Influxing Fun in Florida

Welcome to the twilight zone of professors. To put it politely, these guys are different. To put it bluntly, they are, at times, downright strange. But however strange or bizarre their methods might seem, they are as dedicated to teaching as anyone in their profession. ... Even though these profs have been known to smack ice cream cones into their foreheads, drill holes in desks, and dress up as Elton John, there's something serious going on here, something they take pride in -- education.

From Today, a glossy PR poopsheet published for some reason or other by the University of Florida

IN the twilight zone of professors at the University of Florida, you will find, for example, David Denslow, or Dr. Dave to those who sit at his feet. He teaches in the College of Business Administration. He "teaches one live class in the morning, which is videotaped and replayed throughout the day."

Sometimes he breaks off his spiel and says, "Boy, there's something out there that's really destroying my concentration." (Pause.) "That jacket, that yellow jacket out there. Could you please take that off?" Then, a student planted in the back of the room takes off a jacket. But that's not all. The student then "speaks to the TV, telling Denslow his tie is too loud. Timing it perfectly, Denslow replies, 'Oh, my tie is too loud? Sorry,' he says, taking it off." Then the tape is replayed through the day. Denslow has also planted students instructed to hold up rutabagas, in which act they may well have found some pleasure not exactly anticipated by Dr. Dave. He sounds like the right man to hold up some rutabagas to. He has also jabbed himself in the forehead with an ice cream cone while doing his imitation of Gerald Ford, which deed may well have left some of his students not entirely displeased.

"I think I do it because I enjoy it," he says. That's what we think, too. But he also has a "professional" justification: "The off-beat stuff I try to work into the very standard lectures, those that might get boring."

Well, Heaven knows, there are all sorts of things that might bore a student of business administration. It's probably best not to take any chances, especially where the dissemination of mere information is concerned.

The pain of study is also mitigated by Richard Lutz, a marketing teacher who is said to be "thirsting for a closer relationship with his students." So he brings his tool to class and drills a quarter-inch hole in the podium.

"They're completely blown away by the fact that I've drilled a hole in university property," he explains. "What this illustrates is a key marketing idea -- that people buy quarter-inch holes, not quarter-inch drills."

Well, every discipline has depths of its own, and marketing may well have a few that are both key and obscure, and thus, apparently, utterly beyond the power of mere discourse to clarify. So what else is a man to do -- especially since he is "as dedicated to teaching as anyone" -- but to bring his drill to class and blow his students away? And who knows? -- he may even have a little piece of the outfit that markets podiums to the state of Florida.

The list goes on. Sidney Homan brings down the house when he throws his bookbag to the floor and illuminates a passage from Romeo and Juliet: "What he's doing is trying to make out with her. Nowadays it doesn't take so long, it's 'your place or mine.'"

Julian Pleasants breaks them up by going to class dressed as Clint Eastwood, complete with Colt .45, "to let the students see how long and heavy it was, and it was also a focal point from which to discuss violence in the Old West."

And then there is Stuart Schwartz, special educationist, and one of those people who has his students play video games with their feet so that they can relate to the handless. (As to whether he also has them play video games with their hands so that they can relate to the footless, we are not informed.) Schwartz tosses out small change to whichever of his students will laugh at his jokes, thus rolling them in the aisles whenever they roll in the aisles. When he runs short of change, he passes out coupons worth five points toward a student's grade, and seems to be trying to excuse himself for something or other by saying, "Besides, I pass out more coupons than money. "To me," he explains, "if a professor doesn't influx some fun or humor or activity into the lecture, then he's not really tapping the learning that can take place."

Why the University of Florida would want such facts known, there is no knowing. Perhaps it has something to do with a perfectly justifiable, and even praiseworthy, institutional death-wish. Or perhaps the weighty right hand of deliberate mindfulness that surely dwells in the president's office just doesn't know what the left hand of flackery is doing down in the cellars of public relations.

No matter. The whole business is a comforting display of the benefits we reap from the First Amendment, by whose power fools are so easily led into foregoing the protection offered them by the Fifth. And, unlike the antics of the twilight zone profs, the account of same is truly educational.

In the dialogue called Gorgias, Socrates defines flattery, which he calls a knack learned by experience, and contrasts it with medicine, which he calls an art derived from principles. The aim of the flatterer is to provide pleasure, without any consideration of whether the recipient should have that pleasure, and that of the physician, to provide what is good for the recipient whether pleasant or not.

Of the latter, the true teacher is the most complete example; of the former, the competent whore. When the teacher fails, the good that was to be done is left undone, and that's bad; when the whore fails, some good that was never intended suddenly appears, and that's great. It's funny, too.