Hofstadter, Chapter 5: Recite after me...

Apparently the "recitation" method of instruction involved students memorizing texts and then showing up to class to either recite from memory (worst case) or answer questions (best case).  There was no intellectual excitement in this (obviously), so the introduction of lectures was seen as a way of bringing more excitement and interesting, informed perspectives into the classroom.

I think the most important lesson here is that any educational method that becomes primarily about the promulgation of facts, whether by memorization from books or memorization from lectures, is doomed to fail.  On the other hand, the analysis of important ideas and solution of problems is education at its best.  The hard part is that really chewing on meaty ideas is hard, not everybody rises to the occasion, and so you either have to maintain some meritocratic elitism or dumb things down.  The current zeitgeist in the academy is embarrassed about that, and so the "sage on the stage" is a target of scorn in part because of the elitism inherent in the idea of an expert voice being the center of any part of an instructional session.

Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1855

Richard Hofstadter, Academic Freedom in the Age of the College, pages 223-224:

The evidence is overwhelming that during the denominational era a great proportion of the schools in the United States that called themselves "colleges" were in fact not colleges at all, but glorified high schools or academies that presumed to offer degrees.  As the president of the University of Georgia told his trustees in 1855, the American people were generally satisfied with the name of a college, and sought for their sons not so much an education as a degree.  Americans and Europeans alike who were familiar with the educational systems of the Continent and England tended to agree that American colleges characteristically (not at their worst) were rather more like the German Gymnasium, the French lycee, or the English public school than like either the university or the college of these countries.

The first sentence is driven home to me every time I have to explain subject-verb agreement or how to correctly compute the slope of a graph.  The second sentence is driven home to me every time the state legislature expresses interest in graduation rates and says nary a word about intellectual rigor.  The last part was driven home when I was in grad school and learned that my international classmates had taken undergraduate courses that were equivalent to our graduate courses, largely because our first 1-2 years of undergraduate study cover things that they learned in high school.

All of this has happened before and will happen again.

Hofstadter, Chapter 5: Two steps forward, one step back

I'm about a dozen pages into chapter 5.  To recap what came before, in the 18th century American colleges became more open to working and studying across denominational lines.  This coincided with the Founding of a secular Republic by men who were inspired by Enlightenment thinkers and were largely Deist in their personal views.

So of course the 19th century ushered in plenty of colleges devoted to upholding sectarian doctrines and preventing their youth from being exposed to the wrong ideas.  This phenomenon occurred in both the new colleges being created along the frontier and also in revivals of denominational identity in established colleges.  Figures.

Also, Hofstadter has (on page 212) a great quote from Philip Lindsley, a Princeton scholar who eventually became President of Cumberland College (later renamed University of Nashville, and now apparently only existant through some heir institutions):

Our people, at first, oppose all distinctions whatever as odious  and aristocratical [sic]; and then, presently, seek with avidity [sic] such as remain accessible.  At first they denounce colleges; and then choose to have a college in every district or county, or for every sect and party--and to boast of a college education, and to sport with high sounding literary titles--as if these imparted sense or wisdom or knowledge.

I think he's summed up America's conflicted views on class and education, and the Underpants Gnomes views that Americans have concerning the value and meaning of a college degree.

Plugging ahead in Hofstadter

I've finished chapters 3 and 4 of Hofstadter's "Academic Freedom in the Age of the College."  A few things leap out at me:

First, US higher education was different from the rest of the world in one key respect from the very beginning:  The colleges were subject to lay boards of governors or visitors (or trustees, or regents, or various other terms that modern institutions use), while European faculties were self-governing.  This accountability to non-academic authorities, many of them "local notables", might explain some of the oddities of US higher ed, not the least of which is that our schools devote enormous resources to athletic teams that don't advance the academic mission, may or may not be net revenue contributors, but certainly entertain the locals.

Second, academic freedom in US colleges paralleled the rise of religious freedom, largely in response to two trends:  The increasing religious diversity of the US and the increasing numbers of students pursuing non-clerical careers. As students moved away from clerical careers (especially in the years right before the Revolution) religious identity became less central to collegiate identity.  Also, if you need tuition dollars in a diverse society you can't afford to limit your enrollment to one sect.  Yes, there are a few religiously strict institutions in the US today, and today we would regard that as an oddity of US higher ed, but overall US higher education got on the religious tolerance bandwagon long before Europe.

