Recovering Education from the Dismal Demands of School
Education has been boiled down to school. All of the elements of education now have to be reduced to fit into very small test tubes and slides called “assessment.” No other approach but data will do to determine the answer to the timeless question posed by President Bush, “is our children learning?” Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson have won over minds and stomped out the hearts of those who see an equivalent value between liberal arts and science. Science works within the knowable reality; thinking beyond it to the realm of possibility is useless.
Speaking of useless: University administrators have bought into data-driven concepts without even having the debate. I wonder if they could even define the debate between data-driven decision making and other kinds. I wonder if they could even see an alternative to their role as “decision makers” (they shouldn’t be). They want to look good, feel good, so they look around for well organized test tube racks and then turn what we are doing – actual classroom work – into stuff for the test tubes. Think of the scenes in the laboratories from shows like CSI: Insert City Here except instead of a sexy actor portraying a forensic scientist you have a pasty Dean playing the role of someone who cares about more than their BMW.
It's so very sad: This semester I had a student tell me at the end of the term that they really appreciated my course. They couldn’t nail down another reason other than they
“hate school.” This enthymeme was meant to be clear – my class, somehow, was not school even though it was located in the heart of school, a for-credit university course. This cognitive dissonance was a source of surprise and pleasure, and most surprisingly they felt they had learned something, a result so impossible they had dismissed the chance of it years ago, so they said.
How can we figure out how this happens? Assessment is as easy as speaking to students. They are not incompetent; they are incapable. They have been sold a bill of goods by multiple admission departments. They have been told by well-meaning teachers that they are smart, instead of being told that smartness is the sum of the practices you engage in daily. They come ill prepared for university – we have heard everyone say this, and I too am in the chorus – and we don’t feel like we should fix it. After all, we have assessment data to collect for the Provost!
The trouble can be solved by inquiring after better data. I remember being part of a study at my university several years ago about “meaningful writing.” They asked at random various students what classes they took which had a “meaningful writing experience” for them. I think this could be done with our required (core at some places) courses. Currently, the core, for the most part, is taught by underpaid and exploited workers – adjucts and graduate students. These people are the primary exposure to college that interested, competent (yet incapable) students encounter. This will set the tone for the remainder of their college strategy.
If we want better undergraduates it is up to those who are interested in teaching – seriously interested in it, not posting on social media about the “special” ones who really “make this job worth it,” but those who like to get down and dirty in the trenches and deal with the seriousness of communication, it’s desperate imperfection, it’s frustrating results and causes. These people do not glowingly speak about the teaching experience because it is hard, it is stressful, and it is not joyful like a day at the Carnival. It’s the set up and take down of the carnival; it is the life of transitional experiences that make up the serious teacher’s work. Finding these people should be possible with a questionnaire to students similar to the one about meaningful writing.
Once we have located these people on campus, we put them into dialogue with one another about teaching and what it means to teach new-to-college students. We discuss how to distinguish education from school in meaningful ways. Finally, if I were a Dean (a nightmare for everyone involved especially me) I would ask them what they would need to have to commit to teaching a full load of the core classes. We cannot afford to waste that formative experience with higher-education by putting stressed out, insecure (in many ways), undercompensated people with no connection to the University community in the front of the room for the first 15 weeks. We’ll lose them all. If we want better undergraduate students, we have to get in the trenches with them. We have to show them the practice of smartness, not praise them for “already knowing.” What sort of education professional praises what students already know?
Education is about transformation not getting it right or objectively clear, like (charlatan) scientists in popular culture often talk about. Education is about reimagination of one’s position in the world and what constitutes that world in which you are positioned. Putting people in the required courses who understand this, who want to help forge students instead of blame them, who want to have a transformative experience with young people will change the whole thing. Assessment won’t be necessary beyond an upper division course professor asking three questions of her class on the first day, then thinking “I need to up my game. They are ready.”