It's official, I've accepted Stanford's offer to attend their Learning Sciences and Technology Design PhD program starting next fall. Initially I'll be studying under Roy Pea and Hilda Borko, both - since we're talking about, you know, Stanford - renowned researchers and well-respected in their field. I know Roy from my time as a Master's student, during which my friend and co-conspirator Coram and I consulted Professor Pea as often as we felt we could get away with while working on our project. As a result, I'm certain I'll be able to work with him and learn from him.
Ultimately, this decision was not an easy one, even though Stanford is an "obvious choice." To the common layperson, the name Stanford alone is worth so much that, when I have posed my conundrum to certain people the response has been a resounding, "you mean there's actually a question?" My answer is, yes, there is (or was) a question. You see, PhD work is less about prestige and more about fit. My decision, then, was not about trying to find the "best" program, but to find the program that most matched my own learning style, research interests, pedagogical biases, and general outlook on the world in general.
The Communications department at the University of California, San Diego matches me very well in almost all of those areas. Their pedagogical model is highly discussion driven, the amount of reading and writing that students do their lines up well with the amount of reading and writing I do of my own volition, their conversations are lofty and philosophical, and the people are quirky, critical, and equal parts cynical and optimistic. In short, a lot like me. Indeed, had I chosen to attend UCSD I'm sure I'd be having a number of conversations with a variety of people right now in which I would be pointing out exactly that: I definitely fit at UCSD, and that's the most important thing.
So why not UCSD? Well, I also fit at Stanford. In fact, I think I fit better at Stanford.
While the people at UCSD are a perfect match for me, and while I would have the freedom to pursue my research interests, I'm actually not convinced that the general outlook of the department matches my own and that, even more importantly, the pedagogical bent of the program would suit me. I don't mean to say I think there's anything wrong with the outlook or pedagogy at UCSD, I just think they wouldn't work for me.
As a graduate of St. John's College, I come from a strange academic tradition. I'm a student of the so-called "Western Canon" at a time when a lot of the academic world - and places like UCSD in particular - seriously doubt whether there really ought to be such a thing as a canon. The questions at the heart of this objection are valid, and look like this: How can you determine which books are Great, or even if there is such a thing as Greatness? Isn't that a hegemonic, colonial tool to marginalize the values and cultures of all of those people who are not white male Europeans?
By themselves, these are important questions that, frankly, St. John's probably doesn't do a good enough job answering.* The problem, to me, is the double-reversal jiu-jitsu that comes next. Because those are good questions, the answers are assumed to be, basically, that there is no such thing as Greatness, that the Great Books are a total sham, and that any curriculum that reads them and takes them seriously on their own merits (instead of through alternative cultural and contextual lenses) is itself an instrument of intellectual and cultural tyranny. The result, of course, is the laissez-faire, anything goes attitude towards ideas that pervades the post-modern world. That attitude says, "your ideas and my ideas are equally valid, because they each come from our own perspectives. Right and wrong are relative, and meaning is personally constructed, and if we all just agree to disagree and get along the world will be all right." To me, that's a shameful intellectual surrender. Maybe this is a hegemonic idea, but I like to think that there's more value in consensus - and, even more so, the effort to get there - than there is in tolerance.**
* Of course, any graduate of the college who continues in academia will inevitably have to confront these questions anyway, and will be - I think St. John's would argue - equipped to do so because of the critical thinking skills they've gained as Johnnies. I suspect a great many St. John's graduates end up being heavily critical of the curricular content of the Great Books program precisely because it is so Anglo-European centric. So it's hard to criticize the college for picking a narrower curricular goal that it can achieve in four years, instead of trying to bite off more than it can chew when it knows students will get there after-the-fact anyway. That's just good curriculum design.
** That the position of tolerance for differing ideas is also held be many self-proclaimed radicals - many of whom are only actually tolerant up to a point - only serves to remind me of this Eva Brann (St. John's Dean, not wife of Hitler) quotation: "To the radicals we might say: you don't begin to know what radical is; we are the ones who go to the roots."
Now that's not to say that I know anything like enough about UCSD to say where the institution as a whole stands relative to this issue. In reality, I'm sure there are a range of opinions. I did, however, get the sense from the brief time I spent there and the one class I visited that I would likely end up very frustrated by the "make connections" instead of "find meaning" model that goes with their post-modernist academic culture. That each week's reading on the syllabi I saw included multiple and intentionally disparate authors in order to build background and force cross-cutting interpretations rubs against my Johnnie sensibilities, in which those things are not exactly bad, but nevertheless can undercut the effort to actually understand a given text's content, instead of just its context or impact.
