". . .in response to the irrepressible human tendency toward story-telling. . ." (John Dewey, "The Human Abode")
"a lesson taught with humor is a lesson retained." (Ruth Westheimer, via the Talmud)
Have you heard the one about the professor who was sure he was a comedian?
Humor can appear in the teacher’s delivery or persona to reassure students, can help illustrate a concept, form the basis of writing assignments as a subject for analysis or contemplation of thesis and support, and supply an entertaining or cautionary reminder that language use may produce different meanings for different people.
I have employed humor, relevant to pedagogy, through brief stories. Some of my students have loved and waited for these jokes, though these days I generally tell only one joke per semester. I sometimes have told a joke at the beginning of a class meeting to motivate some students to arrive on time, or just before or after an essay or exam.
When I think of positive role models for teaching Introductory Composition, Methods of Argument, or Technical Communication, I recall two English professors I came to know who used humorous delivery in their lessons. One of them sometimes allowed sarcasm, which I endeavor to avoid, to creep into his comments.
For Technical Communication, I have shared two humorous youtubes that relate to the purpose of the course and of an assignment. In one, a fictional “expert” named Anderson can’t get his un-informed employers to understand or appreciate the concepts he is trying to explain (“The Expert" ” by Lauris Beinerts , from the Russian short story, “The Meeting,” by Alexey Berezin). In another, a true-life letter-writer and comedian, Joe Lycett, recalls how he sent successful claim letters arguing that there was no evidence he had parked illegally, thereby cancelling his parking fine (“Funniest Parking Fine Appeal” from Jimmy Carr and the British comedy show, “Distraction”).
Stories do more than show the importance of keeping a sense of humor, which we may forget in frustrating moments of teaching and learning. Stories can also recall a lost art of oral, moral narrative. Because many students expect teachers to be performers of sorts -- as well as authorities -- such formal classroom story-telling humor, in my experience, comes from me rather than from my students. (Steve Martin, in his "Born Standing Up," says, "teaching is, after all, a form of show business".) After the delivery of the joke, I review for the students in one sentence the relevance of the joke for pedagogy – returning in some way to the student comment or class situation that prompted the joke. Part of my purpose is to frame the possibly stressful situation in an amusing or universal way. I am also trying to show in the humor empathy for the students.
There are stories I have heard or read at some time, doubtless old and author-less even then. Many humorous stories seem to be of universal ownership.
It may be interesting to analyze what makes a story funny. One semester, in my composition class, we compared and contrasted two zany, iconoclastic monologues that appeared, half a century apart, in the New Yorker magazine: Jack Handey’s “What I Would Say to the Martians” and Dorothy Parker’s classic “Waltz”. Some of my students did well choosing to write an in-class essay analyzing the humor. And as part of a visual argument exercise, for a Methods of Argument class, students might take a humorous picture and write the caption for it. (I caution students that, once they explain a joke from their own culture, it may cease to seem funny.)
For an English as a second language course, I once had students read the roles from my transcription of a Seinfeld episode—where Jerry and his girlfriend Elaine visit Jerry's parents in a Florida retirement community, attending a banquet honoring the outgoing president (the script includes arguing over the "astronaut pen"). Since there are only four or five main speaking characters in the episode, we may have stretched the exercise over two days to allow many students the opportunity to read aloud. Then the class watched and listened to the video of that part of the show. Finally, we discussed the meaning of the scenes and humor, comparing and contrasting U.S. culture with other cultures. Expectations of an audience about young romance and parental response may be different in different cultures. I learn from student insight. Humor can be a window for understanding a culture—that of a classroom or that of the wider world.
Notes of caution:
· Some individuals, and classroom audiences, enjoy humor more than others.
· Sometimes we may feel that humor is inappropriate: there are times and topics calling for dignity or identity, which may feel threatened by the seeming irrelevant trivializing. We may feel this way when we are students in class, ourselves, struggling to understand, or to earn a level of excellence. In such circumstances, a parable or story with a moral lesson might be appropriate. It is perhaps no coincidence that the tone of voice we use exclaiming, "That's not funny!" is the same tone we use saying, "That's not fair!" (We use a different tone of voice when we dare to say, "I don't get it.")
But here's one personal anecdote, whose conclusion may be familiar to clergy giving sermons: When I was a teenage undergraduate, at the end of the last day of an intellectual history course I loved, my favorite professor modestly told two jokes to the class. At the punch lines, the class burst into uproarious laughter, and then at the end of his remarks, thunderous applause. I looked around, gaping. I had missed the witticisms! As my classmates filed out of the auditorium, I rushed from one to another: "Could you tell me what the punch lines were? I didn’t hear them."
The students who had laughed looked at me with incredulity and indifference. They had no idea of the punchlines, either.
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