Posted by Jay Livingston
What to do about snow days? That was one of the last items on the agenda at the half-day-long meeting of all department chairs. In coming semesters, we’ll probably get more weird weather, so what kind of advance arrangements should make? Schedule more pre-exam-period reading days that can be converted to class days? Have teachers tockpile a few online classes?
“I don’t know about anyone else,” said one chair, trying to sound puzzled, “but so far none of my students have complained about the two missed classes.” (OK, it was me.) There was laughter, though not an entirely easy laughter.
I continued:
I had two immediate mental associations when the topic came up. One was my brother. Long ago, I was talking to him about this problem or something similar He took out a blank piece of paper. “Suppose this is your field, sociology.” Then he drew a square that took up less than half the page.. “And this is how much you know.”
“And this,” he drew a smaller square inside that one, “is what you can cover in a semester.” It was beginning to look like an Albers print but without color.
“And this,” a still smaller square “is what your students can learn.”
I didn’t have to state the obvious implication: as long as the what-they-can-learn square was considerably smaller than the what-you-can-cover square, what difference would a couple of snow days make?
“My other association,” I said, “was to Father Guido Sarducci.”
I was surprised by the number of people who seemed to get the reference.* At least they laughed. And one woman I spoke with later (chair of Nutrition Sciences) did a very credible version of Fr. Sarducci’s accent. She added that our business was one of the very few where the customers often wanted less for their money.
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* The bit became famous after Don Novello did it on SNL in the early 1970s. This version is from 1980, still early enough that the audience gets the Mickey Mouse Club reference.
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