Don’t Yank the Sage From His Stage
“In most college classrooms,” wrote Alison King in a seminal 1993 article, “the professor lectures and the students listen and take notes. The professor is the central figure, the ‘sage…
Posts tagged with
“teaching”
The College Classroom Can Be a Judgment-Free Zone
Step inside any gym and you’ll likely see a familiar sight: regular gym buffs, for whom the gym is a second home, using the workout machines with ease. You will…
Are English Departments Really Dying?
In an earlier millennium, yours truly undertook graduate studies in history and persisted a couple of years before getting cold feet. Some new PhDs could not find academic positions; some…
Colleges: Go Back to Basics
Colleges perform two vital functions: They disseminate to the people (especially their own students) the knowledge and wisdom acquired through time in ways that enhance the common good, and they also…
Math Teachers are Taught that Elementary Math Education is a “Struggle for Justice”
Does the average person have any idea what is now considered “normal” in the field of K-12 education? I already had some misgivings after reading Jay Schalin’s devastating review of…
A Perennial Question: What Makes a Good College Teacher?
Each generation returns the same complaints: college teachers drone, college teachers lack creativity and spark, nay, they often lack even rudimentary pedagogical awareness. And since the ascendance of what William…
Derek Bok’s Higher Expectations – Our Colleges Should Accomplish More
Former Harvard president Derek Bok has long lamented that our institutions of higher education largely underperform in their missions. He has now written another book making that argument. His Higher…
How Can Professors Inspire Students to Want to Learn?
COVID-19 has revolutionized how we think about online college teaching. Until last spring, two perspectives predominated. One argued that massively enrolled online classes presented by impressive teachers or prestigious universities…
True Learning Starts With Real Mentorship
There’s a chasm between the purpose of a liberal arts education and how many colleges and universities actually operate. Throughout academia, excessive value is placed on efficiency, research publications, and…
Without Financial Transparency, Colleges Mislabel Research Spending as Instructional
Public colleges spend public money, but college officials are reluctant to make information about their budgets easy to understand. That aversion to transparency makes it easier to pass non-instructional expenses…