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After nearly ten years of teaching on the
college level as both a graduate teaching assistant and an instructor,
probably the most consistent and persistent observation I can make about
teaching is that instructors should be trained in hostage negotiation and
S.W.A.T. tactics, or maybe even bomb defusal and disposal. From the first
moment I walk into a classroom of students (and it doesn't matter if they
are freshmen or seniors), I am immediately understood by them to be the
enemy, the obstacle between them and their illustrious careers as "x" (whatever
the present fad profession is). I am the gatekeeper and they must now be
the keymaster. They are Oedipus to my role of Sphynx, the riddler who wants
to trip them up and eat them alive. And they always leave me wondering
why there is such emotion to our budding and somewhat anonymous relationship
as teacher and student. Why this passion when we don't even know each other
yet. I believe the "stress point" here is their idea about what I am going
to do to them at the end of the semester: I will grade them.
They have surmised from various sources ranging from parents
to friends to previous "teachers" that I will "grade" them like a piece
of meat as "grade A" or some lesser cut of human potential. And this grade,
students vehemently believe (and why shouldn't they, since it's what we
as a society believe and teach ourselves) this grade will have irrevocable
consequences on their future represented first and foremost in the form
of the beloved and treasured grade point average.
Now, the interesting thing that strikes me about using the GPA
as a means of classifying students and their abilities to "make it"
in the REAL WORLD is that it presents an irreconcilable paradox with our
purported objectives as a learning institution.
Consider the history of the GPA as an evaluative
instrument. At its inception, the GPA was intended to represent the student's
level of expertise in a range of ideas and information presented and tested
in the classroom from equations to poetic interpretations. A teacher or
prospective employer could then look at that "Average" of graded points
and decide whether the student or prospective candidate was worthy of further
consideration.
In a perfect world, this system of evaluation could work, but
we are far from that perfect world today in the halls of education. Today,
we are not even sure of the relevance of grades to any sense of competence
in the subject matter any more. Even in the so-called "hard" disciplines,
Engineering, Science, and Business courses teach principles that are obsolete
by the time of graduation. On the "soft" side of the curriculum, Literature,
Philosophy and Art classes are treated as luxuries with no particular value
of their own except as a means to create these creatures known as "well-rounded"
men and women who, like Weebles, should wobble but never fall down. Then
there are those teachers who throw the whole enterprise of evaluation out
of kilter when they refuse to merit excellent work with an "A" because
they feel obligated to be known by students and teachers alike as the truly
"tough" teacher who never gives "A"'s. These teachers hope to set themselves
apart from weak-kneed, lilly livered teachers; yet they ironically demonstrate
that they have little or no interest in teaching a student how to excel
in the first place. Thus, an "A" becomes less an evaluative instrument
and more of an ego illusion on the part of the professor It would appear,
then, that in the "real-world", grades are more complex and arbitrary
in what they actually do represent than we would have them be.
Now, critics of this skeptical perspective
might argue that students don't come to college to learn anything in particular,
but come to learn how to learn. I could agree with that if they were indeed
learning anything at all; but let us consider for a moment what it is that
they are actually learning. In other words, what does our present system
of evaluation teach our students; what is their "higher" education teaching
them about the world today?
First of all, I believe our students are learning from us that
this world is made up of qualitatively different levels of human beings:
winners and losers. Winners are successes, losers are not; winners are
fun to be around, losers are not; winners have something valuable to contribute,
losers do not. The bottom line: A winner is a person; a loser is not. Furthermore,
students learn that they are either one or the other and never the twain
shall meet. Being a winner is most certainly and always better than the
alternative, so our students learn they better make sure they are identified
as the winners; otherwise, they will be among the mass of mediocre creatures
who will never reach their full potential and will live out lives of quiet
desperation. They feel the abiding need to reach their potential,
but they have been duped as to what that potential really means by those
who would dictate the worth of that potential according to some ultimately
and potentially damaging, arbitrary standard.