Again, I'm not sure that there's anything wrong with the way UCSD is doing things, I just don't think it's right for me.
Now you might be thinking that Stanford is vastly different. It isn't. If anything, it's less discussion and dialogue oriented than UCSD, and it is just as much concerned with post-modernist questions and processes. The difference, then, is that Stanford is not just talking and reading and dancing around the theories and philosophies of these issues, but is, in fact, actually out in the world doing. My experience as an LDT student was one of project-based classes and practice-oriented learning, which lines up well with modern learning theory. While not every professor I had was a brilliant teacher using the more cutting edge pedagogy and technology, many - including Roy, incidentally* - were just that. For all of its stuffy, privileged, businessy, ivory tower reputation, Stanford really does strive to practice what it preaches.
*Or not incidentally at all.
Being political (in the root, Greek sense of dealing with society) has its drawbacks. It can be frustrating to try to make a difference. But as much as I'm sure I'll have days and nights when I feel like I'm just a small, insignificant part of a broken system, and I can't do much to improve the situation, I think that Stanford will encourage and support (and, really, actively enlist) me in fighting the good fight. The potential for myopia at UCSD, on the other hand - the ability to remove myself from the world and just do whatever I want - frightens me much more than the frustrations I'm sure I'll feel at Stanford sometimes do. I am, despite myself, equal parts idealism and practicality, and I feel like Stanford understands that dichotomy (and supports both sides of it) better than UCSD does, at least in my case.
There are, I suspect, a great many other things I could say about what draws me to Stanford (including my previous experience there compared to the relative unknown of UCSD), but they would be variations on the theme from above. The truth of the matter is, both programs were the "right decision," but in different ways, and I was fortunate to have an opportunity to pick between the two, even if it meant the decision was a difficult one.
Showing posts with label Eva Brann. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eva Brann. Show all posts
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
The Best College in the Country
It's odd that we rank schools. What, exactly, does it mean to be "the best college," or the best preschool, for that matter? Does it mean students have higher standardized test scores, or the school has a larger endowment? Does it mean a school is more selective? Does it mean students graduate more prepared to work in high-paying fields?
Earlier today I read an interesting set of sixteen negative theses about a particularly fine college. It describes what the faculty are not, and what the school does not do. Why? Because this particular college does things a little differently. You can probably guess what college it is, but I'm going to operate under the pretense of suspense and not tell you. Here's the list, with my comments or further quotation sprinkled in when appropriate:
1) We (the faculty) receive no compensation.
Instead the faculty receives a stipend. Sufficient to make a living and to educate their own children, but not the kind of salaries commanded by many Professors - especially those who moonlight as corporate board members.
2) We deliver no to commodity to our students.
It's fashionable these days to speak of education as a business. Students are "end users" or "consumers" who pay the University for a degree, which is itself a commodity for use in the job market. A college opposing this notion is non unheard-of. Many liberal arts colleges would sustain that they do not commoditize education.
3) We do not prepare students to make a living.
"We do help them to examine and shape their lives," the text continues.
4) We produce no assessable outcome.
"The shaping of a soul is a simply immeasurable event." Again the text. Assessment is one of the biggest problems in modern education. All the things you can assess are, generally, not worth assessing, and all the things you really want to assess, you can't.
5) We are not an academic institution; we are, instead, a community of learning.
6) We have no administration.
Imagine having your dean, or the President of your school, for a class. Imagine running a college - not a small charter school - on by consensus.
7) We are not Professors, and perhaps not even teachers.
From elsewhere in the piece, but an awesome quotation: "We are devoted teachers who doubt whether teaching is possible." The contention is, essentially, that learning is more important than teaching (or education, you could say... And no, I didn't plan that).
8) We are neither intellectuals nor scholars.
What is more important, questions or results? In a research-driven academia it's easy to get wrapped up in career-advancement and publishing and so on. A faculty not concerned with these issues is a faculty devoted to its students instead of itself.
9) We are not selective, at least not in intention.
If the primary outcomes are impossible to assess, why should the preparation of the student entering a school matter? The assessments we use are, largely, economic ones. The primary differentiating factor on SAT performance is not quality of education, but quality of checkbook. What are elite institutions really looking for when they seek high-scoring students?
