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[verafrance]

Given the insufferable Parisian weather (today was miserably cold when the rain started coming), I have watched a lot of TV. It's the holidays as well. Interesting things seen recently:

- a documentary on how fois gras is being made in horrible conditions in Eastern Europe and then imported (smuggled?) into France, where there are all kinds of proper regulations about how producers should do it, no animal maltreatment and all that. I had recently been buying fois gras at the supermarket, and the next time I went to buy it, I looked for info on the can about its production origin and there was nothing, nil. I took this as a bad sign, and stopped buying this brand, will now look for another one.

- Panel about different interpretations of who was Jesus, which  included Frédéric Lenoir, author of "Le Christ philosophe." I haven't read it, but you can see what it's about here:
http://www.amazon.fr/Christ-philosophe-Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric-Lenoir/dp/2259204899

 It then led me to this very interesting debate with Régis Debray:
http://www.culture-et-foi.com/texteliberateur/lenoir_debray.htm

- (well this is on the Internet) another nice example of
the bashing of anything and everything American, specially if it refers to a part of society which in France is mainly dominated by the French left, in this case, higher ed. A French professor, currently working in the US, deplores the system of student evaluations in American higher ed. While I would agree with several of her criticisms, a system with no student evaluations (--guess where they have that?--) is part of a system of no checks and balances,  no student feedback, no student rights, no accountability for poor or negligent performance by professors. The question is much more complex.

http://www.lemonde.fr/opinions/chronique/2008/12/08/evaluation-des-professeurs_1127950_3232.html

[frenchdoctor]

Hello

Frenchdoctor, are you M. Bernard Kouchner ?

No, no, I'm nothing but an average, run-on-the-mill, ordinary doctor.  

If I were a member of the government, I'd decide a massive pay raise for all scholars in the humanities. I'd order the GIGN to assault departments of education. I'd make my book a mandatory reading for all teachers and students in the whole country. I'd oblige lesser writters, like Bonnefoy or Le Clezio, to bow in front of me. All my lectures would look like Napoléon's crowning, and all my students like Marie Gillain.

Some of you might be allowed to carry the golden train.


PS : I don't like my pseudonym, frankly. But I needed something that rapidly shows that
a) I'm French
b) I'm a doctor (In French lit, BTW).

[frenchdoctor]

French professor, currently working in the US, deplores the system of student evaluations in American higher ed. While I would agree with several of her criticisms, a system with no student evaluations (--guess where they have that?--) is part of a system of no checks and balances,  no student feedback, no student rights, no accountability for poor or negligent performance by professors. The question is much more complex.

I'm far from being a leftist, but I must say I agree with the article. The consumerist principle of student's evals is highly questionable. You can't deny that it often turns into a blackmail system that lowers the standards. "I give you good grades, you give me good evals." It's the kind of (false) win-win situation that leads to disaster.

Is it check and balance, or is it a closed circuit ? A Madoff style closed circuit ?

Plus, it would be much worse in France, since French universities are non selective by law. In the USA, at least, there is a selection at admission, that can balance the things a little bit. It's not a one-way process. But in France, university is non-selective. It means the process will be one-sided : students evaluate teachers, but teachers have no right to select students.

In short, in a beatnick's dream made true, the students replace the teachers. Incidently, it means teachers are now useless : petty employees, hired as entertainers, are sufficient. Isn't that process already at work in the USA ? A few decades ago, scholars were the leaders of HE. Today, they are mere employees, forced to obey their students and the administrators. They were executives ; they are now retainers.

To build a bridge between your two topics, theology and education, may I suggest to read the conferences of Laurent Lafforgue ? According to him, the crisis of education is spiritual by nature. We, teachers, let ourselves be turned into vassals because we don't believe in the grandeur of culture and knowledge anymore. Admittedly, it's far above the usual social explanations (a-social thinking is so rare in today's academia), but there is some truth in what he says.

http://www.ihes.fr/~lafforgue/textes/EcoleTroisOrdres.pdf 

http://www.ihes.fr/~lafforgue/textes/TraditionFecondite.pdf


(Oh my God. This is the most off-topic thread I've seen in a while. But, hey, talking about weather isn't an invitation to iddle chat ?)

