The "nun in the toilet," a myth that many Catholic youths meet early in their schooling experience, conveys the idea that there is a nun lurking in the restrooms who can see and hear everything that you are doing-so you'd better NOT do anything untoward. I typically saw my friends whispering or smoking in a circle in the middle of the restroom because they thought "the nun" would have a harder time hearing their gossip or seeing their misdeeds. Such myths help to sustain and perpetuate certain types of behavior.

U.Va. students similarly invent and reconstruct their behavior because of myths. Recently while I was on the Ruffner bridge, three female undergraduate students jogged by. Just as they approached the steps with the "Z," they repositioned themselves to a vertical formation almost as if someone had thrown a switch. They  jogged up the right side of the steps, , careful not to step on any part of the painted Z. When I reported the incident to my USEM students, chuckling broke out among the females, who informed me about a myth that first-year girls are told by older peers on Grounds. If a first-year female runs over a "Z" on Grounds, she is certain to become pregnant before the end of that semester. One wanted me to know that "even though [she] realizes it's not true it's still something [she] pays attention to." Like most people, she allows belief to shape one or more of her everyday actions. Myths are a part of the education experience.

In my USEM course, students examine the most notorious myths framing their schooling experience, as introduced by Berliner and Biddle  in The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, And The Attack On America's Public Schools (1997). While the text provides a foundation for discussion and analysis, the students' actual work encourages transformative experiences. My USEM ("A Nun In The Toilet: Myths As Part of the Education Experience") is designed to help give first-year students a leg up in navigating their U.Va. studies. In general I assist students to strengthen their capacities for judicious skepticism, regard for objectively reasonable knowledge, and the treatment of information that comes in the form of myth as hypothetical at best. The tasks I structure for students include:

•  Reflecting on weekly readings and submitting an account of their thoughts to a course newsgroup.
•  Interviewing each other while being videotaped. When students review their taped conversations they are genuinely surprised by their lack of justification for implicit beliefs.
•  Learning how to research databases that can facilitate their examination of formalized knowledge.
• Taking a position of authority. This task requires students to investigate the function of a position of authority, develop a purpose for approaching an audience, and act on their knowledge.
•  Conducting and presenting social inquiry.  Through this major project students learn about the types of social science used by educational researchers. In teams, the students plan, conduct, and report on their social inquiry, creating a video documentary of their social inquiry work.  They thus examine their own actions and the beliefs that bear on their research.
•  Preparing a class newspaper that frames what their journey in this course has been about.

To adapt this introductory course to another discipline, an instructor must simply create opportunities for student collaboration and examine the knowledge and myths associated with his/her field.

For a listing of current University Seminars, please visit the USEMS website.