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<\/a><\/p>\nFive minutes passed, although it seemed much longer. Not being one who uses her phone very much, I was really struggling to keep busy with my phone, plus I was nervous. I made a point to look at the clock. 10:32 a.m. Seven minutes had passed since the start of class. I heard a couple of students laugh uncomfortably but no one spoke to each other. I went back to my phone and pretended to scroll through news. \u201cJust a few more minutes,\u201d I thought to myself. \u201cYou need to go past the ten minute mark at least.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 10:37 a.m., exactly 12 minutes since class was supposed to start, I put my phone away, picked up the syllabus and started class as if nothing unusual had just transpired. After going through my office hours, assignments for the semester, policy on late assignments etc. I looked around and asked, \u201cSo, what questions do you have for me?\u201d I encouraged them to deviate from the syllabus, \u201cAsk me anything,\u201d I prodded, \u201cIf appropriate, I\u2019ll answer it.\u201d They asked me all kinds of questions . . . but not the one I was waiting for. After a while, I looked around and said, \u201c Is there ANYTHING else you think you should ask me about?\u201d<\/p>\n
The students shook their heads.
\nAt this point my experiment was complete and it was time to let them in on it.
\n\u201cWhy are you here?\u201d I asked.
\nUncomfortable silence.
\n\u201cNo really, why are you here?\u201d
\n\u201cTo learn\u201d, a student in the front row said after a while.
\n\u201cThen why didn\u2019t you ask me to stop using my phone and teach?\u201d
\nThe students gave me range of obvious answers, from they don\u2019t know what I would do in return, to they don\u2019t want to question the professor.
\n\u201cWhat if I told you, you are also here to un-learn?\u201d I countered.
\nUncomfortable laughter.<\/p>\n
From here on, we had a lively discussion about the lessons learned and un-learned from this exercise. To briefly summarize:<\/p>\n
1) The first lesson of this exercise is to understand that social norms \u2013 how we are expected to behave in a given situation\u2014are always working on us whether we know it or not. For my students, it was their socialization in schools, the expectation that they do not question their teachers that encouraged them to not challenge my inappropriate behavior. Students could probably excuse a professor coming in late by a couple of minutes, or taking a couple of minutes to get themselves together. But I had made certain that the experiment lasted longer than ten minutes \u2013 an arbitrary choice by me, but one I felt made the experiment long enough to make the situation absurd and unreasonable.<\/p>\n
2) This experiment also exposed the power of the \u201cpath of least resistance\u201d, (as Allan Johnson discusses in his book, The Forest and the Trees<\/em>) for my students: nobody else was questioning me, so why should they? It\u2019s much easier to do what everyone else is doing in a given situation. This lesson is one of the most valuable one perhaps, especially as we cover the by-stander effect later on in the semester when discussing hazing in fraternities, or military abuse of prisoners for example.<\/p>\n 3) Relatedly, it also revealed the nature of legitimate authority and obedience to authority: my students obeyed my instructions (putting cell phones away) and did not question my behavior, not because they knew who I was as an individual, but because of the authority vested in me by the title of \u201cprofessor\u201d. In our society, we see professors and teachers as generally moral, intelligent, and ethical. The authority of a professor is further emphasized by the physical structure of the classroom with the professor at the front of the room, and by the \u201cmaterial culture\u201d of a classroom: desk, podium, chalkboard, and smart-board for professors. The students on the other hand, sit in chairs, physically looking up to the professor.<\/p>\n These are all sociological lessons that my students learn on the first day through this experiment. But implicit in this experiment is the hope that they will \u201cun-learn\u201d some of the behavior that they\u2019ve been socialized into, whether it\u2019s being a passive student or a passive by-stander. It is only through learning about and critically analyzing our social world that we are actually able to \u201cun-learn\u201d or challenge the many lessons we\u2019ve been taught.<\/p>\n As a critical, feminist sociologist, that is the most important lesson that I can teach my students\u2014sociology is not a collection of facts and theories, it is a perspective, a way of seeing. And as the writer Arundhati Roy says \u201conce you see, you can\u2019t unsee.\u201d To this I would add: truly seeing, that is, seeing the world through a sociological lens, is the first step towards unlearning. Welcome to Introduction to Sociology.<\/p>\n Works Cited:<\/strong><\/p>\n Johnson, Allan. 2014. The Forest and the Trees<\/em>. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.<\/p>\n