Two weeks ago, I asked a question in class. Many obstacles to a good education, or to improving education, are widely institutionalized, and both teachers and educational reformers complain bitterly about their institutionalization. Two common institutionalized problems, however lie with the teachers themselves: that students are often ill-prepared in earlier courses for the current course (and teachers of the earlier courses in turn blame those farther upstream), and that a basic educational conservatism, often buttressed by the limitations of a limited budget and community apathy, quickly beat down bright-eyed teachers fresh out of college and, with them, their new ideas. Poor morale is infectious, especially from teacher to student, and largely self-perpetuating once it sets in. How then, I asked, does one maintain his own energy while still bright-eyed and fresh out of college, so as to transform the vicious cycle of low morale into a virtuous cycle of self-reinforcing enthusiasm?
For my pains, I received not a direct answer, but a week’s delay, after which the prof, having looked up the (sort of) relevant student theses, gave me an additional assignment atop that given to the class generally: read those theses and lead a class discussion on their conclusions.
My immediate reaction was to complain (in the safety of my own head, and later at home) that assigning additional homework every time I ask a substantial question is an excellent way to make sure I don’t ask substantial questions. Deeply ironic under the circumstances! But I went ahead and did the reading, and led the class discussion regardless, and came away thinking that the prof may not have been such a tool after all. I’m back in class because I choose to be, and I ask questions both in and out of class because I truly want to know the answer, and not merely to prove I’m paying attention or keep the conversation going or otherwise earn brownie points. As it turned out, I didn’t get my answer, but had the theses been more directly aimed at my question, I would have learned much more than I would have from a simple answer. And I’m still prepared to ask questions when something’s bothering me. I can’t help myself; I’m a nerd. Perhaps the prof saw that and shrewdly matched his response to his student. That thought made me feel a lot better. For about a day.
Because my third thought on the subject of extra homework for questions in class was that, even if I am too stubborn and idealistic to be dissuaded from questions by mere homework, I’d lay very long odds indeed that a significant percentage of my classmates are not, and they are just as readily able to see a connection between curiosity and work load. I know for a fact that at least a few scheme to get out of homework—not, as some of my classmates, because they’re busy professionals barely able to keep up with concurrent graduate classes, but simply because they don’t like doing homework. For these students, who are also likely to end up teachers, the lesson is that curiosity is punished with work load, and they will take that lesson with them to their own teaching careers. Just the kind of perpetuation of a damning of enthusiasm for learning my original question was meant to combat.
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