Teaching Practical Jokes

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." 

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

I like counterintuitive writing assignments, assignments that challenge students to think in ways they never expected to be asked to think.

For instance, for their first paper this semester, my Freshman Comp students had to demolish a U.S. monument of their choice and erect a better monument in its place. The assignment is an exercise in description. It doesn't matter what monument they choose, so long as it (a) can be described vividly and (b) sends a message about history that the student sees as in some way flawed/counterproductive. 

Students must describe the monument in such a way that illustrates its candidacy for (hypothetical) demolition. They then have to describe the replacement as an answer to the flaws of the first. It's a chance to think big, to build "castles in the air," to let the imagination to run wild. 

For their second assignment, students have to devise a campus prank that reveals something unique about their generation. For this assignment, they have to think smart, not necessarily big. They have to be practical, imagining a prank that is actually possible--though (as I remind them often) must remain hypothetical. 

Before such awful TV shows as Punk’d and Jackass, practical jokes were revered traditions on college campuses. Contrary to their names, practical jokes are quite serious—serious not just in terms of consequences but in terms of their ability to help otherwise powerless groups define themselves within a larger institution. When we take practical jokes seriously, we learn something about the community-building and belonging.

Here are some of my favorite pranks: 

This hijacked road sign is the handiwork of MIT pranksters.
I love it because it engages the viewer's  sympathy, and because
 it is a poignant reminder of the human element lurking just behind the machinations of daily life. 

Harmless fun. And it shatters any preconception that your hight teachers are humorless automatons.

These prank stickers an be found on the London tube. Leave it to the British
to strike such a subtle balance between alienation and cheeky fun. 

A reminder from the elusive graffiti artist Banksy to break out
 of the pattern of daily life and smell the flowers. Or paint them. 

Regardless of how I stress that pranks should be harmless but provocative--that they redressing injustice and reduce alienation without also putting anyone in harm's (or humiliation's) way, students always first associate pranks with cruelty (thanks, in part, to Daniel Tosh, Ashton Kutcher, and Johnny Knoxville), which is why I allow for a ten-minute cruelty-fest, wherein students (and I) recall some of the more sadistic pranks they've witnessed. I kick off the cruelty-fest with this clip from one of my favorite movies, Rushmore (1998): 

After we purge ourselves of cruelty, we set about the task of making the world a better place, one prank at a time.