Robert Bishop

Loving Others in the Classroom

Robert Bishop, Ph.D., Professor of Physics and Philosophy; John and Madeleine McIntyre Chair of Philosophy and History of Science

You’re familiar with the old written law, “Love your friend,” and its unwritten companion, “Hate your enemy.” I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the supple moves of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that (Matthew 5:43-47, The Message).

What does it mean to be our best, God-created selves? Jesus teaches that we should imitate God’s graciousness and generosity towards those giving us a hard time, who are giving us their worst. Challenging stuff, particularly in times of political and ideological polarization.

Through several readings and discussions, the CACE seminar on “Political Polarization and the University Classroom” provided numerous opportunities to think through how Jesus’ teaching applies in a context where both students and faculty too often “play it safe” and self-censor in the classroom for fear of confrontation or worse. I reflected on classroom practices I’ve used to establish a safe harbor for discussion: How successful have these been? What makes the difference between classes where conversation flows freely versus those where playing it safe dominates.

One observation that emerged for me in a lunch conversation during the seminar was that student relationships are an important factor in classroom discussions. In the physics senior capstone, my students are quite willing to engage in wide-ranging conversations often prefacing their contributions with “This is only a half out idea, but I want to try it out with y’all...” Or “This might seem controversial, but here’s what I’m currently thinking...” The unique thing about our capstone is that physics students have functioned as a cohort taking nearly all their physics and math classes together, working on homework and lab assignments together, and hanging out together for almost four years. Their relationships give space and safe harbor to take risks in the classroom rather than self-censor.

The CACE seminar challenged me to think through how I might foster student relationships in my Christ at the Core classes so that students feel comfortable enough with each other to take more risks in classroom conversations. How can I take practices that already get each student contributing to class discussion and transform those into relationship and confidence building? How can I foster students loving each other enough to honor each other by engaging ideas and disagreements with honesty and integrity? Our classrooms are practice for life in Christ and in community, and saying things wrong or sometimes giving offense are part of community in a broken world.

I want my classroom to be a place where students feel they can take risks, sit with difference, agree to disagree, but also receive grace and forgiveness when mistakes are made, and offense given.