10) We are not a participatory democracy; instead we live by a polity.
11) We have no hierarchy.
12) We are intrinsically non-political.
These go together, and are radical, so much so that they challenge politics as-such. "To the radicals we might say: you don't begin to know what radical is; we are the ones who go to the roots."
13) We are not our students' companions.
14) We are not a writing, but a speaking school.
Writing is important, without a doubt, but conversation - unrecorded dialogue - is more vivid, more dynamic, and - because it is more flawed - more real.
15) We are not an experimental college.
16) We have no method.
These last two are particularly interesting to me, because many people look at St. John's (yep, you guessed it!) and see something strange and experimental. They see a methodology that is ingrained. In reality, it is as far from experimental a college as you can find. The program changes, to be sure, but reading good books and having conversations is not really a subject of experimentation, and it certainly isn't a "method" in the proper sense. Each student learns his own way, each tutor her own.
The title of the piece is St. John's Educational Policy for a "Living Community" by Eva Brann (who many of you will recognize as an Annapolis tutor and former Dean). It was a regular internal report from the Dean to the faculty in 1991, but unlike most - and fortunately for us - it was published.
There are probably a lot of bones to pick here, and I'm sure there has been - and is - internal controversy at St. John's over this kind of document. If I were a student there, I think I would be a bit more sensitive to the potentially jarring conclusions Brann makes, and a bit more reserved in my support. But from the perspective of a student at a research University, Brann is absolutely right. I won't pretend that I don't love Stanford, and that it isn't giving me things St. John's never could. However, I also won't pretend that St. John's isn't what a community of learning is supposed to be, in some quintessential way. It's no accident places like the University of Chicago, Reed College, Whitman College, and many others have borrowed from the St. John's 'Great Books' model.
It's all well and good to puff up my undergraduate institution, but I only do so to highlight some of the things that I have heard about education and learning, and to reflect upon the lessons that St. John's understands without needing research. That learning happens when you read good books and talk about them with intelligent people is inevitable, of course, but it's not the whole story. We try to complicate learning all the time, we try to ascribe it to external pressures and good (or bad) teaching, and good (or bad) policy. Learning starts and ends with a student, and the will to learn.
To Brann's theses I would add one, though perhaps it is captured by the notion that teachers cannot teach. It is this: We do not impose a false desire to learn upon our students (nor do we tolerate one). Instead their motivation is their own. Without that, no school can function, and with it, no school can fail. It is a necessary and sufficient cause for education.*
* To use a little Aristotle that, to my surprise, remains quite common parlance. Of course, the more sophisticated among us - or at least the more latinized - prefer "sine qua non" to "necessary cause." And can you blame them?
Yes, you can.
There are many excellent colleges and universities in the country, and I'm not so big-headed to think that the one I like best is actually the best one. I reject the notion of "best," anyway, because that's not the point of education. There's a reason St. John's opts out of the US News and World Report rankings, and that's a fundamental opposition to the premise.
So what's really the point here? Well, to share with you a nice little article I found about my college. Heaven knows there aren't very many, probably because the bit about assessing changes in the soul is true (and who does research on souls?). And yet, isn't that what education - especially high school education - is about? There are times when I suspect that innovative approaches to education forget to look backwards, and that education technology forgets the most important education technology of all: the book.
Earlier today I read an interesting set of sixteen negative theses about a particularly fine college. It describes what the faculty are not, and what the school does not do. Why? Because this particular college does things a little differently. You can probably guess what college it is, but I'm going to operate under the pretense of suspense and not tell you. Here's the list, with my comments or further quotation sprinkled in when appropriate:
1) We (the faculty) receive no compensation.
Instead the faculty receives a stipend. Sufficient to make a living and to educate their own children, but not the kind of salaries commanded by many Professors - especially those who moonlight as corporate board members.
2) We deliver no to commodity to our students.
It's fashionable these days to speak of education as a business. Students are "end users" or "consumers" who pay the University for a degree, which is itself a commodity for use in the job market. A college opposing this notion is non unheard-of. Many liberal arts colleges would sustain that they do not commoditize education.
3) We do not prepare students to make a living.
"We do help them to examine and shape their lives," the text continues.
4) We produce no assessable outcome.
