Vindauga

I admitted in class today that I often misspell “capital” as “capitol” and one student couldn’t help but laugh at me. To be honest, I do this sort of thing on purpose. I try to both break the ice and admit to a kind of fallibility that, I hope, allows my students recognize me as an person and not merely some removed teacher. The idea is that it relaxes the tone in the an otherwise tense kind of class (ethics ain’t easy to keep light) but the fear is that it will remove from me much of my authority. that is in gaining the general ease of the students I might lose my control of the class.

I began the discussion by trying to get the class to focus on one of the claims that the author (Pojman) makes; we feel that people should get what they deserve. Basically, I wanted them to explain what it means and further why anyone would think that. I mean, its a nice psychological think to believe that if I work hard I will receive my reward. And, it fits with the general Christian ethos that the wicked will be punished and the righteous will be rewarded. But, why should we believe that this is how it ought to be? I don’t think that this is a particularly easy question, nor am I certain that is a ready answer but I wanted to explore it with class. The best answer, by the way, that class came up with was that ‘deserve’ serves to motivate us.
So, I admitted as I wrote it on the board that I had been spelling “Capitol Punishment” for days. I really had. I even submitted a paper to a conference with that as its title (not surprisingly, I was denied). Wow, do I feel like a dumbass now. But these mistakes are neither uncommon nor morally reprehensible. Basically, I find them to be innocuous. But a rather chatty freshman in the front row thought this was the funniest thing she had heard all day. That’s cool, I opened myself up for that.

But then, not a minute later, when trying to describe the author’s argument she said that “capitol punishment works to deter murder” with the word ‘deter’ pronounced like the word ‘meter.’ How quickly our ridicule comes home to roost. Needless to say the entire class was giggling at the combination of events. To her credit she took the mistake in stride.