[verafrance]

I'm far from being a leftist, but I must say I agree with the article. The consumerist principle of student's evals is highly questionable. You can't deny that it often turns into a blackmail system that lowers the standards. "I give you good grades, you give me good evals." It's the kind of (false) win-win situation that leads to disaster.

Is it check and balance, or is it a closed circuit ? A Madoff style closed circuit ?

But have you ever taught at a good or at a very good university in the US? I don't think we can take the student evaluations out of context, they are one measure part of a much more complex system of checks and balances. I cannot speak about what's happening in higher ed on a national level, I cannot say if what she describes is applicable to the majority of American universities. However, it does go against just about every experience I know of in higher ed, where there was little blackmailing and abuse being carried through student evaluations. Except for one class taught by a TA, where a deal was certainly struck with the students, I don't know of serious problems with students having so much power nor the motivation  to collectively blackmail a professor through student evaluations.

Who evaluates professors in France? As far as I know, no one. Carte blanche. Of course, that is all very well when the professor is ethical, professional, and a great teacher, but when that is not the case, it's part of a larger system of problems. No check and no balance.

As to the "entertainment" question, I think you went overboard :-) Students are not deciding the curricula, but this system of evaluations does favor professors with more flair. But that's not a problem with just students, the entire world is like that. One reason why a twenty year-old kid who can bounce around a ball in an amusing way or sing and dance can become a multi-millionaire in a couple of years. That's how much humans love entertainment. Still, this problem is more an issue with more immature students, younger ones. I think the more serious the student, the more they care about how well the professor is teaching, challenging and helping them, not if they are being more or less entertained.

[verafrance]

Plus, it would be much worse in France, since French universities are non selective by law. In the USA, at least, there is a selection at admission, that can balance the things a little bit. It's not a one-way process. But in France, university is non-selective. It means the process will be one-sided : students evaluate teachers, but teachers have no right to select students.

Well, here I definitely disagree. In France, the selection is done after students enter the university, during the undergrad years, with a secondary selection hoop to get into grad school. The stats given at the time of the Pécresse brouhaha said the failure rate for undergraduates was at 50% on a national level. So they let everyone in, and then flunk half of them out. I think you may agree that there could be a way to be more efficient than this.

[verafrance]

(Oh my God. This is the most off-topic thread I've seen in a while. But, hey, talking about weather isn't an invitation to iddle chat ?)

Speaking of this, did you see there were over 80 accidents in the Parisian region as dusk fell and the rain froze and turned the roads into a huge interlaced skating rink? I hope the RATP will be OK tomorrow morning.

[dellaroux]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pj5wQWUg9j8

(About 1:30 in)

ah....merci bien. I phink I get it now....

[frenchdoctor]

Verafrance, we obviously disagree. No big deal. On such issues, I disagree with 99.99% of academics. I like being the minority.

First, a detail : the careers of academics in France are evaluated by the CNU. It is probably not perfect but, all in all, peer-reviews are more serious than customer satisfaction surveys. This said, there is no good way to evaluate research, since it's supposed to be new and original by definition. You have to accept a part of imprecision and failure, which is necessary in all human creation.

I have no experience teaching in the USA. Actually, my background is mostly research.

For a laugh, let's imagine myself in front of an academic SC :
"I don't believe in student's centered teaching methods, and I refuse the principle of teaching evaluations." If I'd say that, which is what I think, what would be my chance of being hired ? None, of course. Academic freedom doesn't go that far.

Let's try to be logical one second. I've spend more than 10 years of my life studying literature. How could a 17yo kid, with no experience whatsoever, evaluate the quality of my work ? How can someone in his right mind even consider that it can be possible ? Why do scholars feel so insecure that they require advice from kids ?

