Why Teach?

Why Teach?  An interesting question, that.

Another Christmas gift from Janet was Mark Edmundson’s book which has a title asking exactly that question: Why Teach?  In Defense of a Real Education. 

In a curious way, this was a rather thought-provoking book.  It’s a collection of essays which, truth be told, meander all over the place, united only by the fact that they have something to do with education.  The book is best described as a cri de coeur.  Edmundson looks out and sees a sterile corporatized (a favorite adjective of the Academic Left) educational system which has moved well past taking root and is starting to flower, bear seeds, and replicate itself.  That college is anathema to Edmundson.  He is a prophet standing on the hill lamenting and denouncing and calling his people to repentance,  Edmundson is Jeremiah. 

What does Edmundson want?  An education that matters, that rips right into the souls of the students and shakes them out of complacency into deep reflections about things that truly matter.  He wants faculty who don’t want to play the game of the modern college, who eschew the trendy pedagogical imperatives of the day.  He wants faculty who are most certainly not cool, who do not try to meet students where they are but force students to move to a better higher place.  He wants students to pause in their race to graduation and decide to learn something deep and meaningful.  Get rid of all that technological floor show, no multimedia spectacles, no simplifying the curriculum, no making everything easy.  Hard, meaningful work.  Studying important timeless things in timeless ways.  Professor, student, Great Book.  That is all you need.

Obviously, I agree with Edmundson.  He is the type of professor who says things to me like “Wow.  Even though I totally disagree with your politics, I really agree with you about education.”  I don’t know why liberal faculty are always surprised that a conservative academic preaches the value of Tradition in Education.  I suspect it is because they think the enemy of Education, properly conceived, is that “Corporatization” thing and Conservatives like “Corporate America” so Conservatives must hate Great Books.  It is strange how narrow minded modern liberal professors can be. 

By the way, this is not just some gratuitous swipe at Edmundson.  He fits the type I have met all too often.  For example: “My overall point is this: It’s not that a left-wing professorial coup has taken over the university.  It’s that at American universities, left-liberal politics have collided with the ethos of consumerism.  The consumer ethos is winning.”  So typical.  In this book Edmundson spends many, many pages showing that the whole neo-Marxist-feminist-multiculturalist-genderindentityist crowd have destroyed the reading, real reading, of Great Books.  That new crowd has turned every book into a mirror, simply reflecting back the author’s prejudices.  From the argument in Edmundson's book it is obvious that the left-wing professoriate has joined forces with the consumer culture to destroy the type of education Edmundson values.  Yet, Edmundson must periodically assert his left-wing credentials by giving the very people he is criticizing a pass.  Sad.  When people like me note how the reading of Great Books has been destroyed, we are just called Neanderthals.  Edmundson should just embrace his inner Neanderthal. 

The problem with the modem college is not some sort of Corporate takeover by evil outside administrators.  The problem is that the faculty have given up the battle to educate.  Providing an education is hard work.  One of the overlooked things about the modern academy is: faculty are really not interested in working hard at educating.  They get offended when you say this, by the way.  But, today, Wednesday January 7^th, I would suspect that about 10% of my colleagues are at work.  When I hear my colleagues wax poetic about all those new innovative pedagogical tools, the thing that is left unsaid is this: if you use these new tools, then you won’t have to do so much work.  Show videos in class?  Don’t have to prepare a lecture.  Encourage students to get together in groups to work on problems together in class?  No lecture.  Flip the classroom so students watch lectures on-line and then come to the class to work on problems?  What do you know?  Less lecturing.  Then there are all the pedagogical innovations that simply make less work for the students—and less work for the students means--you guessed it—less work for the professor.  Fewer readings for students?  Less reading for the professor.  Between my assorted classes this Spring, I have assigned 23 books.  Other than the textbook for one of the courses, I will read (or reread) every one of those books.  That is a lot of reading.  It takes a lot of time.  The fact that few if any of my colleagues will spend even a fraction of that much time reading material for courses has absolutely nothing to do with the number of Administrators at the college.  

