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[betterslac]

While there were several parts of Harry Lewis's essay that I thought were ok (some of his arguments about a need for a core curriculum, his rejection of the fad of treating students like customers-- I wonder how that goes down at the American Enterprise Institute) I found much of it irritating:

It is another example of an academic outside of political science posing as an expert in politics. The assumption, especially among those in the natural sciences, is that one can read a book or two, use "common sense," and suddenly one is qualified to lecture to think tanks, publish books, and write learned columns on the subject in the Chronicle. We political scientists must be schmucks-- we are forced to labor away at the literature and data for years before we are granted that privilege.

He is unhappy that political scientists are not thrilled to be teaching undergraduates the nuts and bolts of American goverment and politics and thinks we are not doing enough of it. News flash-- most of us are, just don't tell us we should find fulfillment in it. By the way, I've read some books on technology and I think every college student should be computer literate. Harry and the rest of the computer science faculty at Harvard should therefore be spending the majority of their time teaching CS 101 and finding it fulfilling

Third, while he opines that teaching of American goverment should not be about patriotism, he insists on labeling it "civics". That label connotes training in a govermental system, not the critical thinking orientation he champions.

[sibyl]

I don't believe that Lewis actually holds the views you ascribe to him. 

First, it helps to know that Lewis used to be dean of Harvard College, a fact not found in the "about the author" text.  He is speaking not as a computer scientist but as a former dean of one of the nation's most influential institutions, with experience with and interest in core curricula.

Second, he's not griping about what political science professors teach but about what institutions teach through general education requirements.  I read him as saying, We colleges and universities fail our nation when we fail to require our students to know about the United States and instill in them a spirit of civic involvement.  That's still a debatable proposition, but it's more reasonable than the one provoking your ire.

In his book Excellence without a Soul he makes the case that most colleges and universities make it easy for students to focus only on money and grades.  To be sure, students enter with that focus, but Lewis thinks that colleges and universities ought to challenge students to think more broadly, and that general education has to be the place to do it because it's the only way we can guarantee that students will think about these things.  I found the book thoughtful and thought-provoking.

[aandsdean]

In his book Excellence without a Soul he makes the case that most colleges and universities make it easy for students to focus only on money and grades.  To be sure, students enter with that focus, but Lewis thinks that colleges and universities ought to challenge students to think more broadly, and that general education has to be the place to do it because it's the only way we can guarantee that students will think about these things.  I found the book thoughtful and thought-provoking.

This is an outstanding and important idea.  However, how to convince parents and state legislators (many of whom are dead set against critical thinking, I believe) that this kind of education should happen.

I deal with parents a lot.  Many of the issues they raise have to do with 1. How much we cost, and 2. why Jr. has to take a course that has nothing to do with his major--what good wil it do for his professional future?

The problem is partly the universities', but it's much larger--it's a society that cares primarily about making money and obvious utility.  Utopian dreams don't much figure into the weltanschauung these days, alas.

[sibyl]

However, how to convince parents and state legislators (many of whom are dead set against critical thinking, I believe) that this kind of education should happen.

I don't think you necessarily need to do this.  I mean, I deal with those parents as well, but they will object to gen ed no matter what the content is.  And legislators are readiest to ride into curricular matters when you *eliminate* items related to the United States, not add it.  So they're not the problem.

The real problem is the logrolling nature of most curricular development.  Even if you get agreement on a theme like "education for citizenship," the math department argues that no one can fulfill their obligations unless they have mathematical skill, and the physics department claims that surely a knowledge of the physical science is necessary in our technological society, and the English department says that a knowledge of the literature of the US is essential for understanding the obligations of citizenship, and the Spanish department points out that Spanish is our second national language, and pretty soon you're back to a curriculum that consists of hoops to jump instead of a coherent plan of study.

That said, I think it's worth a shot.  And I think you will like Lewis's book, aandsdean.  Check it out.

[aandsdean]

However, how to convince parents and state legislators (many of whom are dead set against critical thinking, I believe) that this kind of education should happen.

I don't think you necessarily need to do this.  I mean, I deal with those parents as well, but they will object to gen ed no matter what the content is.  And legislators are readiest to ride into curricular matters when you *eliminate* items related to the United States, not add it.  So they're not the problem.

The real problem is the logrolling nature of most curricular development.  Even if you get agreement on a theme like "education for citizenship," the math department argues that no one can fulfill their obligations unless they have mathematical skill, and the physics department claims that surely a knowledge of the physical science is necessary in our technological society, and the English department says that a knowledge of the literature of the US is essential for understanding the obligations of citizenship, and the Spanish department points out that Spanish is our second national language, and pretty soon you're back to a curriculum that consists of hoops to jump instead of a coherent plan of study.

