X-treme lecturing

The pedagogical technique known as X-treme lecturing was an experimental teaching method pioneered by the infamous Marvin Fitch. Taking inspiration from research into memory recall during times of crisis, Fitch subjected his students to a continuous series of crises while he lectured. These crises, chosen to induce fight-or-flight responses, included such educational experiences as filling the room with Barcuvian carnivorous rage-hamsters, dropping the floor from the lecture hall and suspending the desks from oiled ropes, and assigning students to do group work with a marionette child. Students who performed poorly in Fitch's classes were especially subjected to this, since the theory of X-treme lecturing dictated that their performance would improve if they were subjected to even more stressful crises. Because these students were predictably picked off by this "attention", Fitch's methods went unnoticed or ignored by university administrators, who only saw Fitch's high rates of student success: an artifact of the bottom half of the bell curve falling off, so to speak.

X-treme lecturing was incidentally outlawed in AES 960 by the passing of the I'll Legislate It, I Swear, Don't Think I Won't Act, due to a clause that banned pedagogy involving hyphens. This, of course, was no obstacle to the indomitable Marvin Fitch, who switched careers to adult trade education. His practice of this technique continued and was taken up by disciples, which is generally agreed by sociologists to be the cause of the cold, dead, hollow thousand-yard stare electricians and plumbers tend to have in their eyes these days.

Despite its comparably low survival rate compared to most other pedagogical methods, X-treme lecturing boasts an impressive resume of alumni. Several seated members of the Disputatious Assembly of Sovereigns took at least one X-treme class with Fitch. The bond these alumni share is one stronger than any familial or institutional ties: the bond of shared trauma. One need only witness the knowing look that passes between two graduates of Fitch's in between the spasmodic twitching to know that something was understood there that the rest of us, for better or for worse, will never have access.

Conspiracy theorists regularly claim that Fitch's methods have been adopted by this or that government, or by the Disputatious Assembly of Sovereigns itself, as a means of re-educating political prisoners. These claims are rarely taken seriously, as Fitch has personally denied that X-treme lecturing is useful for education.