Universities have evaluation forms for everything. The student evaluation process has taken on a life of its own and, at many campus events, we’re handed an evaluation form along with our program. Just the thing to set the mood to openly embrace the experience we’re about to have, isn’t it? It’s ironic that, even as the serious study of effective evaluation techniques has come into its own, we should be choking on a glut of superficial critique.
It’s not just the sheer quantity of evaluations that’s so noxious, but that the results are increasingly indistinguishable from cursory Amazon customer reviews. Whether we are students, moviegoers, product evaluators, voters, or disgruntled workers, more and more, we are framed and treated as consumers whose primary power resides in our, often petty, judgments. It used to be that whole sitcom episodes — our comedy standards were lower back then — could be built around the trope of the ruthlessly picky restaurant critic. The restaurant staff would scramble to prepare for his visit, triggering a slew of zany mishaps.
But now most of us have endless opportunities to play the bit part of that unforgiving critic. A single consumer can now upend things for a seller, such that the most vulnerable businesses will, like Jack Tripper from Three’s Company, twist themselves into pretzels to appease. This was confirmed for me when a seller I’d purchased from called me ten minutes after I’d submitted my complaint, and then emailed me to follow up, and then emailed me yet again the following day just in case. His vulnerability to the whims of my keyboard resulted in customer service gyrations that were a caricature of “responsiveness.” Something analogous happens in the classroom, of course, in that instructors, especially the most vulnerable ones, but, these days, really, any of us, can be derailed by the tenacious complaints of a single student, however vague or superficial. We are constantly managing our reputations, desperate to avoid those one-star reviews.
Such consumer power is obviously to be celebrated, and some of those Amazon reviews are amazingly thoughtful and informative. In a nation (and world) largely at the mercy of big corporations, individuals need to embrace and use this power for good. But it has a real downside too. “Everyone’s a critic,” is another (not-very-funny) 20th century comedic trope, and it is true. We have been habituated to approach our experiences and other people through a myopic tunnel of petty judgement. Do I like her clothes? Her voice? Is there enough extra toilet paper in the bathroom of this restaurant? Did the museum attendant smile at me and make me feel welcome? Was the corner of my UPS box dented?
We often seem to feel, not just entitled, but even required, to actually share our petty opinions with the teacher, the purveyor, the world! We are, after all, first and foremost, consumers, and isn’t this what consumers do? Don’t we, in the U.S at any rate, expect a kind of deference and subservience from those we are paying to provide goods and services? And hasn’t higher education largely become just another consumer purchase? When I first noticed that students were functioning as critics with readings they were asked to discuss — “It was dry and boring; I liked the other one better.” — I was thrown off. While it has always been a challenge to get students to engage substantively with texts, these students, in offering their “critic’s” opinion, thought that they were engaging critically.
And the worst consequence may well be that we cheat ourselves of rich experiences, the stuff that makes up our lives. When we approach the movie, the instructor, the restaurant server, or the coworker, primarily in consumer critic mode, we are primed to notice and pounce on flaws and mistakes, errors or quirks that need not have been seen as impacting the quality of the performance, or the work. It’s obnoxious, to be sure, and it also drains these experiences of their mutuality, their depth, and their integrity. Constantly in Amazon reviewer mode, we fail to meet people or experiences on their own terms, open to what they might mean and become to us, or to how we might be changed by them. We become, like the student who, when asked to provide feedback to his professor says, “I hate how she wears her hair.”
The Virtual Pedagogue 