Yesterday I worked in a Berkeley cafe. The student sitting next to me said she was taking a course from Robert Reich called Wealth and Poverty. Most famous profs she’d found disappointing, she said, but not him. I was impressed that Reich was teaching undergraduates. Most profs in the Goldman School (UC Berkeley’s public policy school) don’t teach undergrads. The class is once/week for 1.5 hours (followed by a half-hour “salon” — meaning discussion) in a large lecture hall (Wheeler, 5 pm Wed). It met in a few hours. I went.
The topic was communities attracting large businesses, such as Boeing. Today’s topic should make you feel bad, Reich said. That was one of his goals, clearly — to make students neither complacent nor despondent. And he wanted them to be sophisticated: He didn’t want them to have a “bad-guy theory of the world”. Fine. I liked the way he walked around the big room, instead of staying on stage, and he had a great conversational manner. I also liked the way he used the first ten minutes to sum up what he’d said earlier.
What I didn’t like was the content. It was example-free — unless you count saying that Boeing moved to Chicago. As the lecture continued, my eyes widened: Is this what a good undergraduate lecture at Berkeley is like? There were no stories! Not one. He discussed, in purely hypothetical terms, how Boeing might decide where to move. They’re considering a number of cities, Chicago, Long Beach . . . Los Angeles. What will Los Angeles offer them? Tax breaks and subsidies, said Reich.
STUDENT What about good weather?
Reich didn’t answer. He went on to ask, rhetorically, were the tax breaks and subsidies a good thing? No, because they left less money for education. At this point I left. Except for being surprised by the low-quality content and amused by the student’s comment, I’d been bored. As education, it was thin gruel. The disjunction between Reich’s excellent intentions, great reviews (the room was packed), and great manner and his dreary content didn’t remind me of the name-dropping throat-clearing Yale prof but of the Los Angeles graduation where none of the speakers told a story. Somehow this simple point about how to teach — tell a story — had been forgotten.
John Searle still teaches Philosophy of Language, right? I recommend you go sit in on one of his lectures if you get the chance, while he’s still around. When I took his class ~20 years ago, he owned his stage like a Shakespearean actor.
You could also try Anthro 160 – “Forms of Folklore”. That’s a class *about* stories so the lectures can’t help but feature them…
Glen, I heard Alan Dundes lecture about folklore. He gave plenty of examples, yes. I wouldn’t say he taught by telling stories except in the obvious sense that he gave examples (which were stories or jokes). But maybe it didn’t matter: The examples were interesting and that made the lecture interesting.
“He went on to ask, rhetorically, were the tax breaks and subsidies a good thing? No, because they left less money for education.”
OTOH, if a thousand people move to the area to work at the place, then they are paying taxes. So did that leave more or less money for education? It is a tougher question than Reich makes it out to be. Thinking about such second-round effects is common in economics. In fact, according to Henry Hazlitt in _Economics in One Lesson_, it is _the_ defining characteristic of economics.
Tom, yes, what you say is one reason I left when I did.
*What you say is such an obvious point, that I feel silly saying that I agree with you.
*I feel less silly sharing examples from a favorite professor at the University of Texas. https://fwd4.me/HBr
*During our American Literature courses, Professor Winship would include stories about the books and authors. His stories made the authors and books more real. But, his trump card, was taking us to the Harry Ransom Center and showing us proof that confirmed the story.
*For example, we got to see every edition of Leaves of Grass and found out that Whitman used a fake paper/cardboard butterfly for his famous photo.
*We saw order sheets for Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn…it was pre-sold door to door. We even got to see one of the rare copies of the first run of the first edition of Huck Finn, which made it through the publisher with a very proud print/illustration of Uncle Silas.
*We learned a lot about American Literature too, but the stories help orient me…even to this day, writing a comment on your blog.
*Cheers and thanks for the memories.
I just spoke to a public health student here at cal about Reich and she said, “Oh my God!! He’s amazing!!” Might go next Wed.
What has Reich ever done to make anyone expect anything but “thin gruel” from him? Making 20-year-olds swoon is not a very good signal of quality. Neither is having politically powerful friends.
Economist, after I go to Reich’s lecture, I’ll comment here about what I experience.
Well, there is a great story about the Boeing move, with lots of documentation.
The bottom line was that the CEO wanted to move to a place that offered him a large in-land lake for sailing, so Boeing moved to Chicago. The rest was mostly show, which came out eventually. There are all sorts of things that could have been developed in that case study.
Too bad he did not. Why didn’t he do the work to go into how Boeing approached the search, where they looked and what the parameters appeared to be and then what they turned out to be? That would have made a great lecture.
My land use prof in law school used to do that, over and over again, in his lectures. I still pay attention to the topic, even though it has nothing to do with my professional practice, because of the interest his examples stirred in me.
Wow, I didn’t know that, Stephen. It reveals big problems with Reich’s approach. As you say.
I went to Reich’s class tonight, because of what I read in Seth’s blog. The class was: Wealth and Poverty, Wed, 5pm, 150 Wheeler. I stayed from 5pm-615pm. Reich started out with “By the way, Bill Clinton says ‘hi’ to you,” because Clinton had dinner with him in San Francisco when Clinton visited Cal last Wed. Reich talked about how he called and left a message to Clinton, asking him to make a surprise visit to the class, but he couldn’t get through to Clinton. Later, Clinton told him how he tried to respond back, “I couldn’t get through to you!” So Reich said back, “I’m a busy guy!” Everyone laughed.
The lecture was about labor unions and wage raises. Reich was really funny. The hall was PACKED. Students sat on the floor and stood up in the back. I’ve never seen so many students so excited to be in a professor’s class. One student shouted out, “This class is so fun!!” Another student brought both of her parents to listen!
Reich told stories about his experience in Washington, as Secretary of Labor under Clinton. He talked about how one of his jobs was to promote NAFTA among unions. He was booed in halls filled with 800+ people because they opposed NAFTA. He described a meeting between the national labor unions and Bill Clinton. To make a very long story short: Clinton didn’t give them anything, but he was able to make them think, as one of the union leaders said, “It was a fabulous meeting!” Reich acted out on stage what Clinton was doing at the meeting, how he was able to make these extremely angry union leaders “melt.” It was hilarious! In addition, Recih talked about the AFL-CIO. He showed graphs from Harvard Law School showing the decline in labor unions in America since 1967. Reich talked about labor law reform and how he tried to convince Clinton to set up such laws. However, Clinton chose to focus on NAFTA.
I don’t know anything about economics, but tonight I learned a lot!
At Berkeley, our lectures are usually theoretical. The “examples” are “learned” outside of class. The methods by which and the tools with which we analyze those examples are introduced in class. We’re taught thinking strategies and methods (hence Reich’s apparent socratic approach) but we’re not taught what to think or exactly how to think.