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A Kinder, Gentler MIT?
One of the hidden advantages of teaching literature is that you acquire a whole series of handy quotations. One favorite of mine comes from Wallace Stevens: "One's ignorance is one's chief asset." I find that consoling whenever I deal with an auto mechanic or somebody on the help desk at I/S.
But now I turn to my least favorite substantial American poet, Walt Whitman: "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself." Which is by way of introducing some thoughts on how we portray ourselves and MIT to our students.
I once attended a dinner at the Faculty Club, which gathered Freshman Advisors, and which addressed the issue of what could be done to improve the freshman year. I was delighted to hear one of my distinguished senior colleagues (thankfully, a biologist, no sentimental Humanist) propose the abolition of problem sets. As I recall the rebuttal (and it was loud and fervent, after an interval of shocked silence had ended) amounted to the argument that life is hell and we owe it to our students to prepare them for that. Much the same argument was presented by an alumnus, in a very recent number of Technology Review.
Having been raised in a staunch Calvinist tradition, I often remark on the judgmental rigor of science and technology. I have more than once argued, in these very pages, that we subject our students to terrible, even unethical pressure, with baneful impact on their health and dubious positive results on their learning curve in the subjects we teach. We seem convinced that unless someone fails the course, it just isn't demanding enough. Now, however, I want to argue that we are nicer than we let on.
I am prompted to this conclusion by the instance of one of my freshman advisees. S/he [I want to try to retain as much confidentiality as I can, even at the price of verbal awkwardness] had achieved a fall term record that prompted the considerations of the CAP (Committee on Academic Performance), and a "warning" was duly issued (justly so, in my opinion; even the student admitted that s/he had simply not taken things seriously enough or logged the necessary hours battling with homework). During the spring term, I had little contact with him/her, except the occasional e-mail which, unsettlingly, announced a major involvement in more than one major undergraduate theatrical enterprise, and I was not surprised to receive a wealth of "Fifth Week Flags." Sure enough, the results at the end of the term were just about identical to those in December. I talked with the student, with his/her mother, with a number of people in the ARC (Academic Resource Center) whose opinion and experience I have come to respect, and I could not help feeling that the student was facing an interruption in his/her MIT career.
Which, truth to tell, seemed a healthy thing. There was a level at which s/he simply did not want to face up to the demands of an MIT education. I seriously, if unsuccessfully, proposed to him/her that s/he plan some time off, no matter what the CAP did.
I entered the CAP chamber (all right, it was only the Bush Room) with considerable nervousness. I was asked for my recommendation, and I gave it. The Committee then deliberated – and continued the student's probationary status.
The chair assured me that the Committee had required some half a dozen or so students to withdraw, that very morning. But in this case their judgment showed patience, charity, and a distinct willingness to "take a chance" on a very bright young person.
All of which simply astonished me. Where was the firm, rigorous hand of Judgment?
All I am arguing, in a roundabout way, is that we communicate to students the sense that we are indifferent to their lives and psyches, committed to "Education by Ordeal," and not in the least willing to "cut some slack." A slightly digressive instance is grading on the curve. Ask the next group of students you encounter whether MIT courses are customarily curved. I guarantee they will say "yes." I certainly believed that was the case, until Tom Greytak and Steve Lerman pointed out that grade curves are against the Rules of the Faculty. Ask students to cite one instance in their own experience, when a course was not curved, and they will give you a blank look.
Somehow we have spread abroad the misconception that we intend to "sort" them academically by more or less setting them at each others' throats. A small but telling instance of the phenomenon I'm addressing: it's not so much what we do (although surely that could take much tending and mending) as the way we do it, not so much the explicit as the implicit messages we communicate.
We are – shocking though it may be – kinder and gentler than we'd like to admit, it seems.
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