May 21, 2004

In Praise of Passionate, Opinionated Teaching

By MARK OPPENHEIMER

Americans dissatisfied with higher education typically have one of two gripes. Either the problem is the curriculum, which might be too liberal or too conservative, too changeful or too stodgy, too current or too retrograde, too utilitarian or too useless; or the problem is the university's structure, which often is deemed too businesslike and soulless.

The first critique, the curricular one, began to surface in the United States in the 19th century, when colleges moved gingerly away