Should Teachers Befriend Students?

This is the title of a post by Sam Lamerson over at Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog.  Lamerson discusses this in the context of divinity school teaching, but I would like to broaden its scope a bit to include the teaching of undergraduates.

Lamerson cites Patrick Allitt’s book I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student: A Semester in the University Classroom.  Allitt, who I had the chance to meet and spend time with last October when he was on campus to deliver the Messiah College American Democracy Lecture, is largely opposed to the idea of professors making friends with students.

Lamerson writes:

Allitt starts off the book in the preface with an overview of his teaching philosophy.  While much of Allitt’s advice is worth its weight in gold, the one piece of advice that struck me as somewhat problematic was his statement about being friends.  He believes that it is a mistake for the professor to become friends with the student.  After admitting that being friends with students is a constant temptation, Allitt states that he must “resist it lest it compromise [his] judgment and impartiality.  Professors and students must not be friends (friends don’t give each other grades that have a vital effect on their futures).”

When I heard Allitt talk about this at Messiah College, I went home and pulled out my copy of Mark Schwehn’s Exiles from Eden.  Schwehn laments the loss of friendship in the college classroom.  He imagines an academic community in which “the rigors of work and the pleasures of friendship could be united.” (p.17). 

Schwehn adds:

Most faculty members are, however, deeply suspicious of friendships with students, for they instantly reduce all such friendships between persons unequal to one another in some respect to a kind of chumminess that is demeaning to both parties.

Yet for Schwehn, true friendship is possible in the collective pursuit of knowledge and virtue.  He writes: “the highest form of friendship between virtuous human beings, philia and inquiry, love and the pursuit of truth, enrich one another.  It is no wonder that so often the most durable friendships that human beings form arise in the context of learning together.” (p,63).

If you define friendship in terms of spending time together outside the classroom or socializing with students, then I have very few students who are my friends.  But if friendship is forged, as Schwehn writes, through the common pursuit of learning and growing, then I think I have befriended many students over the years.

And, interestingly enough, those students who I have befriended in this regard have been students with whom I stay in touch long after they leave college. 

To add to Schwehn and Allitt, I think the idea of loyalty is an important part of any kind of friendship that might exist between professors and students.  Over the years, the students who I have been closest to are those who have either taken multiple classes with me (implying that what I do in class has benefited their lives in some way, or else why would they keep coming back when they don’t have to) or have worked for me as a research assistant of one form or another.  I usually end up writing my best letters of recommendations for these students because I know them so well.  I take a vested interest in their lives and vocational choices. 

There is, of course, a danger in this.  Students call it “playing favorites.”  Fair enough, but I think I can honestly say that I am open to developing this kind of “friendship” with anyone who takes a legitimate interest in me, my teaching, my approach to American history, or my work.  Not all students do, and that is fine.  It seems that the initiation of this must be a one-way street.  I believe I am overstepping my bounds by trying to force my friendship on students.  (It also seems a bit creepy).  This is why I have a policy in which I do not “friend” students on Facebook, but do accept and welcome their “friend requests.”

A mutual loyalty develops between me and certain students which might be called friendship.  I become loyal to them in the sense that I take a greater concern for their success after college, take meals with them, provide a source of ongoing advice after they leave college and while they are here, and maybe even collaborate with them on scholarly projects.  At the same time, they often remain loyal to me by checking in regularly, letting me know when they are in town so we can have coffee or lunch, or answering the call when I am looking for help in doing my job as a professor, department chair, or scholar.

Perhaps it is my personality, but it takes a long time before my friendship with students is based on anything that might be called “equality.”  For many, I will always be the teacher and they will always be the student.  Some even insist on calling me “Dr. Fea” long after they leave college. I think they feel that is just too awkward to start calling me John.

In the end, friendship is possible with undergraduates, but it is, and must be, different from the kind of friendships that our students have with their classmates, roommates, and co-workers.

I am eager to hear from you on this–either here or on Facebook.

Teachers and professors:  Do you befriend students?  If so, what does that look like? 

Students or former students:  are you friends with your professors or former professors?  If so, what does that look like?

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