If you happen to be one of those folks who think college – or high school! – students should have influence over how they are taught, consider this lesson from Freddie deBoer on Persuasion concerning the firing of Professor Maitland Jones of NYU:
Whatever the case, I want to suggest that the students who launched the petition were denying themselves a central element of education: figuring out what you’re not good at. Failing. Trying to learn, and failing to do so. This is an element of education as vital as learning what you’re good at, the act of self-discovery of one’s own lack of ability. All of us have limits, natural limits on what we can learn and do in academic fields. Some exceedingly rare individuals appear to be brilliant at everything, but for the rest of us, there’s a whole suite of topics and skills that we will never perform with any facility. And if colleges insist on reducing rigor to the point that learning those limits becomes impossible, something will have been lost.
In my own time as a graduate student in the humanities and as an administrator in the City University of New York, I was dismayed by the ongoing assault on rigor, with arguments against homework, against grading, and against taking attendance. Many in academia default to any position that seems pro-student, due to a desire to be “the cool professor” or through tendentious political definitions of the purpose of higher education. But such people tend to define “pro-student” as meaning whatever students want, when of course part of the point of being an educator is to do what’s best for students that they may not want to do themselves. I believe that rigor is essential to providing students with value for their tuition dollars, as I personally have been brought closer to the level of my potential thanks to professors who made serious demands of me. I have also learned the limits of that potential thanks to those teachers, who helped me to understand what I was and was not good at.
The one point that deBoer should have made, but didn’t, is that by making courses too easy, we run the risk of incompetency leaking into safety-critical fields, fatal accidents occurring – and then, who do you blame? The professor was fired, you can’t blame him. At one time, the pedagogical approach was … a graduate instructor friend of mine in the electrical engineering department explained the idea simply. If early engineering classes were easy, and most students passed them, then some of those students would inevitably run up against their academic limits later in their academic careers, at which point starting over with a new major would be harder and more expensive. [deBoer]
At one time, it was the responsibility of the educational institutions to ensure, as best one can, that only competent graduates get out the door. But if the administrators are now giving the students access to the controls, then who’s responsible?
These self-centered students. For every fatal accident caused by an incompetent graduate hailing their institution.
Those petition writers, those petition signers, have taken on responsibilities for which they lack all competency. The administrators, to be honest, bear some responsibility as well. They should know better. Indeed, deBoer’s friend’s recitation should be part of the curriculum for the would-be administrator.
And this is why you don’t let the students run the joint.