This idea of "grading" people and its logical
consequences resonate with all the qualities our culture supposedly despises
about prejudice. After all, what we seem to be saying when we place
an "A" label on one student is that she is the prized individual with a
future who can "make it" out there; but this other dude, well, he just
can't cut it and we'll let him in on that by giving him a "C" or "F". Maybe
the truth is that we love prejudice, the ability to "mark" myself or, in
the case of the classroom, have someone "in the know" mark me as a "winner"
so that I can never be associated with those pathetic losers out there
who just can't cut it. And I will be able to prove that I am a winner because
I can show you that evaluation on paper or digital read out. As a society,
we may say that we stand for and want to promote equality, but under these
protestations, we desire to supersede our brethren because it's the only
way to prove we have worth.
No wonder our students are afraid to question and doubt the information
they receive. If they question, they may get poor marks, leading them to
the conclusion that they are not worthy of the brand of “excellence.” In
composition classes, they sit, absorb, figure out the teacher's belief
system, and then proceed to regurgitate exactly what the teacher believes
because these perceptive young men and women understand (and this is too
often the actuality of the case) that that teacher often also wants the
affirmation and "marking" of others, namely his students, to justify his
own ill-conceived or very much refutable claims on life, the universe and
everything. Thus students conform their ideas for the moment, taking on
the notion of the day or semester only long enough to gain the prize of
the "A." And lost forever is the process of education and learning. We
have now entered the world of demagoguery and pedantry.
In this environment hostile to true learning,
there is no room for creativity or self-discovery. How can these
exist when there is no room for exploration and/or doubt? The focus is
on answers, giving and getting answers. There appears to be no more time
for questions. It is a time saver, but what the cost when employers complain
that their employees cannot think or make decisions but must always be
told what to do. If questions are passe' then so is the examination of
life at its deepest levels, the levels which give us and our lives meaning.
Without innovation or at least the freedom to question and explore their
education, students are left with the choice of failing or conforming their
ideas to fit the standards set by a flawed person or group of persons.
But they are waking up to the violence perpetrated on them and they are
not taking it anymore.
The fact that students are aware of the arbitrary
nature of their evaluations can be seen after the semester is over. Students
do not leave their all-important fate to chance or the whim of a single
individual. All around this country, the pattern of what to do after the
grade comes out is becoming all too common. If a student feels the grade
does not reflect the extent to which they conformed their ideas to the
professor's, or if the evaluation will not meet their practical needs
of getting into a good graduate program or job, they are now downright
bold in their confrontation with a professor. The amount of intimidation
that goes on in such a confrontation can be mild (i.e. using a sob story)
or quite threatening (i.e. threats of physical violence or a lawsuit).
We trusted for so long that we could "fear" these students into submission,
but now they smell our confusion and turn that fear against us. So our
ill-conceived understanding and use of the evaluative system is eroding
the necessary trust in the student-teacher relationship that makes learning
possible. In the quest for authority, we have unwittingly shown our students
that we have no authority, only opinion.
Yet, there are many still in the academy that defend this "answer-driven"
model to education. The excuse most often given for the perpetuation of
this lack of time spent on actual discovery and learning is that is there
is too much information to pass on and far too little time to pass it on
in; therefore, lectures are essential and discussion must be kept to a
bare minimum. Whether it's math, history, poetry or philosophy, the "teacher"
sets up a world of ideas and states, either implicitly or explicitly: "Behold,
here is my world. Accept it or fail."
No longer is education a matter of educing
what the student can know or can develop from his own personal experience
or thought process. We have instead chosen to focus on what a student should
know. The "process" of learning is taken out altogether and replaced
with ends, facts, certitudes, and conclusions that are induced into the
student's mind. This "goal-oriented" approach leads to a goal-oriented
student who looks for the right answers instead of the right questions.
