History/Academia/Religion/Culture/Politics/Jazz
Mode for Caleb Caleb McDaniel

Mel has two interesting posts wondering about what professors should (or should not) wear in the classroom, and she points to three recent articles in the Chronicle on the same subject. Mel's second post also points to Profgrrrrl's post on these pieces.

Like Mel, I don't think that one could formulate universal rules of dress for professors, in part because the kinds of things that clothes signify can depend on the part of the country you're in, what kind of school you're teaching at, what kinds of clothes your students wear, etc., etc. And I also agree with Mel that clothes are only one part of the many signals that we send to our students in the classroom--signals about what we are like, what our class will be like, what we expect of students, what we expect of ourselves, etc. etc. Still, after those considerations are taken into account, I also agree with Mel that

To claim that our dress and self-presentation has no impact on students is as false I think as it would be to say that it is the only thing that matters. It's one of many things that mix into the equation. But it is something that we have control over (I can't change my height, for instance) and is therefore worth thinking about.

The one thing I would add to Mel's points--and the points made by the Chronicle authors--is that our clothing as professors is not just about self-presentation, or at least it doesn't have to be. Most of the comments in these posts and articles have to do with what we communicate about ourselves by what we wear: are we trying to exude authority or accessibility? are we dressing to impress? are we trying to draw a clear and visible distinction between ourselves from our students?

But dress does not just communicate things about us; it can also communicate things about occasions. When I wear a tie and jacket to a wedding or a funeral, my clothing has less to do with recognizing me than it does with my recognition that these events are uniquely meaningful. I'm not primarily saying something about my self so much as I am saying something about the social setting I am in--its seriousness and significance.

In my experience teaching so far, I have usually worn at least a tie to class, and if not a tie then a jacket, and if not a tie or a jacket, at least a button-down shirt and slacks. When I reflect on why, I'm sure part of it has to do (as it has for Mel) with my closeness in age to my students. But I think it also has to do with my wanting to communicate to students that class is an important part of my day and week, that I take it seriously. There's certainly a way in which one could communicate this message in an overbearing way, but I don't think that dressing "up" a bit necessarily puts students off, especially when the other signals that one sends as a teacher make the classroom feel open and the instructor accessible.

A couple of years ago I read Parker Palmer's book The Courage to Teach, and it's one of those books that has risen in my estimation retrospectively; I appreciate things about it now that I didn't really get when I was reading it. One of the things Palmer stresses is that many of our choices as teachers can be governed either by fear or by courage. "As a teacher," says Palmer, "I am at my worst when fear takes the lead in me, whether that means teaching in fear of my students [e.g. worrying that they will see through the mask of authoritativeness that I put up] or manipulating their fears of me [e.g. putting up a mask of authoritativeness]." In contrast to letting fear take the lead in our teaching, Palmer urges us to let our teaching be shaped by what he calls the "grace of great things." When we teach a class, we are inviting our students to gather with us around the "great things" that our discipline studies--its motivating questions, its central themes, its practical applications. These are the things that drew us to our disciplines in the first place, but fear of students (or of administrators or colleagues) often distracts us from those "great things" and makes our selves the primary object of our focus as teachers.

One thing I need to think more about is whether this distinction could have relevance to my wardrobe choices. Am I dressing "up" to keep the fear at bay? The fear that my students will not respect me, that they will discover gaps in my knowledge, that my colleagues will think of me as a subaltern rather than a peer? Or am I dressing "up" for the same reason I dress up to go to a wedding--because when I teach, I want to communicate to my students that we are in the presence of "great things"? If sometimes I know the answer has more to do with fear, I want at least to aspire to be a teacher for whom the "grace of great things" casts out fear.

I wonder, on the other hand, whether my freedom to muse on these things is in part a luxury. I'm aware that clothing and self-presentation does have to do with local politics and power structures within different universities; I'm sure I am to some extent free from the kind of surveillance, formal or informal, that is focused on the wardrobes of other academics. That's why I wouldn't want to make these reflections into some kind of categorical imperative. But I do think it's interesting that discussions of our sartorial choices as professors tend to center almost exclusively on what they communicate to our students about ourselves. Is it possible that our clothes also send a signal to our students (again, only one signal among many) about how we regard class as a "special occasion" of sorts, special because of the significance that we invest in our areas of study? I'm not saying that sense of significance can only be conveyed by dressing "up," but I do think it can be a reason for dressing "up" that is at least partly distinguishable from a desire to perform a certain self-image in the classroom.