That said, I think it's worth a shot.  And I think you will like Lewis's book, aandsdean.  Check it out.

Answer 1 on curricular logrolling:  Oh, yeah.  We're thinking about revising gen ed. and I'm already bracing for the phenomenon you mention.

Answer 2 on legislators:  Yes, you can usually appeal to them about American stuff.  However, one whiff of demythologizing--if they catch that whiff--and all bets are off.

Answer 3 on parents:  The things they do in the name of helping their kids continue to baffle me and make me occasionally lose hope for the future of the US.

Remark 4 on Lewis's book:  We're about to start a reading group on "educational philosophy" kinds of books.  This seems like a good prospect for that discussion.  I'll check it out, thanks!

[daniel_von_flanagan]

Even if you get agreement on a theme like "education for citizenship," the math department argues that no one can fulfill their obligations unless they have mathematical skill, and the physics department claims that surely a knowledge of the physical science is necessary in our technological society, and the English department says that a knowledge of the literature of the US is essential for understanding the obligations of citizenship, and the Spanish department points out that Spanish is our second national language, and pretty soon you're back to a curriculum that consists of hoops to jump instead of a coherent plan of study.

They are all correct.

My biggest gripe with core curricula - this is after helping to craft two of them, almost seven wretched years of weekly fights - is that their de facto role is to remove a sense of responsibility for your students' education.  Once the core and grad requirements are in place, a professor of (say) Physics can just assume that the student will pick up all their non-science as part of the gen ed program, and so only pay attention to the major requirements.  At my university we all know that there are students graduating who are unacceptably weak in all the subjects represented by the core, and it is common and too easy to simply blame those departments providing the core offerings for not doing their jobs, rather than try to share responsibility for the resolving the situation. - DvF

[aandsdean]

Even if you get agreement on a theme like "education for citizenship," the math department argues that no one can fulfill their obligations unless they have mathematical skill, and the physics department claims that surely a knowledge of the physical science is necessary in our technological society, and the English department says that a knowledge of the literature of the US is essential for understanding the obligations of citizenship, and the Spanish department points out that Spanish is our second national language, and pretty soon you're back to a curriculum that consists of hoops to jump instead of a coherent plan of study.

They are all correct.

My biggest gripe with core curricula - this is after helping to craft two of them, almost seven wretched years of weekly fights - is that their de facto role is to remove a sense of responsibility for your students' education.  Once the core and grad requirements are in place, a professor of (say) Physics can just assume that the student will pick up all their non-science as part of the gen ed program, and so only pay attention to the major requirements.  At my university we all know that there are students graduating who are unacceptably weak in all the subjects represented by the core, and it is common and too easy to simply blame those departments providing the core offerings for not doing their jobs, rather than try to share responsibility for the resolving the situation. - DvF

DvF is also right, and this is why the whole curriculum, especially gen ed/core, is so vexed.  As a person in English (where my heart still is, though I have developed a lot of knowledge about and respect for other disciplines in A&S over the years), I am profoundly sick of hearing things like "I thought this was covered in English 101" when issues of, say, plagiarism come up.

One of the reasons I like SLACs--at least the one I went to and the one where I started my teaching career--was that, despite their faults, there was at least some sense of shared enterprise and responsibility among the faculty for things like writing skills, logical thinking, etc.  The smallness of the places made clear the connections among disciplines, and we shared students quite closely so our sense of what they were doing was pretty strong.  For lack of a better word (it IS 6:30 in the morning for me), there was an organic coherence of a sort to the way students passed through the curriculum.

This was a good thing.

The other problem, though, is that we (I use "we" in a loose sense to include college and university faculty and administrators) come at the curriculum from our subject positions (well, of course) and I think sometimes have a hard time looking at it from outside our disciplines or from the students' point of view (no matter how much they try to impress that point of view on us).  As an example, I spent my early professorial years wanting and hoping that I could make my students understand the material I was teaching as well as I did--idealistic, of course, and perhaps somewhat egocentric, but also hopelessly naive.  It can't be done, especially at the undergraduate level, though I think if you can ignite the desire to learn and help students with the mastering the tools of learning they can get there as they progress through their lives. 

So the question at the course level is, "What do the students need, right now, to make the biggest possible advances in their current skills and level of knowledge?," rather than, "In an ideal world, what would every student look like upon completion of the whole program," though of course assessment is driving us both to ask this latter question and also to fail miserably at answering it in a satisfactory way.

