Fixing College Education: A New Curriculum for the Twenty-first Century

Chapter 2: An Environment for Learning

11 2 An Environment for Learning Putting students into the center of the curriculum and enabling them as soon as possible to take responsibility for what happens in class means putting to the side a whole host of sentimental and well-loved conceptions of teaching. A curriculum centered on student learning rather than on imparting information changes the environment, changes the idea and the job of teaching , and ultimately changes the kind of people who teach in colleges . Teaching as entertainment or as a dramatic art, and even teaching as “inspiration,” may have some effectiveness in conventional classes, but they lose their validity in this environment . As memorable as they may be, “great” teachers still characteristicallytellthestudentswhattothink ,ratherthanenabling them to do the hard work of thinking for themselves. You can test this by asking yourself what you remember of the “best” professors—the best lecturers, the most inspiring teachers—you had in college. You will surely remember admirable, “unforgettable ” characters and great performers. You may retain deep personal admiration for some, for their intellectual brilliance, excellence of character, passionate commitment to learning, or devotion to students. You may even still remember a few striking facts or ideas you learned in lectures. But it is less likely that you will be able to identify those traditionally striking pedagogical occasions with the ones in which you broke through to a sense of your own heightened capacity to think, to investigate, to discuss , to judge, to express yourself. Your best teachers were the FIXING COLLEGE EDUCATION 12 ones who created the occasions for you to do it for yourself. Often, you do not realize this until some time and experience have sifted them out for you. There is of course something to be said for the idea that students can learn by emulation, by imitating the thought processes of their teachers. I suspect that many thinking persons, at least the most imaginative and motivated of them, have learned in this way. The idea is well put forth by T. Kaori Kitao, professor of art history at Swarthmore. In the course of an essay defending electives in liberal education, he writes: The student assimilates—almost unconsciously—the way the mind of the teacher works. All students, talented or untalented, learn the way the teacher’s mind works, and when they internalize it, they make it their own; when it becomes their own, they curiously forget that it had to be learned. . . . The knowledge you learn about the subject of a course is its nominal benefit. The real substance of learning is something more subtle and complex and profound , which cannot be easily summarized. . . . It has to be experienced, and it is as an experience that it becomes an integral part of the person. These are wise words, and in the enviable environment of a Swarthmore, they may all be true. But the key condition cannot be the mere taking of a course. There are rare instances in which the student’s imaginative power operates regardless or even in spite of the pedagogical situation, but what is required in most cases is that, as Kitao says, students have the right experience. In this sense what is crucial is neither the teacher’s mental processes nor his or her personality, but the situation in which the student is placed. The “great” teachers in the new curriculum will not be great because they are memorable performers. They will shun the center of the stage and will be suspicious of the pleasures of displaying talent and exercising power. They will feel, as Marshall Spector puts it, that “in a discussion, things are going well when the students are ignoring me.” Their skill will be felt gradually and indirectly, in the students’ sense of their AN ENVIRONMENT FOR LEARNING 13 own growth. Such teachers may well earn undying respect, but it will be earned slowly, and over a longer term. To bring off the new job of teaching will require widespread faculty acceptance and learning of a new pedagogy that replaces “telling” students with empowering them to think. Ken Bain, who studied the ideas and techniques of those college teachers he judged to be the very best, concludes that they all provide a “natural critical learning experience”: People tend to learn most effectively (in ways that make a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on the way they act, think, or feel) when (1) they are trying...