A few things online that caught my attention this week:
Pay teachers $100,000 a year.
Did Trump defile an American “sacred space” last week? More here.
City Journal hosts a forum on higher education that includes pieces by Wilfred McClay and John DiIulio
More journalists are leaving cities and “finding America”
Christianity Today has a new website.
Can the GOP really be a pro-labor party?
Christian colleges “finishing well“
The Dispatch and The Bulwark seem to have some disagreements
Mortin Hoi Jensen reviews a new collection of Christopher Hitchen essays.
Michael Kazin on Labor Day
The Mormon War of 1858‘
College professors need to learn how to teach
“Trade-ification” in university press publishing.
Campus faith leaders on political activism and colleges and universities.
Zimmerman’s article on professors needing to “learn how to teach” sent a shudder down my spine.
He laments that the White House and Congress have thus far neglected teaching in their concerns over higher ed–as if getting elected legislators involved in evaluating teaching practices is a wise idea.
Similarly, we have the invocation of “science”–once people were lost in a pre-scientific fog, says Zimmerman, but now there’s no longer any excuse to ignore the sure findings of the most up-to-date research on the topic: “If you truly believe in the power of science, you need to apply it in your own classroom.” What a blessing to be living in an era when we finally have a definitive science of teaching! A great leap forward is surely on the horizon once the scientists and the government can link up and develop a five-year plan.
And what will this look like? Zimmerman gives us some hints. You can be sure there will no longer be students “sitting inert while the scholar at the blackboard drones on and on.” (It’s fascinating that these sorts of articles–which are essentially a lecture on the page–are never accused of “droning on and on.” Also–“blackboard”? They still have those?) What will there be then? “Wonderful instructors” who have students “create podcasts” is what. Brilliant! Let’s get some tech in there! That’ll energize things! What an original idea.
And as a kind of rubric governing the entire enterprise, we get to hear from a student, whose perspective gets highlighted in the article as the overarching guidance for any teachers aspiring to excellence: Above all, if you want to “engage” students (and not merely “talk” to them), professors need to “put the fun back into class.” There’s a fresh idea no one’s ever thought of.
It’s interesting. Walk into the average modern classroom today and you’ll hear music playing during the intro period, see a series of splashy powerpoint slides, watch a video or two–often humorous and taken from pop culture–and see students acting out dramatizations of the topic or doing some version of show-and-tell, yet, despite all that, a fatal weakness in the educational enterprise remains: we’re still not having enough fun.
Like the author says, “Teaching well is hard.” Fortunately, we’ve got scientists working on that.
Let me guess: the solution will involve more gadgets?