actually countering the cultural ideals of community and collegiality so (ostensibly) highly valued by the university. Also surprising to me was the degree to which relationships that pre-dated the freshman year thwarted opportunities/probabilities for establishing new relationships/friendships. The upshot of all of this, especially for students who are privileged most by dominant culture “norms” (white skin, economic status, etc.) is to be mired in “the relationship among ignorance, intolerance, and ethnocentrism” (Nathan, p. 87) without hope of true freedom in regards to new relationships and friendships.
My advice to new undergraduates would be to recognize this time, their freshman year, as a rite of passage and to attempt to fully appreciate the liminal qualities and transformational potential of the year. Of course, for many of the freshman who have been raised up in the US, a culture that does not overtly recognize this time in a manner that honors this period of people’s lives in such a way, they may be rather hard-pressed to understand how to accomplish such. And based on Nathan’s reflections about international students, this may be an equally unlikely and unfamiliar concept for those students.
My advice to a new college instructor (myself included!) would be similar to my advice to college freshmen – that is, recognize that the freshman year CAN be an importantly transformative year for those students and act accordingly. One approach may be to simply make direct statements to that effect. For example, “Your first year in college can be considered a rite of passage. As such, you may think of yourself as living in an in-between state, in between the home you grew up in with the guidance of your parental units and the world of adulthood with all the self- and other -responsibilities that status implies. What unfolds for you in this year may hold the seeds for your future...” and then speak as candidly as is appropriate about ways they can honor this time and make it truly useful and beneficial to themselves. Of course, if there are ways to tie that into the course content, all the better!
I also believe it could be quite appropriate and helpful to explicitly discuss the challenges as well as the benefits of nurturing relationships across perceived cultural and ethnic/racial identities. For white US students in particular, the likelihood that they will naturally fall into those relationships appears to be quite small and this is unfortunate for them on both psychological and pragmatic real-world levels. Review the findings of Nathan and others, and openly discuss the ways that ethnocentrism can negatively impact them in their own lives.
My perspective of undergraduate students was quite sketchy prior to reading this book and has most definitely been enhanced through reading it. One of the aspects I found most helpful was Nathan’s exploration of the concept of cheating. I was grateful for the author’s disbelief and resistance to those national broad-stoke studies that end with a summary “everybody cheats” analysis. Nathan summarized it so well I will remind us of her words, “Cheating must be interpreted in its lived contexts, and when it is, it can be said that most of the time, most students don’t cheat. Seventeen percent of students are habitual cheaters… a statistic that offers a very different picture of the student body from reports highlighting the 83 percent of students who admit engaging in some dishonest act.” (p. 128) Another aspect of the book that landed for me involves the ways in which dominant cultural norms have coercive effects (e.g. not asking questions in class to avoid becoming the class “witch” – a troublesome use of a stereotype, however, that is another subject worthy of its own attention!). And while these coercive and corrosive effects heavily impact student culture and behavior, there is hope to be found in norms within “contesting subcultures” that are present within the dominant student culture, such as the “hard but not boring” alternative cultural texts identified by Nathan. (p. 144) Overall, I was encouraged by Nathan’s writing to see students in the fullness of their human potential, rather than narrowly as less-than-fully-intellectually-mature actors with limited agency and consciousness. Seeing students in this light reminds me of my responsibilities to them as a co-collaborateur in building a better today and tomorrow.
