I had a similar experience this past semester with my Intro to Political Theory courses at a large state research university. I told my students at the start of the semester why they cannot use technology for the course aside from online reading quizzes, why "AI" had no place in my course, how the sparse PowerPoint slides I used were designed to keep them focused on the texts, and why their exams would be Blue Book-based and focus on interpreting a passage I gave them in light of a prompt. Students were still quieter in class than I would like them to be, but they learned how to follow arguments closely and carefully in the texts, and they expressed their gratitude for this approach in their evaluations.
While I am part of a Great Books-style program within the larger university, I just want to echo what you write in your post and say that I've seen students in my general education courses yearn for professors who treat them as if they have souls. I make it a point to learn their names as the semester goes on and call on them accordingly once I do. That simple act was important to at least one of my students in the evaluations. As you say, if we professors take our classes seriously, passionately, and with care for our students, they will respond to it.
I think that’s the entire secret to teaching, in fact. I have a forthcoming piece making that argument more directly. My other piece outlines how I think we can still teach writing under current conditions—actually thinking it’s worth doing and showing that commitment is half the battle.
I appreciate the frame of “centering basic questions” and how they bear on a life well lived. I teach design and architecture, but more on the seminar/design research end of things than studio. So I’m trying to help students ask: what is the purpose of the built environment and designed world? And how do people thrive therein? I often describe this as making artifacts a portal to big philosophical questions, but I like your insistence on the *basic* nature of them. Like the value of basic questions in science research. Less self-consciously high-minded, more foundational.
This sounds like exactly the sort of question I had in mind. I really think these questions sort of lurk behind the more sophisticated scholarly apparatus we often encounter, and so it’s not even a matter of less rigour, but just clarity with a view toward awakening something like passion. Thank you for sharing this!
I strongly co-sign all your insights on creating the atmosphere that opens up the space for students to value the experience of learning. For me, the idea that it is an experience is the most important part because inviting automation into the experience put the meaning and pleasure of the experience at risk.
I have a line in my book, Why They Can't Write, which came out long before ChatGPT where I just said, "Students are people too," as a kind of throwaway thought in a draft, but as soon as it came out I realized how important it was. Students have a desire to be curious and learn and experience community like any other human but the structure of schooling often mitigates against those things. You've made the commitment to make those things real and genuine and I'm sure they appreciate it.
As to the grading stuff, I say to hold the line and don't worry about "rigor" as defined by those scores. You're creating something more important a kind of internal rigor that students bring to their work. If that results in more A's, all to the better!
And as for the grading—I really do believe they learned more. In general, I don’t see a purpose in being punitive with grades when students do good work.
Exactly, John. Very grateful for your leadership on these issues. And I’m also hopeful that more of us will figure out what an opportunity we have nowadays to set things right.
My larger class abnormally skewed toward A's this past semester too, but like both of you, I was willing to live with that seeing that they bought in to interpreting the text on their own.
(I suppose I loved this book so much that the reference to Ada Palmer's pope class where the students attacked the entire simulation with passion is OBLIGATORY)
This class got a shoutout in the Times when Pope Leo was elected and Palmer proceeds to write that she does not give the students "The Prince" until they have done the simulation because then they have lived out the situation for themselves
If the entire university is not Great Books-centered then the students have made a choice to do something not careerist and should be respected for that
I had a similar experience this past semester with my Intro to Political Theory courses at a large state research university. I told my students at the start of the semester why they cannot use technology for the course aside from online reading quizzes, why "AI" had no place in my course, how the sparse PowerPoint slides I used were designed to keep them focused on the texts, and why their exams would be Blue Book-based and focus on interpreting a passage I gave them in light of a prompt. Students were still quieter in class than I would like them to be, but they learned how to follow arguments closely and carefully in the texts, and they expressed their gratitude for this approach in their evaluations.
While I am part of a Great Books-style program within the larger university, I just want to echo what you write in your post and say that I've seen students in my general education courses yearn for professors who treat them as if they have souls. I make it a point to learn their names as the semester goes on and call on them accordingly once I do. That simple act was important to at least one of my students in the evaluations. As you say, if we professors take our classes seriously, passionately, and with care for our students, they will respond to it.
I think that’s the entire secret to teaching, in fact. I have a forthcoming piece making that argument more directly. My other piece outlines how I think we can still teach writing under current conditions—actually thinking it’s worth doing and showing that commitment is half the battle.
I appreciate the frame of “centering basic questions” and how they bear on a life well lived. I teach design and architecture, but more on the seminar/design research end of things than studio. So I’m trying to help students ask: what is the purpose of the built environment and designed world? And how do people thrive therein? I often describe this as making artifacts a portal to big philosophical questions, but I like your insistence on the *basic* nature of them. Like the value of basic questions in science research. Less self-consciously high-minded, more foundational.
This sounds like exactly the sort of question I had in mind. I really think these questions sort of lurk behind the more sophisticated scholarly apparatus we often encounter, and so it’s not even a matter of less rigour, but just clarity with a view toward awakening something like passion. Thank you for sharing this!
I strongly co-sign all your insights on creating the atmosphere that opens up the space for students to value the experience of learning. For me, the idea that it is an experience is the most important part because inviting automation into the experience put the meaning and pleasure of the experience at risk.
I have a line in my book, Why They Can't Write, which came out long before ChatGPT where I just said, "Students are people too," as a kind of throwaway thought in a draft, but as soon as it came out I realized how important it was. Students have a desire to be curious and learn and experience community like any other human but the structure of schooling often mitigates against those things. You've made the commitment to make those things real and genuine and I'm sure they appreciate it.
As to the grading stuff, I say to hold the line and don't worry about "rigor" as defined by those scores. You're creating something more important a kind of internal rigor that students bring to their work. If that results in more A's, all to the better!
And as for the grading—I really do believe they learned more. In general, I don’t see a purpose in being punitive with grades when students do good work.
Exactly, John. Very grateful for your leadership on these issues. And I’m also hopeful that more of us will figure out what an opportunity we have nowadays to set things right.
My larger class abnormally skewed toward A's this past semester too, but like both of you, I was willing to live with that seeing that they bought in to interpreting the text on their own.
I'm taken by your formulation that "a teacher is a more experienced student who can inspire earnestness by being earnest." How did you come by that?
(I suppose I loved this book so much that the reference to Ada Palmer's pope class where the students attacked the entire simulation with passion is OBLIGATORY)
This class got a shoutout in the Times when Pope Leo was elected and Palmer proceeds to write that she does not give the students "The Prince" until they have done the simulation because then they have lived out the situation for themselves
If the entire university is not Great Books-centered then the students have made a choice to do something not careerist and should be respected for that