About selection in France... unfortunately, like everything here, the situation is so complicated that it is much difficult to explain in a few words. Some others do better than me :

http://www.r-lecole.freesurf.fr/sup/jourde.html

(see the end of article : "diplômes dévalués" et "illusion démagogique")

The comparison between the two systems is always difficult because, in fact, we don't really have universities in France. "Grandes Ecoles" do the teaching. Public agencies, like the CNRS, do the research. The places we call "universités" are in fact useless. They are empty frames.

Plus, the selection you're talking about exists because students from "classes préparatoires" and "grandes écoles" reach universities at grad level. Suppressing this hoop, like Pecresse is trying to do, would equalize the whole system at the lower level.

And I agree there should be a more efficient system. But the main problem of French Higher Education is... secondary education. You can't imagine the level of students at age 17 or 18. Many of them aren't even 6th grade level ! How could university do miracles ? You can't turn an illiterate, unread, unstudied 17yo kid into an acceptable student by waving a magical wand.

And the first question remains : why do you think such students are qualified to evaluate their teachers ? How an illiterate kid could evaluate the work of a professor in literature ? This I don't understand.

[verafrance]

Verafrance, we obviously disagree. No big deal. On such issues, I disagree with 99.99% of academics. I like being the minority.

It's not a big deal if we disagree.

I don't know how the CNU evaluations work, but, peer review? It sounds very much like a cosy Madoff-SEC peer tie. No one has any clue what is going on inside the classroom, that's my impression.

I agree with you that the difficulties in higher ed don't start at the first year of college. But I've had to listen to countless speeches on how "horrible and despicable the Americans are for daring to select students for college, while the noble and humanitarian French offer college education for all." Then they just omit that they throw half of them out without a college education. Most French people can't even cite the failure rate, they've never heard it on the media. And yes, there are the Grandes Ecoles, but you know better than I do the small number of students enrolled there compared to the huge number of students in the universities.

Now about the student evaluations, as I said, they are part of an entire system of checks and balances and of evaluations. When you speak, it seems you think a few student evaluations are all that exist to judge a professor in the US, but they are just one instrument. Certainly the administration, the faculty hierarchy, etc., are all involved in the evaluation process and they understand that a student evaluation is exactly from the student student's  perspective, and this student is not a professor, a dean, whatever. 

Have you ever seen a student evaluation? It sounds like you have a very unrealistic idea of what a student is evaluating on the form.  You can verify that many of the questions can be answered quite fairly by a student, even one who is as young as 17, and actually even younger. Here's one example:
http://www.celt.iastate.edu/set/samplequestions.html

As you can see, students are also asked to evaluate themselves, and in case you didn't know, the evaluations are anonymous. 

Student evaluations can also be very helpful to communicate feedback to professors (and others) about teaching methods or problems. I'm not sure if student evaluations are always mandatory, but they are usually used all along. So we are also not talking just about 17 year-olds, if we consider  that from freshmen to doctoral students we'll have on average a 17-35 year-old range, you are having feedback from a much wider range of students, many of whom are quite capable of evaluating their teachers in at least a reasonable way and offering interesting  feedback. It also helps the administration know when there is a problem.

As I said though in my first post, I also agree with many of the author's criticisms, I just can't say how much those problems exist on a nation-wide basis, because what she described is not compatible with my knowledge or experience in higher ed. But if you think an 18 year-old is not even capable of evaluating a teacher during a course (from the student's perspective), then you must  surely be against them having the right to vote, n'est pas?

Unfortunately, I find that professors are not a group apart from the rest of humanity, and certainly no different than hedge fund managers. The more you deregulate the overseeing and let them regulate themselves, the more trouble is in store. On the other hand, if the system starts going towards any other extreme, it will surely present problems as well. But as I said, that has not been my experience in the US.

[dellaroux]

1) I think the difference might be that Frenchdoctor is--rightly, of course--saying that students cannot evaluate whether his/her knowledge of, say, French literature, is comprehensive; whether his/her research is cutting-edge sharp; whether his/her collateral knowledge of related fields like cultural history, philsophy, theology, or the history of ideas, is adequate to the task of analysis and commentary required for teaching content with integrity.