Anyhow, the combination of faculty disciplinary territoriality and their abdication of responsibility for the larger educational program is very problematic.  I think there are a lot of causes for it (one being the vastly increased levels of specialization linked to the growth in research expectations in the past 30 years, let's say), but it's one of the sad things about higher education that I fear the current climate (assessment, which reduces to assessible units even the most aspirational discussions of curriculum; intensifying demands for research; disconnection between graduate training and what the great majority of faculty actually do; and drives for increased enrollments that even at small colleges reduce the knowledge faculty members have of individual students) will work against efforts to improve the situation.

Sorry for the muddle--no coffee yet.

[betterslac]

I don't believe that Lewis actually holds the views you ascribe to him. 

First, it helps to know that Lewis used to be dean of Harvard College, a fact not found in the "about the author" text.  He is speaking not as a computer scientist but as a former dean of one of the nation's most influential institutions, with experience with and interest in core curricula.

Second, he's not griping about what political science professors teach but about what institutions teach through general education requirements.  I read him as saying, We colleges and universities fail our nation when we fail to require our students to know about the United States and instill in them a spirit of civic involvement.  That's still a debatable proposition, but it's more reasonable than the one provoking your ire.

In his book Excellence without a Soul he makes the case that most colleges and universities make it easy for students to focus only on money and grades.  To be sure, students enter with that focus, but Lewis thinks that colleges and universities ought to challenge students to think more broadly, and that general education has to be the place to do it because it's the only way we can guarantee that students will think about these things.  I found the book thoughtful and thought-provoking.

Yes, I understand that he is speaking of a core curriculum, but he also has passages such as this:

"Ironically, students are much more interested in taking courses on the American republic than professors are in teaching them. At research universities especially, where the rewards come for creativity and novelty, the subject is not trendy enough for most professors. Because "bold" and "radical" are the highest forms of praise for academic thought, teaching what citizens should know brings little respect."

and this:

"Harvard's recently voted curriculum expects all students to study American institutions to prepare them for "civic engagement." It is too soon to know what courses will fulfill that requirement. But I cautiously hope that we are stepping back from our relentless relativism and indifference to civic responsibility."

So I still maintain that, Dean or not, Lewis exemplifies a common trend: the belief that politics and "civic engagement" are matters on which anyone can pose as an expert. We rightly dismiss non-scientists who attempt to intervene in debates that are driven by highly specialized data. Why should we not do the same in this area?

[not_a_gradstudent1]

He is unhappy that political scientists are not thrilled to be teaching undergraduates the nuts and bolts of American goverment and politics and thinks we are not doing enough of it. News flash-- most of us are, just don't tell us we should find fulfillment in it.

That struck me too, but I found the unsupported assertions about students wanting to take and professors not wanting to teach American institutions courses even more irritating. Take, for example, this passage:

Ironically, students are much more interested in taking courses on the American republic than professors are in teaching them. At research universities especially, where the rewards come for creativity and novelty, the subject is not trendy enough for most professors. Because "bold" and "radical" are the highest forms of praise for academic thought, teaching what citizens should know brings little respect. Yet students hunger for enlightenment about their country. Enrollment in Harvard's course on the American presidency has averaged 165 over the past eight years — even though it satisfies none of Harvard's core requirements.

Someone's been teaching that presidency course that students keep taking. Was that someone coerced into it? Why would that have been the case if the course doesn't satisfy any core requirements? And does the enrollment figure really support the claim that "students hunger for enlightenment about their country"? It could just be that it's a "gut" course that students flock to for the easy A.
I could go on, but I've got a bunch of American political institutions lessons to finish prepping for tomorrow...

[sibyl]

So I still maintain that, Dean or not, Lewis exemplifies a common trend: the belief that politics and "civic engagement" are matters on which anyone can pose as an expert.

Forgive me, but I don't see how the passages you quoted suggest this conclusion.  (Maybe I've been telling too many students that quotations don't speak for themselves and need to be explicated.)  To whom does he attribute expertise?  He doesn't say who should teach these courses, and so I don't see that he's suggesting that, say, a specialist in comparative government or even a chemist should teach them.  He doesn't suggest that a student who has taken such a course is an expert, only a well-prepared citizen.  Would you kindly clarify your argument?

[betterslac]

 

So I still maintain that, Dean or not, Lewis exemplifies a common trend: the belief that politics and "civic engagement" are matters on which anyone can pose as an expert.

