{"id":448,"date":"2012-05-21T14:38:47","date_gmt":"2012-05-21T12:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=448"},"modified":"2012-05-21T14:38:47","modified_gmt":"2012-05-21T12:38:47","slug":"spending-money-on-drama-working-out-the-cost-of-a-subject","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2012\/05\/21\/spending-money-on-drama-working-out-the-cost-of-a-subject\/","title":{"rendered":"SPENDING MONEY ON DRAMA (WORKING OUT THE COST OF A SUBJECT) <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll be teaching again next year the elective \u2018English Theatre\u2019 and I\u2019m reconsidering the texts I used 2 years ago. In that edition I asked my students to read two anthologies, Grahame Whybrow\u2019s Modern Drama: Plays of the ’80s and ’90s<\/em> and Alekz Seirz\u2019s Twenty-First Century British Plays<\/em> (both Methuen). 10 plays in total, 36 euros. <\/p>\n

We worked on dramatised readings of scenes from all of them and seeing how they played out in class, I have decided to replace 50% of the plays with other texts. Now here\u2019s the problem: the only way I have of checking whether the texts I have selected are worth teaching is by reading them, that is to say, by spending my own money (as I did, yes, 2 years ago). In the end I have spent 60 euros on 5 new books (3 single-volume plays, 2 collections by the same author). Single-volume plays are, at around 12 euros, not that cheap considering they\u2019re on average 100 pages long. Yet, there\u2019s no way around it. I have worked out that my students need to spend around 85 for the 10 plays. That\u2019s roughly the price of a cinema ticket per play. <\/p>\n

We teachers may purchase books through the library but they remain the library\u2019s property and though we can borrow them for the whole academic year, we can\u2019t make notes on them. The result? The books we buy for the library don\u2019t include the ones we use in class, which we pay for out of our own pocket. A subject can, thus, easily cost each of us, teachers, 100 euros, if only a couple of secondary sources are added. This is why it\u2019s VERY annoying when we see that students don\u2019t buy the books (in time), or use low-quality editions, etc. <\/p>\n

Now that I\u2019m planning this subject I\u2019m thus caught between a rock and a hard place: the need to spend my money to offer quality based on an informed choice and the students\u2019 resistance to spending money on books. As usual, I\u2019m possibly going to be unfair to many students but many seem to forget that books are part of the expenses of any university degree. The NECESSARY expenses. I saw the other day in my class a girl who had downloaded and printed an e-text copy of the (copyrighted) novel we\u2019re reading, The Remains of the Day<\/em>. That is something I will never understand… Back to drama (or to my drama!): If I opt for the cheaper solution (= teaching the same plays as 2 years ago) I do know that 50% of the subject will not be as good as it could; if I cut down the number of plays to, say 5 or 7, it\u2019ll be a pity as that\u2019s all the contemporary English drama (some!) students will read; if I keep the 10 plays, the subject will be rich enough but I\u2019m sure it will all result in rampant piracy of the texts among my not-so-rich students. <\/p>\n

I wonder if Medicine university teachers, a degree notorious for the cost of the textbooks, ever consider these matters. (I also wonder how they pay for the said textbooks…). Whatever my final choice is, in consideration of the students\u2019 finances, the bare truth is that I have already spent those 60 euros… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll be teaching again next year the elective \u2018English Theatre\u2019 and I\u2019m reconsidering the texts I used 2 years ago. In that edition I asked my students to read two anthologies, Grahame Whybrow\u2019s Modern Drama: Plays of the ’80s and ’90s and Alekz Seirz\u2019s Twenty-First Century British Plays (both Methuen). 10 plays in total, 36 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching-tools-and-rules","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}