So I’ve been asked to update a postgraduate course whose readings are considered “out of date”. Looking back over the work I’ve done on this project thus far, I’m realising that most of the readings I’ve provisionally added or substituted in the syllabus are actually at least several decades old, with some going back to the 18th century… This has happened for two reasons: first, I have a marked preference for assigning primary, rather than secondary texts (I’m generally happy to have my lectures and our class discussions take the place of secondary texts for purposes of a course like this – although in this case I need to be a bit cautious, as I may not be the person who actually teaches this course…); and second, I tend to think that more recent material is both easier for students to understand on their own, and markedly easier to understand if the course has laid some kind of conceptual foundation in “classic” debates.

While I think these are perfectly lovely rationalisations, and I’m personally very fond of them, the reality is that, when I was asked to undertake this work, the specific conversation involved someone complaining that the course reader was out of date, as very few readings were more recent than the early ’90s – “and surely we’ve moved on since then”… I suspect that what I was actually expected to do, was to update the course reader with the best of recent journal articles and such, and that my approach to the course redesign therefore certainly violates the letter – and probably also the spirit – of the request.

So now my question is what to do about it… I think the course as designed is an improvement on what it replaces: it’s more conceptual, more cohesive – but not, in any sense of the term, more “up to date” than what it replaced… (I also have a nagging worry about whether the conceptual cohesiveness of the material might be an eye-of-the-beholder matter – I have a high comfort level with historical materials, but can’t rely on this being shared… I could, of course, write annotations on the materials to provide suggestions for how they could be taught – but this exceeds my mandate – and is probably also a slightly cheeky thing to do, given that the course will likely be taught by someone much more senior and experienced…) So my dilemma of the moment is: do I leave the course like this? Do I start over on the redesign, and do what I was actually asked to do? Or do I supplement the scaffolding I’ve created, by quickly tossing in a random sprinkling of journal articles from the last several years as well?

The last would seem the safe option, and my resistence to it is probably largely irrational, based on my own aesthetic preferences… ;-P My irrationality is, however, well-armed with rationalisations – among which include a concern that, in many cases, contemporary journal articles are more technical and/or are interventions into academic discussions the course will not cover, making them more difficult for students to parse… As well, I am concerned with getting students to engage with the assigned material at a reasonably high level, which has the side effect of minimising the quantity of material I can include – and, pound for pound, I generally find more conceptual grist in primary materials, than in secondary commentary… The exception would be secondary materials providing broad historical overviews – but I’ve already covered this in my course design (and the overviews I’ve chosen aren’t necessarily at the bleeding edge of the publication cycle, either…).

But rationalisations aside, I secretly suspect the solution to this dilemma boils down to whether I’ll insist on being a snob about what I assign, or whether I’ll do as I’ve been told… ;-P (Somehow I rarely seem to do as I’m told – I’m not clear whether this is because I revel in being contrarian for its own sake, or whether I just happen to hold dear a few unpopular concepts that routinely toss me into a contrarian position…)