"The shaping of a soul is a simply immeasurable event." Again the text. Assessment is one of the biggest problems in modern education. All the things you can assess are, generally, not worth assessing, and all the things you really want to assess, you can't.
5) We are not an academic institution; we are, instead, a community of learning.
6) We have no administration.
Imagine having your dean, or the President of your school, for a class. Imagine running a college - not a small charter school - on by consensus.
7) We are not Professors, and perhaps not even teachers.
From elsewhere in the piece, but an awesome quotation: "We are devoted teachers who doubt whether teaching is possible." The contention is, essentially, that learning is more important than teaching (or education, you could say... And no, I didn't plan that).
8) We are neither intellectuals nor scholars.
What is more important, questions or results? In a research-driven academia it's easy to get wrapped up in career-advancement and publishing and so on. A faculty not concerned with these issues is a faculty devoted to its students instead of itself.
9) We are not selective, at least not in intention.
If the primary outcomes are impossible to assess, why should the preparation of the student entering a school matter? The assessments we use are, largely, economic ones. The primary differentiating factor on SAT performance is not quality of education, but quality of checkbook. What are elite institutions really looking for when they seek high-scoring students?
10) We are not a participatory democracy; instead we live by a polity.
11) We have no hierarchy.
12) We are intrinsically non-political.
These go together, and are radical, so much so that they challenge politics as-such. "To the radicals we might say: you don't begin to know what radical is; we are the ones who go to the roots."
13) We are not our students' companions.
14) We are not a writing, but a speaking school.
Writing is important, without a doubt, but conversation - unrecorded dialogue - is more vivid, more dynamic, and - because it is more flawed - more real.
15) We are not an experimental college.
16) We have no method.
These last two are particularly interesting to me, because many people look at St. John's (yep, you guessed it!) and see something strange and experimental. They see a methodology that is ingrained. In reality, it is as far from experimental a college as you can find. The program changes, to be sure, but reading good books and having conversations is not really a subject of experimentation, and it certainly isn't a "method" in the proper sense. Each student learns his own way, each tutor her own.
The title of the piece is St. John's Educational Policy for a "Living Community" by Eva Brann (who many of you will recognize as an Annapolis tutor and former Dean). It was a regular internal report from the Dean to the faculty in 1991, but unlike most - and fortunately for us - it was published.
There are probably a lot of bones to pick here, and I'm sure there has been - and is - internal controversy at St. John's over this kind of document. If I were a student there, I think I would be a bit more sensitive to the potentially jarring conclusions Brann makes, and a bit more reserved in my support. But from the perspective of a student at a research University, Brann is absolutely right. I won't pretend that I don't love Stanford, and that it isn't giving me things St. John's never could. However, I also won't pretend that St. John's isn't what a community of learning is supposed to be, in some quintessential way. It's no accident places like the University of Chicago, Reed College, Whitman College, and many others have borrowed from the St. John's 'Great Books' model.
It's all well and good to puff up my undergraduate institution, but I only do so to highlight some of the things that I have heard about education and learning, and to reflect upon the lessons that St. John's understands without needing research. That learning happens when you read good books and talk about them with intelligent people is inevitable, of course, but it's not the whole story. We try to complicate learning all the time, we try to ascribe it to external pressures and good (or bad) teaching, and good (or bad) policy. Learning starts and ends with a student, and the will to learn.
To Brann's theses I would add one, though perhaps it is captured by the notion that teachers cannot teach. It is this: We do not impose a false desire to learn upon our students (nor do we tolerate one). Instead their motivation is their own. Without that, no school can function, and with it, no school can fail. It is a necessary and sufficient cause for education.*
* To use a little Aristotle that, to my surprise, remains quite common parlance. Of course, the more sophisticated among us - or at least the more latinized - prefer "sine qua non" to "necessary cause." And can you blame them?
Yes, you can.
There are many excellent colleges and universities in the country, and I'm not so big-headed to think that the one I like best is actually the best one. I reject the notion of "best," anyway, because that's not the point of education. There's a reason St. John's opts out of the US News and World Report rankings, and that's a fundamental opposition to the premise.
So what's really the point here? Well, to share with you a nice little article I found about my college. Heaven knows there aren't very many, probably because the bit about assessing changes in the soul is true (and who does research on souls?). And yet, isn't that what education - especially high school education - is about? There are times when I suspect that innovative approaches to education forget to look backwards, and that education technology forgets the most important education technology of all: the book.
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