(As an aside, today's distinctively denominational colleges should be understood not just as oddities in international terms, but also as oddities by American historical norms.  As a proud product of Catholic grade school, a type of school that is proud of its distinctive religious identity, this gives me something to think about.  I have written before that my academic mindset is influenced in part by the New England roots of American higher ed, yet my personal identity is very deeply influenced by the Catholic grade school that educated me in my youth.  It is rather strange that the strength of American higher ed owes so much to its ecumenical history, yet I consider it a point of pride that I am a product of Catholic education.)

Interestingly, the shift away from solely emphasizing clerical training also led to the first science and math professors on US campuses, and the role of a "professor" was disturbingly similar to the current way we classify academic staff.  Back then, most teaching was handled by low-status "tutors" or "instructors."  The rest was done by the college President and perhaps one or two other Professors.  The difference between the Professors and tutors was that the Professors were high-status experts  who expected to be around for a while (though not with our modern concept  of tenure), while tutors were biding their time until a better job opened up (usually in the clergy).  The ratio of Professors to tutors was probably lower than the ratio of tenure-track faculty to non-tenure-track faculty today, but the trend is definitely in the direction of how things used to be. That doesn't mean we should be nonplussed by a regression to historical norms, but it does reinforce that the best way to understand the consequences of trends in the present is often to compare and contrast with the past. All of this has happened before and will happen again.

Anyway, some amount of math and science teaching was happening in colonial colleges before they had math and science Professors, but it wasn't until the late 1700's that math and science Professors were appointed in significant numbers.  Interestingly, they were the first Professors outside of theology.  Certainly history, literature, etc. were being taught, but nobody was appointed with the title of Professor of History (or whatever) at that time.  What is amazing, both in comparison to Europe back then and America now, is that the math and science professors arrived in American colleges without incident. Oh, I'm sure that somebody or other in the faculty lounge was grumbling that the math professor was getting the office with the nice window, but there was (at least according to Hofstadter) nothing comparable to the Galileo Affair of 17th century Europe or the Scopes Monkey Trial of 20th century Tennessee.  That is remarkable to me.  Indeed, even a century before Professors of science were appointed, Hofstadter notes that Puritans were remarkably unperturbed by people reading the works of Galileo and Copernicus.  Given that Protestants of the 17th century were at least as conservative in their scriptural interpretation as any of the Roman Catholic officials who went after Galileo, this is truly extraordinary.  The American spirit of tolerance apparently has deep roots.

Now I have to dive back into a pile of grading and prep and committee work.  Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have a chance to finish the last chapter of Hofstadter.

What I've been saying for a while

I've been saying for a while that current educational fashions are at least as much about cultural resonance as they are about studies showing learning gains of X percentage at whatever level of statistical significance.  Well, this op-ed by a history professor says the same thing.

When educational trends are being criticized in an op-ed in the New York Times of all places you know that something very strange is happening.  What's next?  Human sacrifice?  Dogs and cats living together?  Mass hysteria?

The progressive teaching personality

I've said a lot about the cultural roots of progressive pedagogy, and the way it intertwines with views on expert voices.  However, this article makes the interesting point that there are also personality issues that go to extroversion vs. introversion.  There's a certain personality type that just plain likes the idea of group work.  I have seen people who are only truly happy when their students are sitting in lots of small circles talking.  They throw themselves into the midst of this chatter like a pop star crowd-surfing.  You can't tell me that this preference concerning teaching styles is solely about statistical studies showing a significant difference in conceptual learning gains.  Statistically significant learning gains get you more discussion of concepts, but culture and personality get you academics eating this shit up like it's humus and pita chips from Trader Joe's.  And it's definitely true that the warmer, fuzzier stuff has been ascendant in the academy for some time, so I suppose it was inevitable that eventually the science faculty would move towards sitting in groups and smiling and saying "Thank you for sharing that."

