Grace Jasper 
Dr. Newstreet 
History of American Education 
18 March 2018 
Dr. Culp Interview 

Grace: OK. It is Wednesday, February 21st and I am with Dr. Culp, here. So first off, what schools did you attend? 

Dr. Culp: SO I went to Ordway Elementary, which is on Bainbridge Island, Washington and I went to Commedor Middle School, which is also Bainbridge Island. And I went to several colleges…the main college that I actually graduated from was St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. And uh, I got my Phd in political science at Boston College. 

Grace: All right. And what kind of student were you? 

Dr. Culp: So, that’s kind of hard to answer. I mean, when I was little, I was a good student. Uh, and then in middle school and high school I was OK. I didn’t really like to do work unless I was interested in it. So, you know middle school, I’m trying to remember if I ended up failing. I failed at least one class. Because I just didn’t do the work. Then by the end of high school, I was a pretty good student again. And, you know, in college it was kind of one of those students where if I was interested in a topic- there were a lot of topics I was interested in, and if I was interested in a topic I would do lots of work. Um, but if I wasn’t interested in it, I would you know, kind of do the bare minimum. I was kind of lazy; curious, but lazy. So, I was a good student at first but basically once middle school came along it was a little bit more. But as far as classmates go, do you mean like my friends? Or everyone I was around? 

Grace: Classmates or friends, you can start with friends if you want. 

Dr. Culp: Well, A lot of my friends, especially middle schools and high school were not good students. So often times I was getting better grades than they were. So, I don’t know if I would say they affected the way that I learned. Um, I mean when I think back on school, at least up through college, I don’t think of my classmates like as co-learners. They were just the kind of people I was around as my friends, but they didn’t have any conscious effect on my learning. I mean, in college and in grad school I would make friends often times kind of based on shared, intellectual interests. So, I would talk to them about things. It aided in my learning because I would make friends with people that I could talk to about the topics I was interested in. 

Me: Were there any historical, social, political, or economic events that you specifically remember occurring while you were in school? 

Dr. Culp: Yeah. I remember The Challenger blowing up as we watched in class- I was in grade school. I remember The Berlin Wall coming down. I remember the Gulf War very well- I was in middle school and there was the Gulf War. I remember the impeachment proceedings against Clinton. And of course, I guess it was in between college and grade school but obviously there was September 11th and I remember the Afghan invasion an the Invasion of Moroc. So yeah, there was a lot that I remember! And of course, I’m in politics but before I was even in politics I remember this stuff. I’m not sure if they had any affect on my education. I remember during the Persian Gulf War of ’91 we started every day with a moment of silence. But it didn’t really affect my education that much. I was very distrustful with authority when I was a kid so these events were ones that I didn’t really take that seriously necessarily. I was not a good student. In middle school, that’s what is comes down to where everything blows up. 

Grace: Do you remember your teacher having any visible emotion about those events? Or any of your teachers when those things happened? 

Dr. Culp: I remember being scolded for talking during a moment of silence. Haha. But I don’t remember… I seem to imagine my teacher crying when The Challenger blew up…. But, you know, the brain fills things in, so I don’t know if that really happened or not. I remember my mom’s reaction to the Berlin Wall coming down but I don’t remember my teachers. 

Grace: What was your mom’s reaction? 

Dr. Culp: She couldn’t believe it. She said, You know, “I’d never thought I’d seen this day.” And now here we are. The Berlin Wall has been down longer than it’s been up, as of November. 

Grace: What do you remember about when you first took an interest in the world of politics? 

Dr. Culp: Yeah, so that’s funny, ‘cause I was sort of interested in politics all the time. I remember as a little kid, sort of paying attention. I really started getting more interested in politics in third grade when everybody had to write a report on a President. And I got John F. Kennedy. And I remember just getting really interested in that and I sort of paid attention- you know, this was the Reagan Era and I knew I read Mad Magazine and they always had parodies of politicians. And so again, not the most reverent but, so from very early on I sort of knew. It was the Cold War, so one of the things you have to remember- oh I remember cher noble as far as political events go. But, this was near the end of the Cold War so there was still lots of movies that were about the Cold War and I remember Gorbachev when he came into power and Reagan and seeing that on the news. And him being on the cover of magazines ‘cause my parents got Newsweek and Time and the newspaper so I would see that stuff around um, so from very early on. I got a liberal arts degree from St. Johns. Prior going to St. Johns I was really mostly interested in literature. Um, and then, at St. Johns I got more interested in philosophy, even though when I look back I did a lot of my writing projects on historians and political philosophy. So I guess I was kind of interested in ethics. 

Dr. Culp: And then, it was really only after I was done with college when I was looking at grad schools and I saw the Boston College political science grad program I’d been looking at philosophy departments. And I just sort of looked and decided, ‘this actually seems more interesting to me.’ So I went and got a degree in political science. Haha. It was kind of funny. It was not deliberate. I was not one of those people who was like, ‘I’m interested in politics. I want to go into politics. I want to, you know, study politics.’ It sort of happened accidentally. 

