Northwestern University - Syllabus Yearbook (Evanston, IL)

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Robert Church Professor of Eduction and History One of the reasons I became a teacher is the fact that I like doing historical research. I really enjoy the process of ordering disparate materials, taking a bunch of notecards, old journals, reading through them, and trying to say something that ' s interesting and provocative about them. It ' s a fascinating process that I love to do. Historys always afforded me that opportunity. But I ' ve carried it one step fur- ther in becoming a professor of education because I find that I am much less bound by disciplinary limits on teaching styles: I am much freer to be my own man. I ' m not sure that I can define an ideal teaching model for myself. The man who so influenced me in my junior year would sort of point at you with his eyes and his finger. He ' d ask, What is the answer to that? and you ' d answer or you ' d look stupid. He had classes and discussions worked out so that he always ended where he wanted to be with his conclusions. In a sense he was saying his piece, and it was clearly more stimulating than a lecture. I ' m really caught at the moment with the non-directive method which philosophically I don ' t believe in — I ' m not a Carl Rogers fan. I like to think of myself as tough-minded and yet I find that the non-directive approach proves to work best in awakening students to the possibility of what could be done with the material before them and how they can relate what they ' re doing in history to what they ' re doing in the real world. I haven ' t found the proper balance. I can really see no way of using a large lecture course except for obtaining factural information and for interpretation. In a sense, a lecture is a book that hasn ' t been written yet, and presumably lectures ought to be better than books — more advanced. But I don ' t see any real way to magically engage two hundred students in a give and take, or any kind of effective branching process where they can advance at their own pace, or think about things the way they want to. In a large lecture class, there ' s no way to get somebody ' s reac- tions to what you ' re saying. Teaching time does not need to dwell on the conveyance of information. This is where I think television, video tapes, or something like that could be used. It really doesn ' t make sense to take the time to give the same set of lectures every year. That time could be spent in taping the notes and maybe revising the tape every year to keep up with new information. The extra time could be spent in small groups. I ' m very much attracted to the idea of college as a time of opting out of pressures and of getting ahead in the world. I see college as a time to stretch your mind and try on a series of intellectual styles and personal styles without getting hurt — without losing the chance of promotion to this or that career. You get the chance to try different ways of thought and of experiencing either directly or through books different styles. In a sense I see college as just as important in giving you a chance to learn

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Allison Burnett Professor of Biology ones who are paying the money. These are the professors that should be carefully chosen for the task. Other professors that are more specialized or, in gener- al, poor teachers — and there are poor teachers — can still work with advanced students in smaller groups, and teach very specific and technical things. It ' s a big paradox, and we just have to come to the real- ization that a person can be a good teacher, can run a fine course, and still be very good at research. That combina- tion is not paradoxical. There ' s no conflict there, but the part that is a paradox is that a person who does give all his time to teaching, and becomes a superb teacher, is not rewarded. He ' s not promoted. He has to give the production the University wants — a published piece under the person ' s name. That ' s what they look at as pro- ductivitity. I don ' t see the point of having a major at all. Because when you want to go into your specialty in graduate school, you should be able to choose then. I find that the undergraduates ask much more basic questions. It ' s rather easy to teach graduate students because their questions are always very technical and very pinpointed. I don ' t think a person should have to start choosing what he ' s going to be doing the rest of his life in his freshman year. He may find in his junior year that some things become very excit- ing for him, but he can ' t catch up on the hours that he needs in that particular year. 27

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about yourself as it is in giving you a chance to learn about the world. College education should always be couched in terms of constant interplay between the self and the latest data, and allow you to interact as much as possible at your own speed and in your own way to find what you like and what you don ' t like. I find it difficult to know whether there is inherent pleasure in intellectuality for people who are not professionally committed to pursuing the life of a scholar. This is the kind of ego- centrism all college professors have — because we enjoy college everybody else must. I don ' t think that what one has accomplished by the graduate level is measureable. Presum- ably somebody coming out of college will be more sure of himself, more knowledgeable about himself and have a sense of values. Un- dergraduate education contributes to this. It has a lot to do with being away from home, having independence from the kind of petty requirements that characterize the high school. It ' s the stimulation of being in an atmosphere where so many students are going through the same kind of process. It ' s in an atmosphere that should value the kind of intellectucal playfulness which involves thinking for think- ing ' s own sake, thinking for the hell of it — the exchange of ideas, the exchange of feelings and the exchange of values that should go on in a non-punitive atmosphere. I respect students who are intellectually playful, who take ideas that I think one way about and think something different. How gen- eral this is among faculty members, I don ' t know. I have been shocked by some stories that I don ' t know are true or not, where intellec- tual playfulness has been penalized almost vindictively. I ' m surprised to see it at all. The general atmosphere of the whole university is perhaps too businesslike to support intellectual playfulness as the most prominent ideal. I find a kind of Norman Vincent Peale Power of Positive Thinking here — that Northwestern ' s really great. There is a freezing up attitude and a Shut up and like it atmosphere. There ' s a sense at this university that so many of the faculty are opting out of responsibility for the quality and type of edu- cation that the kids are getting. What I ' d like to see this college doing is relaxing, playing, and thinking. The three can go together: too many students find that they don ' t. I think it ' s because of grades, I think it ' s everything. There ' s a God-awful number of requirements in the school. It ' s doing it right. The number of people coming into this office and talking to me about — well, you know, — I looked on there and it said this and I looked over there at the catalogue and it said some- thing else and what ' s going to happen to me if I don ' t interpret it right — a constant stream of little hurdles not even involving grades — bureaucratic hassles. I get a kind of feeling of anomie among the students and the faculty against some power up there that doesn ' t understand, that doesn ' t care, that is somewhat unresponsive. I really don ' t know how to put my finger on it any closer than that except the number of times I ' ve heard teachers laughing with students at the bureaucratic foibles that they ' re both facing. There ' s no sense that if it ' s stupid, we ' ll get it changed.