(Academic eating tip: Eat your humus with organic baby carrots, not pita chips.  Then you get more vitamins and fewer carbs.  This food tip is subject to change when the fads change.)

However, I will surprise my readers by saying that I don't think this is solely about personality types and massive placebo/Hawthorne effects from doing things that get certain personality types fired up. It is almost certainly true that some people do better than others sitting in groups and doing worksheets. (One needn't subscribe to discredited theories of learning styles to submit that some people might be a bit better at one thing than another.) If there was little/no group work and hippy-dippy conceptual stuff in traditional teaching then introducing some of that will OF COURSE improve results.  Those who were desperately craving some sitting in circles and sharing will finally get some of it, so of course their results will improve.  Meanwhile, those who really do prefer a bit of tradition (you know, heirs to Puritan views of experts and all that) will still get plenty of that from the abundant traditionalists.  In fact, the ones who generally fare better with tradition might benefit from stepping outside their comfort zone a bit.  (There's plenty of research to suggest that stepping outside the comfort zone is probably more beneficial than catering to "learning styles" based on dubious evidence.)  However, once you reach a roughly 50-50 mix, if you continue to move away from tradition (or, perhaps more accurately, get to the point where you are now defining tradition rather than defying tradition) you will reach a point of negative returns:  The ones who would honestly rather just pay attention to an expert will get fed up with this group work nonsense and experience negative marginal returns, while the ones who love to sit in a circle and share will have already gotten enough of it.

At this point it would be easy to say that I'm being silly.  OF COURSE group work is better!  The data shows it!  Well, up to a point.  The Hake study, for instance, covered early adopters and showed gains that have been harder to replicate once "active learning" went beyond early adopters in special, early-adopter-friendly environments and became de rigeur.  I think everyone at this point agrees that a certain amount of active learning is a good component of a class, but the jury is out on mass adoption of more and more and MORE AND MORE group work.

Besides, the article that prompted this post was shared with me by a friend who made an important observation:  In the real world there are indeed meetings, but most meetings are pointless, and most people yearn for nothing more than the meeting ending early so they can get back to the cubicle, put their head down, and actually get some damn work done.  Perhaps there's a lesson in there.  Yes, a bad lecture is bad, but a very carefully-led, well-focused Q&A can be more useful than going through a worksheet with the idiot next to you.

Classical education, character, competition, and privilege

I have run across the argument that the Imperial Chinese practice of selecting officials based on tests of Confucian classics was a factor that limited China's ability to innovate and keep up with the West.  It's a tempting argument, and the more I think about it the more I sympathize, but first we have to explore one significant objection to the argument:  Reading Hofstadter makes it clear that the educational systems of all Western powers in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries emphasized classical studies for their elites.  I don't know that reading Homer and Plato is any better or worse for one's character and judgment than reading Confucius.  I'll grant that the Western canon taught to elites seems to have had greater diversity of sources than the Chinese canon, but I don't think that the choice of texts was the limiting factor.  Rather, I think it may be that (ironically) the Western system may have put less pressure on elites.  Let me explain.

Advanced schooling was not terribly commonplace in Western countries prior to the 20th century.  Anybody who got an advanced education was probably from a pretty privileged background.  The people teaching in the high schools, boarding schools, universities, and whatnot might be stressing mastery of the classical liberal arts, but the kids in those schools knew that they had a good shot at a decent future just based on their backgrounds.  For most of them, academic excellence was not necessary; getting by was enough.  That's not to say that they all drank and partied their way through boarding school--many did, but not all.  There were still sports and clubs and other pursuits befitting a young gentleman of the right background.  A person who did a decent job in class and also earned respect as a leader on the sporting field and in his clubs might be recognized as a young gentleman of the right character and be recruited into some fast track in public service or business.  It might not be like today's career fairs, but if he attracted the right notice it would serve his future well.

The key thing is that he was in an environment where he stood out for going above the minimum, because he and the people around him all felt some baseline of security.  Within the context of their society and upbringing, they already had good reason to feel fairly secure.  Those who excelled did so because of their character, not because it was their only shot.