Those areas, of course, students of any age are unqualified to comment upon because by definition they do not have the knowledge base themselves from which to discuss the issues.

And even if I am railing about student insanity at the end of the term, as I might well be, I am not generally complaining about that level of presumption in most of my students. They do understand that there are things they don't know and need to learn to go on in life.

2) But students can, and do, have a basis for commentary (if they are also behaving/writing with integrity) about how the material was presented to them.

Was it given in a logically organized format that they could begin to understand? (not all teachers offer the 'balloon strings' needed for debutants to "catch" the first thread of a lofty, complicated ideology floating 'way above their heads. On the other hand, some of the most brilliant do...I was at one time staff support for an internationally known economist whose students were unanimous in appreciating his/her teaching style.)

Was it offered in a considerate way? (Some instructors, believing themselves to be above their students, can be condescending, even unkind, projecting clearly a sense that they "can't be bothered" with teaching to any standard, or caring about the confusion they leave in their wake. Others spend time explaining, listening, looking students in the eyes during lectures and talking kindly with them after class.)

3) So, perhaps I'm saying "you're both right," and at the same time. Two things (at least) are operant, in my estimation, in teaching. One is the horizontal relationship--all, teachers and students, are human. The other is the vertical connection--students are and have always been said to "sit under" a teacher for a reason.

I think the issue is balancing these two so that the basic principles of fairness, communicativity, and integrity in learning and teaching are maintained, and I think many times that the ways of doing this are so specific that, while guidelines can and must be given, individual humans, being human, will have widely different ways of interpreting and working within them to bring the thing to a satisfactory conclusion.

Relational without being relativized, perhaps.

(And I'm writing this now because it's grey and snowing where I am (and due to continue doing so most of the day...we're in for up to 8 inches again, they say...) and I'd MUCH rather be in Paris!)

[verafrance]

Exactly.

[verafrance]

No snow nor rain here! I guess we were fortunate that it all came yesterday and today. Then again, several hours to go until midnight. It was a bit cold late afternoon, but not much. 7000 policemen have been deployed in Paris for New Year's Eve. No alcohol and no firecrackers allowed at the public monument hot spots in Paris. Sorry to hear you are stuck en province. (It's so French to say "en province!") There is Paris, then there is the rest, of course. My students always need to correct me because if I don't pay attention, I'll say "provence" and not "province." I have trouble pronouncing a lot of these little French nasal sounds.

[frenchdoctor]

I'd happily agree with Dellaroux moderate point of view, but I'm afraid it's not what is currently being cooked in the nefarious kitchens of the French ministery.

Verafrance, I think peer-review is the only way to work, even if it's very unperfect. Who can decide that X is a better astrophysicist than Y, if not others astrophysicists ? Should SCs conduct a poll in the streets to determine who is the best ?

Could you evaluate the work of a, let's say, cardio-vascular surgeon ? Me, certainly not. If I had heart disease, I would have no other choice than to blindly trust the medical institutions. I would not choose my surgeon at random on catalogue, I would not ask a vote to know who is the best. On what ground, anyway, since I am completely incompetent ? I'd have to trust people who know better than I do.

This is not oppression, it has nothing to do with the right to vote, it's the way any human society exists. Because we are not perfect and we can't know everything about everything, we need to rely on institutions. Unless you're a hippie or a libertarian (that's roughly the same thing) you have to accept the way the human society works.

And I don't think a 18yo isn't capable of evaluating the work of teachers. More precisely, some of them can and some of them can't -- and given the overall shape of French education, the second category is by far the most important.

I think that, by principle, young students should not have too much power in academia, especially should not have the power to evaluate their teachers. Not because they are stupid, but because they lack experience. Because research, culture and knowledge are long-term processes, that require to climb the stairs step by step, with a lot of patience and humility. Because I don't, absolutely don't, believe in the creative, magical spontaneity of youth.

In short, to me, teaching evals are contrary to the basic principles of education themselves. For better explanations, read Hannah Arendt's "Between past and future".