Forgive me, but I don't see how the passages you quoted suggest this conclusion.  (Maybe I've been telling too many students that quotations don't speak for themselves and need to be explicated.)  To whom does he attribute expertise?  He doesn't say who should teach these courses, and so I don't see that he's suggesting that, say, a specialist in comparative government or even a chemist should teach them.  He doesn't suggest that a student who has taken such a course is an expert, only a well-prepared citizen.  Would you kindly clarify your argument?

I am not saying that he wants non-political scientists should teach politics courses, or that he  thinks people from other subfields should or should not teach in American politics.

I am saying he is posing as an expert on civic engagement, and pontificating on the kinds of courses political science professors should teach in order for students to obtain the particular knowledge of American politics he thinks they should have. And I am suggesting that he is not an expert, and that his suggestions as to the kinds of courses we as political scientists should teach are as uninformed as would mine with regard to the kinds of computer science courses he and his colleagues should teach.

I am also suggesting that this is a trend-- that everyone thinks he or she is an expert on politics (just as everyone who has gone to church thinks he or she is an expert in religion).

[daniel_von_flanagan]

I am saying he is posing as an expert on civic engagement, and pontificating on the kinds of courses political science professors should teach in order for students to obtain the particular knowledge of American politics he thinks they should have. And I am suggesting that he is not an expert, and that his suggestions as to the kinds of courses we as political scientists should teach are as uninformed as would mine with regard to the kinds of computer science courses he and his colleagues should teach.

Well, there is an important issue here, and it arises either explicitly or implicitly in every real-world (ie, real-university) core discussion.  If you are a mathematician, or a physicist, or an electrical engineer, then you want your students to learn Fortran, because this is the lingua franca of numerical analysis and deterministic modeling.  However, few if any CS departments teach Fortran, as it is generally considered a primitive language without interest in the academic CS community.  Now, the mathematician or physicist might not be in a position to tell the CS department what to teach, but I do think they have standing as to whether Fortran should be taught at their university by somebody, and if there is a core requirement for students to know a computer language then a strong case can be made that it should include Fortran, even if the CS department is not interested in teaching it.

Similarly, I would never presume to tell Political Science professors what to teach in their classes, but if there is to be a core requirement for such a course then I absolutely claim a voice in what should qualify, since such a requirement is not necessarily designed to make students better at academic political analysis, and with the rest of the core is the instantiation of the general philosophy of the faculty as a whole as to what constitutes a college-educated person.

Now, when the complaint is that faculty in department X are not leaping at the opportunity to teach a course which ostensibly is in the domain of department X, of course that is irritating, but those departments which offer a large component of service courses (eg English and Math) get this all the time, and have learned to live with it, either by teaching the course  because it brings them 'credit' in the form of enrolled bodies and gives them control over what the students see, by not teaching the course and shutting up when someone else steps in to teach it, or by arguing that what the students really need is a different course more like what they usually teach.  The latter is rare, for a variety of reasons, not least because it is hardly ever successful as an argument.

I am also suggesting that this is a trend-- that everyone thinks he or she is an expert on politics (just as everyone who has gone to church thinks he or she is an expert in religion).

Welcome to America. - DvF

[dolljepopp]

Does anyone else love watching theatre and English departments mud wrestle over Shakespeare?

[aandsdean]

Does anyone else love watching theatre and English departments mud wrestle over Shakespeare?

Not only have I watched it, but done it, since Shakespeare is somewhat in my field.

The smart money is on collaboration on this one.

[sibyl]

I am saying he is posing as an expert on civic engagement, and pontificating on the kinds of courses political science professors should teach in order for students to obtain the particular knowledge of American politics he thinks they should have. And I am suggesting that he is not an expert, and that his suggestions as to the kinds of courses we as political scientists should teach are as uninformed as would mine with regard to the kinds of computer science courses he and his colleagues should teach.

I am also suggesting that this is a trend-- that everyone thinks he or she is an expert on politics (just as everyone who has gone to church thinks he or she is an expert in religion).

Thanks for the clarification.  I'll repeat something I said earlier: Lewis claims expertise in curriculum, not in political science.  Even if we reject his claims to expertise on the basis of his experience, as DvF says any faculty member has standing to discuss the core curriculum.

He's not arguing that civic engagement is the only thing that political scientists should teach.  He is arguing that preparation for civic engagement should be a sine qua non of any core curriculum.  That's a debatable proposition, but it has much to recommend itself.  Our civic institutions depend on the participation of informed and engaged citizens.  If engagement tends to produce people who overestimate their political expertise... well, that's a price I'm willing to pay.

Does anyone else love watching theatre and English departments mud wrestle over Shakespeare?

Of course.  I bring popcorn, and make comments in iambic pentameter and wait to see who notices.  To those who first discover my motif, I gladly pledge my vote and all support.