https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/f0b0623ad4df58f719946bcf9aeb28e5.pdf 797648a2290eecd5fadb01c3a2eac046 PDF Text Text Christopher Uhl and Dana Stuchul Teaching as if Life Matters; The Promise of a New Education Culture. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.224 pp. $25.00 (paperback). ISBN: 978-1421400396 Reviewed by: Chad Hanson, Casper College, USA DOI: 10.1177/009205SX12463194 Uhl and Stuchul’s volume on teaching is wedded to a perfect title. The authors assume the same thing about education that we assume about soci­ ety: It is greater than the sum of its parts. Although, I would argue, within the current scholarship of �Book Reviews teaching and learning, we tend to focus more on the parts than we focus on the greatness. Even as sociologists, we are prone to reducing studies of students to psychometrics (Arun and Roksa 2011). Therefore, Teaching as if Life Matters offers a refreshing view of undergraduates as whole and multifaceted people in the midst of becoming professionals. The book begins with a familiar observation. The authors paint a picture of their classrooms by describing “young people who seem to be resigned to following a soul-numbing life script consisting of attending classes, getting a degree, finding a job, paying off loan debt, working a job for forty­ plus years, and then retiring” (p. 2). Their anecdo­ tal depiction of student culture matches what we find in research on the undergraduate population (Carey 2012). Uhl and Stuchul call the situation an “impoverishment of spirit,” but they do not blame students for their condition (p. 2). Instead, they cite the cause as an “impoverished environment” in colleges and universities (p. 2). Uhl teaches biology and Stuchul is a chemist by training. Yet, they take a more sociological approach to higher education than we often see within the field of sociology (Hanson 2005). Uhl and Stuchul examine the norms, roles, and values at play in the production of everyday life in schools. This approach allows them to see how education changed over the course of history. During the past 50 years, our institutions were transformed, from ivy groves insulated from society-at-large to knowledge factories, “in lock­ step with the dominant culture and its emphasis on competition, materialism, individualism, and speed” (p. 14). More so than most, Uhl and Stuchul accept that postsecondary schools act as socializing institu­ tions. They insist that “schools are important loci of socialization” (p. 14). This approach allows them to avoid the traditional emphasis on cognitive outcomes and the question, “What do our students learn?” Within the scholarship of teaching and learning, outcomes are Conceived as products, but Uhl and Stuchul focus on the process of becoming an educated person. Instead of merely asking what students learn, they ask readers to consider how teachers and students relate to one another and why our interactions often fall into patterns 379 that make for less than exciting experiences in classrooms. The attention to the question of how students and teachers relate to one another provides a back­ ground for concrete suggestions with respect to teaching strategies. For example, the authors offer an exercise where students examine the posture and nonverbal communication of leaders (p. 38). In another case, they describe how they make use of Saint Benedict’s admonition to “listen with the ear of our hearts” when we read from a text (p. 68). In this venture, students are asked to treat reading as a form of meditation. They also describe a tech­ nique that allows students to wrestle with the ques­ tion of what it takes to discover their “calling,” where their values align with their choice of voca­ tion (p. 73). Throughout this work, the authors guide read­ ers toward building an environment where students have a chance to think about who they are and what they become as a result of their education. Questions of self -and identity are central to the book. Uhl and Stuchul do not cite or refer to authors who write in the tradition of symbolic interaction, but those familiar with the interactionist perspective will find a lot to like about their orientation. Uhl and Stuchul stop short of crediting the well-known interactionist. Manford Kuhn (1960), for example, but they pointedly encourage teachers to press students with the question, “Who are you?” (p. 83). In a chapter titled “Seeing Our­ selves with New Eyes,” they provide a framework for engaging students with questions such as: “Are you your possessions? Are you your body? Are you your beliefs? Are you what you do for a liv­ ing?” (p. 86). In keeping with the focus on the relationships between schools, students, and society, Uhl and Stuchul crafted a book with the intent to help us fulfill what they see as our core purpose—to help our institutions “serve as places of inspiration, exploration, discovery, and the making of meaning” (p. 170). In contrast, much of the work that fits within the scholarship of teaching and learning is bent toward 1950s behaviorism. We conceive teach­ ing and learning as a stimulus and a response. Even the eminent behaviorist, B. F. Skinner, understood the pitfalls associated with this method, however. He wrote, “Education is what survives after we have �forgotten what we learned” (Skinner 1964:484). Cognitive learning outcomes wither beside the change-in-self that occurs through the course of an education. The complex dramaturgy of the classroom is merely one component of the larger rite of passage that we call the baccalaureate. I spent the past semester reading many of the newly released books on postsecondary schools. When I picked up this title, it felt like stepping from black and white into color. Some of the chap­ ters contain new age-isms that will make hardnosed empiricists uncomfortable, but the book does a fine job tapping the spirit that motivated many of us to become teachers. In the end, readers will find a reasoned call to examine the current culture of education and a practical guide to reinvigorating life in the classroom. a i 1 < 1 i i i i i 1 i j < ] REFERENCES Arun, Richard and Josipa Roksa. 2011. Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Chicago; University of Chicago Press. Carey, Kevin. 2012. “Academically Adrift: The News Gets Worse.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 17 2012, p. A64. Hanson, Chad. 2005. “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning—Done by Sociologists: Let’s Make That the Sociology of Higher Education.” Teaching Sod- C oZogy33(4):421-24. Kuhn, Manford. 1960. “Self-attitudes by Age, Sex, and Professional Training.” Sociological Quarterly l(l):39-56. * * ’ 1 I £ j S Skinner, B. F. 1964. “New Methods and New Aims in Teaching.” New Scientist 122(5):483-84. I i I � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. 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Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_72 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>Teaching Sociology</em> is published by Sage Publications