Contrast that with today's kids seeking admission to elite colleges.  I'd be the first to say that anybody who can seriously even contemplate an elite college will probably be OK if "all" that they get is their "safety school."  However, they don't feel that way!  They feel like they need to push farther and farther.  They aren't on two athletic teams AND in orchestra AND in a community service club AND doing a special science club AND getting A's AND taking AP classes in five different fields because they are well-rounded and simply love all of those things.  OK, a few of them are.  However, the vast majority know that there's a game to play, and so they play it.  Some will become deeply humanitarian as a result of all of that service, and be humbled by all of the privilege that they enjoy.  Some will become arrogant and narcissistic because they feel that their giant resumes prove that they are so great.  Most will wind up somewhere in between and just keep pushing on in life.  But the key thing is that people observing them in that moment can't know who will become a humanitarian and who will become a narcissist!  The competition obscures character.  You never know who is passionate and who is just doing what they need to do.

There's a lot to be said for taking people outside of their comfort zones, but there's also a lot to be said for observing people in their comfort zones.  Anybody who has ever taught pre-meds (or been a college student taking freshman chemistry alongside pre-meds...) knows that pre-meds are all the exact same ultra-competitive little shits (sadly).  Anybody who has been to more than one doctor knows that doctors vary widely in personality, approach, and skill.  Before they get into med school they are all the same because they have to be.  Once they get into med school, they know that their worst case is a low-prestige residency in primary care...which will still yield them a comfortable income!  Some will push hard anyway and qualify for the most competitive residencies in the most competitive specialties.  Some will just keep their nose to the grindstone and do a good job and become good doctors but not shine in the most competitive heights.  And some will be slackers who keep malpractice lawyers employed.  But they all know what their baseline is, they have a certain margin of comfort, so now their internal motivation and character matter.  Really, it's not so different from observing people after tenure.  Some make good use of their security and leverage it to greater accomplishment, some just keep on doing decent work, and a few are as lazy as you'd fear.

The 17th to 19th century Western systems of elite education varied in many ways, but they all took the sons of privilege, put them in an environment that combined classical learning with extracurricular pursuits, and told them that they'll all do OK in life but how far beyond that they go will depend on their character, effort, and accomplishment.  Those sons of privilege then proceeded to distinguish themselves to varying degrees, and could be observed for all manner of traits, to be recruited (or not) for various paths.  It was more like medical school or tenure than the Chinese system of ever-more-competitive exams for ever-higher stakes.

The problem with our elites is not that they got good grades and test scores.  The problem is not even that they enjoy privilege and security. Every society has privileged elites--even (and especially) the ones that undertook an ideological project of being "classless."  Rather, the problem is that the political system is too closely aligned with sectors that give their greatest rewards to people who play the game for top colleges and then play the game for top law and MBA programs and then play the game to be recruited by the biggest law firms, banks, and corporations.  I don't care that elite law firms and banks and big corporations exist and have their games.  I care that we have a political class too focused on those elements of the economy, while the middle is hollowed out.

The real solution has nothing to do with universities and everything to do with economic policy.  But if you absolutely insist on trying to at least partially improve the elite class through college admissions we are stuck with a paradox: The elites show their character when they are most comfortable, not when they are most competitive.  However, there's no morally or socially acceptable to pitch protection or comfort for elites as a solution to inequality.  There are far more people who would like to attend Stanford and Harvard and Yale than there are spots at Stanford and Harvard and Yale. The only morally acceptable response is to make the applicants demonstrate (in some way) that they are worthy (by some measure).  That measure can be grades, character, writing samples, extracurricular accomplishments, service, interviews, whatever.  However, as long as there are way more people who want it than there are spots, and as long as there are huge returns to getting one of those spots, there will be intense competition.  Consequently, you will be observing how people compete on grades, or interviews, or service, or whatever, not what they do when they are relaxed.

I have no easy fixes to offer, but my best guess is that you'll  have to just accept a certain amount of entrenched elitism, let their kids relax and let their guard down instead of doing 10 different extracurriculars alongside sports and AP classes, and then use some class-based and/or race-based affirmative action to add some non-elite kids to the mix.  No competitive formula will fix things.  But I'll take some bright young gentlemen (and ladies) who displayed their character from a position of comfort over the socioeconomic elite version of a pre-med.