Stanley Fish writes about our jobs...

Stanley Fish's blog on the New York Times is great as provocation.

Of course, before you can do your job, you have to know what it is. And you will not be helped by your college’s mission statement, which will lead you to think that your job is to cure every ill the world has ever known – not only illiteracy, bad writing and cultural ignorance, which are at least in the ballpark, but poverty, racism, ageism, sexism, war, exploitation, colonialism, discrimination, intolerance, pollution and bad character. (The list could be much longer.) I call this the save-the-world theory of academic performance and you can see it on display in a recent book by Derek Bok, the former and now once-again president of Harvard. Bok’s book is titled “Our Underachieving Colleges,” and here are some of the things he thinks colleges should be trying to achieve: “[H]elp develop such virtues as racial tolerance, honesty and social responsibility”; “prepare … students to be active, knowledgeable citizens in a democracy”; and “nurture such behavioral traits as good moral character.”

Fish says all he can do is "academize" these virtues, not achieve them. As a great many comments to his blog suggest, this is a deliberate misunderstanding of what universities do. Critical thinking about these virtues is exactly what is meant, at the university, by achieving them. What does Fish think that Socrates was trying to do when he engaged his community in reasoned dialogue. Was he a simple moralist? Still, Fish's broader point, perhaps clumsily made, is that some professors think that moralizing is the same thing as academizing. Some students that I advise have told me that they have had the following experience: (1) they expressed the opinion that raises in the minimum wage were perhaps not the "no-brainer"* way to reduce poverty; (2) the comments are received with stunned hostility by a faculty member; (3) discussion is ended. The point is, even if raising the minimum wage in the United States is an effective way to redistribute income to reduce poverty, it is not the only way (an earned income tax credit might be more effective, say), and the point of learning in the classroom is to find out why it might be effective or ineffective in particular places and times.

*On the "no-brainer." Vice-President Cheney's recently remark, accurately quoted, apparently, that "dunking" people in water was a "no-brainer" if the purpose was to save lives... well, it just shows why we need Ethics requirements more than ever, right?

Resources for understanding what quantitative literacy is...

A St. Olaf's site gives summaries of QL at a good group of universities. There is no great consunsus, everyone seems to be muddling about.

A sample assessment test from Whittier suggests, to me, that QL is almost absurd as a college course. All of these questions are items that a student should pick up in a normal course of study with a reasonable set of distribution requirements, including a math requirement.

Michigan State University's final report on QL.... nice set of learning outcomes. They call for a QL Foundations course (rememdial math plus other stuff) and then Applied QL courses through the majors... interesting.

What makes for a great lecture?

Not necessarily active learning. But then again, we can't all be like Richard Feynman...

Responsibility and engagement

As part of my own academic work on Sudan and Darfur I keep coming across the word 'responsibility,' in the context of the general responsibility to protect that is increasingly becoming a rhetorical norms for the world community. Empirical studies are lacking on whether the incidence of humanitarian interventions are on the rise or not; one of the problems is that under the Cold War the two powers took care of their clients and the problems of their clients, while under the new order the U.N. and regional organizations are now doing that work, to an increaing degree, and of course the nature of conflicts changed to more violent and civilian-targeting civil wars.

I find it interesting then that the theme of responsibility and engagement is also preoccupying academia and curricular revision. The AACU has launched a new initiative called Core Commitments to get 20 schools onboard to create and pilot some new ideas in this area. Their website is a good introduction.

Where the Committee is early October

The committee in the next two weeks is going to be thinking hard and coming up with a very preliminary draft of structural suggestions. Included will be some suggestions for how Core classes get 're-envisioned' and the process for going from Core goals to actual classes. I can honestly say that we do not know right now how that is going to look- we have lots of ideas, and some favorites, but things can easily change, esp. as faculty continuously give us input. The major learning outcomes however seem to be pretty stable (we have not gotten the survey results back, so that may be premature, but from the comments at numerous meetings it seems like they may not change all that much). So in terms of program review, one might start by thinking about how to assess whether courses in the program that are primarily addressed to the Core are focusing on those learning objectives.

I think in about three weeks we're going to be in a position to say a lot more...

Scientific method, much faith in it.

Continuing with the Harvard theme, their website of papers on general education makes for great reading. Two unforgettable quotes from Ed Glaeser's otherwise fine essay on the importance of scientific method in general education.

After all, the claim that a floral still life symbolizes the crucifixion is as much a testable hypothesis as anything in string theory.

Is the claim that the symbolic representations of artists are as much testable hypotheses as the 'things' in string theory itself a testable hypothesis? I wonder how Glaeser would propose testing his claim? Let's see. There is a phenomenon called, "Making claims about what are testable hypotheses." We submit that it is a testable hypotheses that any relationship conceived of by humans (A is related to B) is a testable hypothesis. God cast Lucifer... etc. Testable. Before Big Bang was a Merry-go-round. Testable. Perhaps Glaeser is being sarcastic. Neither is testable? Could we test that "many claims by humans are not testable hypotheses"?

One paragraph earlier:

My faith in the scientific method and my belief that Harvard’s goal should be to teach the
ability to apply this method seriously outside the classroom and beyond Harvard is the basis of this essay.

Neat that the basis for the goal is belief and faith. Not testable?

Harvard following where others fear to tread... ;-)

A short article in the Harvard Crimson nicely captures some of the spirit of discussions at Harvard on their Oct. 2006 roposal for revision of core curriculum. With Louis Menand leading the revision committee, one expects much that is sensible. But the emphasis still seems to be: one theme, one course, without much thought (or attempt) to structure the Core. Almost inevitably, then, it will revert back to the distribution requirement it claims to be replacing.

An earlier article from 2005 discusses an earlier proposal:

The draft report recommends replacing the current Core Curriculum’s 11 fields of study with three broad disciplines—Arts and Humanities, Study of Societies, and Science and Technology—and requiring students to take three courses in each of the two areas most different from their concentration. The report also outlines year-long “portal” courses that students could take to fulfill the requirement for one of the three areas, according to a copy viewed by The Crimson last month.

And the 2005 Harvard reform proposal is still available on the Harvard website... Here's the "portal" idea:

At the same time, the Committee believes that the curriculum should assist students
in shaping their education by providing discrete opportunities for more intensive,
foundational courses in general education. These courses would provide integrative and
synoptic introductions to important knowledge and texts as well as orienting conceptual
frameworks in each of the broad divisional areas articulated above. Without prescribing a
common body of knowledge for all Harvard College students, they could contribute to a
common set of intellectual and academic experiences in which large numbers of students might engage in debate, discussion, and disagreement about important issues in the realms of art, culture, politics, science, and technology. The courses would reside outside of any specific departmental home and would be listed in a separate section of the catalogue called “Courses in General Education.” They would also count towards the fulfillment of distribution requirements.