Well school's in full swing, and the next time I register for classes, would you please be so kind as to remind me that classes that start with 'women and...' are not nearly as fun as they sound.
Now, I have to take a second to qualify this. Women's studies classes are among some of my favorite classes to take in a discussion format. One where there are less than 20 people in a room having an actual discussion about some topic, any topic. Heck, I took a class on women in post colonial societies and had a blast. It's the back and forth of it, the sharing of ideas, of information sources, the gaining of perspectives other than your own. It's priceless.
What I cannot stand is any of these classes in an online format.
Why you ask? Because if you ask me (and the other 284 students in the class) to answer a complex question about why it took women the better part of 2000 years to achieve leadership roles in Christianity in 150 words or less on a 'discussion board' the ONLY possible answer I can give you is sexism. This is a cop-out, because really, in 150 words or less I can't even tell you what I ate for lunch today, let alone explain two millenia of religious tradition and social change. This kind of work does not generate discussion. It generates canned answers. 285 of us answering in unison with an answer that is overly simplistic at best. We gain no perspective. There is no organic flow to our conversations. We simply spit out what we know you want to hear. The simplest possible answer. Yuck.
I would also like to note that I am a huge fan of online classes, and that organic discussions are possible and productive in an online format. But for some reason, they never seem to work well for women's studies.
*shrugs* next semester I will remember this. :)
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