Talk About Teaching ------------------- Taking Teaching Seriously ========================= Usually, when someone with a title like mine says that we ought to take teaching seriously, he means that faculty should devote more of their attention, more of their energy, and more of their time to their courses. The teaching in these pious speeches usually means undergraduate teaching. And cynics call the performance bombast, or at best hot air, and wonder whether the person making the remarks will alter the reward system to "encourage" faculty to devote more of all those things-attention, energy, and time-to teaching. I am as good a target for such wonderings as anyone, but I would like to defend my oratorical excesses by assuring you that I am moving to make the record of teaching a greater part of the academic personnel process than it has been in the past. I am also, however, fully faithful to the tautology that in a research university faculty must do research and the teaching they do must include graduate as well as undergraduate teaching. This provost, at least, does not wish to remake the research university as an undergraduate college and wants the students who come here to recognize that they are not in such a college. As I told the freshman in my convocation speech, they must be deeply implicated in their education. The faculty will help them in the effort, and the research program of the faculty and graduate students greatly enriches the environment in which undergraduates become educated, both by enlivening the intellectual culture of the University and by engaging a faculty worthy of the students we admit. If we seek to give our students creativity, enthusiasm, and drive, we must teach what we do, not just what we know. So if I am not merely urging you to set aside your research to devote more attention, energy, and time to teaching, what do I mean by "taking teaching seriously"? I mean that we should take our work as teachers as seriously as we do all other aspects of our work. We hold ourselves and our colleagues to the highest possible standards of research and intellectual achievement. We demand perfection from our leadership, while we tend to think of them as fallen men and women. Let us treat our teaching in the same manner. First, let us create courses that are demanding and that meet the same intellectual standards as our scholarly and scientific work. Let us apply our highest ideals of thoughtfulness and craft to our courses-graduate and undergraduate. Second, let us ask our students to do creative work that stretches them to the far edge of their ability and that prepares them for a world in which success in every endeavor requires the full application of one's highest gifts. Third, let us hold our students to the highest standard of which they are capable. Taking teaching seriously is, more than anything else, taking our students seriously, and that requires taking their work seriously. Respond to their work and do not shirk the responsibility of giving a fair and true assessment of its quality. Academic judgment is thine. Use it. Fourth, let us treat our students not merely as learners but as people. As in every other relationship, we will get from our students a reflection of what we give them. In my view, a serious relationship with students requires a certain formality. To take students seriously is to treat them at arm's length. Some students become friends, but friendship is not the model of the teacher-student relationship. We have a formal responsibility to our students and we are helping them meet a formal responsibility to themselves. We are not in loco parentis or in loco amici to our students. When they disappoint us, as some inevitably will, it is not the visceral disappointment we (also inevitably) earn from our own children or friends. Fifth, let us recognize that some students will appear to be unworthy-because they are unappreciative-of our best efforts. But teaching is an act of faith as much as it is a transaction, and faith always defies the harsh realities of life. Moreover, our relationship with students is no less dynamic than our relationships with others. Our efforts in their behalf have their effect over time and have an afterlife. That statement is one of the tenets of the faith. It may follow from these principles that we should devote more attention, energy, and time to our teaching, but that is not the point. Our work is professional work. Some of us find our tasks easy and can do them quickly; others of us thrash about some. Our work is not judged by the time or effort it takes, only by its quality. Teaching is one of the central elements of our professional work. Like every other element of that work, teaching well is essential to our stature and self-esteem as professionals. Yet, the meaning of "taking teaching seriously" is not focused only on the behavior and attitudes of individual faculty. No faculty member can be fully serious as a teacher or scholar in a community that itself does not take these functions seriously. Taking teaching seriously requires that the faculty as a body take collective responsibility for the education of its students. This may be a truism, but it has implications that we have not fully embraced. First, it implies that the faculty as a whole-usually acting through its subunits, such as schools and departments-must take responsibility for designing the programs of the University. It is the faculty that must say what it means to be an educated person-what it means to be an educated chemist, historian, sociologist, and so on. For many years in the University, we have tended to emphasize the freedom of choice of students. It is time to balance the students' power of choice with that of the faculty, acting collectively to determine the course of education for students. Second and consequently, it implies that the teaching of each individual faculty member is part of a whole. I am not sympathetic to the view that the academic program of the University should be the sum of the decisions of individual faculty members about what they will teach and how. Even in our current condition, our teaching leans on that of our colleagues, but our ethos ignores that fact. Taking teaching seriously requires us to take cognizance of one another's teaching and to rebalance the weight of our academic freedom against the equally important weight of our collective and mutual responsibilities as educators. Third, it implies that in a community of teachers in which freedom and responsibility are properly balanced we should be talking to one another about what and how we are teaching. At one end of the scale is the required course, taught by one or more individual faculty members on behalf of the whole unit or community. The community should discuss the content and style of such courses, for the community takes responsibility for them by requiring them. At the other end of the scale are highly specialized graduate courses in which the individual vision and interests of faculty members have their maximum play. These courses too, however, should be the subject of discussion among the members of the community, for they are contributions to the community's academic program. If we take teaching seriously, we should engage one another as teachers and should be willing to share our teaching, as we share our scholarship, with one another. Taking teaching seriously is one part of taking ourselves seriously, individually and collectively. It requires us to balance our individual freedom-which we've earned by the arduous process of attaining tenure-with a commitment to the collective enterprise. Academic freedom is freedom, rather than license, precisely because it confronts its limits in our communal responsibilities. The balance between freedom and responsibility requires us to join the issues with our colleagues and results, most of the time, in a consensus. When the balancing does not lead to consensus-when one group wins and one loses the debate-our commitment to the community and its purposes preserves the enterprise. For this to be so, we must respect one another's point of view. Taking teaching seriously, as a collective and individual activity, requires this mutual respect. We are professionals and adults, so we can sustain that foundation of our work. Now you know that I am a man of faith. - Stanley Chodorow, Provost ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This piece opens a new Almanac series developed by the Lindback Society and the College of Arts and Sciences. The Provost's remarks are from last week's conference on "Helping Students Learn."
Almanac
Volume 41, Number 7
October 11, 1994
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