Saying such things does not exactly make you popular with the crowd.  Edmundson almost says such things.  After reading the book, I doubt he disagrees with those things at all, but he never quite gets around to saying them.  He may be Jeremiah, but he is a kinder, gentler Jeremiah.

So, I didn’t learn much reading this book, but in a strange way, it sure inspired me.  It was one of those books that made me pause and think over and over and over.  Why Teach?  Why am I a Teacher?  What is my goal?  Teaching, really teaching, in the modern college is tough.  Very tough.  I love my students.  I really do.  But, truth be told, and it is not a pleasant thing to tell myself, most of my students, whom I dearly love, do not actually want an education.  Most of my students just want an A and a diploma.  The tough part of teaching, the really tough part, is figuring out a way to convince those students who just want an A and a diploma that maybe they should want something else. Maybe they should want to pause and get an education.  The students who want an education are easy and fun to teach.  Professor, student, Great Book—an amazing education.  I love teaching those students.  But, how to convince the majority of my students that this is what they should want, that their lives will be richer and fuller if they momentarily forget about that A and that diploma and just think about Truth?

Therein lies the thing I started pondering deeply while I was reading this book and have been pondering ever since.  I too have been playing the kinder, gentler Jeremiah—not with my colleagues, but with my students.  I have been using gentle enticements to try to lull my students into a new set of desires.  I have been trying to model a Joy of Learning, and hoping that the spirit will catch on,.  And it has worked on many, many students.  But not all.  If I am honest, not even most.  Maybe, and here is the intriguing part, just maybe the kinder, gentler approach should be accompanied by methods more dramatic.

I’ll give an example.  In my macroeconomic theory course—textbook intermediate level course required of all majors—I have long been assigning supplemental books, books which normal people buy at a bookstore and read.  I assign three a semester, tell students to just read them and enjoy them.  I then ask painfully simple exam questions about them—as I tell students up front, if you read the book, you will know the answer.  A few students read the books—it is surprising, quite honestly, how few.  Students don’t read anymore.  Yet I keep putting these books in the course because for the students who do settle into a comfortable chair and just read for the pleasure of reading, there is that gentle enticement to the realization that learning stuff just for the joy of learning it is rather enjoyable.

This semester, one of those supplemental books I assigned is Chernow, The House of Morgan.  It is a massive doorstop of a book.  I assigned it knowing full well that most students won't read it.  After all, last semester, most students didn’t read Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys, which is short, quick and lively.  So, I figured since most students don't read no matter how quick and easy the book is, why not throw in a longer supplemental book which will be immensely wonderful for that small minority of students who take it up and read it?  I assigned that book before I read Edmundson’s book.  But, now I am wondering—shouldn’t I do more to convince students that spending one month reading just 25 pages a night of a magisterial history book is something worth doing? 

One thing is certain, in attempting to do more to convince economics majors that they should want to read The House of Morgan (after all, if you are going to major in Economics and want to work on Wall Street, then you should be interested in the history of the Morgans—I have no hesitation is saying that emphatically—my students should want to read this book), I will fail.  Most of my students will not want to read this book.  It is 720 pages of text—a longer book than most of them have ever read.  Anything I do to convince them they should want to read it will a) at best convince a very few more students to read it and b) certainly annoy and offend lots of students who resent being told that their preference sets should be altered.  If Edmundson and I are right about the problems of the modern college, then this shouldn’t even be a hard decision to make.  Obviously I should do more.

Why Teach?  Because Teaching can improve the lives of my students.  There is no other reason to teach.  It’s not about the grades, it’s not about the diplomas, it’s not about making students happy.  It is about improving lives.  My students don’t know that.  I do.  Yeah, it’s out of fashion to suggest that professors know something that students don’t know about what is best for the students.  But, if I don’t know more than my students about what makes a better life, then why am I a teacher?