Inside American Education (35 page)

Marxist professors, who have on more than one occasion openly advocated the use of the classroom for ideological indoctrination,
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have likewise openly used their grading power to reward students who espouse the Marxist line and punish those who do not. The syllabus for a course on Marxian economics at the University of Texas (Austin), for example, says that this course “provides you with an opportunity to learn how to view the world from a new point of view and the tests are aimed at evaluating whether and to what degree you have-learned to do this.”
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Aside from the familiar Orwellian use of the word “opportunity,” this course is, by its own description, not oriented toward the educational goal of analyzing or evaluating Marxian economics, but is instead oriented toward the ideological goal of accepting Marxism as the basis for evaluating the world—with the professor’s power of the grade hanging over the student’s head.

Despite high grades and lax standards in ideological courses, students who oppose the brainwashing may be dealt with severely. A leftist professor at Dartmouth has been described as a “political grader” who “tolerates no intellectual diversity in her class.”
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In a Religious Studies class at Humboldt State College in California, when a student stated arguments against the professor’s anti-nuclear views, he was cut off with “That’s not what I am looking for” and it was suggested that he not come back to class.
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When a student challenged the material on Central American politics introduced into a biology class at the University of Michigan by the professor, he was told—in front of the class—that the professor wished he would go to El Salvador and get blown up, the professor offering to sponsor this “independent study program” for him.
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In a course at the State University of New York at Farmingdale, where one of the assigned texts was the professor’s own parody of Ronald Reagan and the Bible, a student who
questioned the accuracy of some of the professor’s statements was ordered out of the class and then security guards were called to eject him.
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Most propagandizing professors do not go to this extreme, nor are 100 percent of them on the political left. A conservative economics professor at the University of Texas (Austin) was criticized by the conservative
Texas Review
for teaching and evaluating his students like his counterparts on the other end of the political spectrum: “Like most
leftist
classes, this reeks of ideological indoctrination.” Moreover, “like most
liberal
faculty members,” this conservative professor expected students to follow his ideology on the tests.
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Again, the fundamental problem is not ideological imbalance to the left, but classroom brainwashing itself. When students must be “well-practiced parrots”
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as the
Texas Review
says, in order to get good grades in ideologically oriented courses, the real problem is not with what they are parroting but with the fact that they are not learning to use and develop their own minds, in the process of reaching their own conclusions.

COMMON PRESCRIPTIONS

While the many examples of professorial misconduct already cited do not show what is typical, they do show what is wrong—how lax the system is. Before considering some of the cures being prescribed, it is necessary to look at the other side—the professors who are conscientious, effective, and even inspiring. They too can be found across a wide spectrum of institutions.

At even the most research-oriented institutions, there are still some dedicated professors. At Stanford, four out of five seniors graduating in 1990 rated their education at least “very good” and nearly a third rated it “excellent.”
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At the University of Chicago, there were calculus teachers who received unanimously excellent ratings by their students
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and an economics professor was praised “almost unanimously” for “eloquent, clear and interesting lectures” and for responding to questions “cordially” and “thoroughly.”
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“All of the students thought very highly of the instructor” in another economics course
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and yet another instructor was “universally praised as an excellent lecturer who was easy to understand, organized, and clear.”
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In a geography course at Chicago, “not one negative
comment was received concerning the instructor or any aspect of this class,”
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and a history professor received “rave reviews.”
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Another historian’s lectures were called “fantastic and phenomenal” and his ability to direct class discussions “brilliant.”
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At Duke University, an economics professor was described as “enthusiastic, knowledgeable, considerate and easily accessible outside of class.” Another “received rave reviews from the great majority of his students.” Yet another gave “dynamic and well-presented lectures” and was “always willing to meet with his students to help their analysis and to discuss any other problems.” Still another economist at Duke received “unanimous praise for his sense of humor, excellent organization and amount of time he devotes to his students.”
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While the mathematics department at Duke did not fare as well, on the whole, still a number of math instructors received general student approval. One was rated “excellent,” another “superb” and yet another “qualifies for sainthood in the eyes of his students.”
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At the University of California at San Diego, the conservative
California Review
gave high ratings to some professors described as being politically on the left. One was described as a “well-respected and published teacher whose lectures can accurately be described as spell-binding.” Of another professor, it said: “Leftist or not, Professor Schiller is a great teacher. He is tolerant of opposing viewpoints and respectful of his students.” Another top-rated professor “never lets on to his political leanings in the class room.”
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“Never less than fascinating to listen to,” is the evaluation of an English professor at Northwestern University. Of a colleague in history it was said: “You can always find a long line outside her office as she is firmly committed to helping students learn.”
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Even at Berkeley, widely regarded as epitomizing the research university where undergraduates are ignored, a professor of computer science has been described as always “lucid and organized,” and “a pleasure to study under.” A professor of English there was described as “a terrific lecturer and very approachable in office hours,” while a professor of rhetoric was likewise praised for having a “well-organized” class and for being “always willing to give students personal attention during office hours.”
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At Harvard, a statistics professor was rated 5, on a scale
from 1 to 5, by 30 of her 36 students and 4 by the other 6. An English professor did almost as well, with a five rating from 20 of his 28 students, the other 8 being 4’s. An economics professor had 22 fives out of 29 students, a professor teaching Japanese received 56 fives from 71 students, a professor teaching Latin lyric poetry received 15 fives from 17 students, and a professor teaching Greek received 21 fives from 26 students, while an anthropology professor received a perfect score of 5 from all of his six students.
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Very similar high ratings are found, in varying proportions, among professors at Princeton, Dartmouth, the University of Texas, and many other colleges and universities, both well known and little known.

