Over at Balkanization, Mark Tushnet recently had a lovely post about Justice Souter. The part that caught my eye, though, wasn't really the main point of his post, yet I think it resonates with all professors after a certain age (which IMHO comes earlier than we expect it to):
“Homer nodded” was part of Justice Souter’s store of cultural knowledge—but not, apparently, part of the store of such knowledge in the Reporter’s office. Justice Souter could write “Homer nodded” as easily as Justice Scalia could refer without citation to Broadway lyrics or Justice Kagan (with citation!) to Dr. Seuss. When I retired from classroom teaching I had just about played out my string on cultural allusions that my students could understand (“The Princess Bride” was hanging in there by a thread), and my guess is that that experience is near-universal (we age, the students we deal with in the classroom remain young).
Almost everyone I know who's been teaching more than a few years has a story to share about the point at which their cultural references stopped "landing" in the classroom. Although I'm saved somewhat by the sheer volume of movies and television that I'm willing to consume (without regard to quality), it sill happens and, of course, generational tastes often differ, so that the mere fact that a hit show or movie is new doesn't mean it's the type of thing our students watched or have even heard of.
Anyway, read the whole thing here.
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