(I don't know if Thomas Cushman article "who best to tame grade inflation ?" is still available on the web. Interesting point of view, too.)

[verafrance]

Verafrance, I think peer-review is the only way to work, even if it's very unperfect. Who can decide that X is a better astrophysicist than Y, if not others astrophysicists ?

Why are you insisting on framing the issue as above, when students are not being asked to evaluate if X astrophysicist is better than Y on their student evaluations? That is not the purpose nor the  content of a student evaluation. I guess you didn't look at the example evaluation I linked before.

If astrophysicist X is completely incompetent at explaining even the most basic astrophysicist concepts to students and astrophysicist Y is an excellent teacher, and if X does research and Y does no research, who is the better teacher? If you were sitting in X's course and you learned nothing and you sat in Y's course and you learned enormously - who is the better teacher? It doesn't matter that X does research and his peers will applaud, he is a terrible teacher. And students could evaluate that, even if in imperfect ways.

This is not oppression, it has nothing to do with the right to vote, it's the way any human society exists. Because we are not perfect and we can't know everything about everything, we need to rely on institutions.

The right to vote has everything to do with the capacity to evaluate issues and another person's ability to do a job -- including all the range of politicians that are supposed to run a country in a democratic system.

Take this example, a professor who never hands out a syllabus and bibliography during an entire course, who never clearly says what is expected of students for the course, nor for the exam, nor for the grading criteria.  I didn't even know such behavior existed in internationally recognized universities before coming to France. This is inconceivable in the US. If you say an 18 or a 35  year-old cannot evaluate correctly this professor is  lax and unprofessional, even after repeated  requests from students, how can you argue that these same students should have the right and the necessary knowledge to evaluate who should be their  president and participate in the democratic process at 18? How many years will it take for them to begin to understand who can do a good job as a politician, if, according to you, before they are 28, they wouldn't be able to know that a lax teacher is a lax teacher? I find your argument incoherent. It seems to me that a fundamental difference between the two systems is that in France the concept that students have a right to quality education is quite absent.

Unless you're a hippie or a libertarian (that's roughly the same thing) you have to accept the way the human society works.

I think that, by principle, young students should not have too much power in academia, especially should not have the power to evaluate their teachers. Not because they are stupid, but because they lack experience. Because research, culture and knowledge are long-term processes, that require to climb the stairs step by step, with a lot of patience and humility. Because I don't, absolutely don't, believe in the creative, magical spontaneity of youth.

Accepting everything in the world equals absolute passivity and conformity, plus it equals the behavior under a dictator, submit and be quiet. Allowing a student to hand in an evaluation and feedback does not give the student excessive power, it gives them a voice and a chance to participate, also to critique, including in their own evaluation. I think the latter is equally important, the more we can orient students to reflect on their own commitment and investment in learning, and to understand their responsibilities, the better job we do as educators. You see, if a professor is demanding with grades, but ethical, and then the students use their evaluations to complain that they didn't simply get an A for doing nothing, if the professor cannot justify their grading policy before the administration, the problem does not lie with the fact that there are student evaluations.

I also think that universities must separate teaching and research as much as possible, when people are not talented for both, and this possibility of separate tracks is usually not  the case, at least at initial stages. A good  researcher who is not a good teacher should not be forced to teach, firstly because it's not part of their top skills, and secondly because his/her students have a right to quality teaching. But neither should researchers be penalized in their research careers because they are not gifted teachers. But I also think teaching skills is something that can be highly improved, specially with certain kinds of experiences and training. So people shouldn't immediately  give up on a weak teacher, because there's also a big learning curve for some individuals.  Unfortunately, the American system is usually too competitive to allow them to have a chance to struggle along to the point where they become very good teachers.

Lastly, I think it's a pity that we don't have more flexible hour schedules with research jobs, more part-time research jobs. It's always some box or another.
 

[frenchdoctor]

The answer to your first question is in Thomas Cushman's article.

For the rest, Alain Finkielkraut explains everything much better than I ever could :

http://www.akadem.org/sommaire/themes/liturgie/7/2/module_2285.php