Grace: So for the next question, ‘how did you become an educator?’ So would you credit anyone influencing you specifically? 

Dr. Culp: I mean, I’m sort of one of those people who became an educator in a way because that’s what you have to be in order to continue being a student. Because I was interested in the thinkers and in the phenomenon and I wanted to continue to study and understand these things and the profession that you go into, if that’s what you want to do, is teaching. So, I would say in a way I didn’t… my primary decision was not a decision to be a teacher. It was just to continue to be a student of politics. Now, some teachers were very influential in my life and you know, I kind of take the job of being a teacher very seriously. It’s not like I’m a scholar and I teach ‘cause I have to. I actually put most of my energy into my classes. Because I think teachers are important because they are sort of the introduction to these subjects so I feel like it is sort of my responsibility. Especially in a course like the one your in where you are forced to be there, I need to kind of show you that it is interesting, that it is valuable to motivate you ‘cause you are paying money to be here and your time is valuable and you’ve got a busy life. So it’s important to show you that it is valuable, but also because by teaching a course like this, a lot of times being a teacher involves- when you’re a scholar or something, so if your level of familiarity and interest are up here and you have to figure out that way to get back down to where learning starts from. So you can’t assume a person’s interests in this. I can’t assume that they know all the concepts that I know. So I have to figure out how to take this knowledge and make it kind of intuitive and plausible to give them a way into understanding more. And that is really helpful because it keeps you more in contact with why any of it even matters at all. 

Dr. Culp: So instead of just getting lost among specialists where it is presupposed that what you’re doing matters, you have to remind yourself of how is this anchored in the human condition, why does this matter, what do people need to know, and then how do you build from there. I actually find it, for me, extremely intellectually helpful to be a teachers because it keeps me in touch with why the disciplines and questions matter in the first place. Richard Feynman who’s a famous physicist, he once said that the way to actually understand something is starting with it, then writing it in a way that makes it intelligible to a fourth grader. And he says you don’t actually, you yourself don’t actually understand something unless you can clearly explain to somebody who doesn’t. Otherwise, you might be letting jargon do the thinking for you and don’t really understand. So in a way, being a teacher is this continual process of testing you own understanding by saying, ‘can I actually make this intelligible to someone who doesn’t know about it yet. So I am very happy to be a teacher because I find it very helpful to me. In terms of what jobs I have had- I wouldn’t credit anybody in particular but after I stopped being a bad student I admired teachers…

Dr. Culp: The jobs I held before being an educator were working in manual labor and then I worked in bookstores. I was a book clerk for years. So I wouldn’t say any of that really influenced my choice. I mean if anything I became a professor and continued to be a student in the same way such as when I worked in bookstores and work but, still read. Like any other career is being kind of incompetent with my brain space for what I am caring about, haha. 

Grace: Alrightie, what is your idea of an excellent student? 

Dr. Culp: Yikes. I mean, to use kind of traditional terms, I would say an excellent student has to have three features, and these are not features of me as a student, haha. One of which is what’s traditionally referred to as docility, which means open to instruction. So a good student is somebody who recognizes the limits of what they know and therefore willing to accept help and learning things they don’t know and can be corrected if they are doing things wrong. So, if you don’t like being corrected or you think you already know everything, then you’re not open to being taught. So, docility is important and then also diligence- which I certainly didn’t have all the time BUT willingness to actually put in the work to learn because learning is actually pretty hard and so a good student is not someone who is just open to learning and open to instruction but somebody who is willing and able to put in the work that is needed to acquire the knowledge. And then, beyond that, a really excellent student needs to have curiosity. Like, they actually want to know things and you have to be interested in the world, how it works, and wonder why things are the way that they are. ‘Cause that’s really what motivates you. That’s really one of the reasons why I dislike grades so much is because grades are a different kind- they become the motive for a lot of people but that I maybe unavoidable. But, the concern for the grade or getting a bad grade can sort of kill a person’s esteem and curiosity in a certain subject matter. So I find it in some way that the system of grading is something that is not very good for encouraging actual learning. So, a good student is docile, diligent, and curious. 

Grace: Why did you choose to teach at UD?  

Dr. Culp: Haha. If you anything about the market for professors, you don’t have a choice. I chose to teach at UD because they offered me a job. I hadn’t heard- although the guy who hired me in the politics department, Tom West, I used his translations of platonic dialogue, and some of his writings on the Founders I used in a course that I taught as a grad student. So, I was familiar with Tom West but honestly never really heard of the University of Dallas. But, my wife had a post doc in Houston so we were living in Houston and this job opening came up. And I thought well, I might as well give it a shot, got lucky, and got the job. So, I chose to teach here because I got offered this job. But now, I wouldn’t leave here, even if you paid me. So, I stay here ‘cause I like it. 

Grace: How long have you been teaching at UD?

Dr. Culp: 9 years? Next year will be my tenth. 

