Ah, the rest of the world is catching up with me. This long article in the NY Times describes a middle-school English teacher who lets her students read what they want instead of having every student read the same thing. I started doing something similar six years ago. There was always an assigned reading, but students always had a choice: They could do the assigned reading or they could find something else on the topic (e.g., bipolar disorder) that they preferred. About three-quarters of the students did the assigned reading.
My criticism of American higher education is two-fold: 1. Students in a class are treated all alike. They’re not. All hear the same lecture, read the same texts, do the same homework assignments, take the same tests. I came to realize that my students differed greatly in their talents and career goals. I can’t remember meeting a Berkeley prof who seemed to be aware of this. When a professor would describe a student to me, it was almost always on one dimension: more or less smart, which meant more or less good at doing the sort of tasks professors are good at. I think the diversity of talent and career interests I saw in my students is no accident or exception (which is supported by the fact that a middle-school English teacher saw the same thing); I think it’s at the core of human nature and it’s at the center of my theory of human evolution. 2. Professors teach how to be professors. Most students don’t want to be professors. Every Berkeley prof I ever met was extremely good at research; a few were extremely good lecturers. And every one of them sounded like an idiot the moment they started talking about how they taught “critical thinking” or whatever grand-sounding term they had for it. “Teaching students to think” was a common way to describe teaching students how to be professors. To say such a thing to a psychology professor is like saying to a chemistry professor that the world consists of four elements (earth, air, fire, water). “Are you aware how stupid you sound?” I felt like saying. But instead I would say that there are many kinds of thinking.
Giving students more power over what they learn solves, or at least reduces, both problems.
Andrew, if I remember correctly you never said anything about “teaching how to think” to me. And you are right, my statement about nobody being aware of student differences is too strong. I have modified it. I suppose the more important point is how little allowance is/was made for student differences. The only obvious and widespread example I know of is for those labeled learning-disabled — then you got more time on tests.
Seth: It’s politically incorrect to have explicit beliefs about differences between students in ability if those beliefs have enough detail to make them actionable. Honestly, understanding the differences between people’s kinds of thinking is a whole academic specialty, a field of psychology but not seriously touched in “education” or “educational psychology” so it’s unsurprising that most people are unfamiliar with it.
Also, there are many kinds of thinking, but do you seriously not think that there is something distinctive about the kind of thinking that professors do that makes it appropriate that it be taught, if at all possible, in schools? People have ALWAYS had many kinds of thinking, but the rise of science created one very distinctive very novel sort of world, largely by cultivating the synthesis of philosophical/mathematical and mechanical/empirical thinking. Everyone knows that human brains don’t need to be taught how to think in general, but they do need to be taught how to think scientifically, hence every culture has thought but only some have science.
Finally, all children think, most adults mostly pattern match instead, which generally works better. I wish that nerdy adults who knew how to think were given good instruction in how to act, play chess, and do other types of pattern matching.
While I had a handful of good professors in college, the best were from Dr. George Ray and Dean Pusey (at Washington & Lee University). Why the best? Dr. Ray had the direct studies — we went to the U.K. to study classical British drama for a course on it. So, we saw the historical places first hand, got lectures directly from Shakespearean actors, and watched at least three dramas a week — from among the great playwrights.
And Dean Pusey? In his 80s when I took the class in Russian lit, he first gave us a questionnaire where each student filled in our interests, aspirations, dreams, etc.
Then, every test was geared toward where our minds were likely to head. I thought at the time I’d become either a writer or filmmaker (I became a novelist, later), my tests were filled with “what key scenes would you choose to keep in if you were to make a movie of this story, and what would you throw out — and why?” and various other permutations.
It made me realize what I’d been missing out on in college — someone who actually looked at where I put my energies and found a way to draw them out from me into the subject matter, and also match that subject matter with my deepest interests.
It was, hands down, the best class I ever took in my life, I thought more deeply about the subject and the work at hand than I did for nearly any other class.
And ironically, the more prestigious the institution is, the more pedagogically stale it tends to be- you may disagree with me on this, Seth, but that has been my experience.
Of the three institutions I’ve been to (UC Davis, Sonoma State University, and the Santa Rosa Junior College), “prestige” was inversely proportional to the quality of education.
At times, I honestly wondered how many professors at UCD were actually there to teach or were genuinely concerned about their students, particularly undergrads. Probably relatively few, I’m guessing. The best instructors I had usually had only masters degrees, as well.
I taught Special Education (light to moderate) and have a learning disability, myself, so I’m extremely (perhaps overly) sensitive and understanding to the problems that arise when the two brains involved on the opposite ends of a learning process are wired completely differently, want different things, or have different expectations. What I experienced at Davis vs. the JC was like night and day.
So in what ways did the two differ? The JC gave me much greater freedom to learn in a way that was appropriate for me and provided much greater interaction between teacher and student. The thousand-person lecture hall format isn’t exactly flexible, nor does it lend itself well to multiple styles of learning. I can’t help but think those who think it’s actually effective are either insensitive to peoples’ needs or just plain don’t care.
@Bennetta said “The thousand-person lecture hall format isn’t exactly flexible[.]”
Right. What is the purpose of 1,000 person lecture halls, nowadays – why not just provide a lecture accessible on the web? Then you could also provide a transcript or lecture notes at the same time. This seems much more convenient, flexible, and useful to me.
For law school, point #2 can be modified to, “Professors teach how to be appellate clerks. Most students do not want to be appellate clerks.”