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Member, Presidential Task Force on
Student Life and Learning;
A winner of the 1999 Karl Taylor Compton
Prize.
In the philosophy of the Educational Triad, the Task Force on Student Life and Learning argues that the education that twenty-first century MIT students need is composed of three different and equally important elements: academics, research, and community. The Task Force goes on to say that while MIT has always accomplished the former two exceedingly well, we lag behind on community. However, the Institute currently lacks a strategic vision for what this community should be. Before further discussion can be fruitful, we need to agree on what we're talking about.
Why Define Community?
I am the first to agree that communication does not require explicit definition of every term. But in the case of a vague public goal like "community," agreeing on the results we want will help clarify our discussions of how to achieve them. Indeed, we court undesirable consequences by leaving the term undefined. I have often heard people use a cloudy, visionless notion of community as "something that we need more of." Some people welcome this way of speaking because it affords the illicit luxury of defining "community" in any way they like: a person or committee may argue for any idea by saying that it will "build community." Such statements are very clever when used to support a favorite idea, because their meaninglessness makes them unassailable.
Community, when conceived as "something that we need more of," quickly becomes defined as the result of anyone's pet preconceived idea. In proposing a definition for "community," and then presenting my own vision of what the MIT community should be, I also propose more broadly to judge ideas on the basis of a predetermined notion of what we want to get out of them – not the other way around. We should ask, "What is the community we want?" and then, "How do we get there?" We should not ask, "How can I define `community' such that my favorite idea can be said to improve it?"
The Meaning of Community
"Community," in what I believe is the Educational Triad sense, refers collectively to educational areas involving interpersonal interaction, learning how to manage that interaction better, and fostering interaction across traditional boundaries. Interpersonal interaction skills – including teamwork, leadership, multicultural awareness, conflict resolution, effective communication, and many other areas – are the areas in which MIT needs to build. Community education should help students gain life experience at personal, social, subcommunity, and broad community levels. With a balanced Educational Triad, MIT will be able to move from the doldrums to the vanguard of educational innovation in the community.
There is significant overlap between community education and academic education, especially in areas like writing and speaking. I shall return to this overlap later; for now, let me emphasize that although it exists – just as it does between academics and research – community education constitutes a separate leg of the Triad in its own right. Implementing community education does not mean merely extending academic life by, say, holding recitations in the residences. It means recognizing that learning to interact is a vital element of a quality educational experience, and then acting to provide that whole experience at MIT.
A Vision for Community
What follows is my own vision for MIT community. I hope that it will meet with approval. Even if it doesn't, I hope MIT will adopt the strategy of working toward a clear vision rather than tactically shooting in the dark.
Imagine a strong, whole MIT community whose strength derives from the strength, vitality, and diversity of the subcommunities comprising it. Strong subcommunities have always been among the most cherished assets of nonacademic life at MIT; they include residential communities, the varied array of clubs and activities, and others. I propose that these strong subcommunities are a strength to build on, and that we can and should build from them to create a strong community of the whole MIT.
This vision challenges a misinformed and unconstructive view that has nevertheless been gaining popularity in some quarters: the idea that strengthening the whole-MIT community will require weakening the subcommunities. This view is unconstructive in that it will prevent us from using our strengths, and it is misinformed in that it steadfastly ignores evidence and experience to the contrary. In fact, counterexamples to this wrong view are all around us. Let me present a couple of familiar cases of where strong communities successfully maintain strong subcommunities.
I call my vision the "federal model" after a famously successful 223-year experiment in subcommunity-supported community, of which we are each a part. America is composed of strong subcommunities, marked by broad differences in culture: variations and innovations that make Massachusetts, Texas, Georgia, California, and Minnesota what they are. No one proposes to force Texans to move to New England in order to create a stronger America. Yet the first allegiance of Americans is to America itself – all of the states exist under the federal umbrella. The subcommunities are strong, and may help to define individual Americans personally, but those subcommunities are parts of America.
For a higher-education example, consider Yale. The Yale community is built up from residential subcommunities that are much stronger and more separate than MIT's have ever been. Yet they were Yale songs I grew up hearing down the long New Jersey Turnpike, as my father (an alumnus of Yale's Saybrook College) sang and tapped his foot on the accelerator. Yalies fondly remember Yale; it is "for God, for country and for Yale" that they fondly wave the handkerchief as they sing the last line of their alma mater. And each of Yale's twelve residential colleges is about as strong a subcommunity as it could possibly be.
Strong subcommunities are not where MIT has gone wrong; in fact, they're about the only area in nonacademic life where MIT has gone right. But MIT needs to link the subcommunities more strongly to the Institute as a whole. If subcommunities are seen and felt as part of MIT, then belonging to those subcommunities will mean belonging to MIT.
Attention, purse-string holders: this means supporting them at a level beyond the minimum for survival. Of course you can't solve a problem by just throwing money at it, but a strong MIT community does cost something. The primary reason, in my view, that the subcommunities are so disconnected from a sense of belonging, is that over several decades MIT has largely left them to fend for themselves. Student leaders today (and I have been one) put an altogether inordinate amount of time into begging for funds, dealing with poor facilities, compensating for an almost total lack of residence-based program offerings, and recovering emotionally from an Institute that pushes them hard in academics but does little to encourage them along the way, or to help them learn the life skills they know they need. Everyone knows that the subcommunities we have are formally a part of MIT, so it ought to be a paradox that students feel great allegiance for them but much less for MIT. In fact, as we all know, it is no paradox. Given how MIT has treated the subcommunities, it isn't really any wonder.
The current administration deserves much credit for making incremental strides in this area. However, MIT will need to make a radical strategic shift if it is to move from laggard to leader in community education. Tactical improvements will help stanch the bleeding, but implemented alone they cannot constitute a cure. The cure for MIT's ailing community life must come from a clear idea of what has gone wrong, an agreed-upon vision of what would be right, and a serious, high-level commitment to get there.
To those who claim that strong subcommunities have failed, I reply that MIT has never really tried to use them. Perhaps it is time we did.
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