The point here is not to attempt to strike a balance or to estimate an average quality of teaching. Both these goals are unattainable. The point is to demonstrate the incredible range of classroom performances at the same institutions—and the almost total lack of institutional quality control which this implies, at least at research universities. There is probably nothing else purchased which has such a large impact on family finances, or on the future of the next generation, which has such lax quality control. Yet many prescriptions for establishing such quality control are likely to fail unless the factors involved, and the balance of power on campus, are understood.

Among the most popular prescriptions for better college teaching are more weight given to student evaluations of their professors, classroom observation of their teaching by peers or administrators, or a stricter control of the appointment and tenure process by administrators, giving more weight to teaching, rather than research. All these approaches have serious flaws.

Student Evaluations

Many colleges and universities already have student evaluations, some of which are published for the benefit of other students, and all of which are available to department chairmen, deans, and college presidents, to do with as they will. These evaluations often contain very useful information on those things which students are qualified to evaluate—the conscientiousness, clarity, and accessibility of professors, for example.
The crucial problem, however, is that students are not qualified to evaluate what matters most, the quality of their education.

They can spot blatantly shoddy stuff, some of which can be found in even the most prestigious institutions. But to evaluate the real quality of a course which the student found challenging, interesting, and even inspiring, would require the student to know how that course compares to similar courses elsewhere, how much of what is vital to the subject was included or left out, and how much of a foundation the course provides for later and deeper work and thought in the same or related fields. These are the unknowns which are almost certain to remain unknown for years after the student’s evaluation has been turned in.

No administrative reforms, no statistical techniques, no indepth interviews, nor any other methods or gimmicks can substitute for the missing knowledge—which is inherently missing. If the student knew enough to evaluate the course by such criteria, there would be no point in his taking the course in the first place. By the time he is working on his Ph.D., he may be able to look back over the years at the introductory courses in his field and evaluate how well, or how poorly, they laid the intellectual foundations for later study or for later work in that field. But, by then, the student is long gone from college and his assessment of what he learned may be radically different from what it was at the end of the course. As Dean Henry Rosovsky of Harvard put it:

All of us who have reached advanced years can recall teachers whom we vigorously detested in high school or college, only to discover in more mature years the excellence of their instruction…. Most of us will also remember some much be-loved “old doc so-and-so”—unfortunately a fixture on so many American campuses—who in our more mature memories reveals his true sell to us as a pathetic windbag.
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Because students cannot evaluate what is crucial, someone else with more training and experience must do that evaluating. Student evaluations, gossip among themselves, complaints to administrators, and choices of courses all play an important role in trying to keep professors honest. But someone else must assume responsibility for things that go beyond that. Whether
that someone must be departmental colleagues, campus administrators, or the leading scholars in the profession who pass judgment on the individual professor’s research—or some combination—is another and larger question.

Classroom Visits

A perennial panacea for substandard teaching is the classroom visit, whether by senior colleagues, the department chairman, deans, or others. These people can no doubt detect, and perhaps deter, gross misbehavior, but so can the students. The officials may be more sophisticated but the students are far more numerous and see a far larger sample of the professor’s classroom performance, over a period of months. A canny administrator has his ear to the ground and knows enough of what is going on, on campus, that he can tell whether a given professor is rotten or decent in the classroom. Not much more than that is likely to be learned from a visit.

A dean, for example, cannot possibly be an authority on all the subjects taught in a college, nor even one-tenth of the subjects. A small liberal arts college is likely to have about 20 departments and, for a major university, there will be at least twice as many departments, each with more numerous specialties than a department in a liberal arts college. The most that a dean can observe are classroom management skills. When it comes to the intellectual substance—the heart of the educational process—the dean is probably as much of an amateur as the students, if not more so. A dean who is a former professor of English literature is unlikely to understand the substance of what is being said in an engineering class, and is certainly unlikely to understand it as well as a student with a couple of other engineering courses already under his belt.

Those who believe that a classroom visit is likely to be a great source of information about teaching repeat the fatal fallacy of education professors, that there is such a thing as teaching, separate from the substantive knowledge being taught. The conveying of that knowledge, and of the intellectual skills and discipline which give it meaning, is ultimately what teaching consists of. If these things are conveyed from one mind to another, then the teaching has been successful, no matter
how chaotic or clumsy the classroom management may be. By the same token, if it fails to happen, then teaching has been a failure, no matter how smoothly or impressively the classroom has been managed, or how happy or inspired the students feel.