With the end in mind, to borrow a phrase from Scott Peck, the student pursues
the only goal worthy of his effort, the "A." Only the "A" will satisfy
his goal since we have removed learning from his field of interests. We
don't ask: "How much have you thought about the ideas presented here in
class"; instead we ask: "How much have you been able to memorize and repeat
verbatim from the textbook and lectures?"
The latter question permeates every task the
student is required to accomplish. From exams and quizzes to reports and
essays, the tasks given require no creativity whatsoever. In fact, creativity
is discouraged because it does not follow the "goals" of the class. If
a student chooses to explore areas undefined by a specific course, he has
no encouragement, no guidance, and no rewards.
Of course, some might argue that creativity is reserved for graduate
programs. But how can one suddenly discover his creativity when every "teacher"
in his life up to the point of graduate school has told him what to think,
what to do. Thankfully, some do accomplish this difficult and arduous task,
but most merely recycle their graduate professor's ideas with a new spin
or clever twist.
What we have, therefore, in the creme de la creme of educational
production is more and more of the same with little if any creativity.
The product is a group of worker-drones with minds numbed to new ideas.
They have the ability to spout forth and use a world of facts and figures,
techniques and systems, rules and regulations; but they have no soul about
them, no wisdom, no guide in their pursuits. All they seem to have is a
desire to pursue without knowing why. The worlds of business and industry
are replete with complaints of the quality of their new employees. They
lack vision, innovation, and the ability to think and so forth. And the
world of business is not the only place to find this lack of creativity.
One need only look through any academic publication
to see that academics, the self-proclaimed harbingers of "higher" learning,
have themselves succumbed to goal-orientation and "answer addiction". The
motto of "Publish or Perish" has replaced the motto of Plato's Academy,
"Know Thyself." The pressure on a professor to justify her ideas
enough to be hallowed in a publication of her peers (so that she can get
tenure--the professor's "A") bleeds into her classroom where she can allow
no dissent because her reputation and her livelihood rest on her ideas
being sacrosanct, irrefutable, and even divinely inspired. No wonder there
is no room for creativity. To get ahead, as both student and professor,
everyone must conform to a standard imposed from without which requires
that each deny his creativity to be accepted and respected. How could the
risks of creativity survive in such an environment?
Furthermore, there is no difference in what
happens in the work place where people do and do and do and never think
about what their doing and why. Their lives are mechanical, a drudge, pointless;
and as corny as it may sound to quote Matthew Arnold in these sophisticated
90's, their lives display nothing of the sweetness and light of true culture.
The work of this world alienates the worker not only from the product of
her labor but also from her very identity as a human being. Their whole
life is process without understanding and they are never given the time,
space, or freedom to explore this "living" they are so busy "making".
Bravo! These are the children of the Academy, abandoned to remain in Plato's
cave focused on nothing but shadows and knowing nothing of the light.
I am reminded of Dr. Samuel Johnson's essay
on Shakespeare. Basically, Johnson wrote an essay on all the requirements
for a "good" drama. These requirements included a list by which all dramas
could be judged. The one problem Johnson had was that Shakespeare, whom
he thought the greatest dramatist of all time, did not "fit" into any of
these rules. Johnson found his way out of this contradiction by claiming
that Shakespeare was a genius; therefore, the rules could not apply to
him. In other words, Shakespeare was exempt from the rules because
his creativity superseded mundane rules of dramaturgy.
If we as an institution continue to treat
people as mere resoiviers of data to be compiled, synthesized and regurgitated
upon command, then we have forgotten our genius and replaced it with an
empire of idiots busy fashioning new clothes to impress the other dullards
and their standards of "success." We educate people to see themselves
as objects of evaluation, and then we scratch our heads and wonder where
"humanity" in life has gone to; and it will be a black matter for those
of us who brought them to this bad end.
If you have comments or suggestions, email me at figueroaf@mail.brcc.cc.la.us
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