Grace: Gotcha. What would you say is the biggest difference from teaching at UD, like a small liberal arts school than like, say Texas A&M or something? 

Dr. Culp: That’s a little bit of a hard one to answer because I never really went to a big school. When I was a grad student in B.C. it was a big school but, grad classes are always small. But, I was a TA at B.C. so I saw what kind of big classes are like. But, it’d be really hard to put your finger on it because UD is different both because of its size but also because of its particular identity. But obviously the smallness of the classes and therefore, the contact that is at least possible between a professor and the students is a lot more at UD. And this affects such as I grade your exams. So, at a big school the TA’s do most of the grading so at a big school you really don’t get to know your students very much unless it’s an upper level elective. So where as in this as in Principles [of American Politics] which is just an intro class, I still get to know everybody because I grade your work haha and I see you. So I guess that kind of possible connection- I mean, there’s also a possible connections that students not make contact. That and also at UD ‘cause of its particular identity, I like that there seems to be among the students at least a presumption that what they are studying should be taken seriously. I know it doesn’t necessarily always be taken seriously but it seems like the default position is that what the school has to offer is actually valuable and that college shouldn’t be treated simply as just getting a credential just so you can make money. Even though that shouldn’t be ignored ‘cause you have to be able to support yourself and there’s nothing wrong with getting a college education so you can get a decent job because it’s hard to get one without it. But, I like that at UD, there seems to be a presumption that you should think that Homer’s good even if you don’t actually enjoy reading him or you should think Dante’s good even if you don’t actually enjoy reading him. I like that among the students that there seems to be a little bit more general respect for learning at UD than elsewhere. 

Grace: Um, OK. Next question. SO even though, like you said, I’m only taking a core class of yours and it’s been less than a semester, um, you still have a lot of passion in the class that you portray. I was just wondering what drives that passion because like you said, you kind of touched on it in a previous question but, is there anything else that drives your passion for teaching, even just for a core class? ‘Cause it’s repetitive, of course since you’ve taught for nine years. 

Dr. Culp: Well, I always change things up because I’m always trying to do it better. In part it’s because the core class is an important class because politics, for better or for worse, is omnipresent in society. There’s the political partisan divide and a way in which politics is almost too important in society today and people have these debates about all these different issues. So, I think principles is really important because it’s one of the only chances students get to see a more impartial, philosophic look into these issues so you can see what it’s like to reflect civilly and calmly about politics because it’s so heated. Thomas Crawford wrote that article a few weeks ago showing that students, for the most part, don’t have their political opinions changed by a Principles class. Which is fine because it would kind of weird because I don’t see myself as an advocate of any particular political system but I do see myself as someone who is kind of responsible within the limited sphere of my capability, make the world a better place by enabling the people who leave my class to have a better understanding of the system that they live in or at least the terms of its basic principles. So often people will debate some issue just simply based on what outcome they want. So one of the reasons why I said I spent a lot of time on the Constitution is because I think it’s important for people to see how the process matters too and how rule of law actually matters. So maybe the Supreme Court handed down a decision and you like the outcome, but maybe you shouldn’t like the fact that they actually made that decision because that is outside their jurisdiction. So just trying to kind of produce better informed, more principled citizens. I don’t overestimate the actual affect that I may have but, to the extent that I can have one is largely through a Principles class. It’s a mission. It’s a vocation. 

Grace: Um, is there anything else you would like to add or clarify? 

Dr. Culp: Not that I can think of. I think that does it. 

Grace: You just made me think about through a previous question- relating to today’s society like you said, politics is a very heated area. Do you think that that advancement in technology has contributed to that heatedness? 

Dr. Culp: Yeah, because social media intensifies everything. So, obviously you hear about ‘fake news’ stuff and I’m sure that’s a problem to some degree. But also, the way that people can kind of instantly react. Sometimes the way I think about it is when something happens in politics nowadays, it’s almost immediately enveloped in a cloud of commentary about it. And from all these different perspectives, on the one had it makes it easier for people to react emotionally to what is going on, but at the same time, it makes it harder sometimes to actually figure out what actually is going on because it’s all commentary with retweets and shared posts and that kind of stuff. So I feel like it’s made the expression of political opinion both more emotional and at the same time less informed. So, that is kind of dangerous. Fortunately, the good news is that polls still show that most people don’t pay that much attention, so it’s still a smaller portion of the population that is already more polarized and louder is now even more polarized and louder because you’re customized, news feed reinforces your own biases so it is much easier to have people’s biases reinforced nowadays and hence become more strident and less compromising. I think it has been crucially enabled by social media. Social media can also be good and can have lots of good uses. But in that sense, it’s contributed to less civility but things have been a lot worse in the past than they are now- I mean, we did have a Civil War once, haha. And even like I said in class today, in the 1790’s the press was completely partisan and presses were associated with parties or insipient parties. There was no impartial limits. So, things have been worse. 

Grace: Yes, haha. Alright well, thank you very much talking with me!