Syllabi are one of my guilty pleasures (J-pop is another but we won’t say anything more on that). I am guilty of having two syllabi–the one I render unto Caesar and the hidden one that unfolds in class every day, the one I render unto the students. I worry about that hypocrisy. I worry about the double bind I might be putting learners into whether they realize this schizoid split or not.

I have been thinking and writing about the liquid syllabus and I love the examples Michelle Pacansky-Brock gives in her post (I told you I was a syllabus geek). I am still working on my ‘real’ syllabus that I want to symbolize our class more honestly, but part of me thinks that the syllabus itself is just a small part of a problematic system. I believe that in a sick world no one is healthy unless the person is a naif like Melville’s Billy Budd, or a martyr who is willing to pull down the temple to prove a point. I am neither, but the conflict remains.

Maybe we should re-conceptualize the syllabus as a menu or as an extensive FAQ or a terms of service document. (Oh, wait, no one reads the latter two either.) I am thinking that my new “insert other word for syllabus here” might just be a listing of the initial conditions of the class (you will be writing, you will be reading, you will bring something to both, you will be making important compositional decisions, you will be researching, you will be expending effort for the future, you might look like this at the end of the semester, you will consider these questions). I know my strategic students would “hate” it. I might hate it. But it would be honest and it would be more closely tied to each learner’s genius loci. It would be a phase changing marvel, moving between liquid and solid and gas and plasma depending upon the energy in the learner’s system.

I have travelled pretty deep in the ‘hills and hollers’ to get to this point in the comment. I think my purpose here has been to both compliment your post–I hope it is clear I love smart shop talk like this–but I also want to complement the idea of syllabus as a part of the institutional problem of power and pedagogy in the Uni. I do worry that my interest in syllabi might just be moving around the dinner forks on the dining tables in the HIndenberg. I wonder if others wonder the same. And I am always wondering what to do about it.

(A sidenote: I often make long comments. If you feel I should make those comments on my own blog, I am happy to do that. I want to respect your space just as much as I want the syllabus to be my learners’ space. Do not hesitate to backchannel me at telliowkuwp. Or just call me out here. I will not be ‘affeared” to hear the verdict.)