Education Should Be Dangerous

This article summarizes the conclusions of Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's sociological study of higher education.  Putting it briefly, the book finds that students don't learn that much.

As a friend of mine who teaches college chemistry points out, the methodology is a little sloppy.  (This is a criticism that can generally be leveled at sociologists without fear of contradiction.  Their work is valuable, but very often a bit touchy-feelie.)  But their conclusions are supported by our experiences.

I very frequently get comments on my course evaluations like, "Wow... actually learned something." What's striking is not that I'm all that great (most decent college teachers will get this comment), but the students' expectations that college is a hoop-jump.

One of the first things I do (on the first day when I'm calling the roll, actually) is to demand of my students an answer to the question, "How do you know when you've been educated?" The first round of responses are usually facile: "If you've learned something," "If you pass," "if you get a good grade," answers I puncture with Socratic questions until they're unusable.

I remind them that if they go to a brake shop and drive off the lot and the brakes fail that they'll demand their money back: "How would you know at the end of this term that you should go back to the registrar and demand your money back?"

What it comes to is that I insist that they change. 

And I think this is a powerful chunk of motivation for the course: I want them to feel that learning is (1) risky, in that it challenges their stasis; and (2) worth it, if their stasis is mainly stupidity, something I tell them straight up; and (3) almost entirely in their own hands.

I forbid in the strongest possible terms texting in my class on that day, and illustrate it by quoting a lengthy section of Song of Solomon to the class and then modernizing it with one text: "IMsoN2U." The lesson (we're still calling roll) is that we're here to expand thought, not condense it. 

Finally, I challenge their boredom as being self-inflicted. This is the trickiest thing I do on Day 1. But I want them to understand how many symptoms of their boredom are choices. I issue this homework "assignment": Next time you get a cell phone call, and the question comes, "What are you doing," where the expected answer is "Nothing," say EXACTLY what you're doing, and what occurs to you, and notice everything about your surroundings, and what you know and what you don't know about it.

I started giving that assignment sort of as a joke to emphasize how we shut out the world in favor of detachment from it. But yesterday, on the second day of class, one of my students said she actually did it. She said, "I did that when my grandmother called and asked what I was doing. We talked for an hour. I NEVER talk to my grandmother." The class was fascinated. (I was too: I didn't think anybody would do it, and I certainly didn't think anything really good would come of it.) 

But this isn't me being brilliant: lots of teachers who are grateful for the chance to teach do the same things in other ways. They let their own infectious fascination with Life on Planet Earth slip in. Depending on class chemistry, time and nature of the class, and just how you're doing psychically that semester, it can flop or fly.

And I think professors who communicate this idea that learning is (or often can be) an adventure can make some headway with students, but it takes a lot of love for the students. Every term you kind of lay your heart out there, confident that most of them will break it. But they do respond to being treated as though they are people and not data input machines or variables in an Education System.

And I think they don't change much... the force of the Internet and its all-part-of-the-hive mentality is huge. And I think that's more to blame than anything. There have been dull pedants since the time of the pre-Socratics at least (and much more likely since teaching was developed). But we cultivate in six million ways the belief that change through learning, improvement through learning, is not necessary. It isn't exciting because it isn't dangerous.

Comments

[Rachel Pridgen]

Yes, yes, yes and yes. This is so perfectly right on that I'm having a hard time commenting anything other than "YES". Thank you for being one who continually challenges my stasis. I am becoming educated.

[Sandra]

Ha! Absolutely education should be dangerous! There was a reason American slaves weren't legally allowed to learn reading and writing. There is a reason that women are routinely (still and increasingly in some conservative groups) denied access to education. THEY MIGHT START TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES.

I went to top rated public schools and graduated from a highly competitive private college in the 80's (we were such nerds, we all left the football games at half-time, if we even went at all--even homecoming!--to go back to our rooms and study) and I was taught to regurgitate a lot of information. But I consider that my "education" actually consisted of two things: my social work professor repeated over and over that the cardinal rule of the therapeutic relationship is "to respect the dignity and uniqueness of the individual", a rule applicable to every relationship one ever encounters (thank you, Jim Piers!).

Secondly, I had a seminar with a visiting Oxford fellow (whose name I have regretfully forgotten) who taught us that we were expected to have our own opinions about everything and that the only criteria to judge "right" or "wrong" opinion was how well it could be argued, ie logically and not fallaciously supported. Without remembering all the Latin terms, the take-home item that has served me for 25 years is that if something is taken to its logical extreme and still makes sense, that's pretty good logic; but if something taken to a logical extreme is absurd (or ends up refuting it own intent) then it is still absurd even in its more moderate forms. Boy, did my religious "convictions" take a huge hit after that class! (And it was a religion class, to boot.)

"how do I know I've been educated?" Because I know how to think for myself and I have developed the courage to do so. Aude Sapere. (and maybe because I can toss off Latin phrases like some big intellectual nerd.)

[Jennifer in AZ]

This makes me more now than ever to want to be one of your students.