The debate about undergraduate education at the University of Chicago is wearing thin. I don’t know what is more cliché at this point: the embracing of our core curriculum as both unique and superior or the criticizing of the Core as antiquated, unhelpful, and insufficiently rigorous. Though the Core is just one of several important tools aimed at fulfilling the purpose of a liberal arts education, these stale arguments have an utter monopoly on our discourse.
Adjusting the required curriculum may have an important effect on an individual’s academic experience, but a macroeconomic approach to education will only go so far. It’s time to consider the other side of the equation—the microeconomic approach.
One way to influence individual decisions and behaviors, without resorting to drastic measures like paying students for getting good grades, is to adjust the timing of graded assignments. Instead of writing papers after concluding a topic of discussion, we should complete the process in reverse. If papers were completed before the class discussion began, several aspects of the learning process would be enriched.
For starters, class discussions would become much more lively. Think about it: Are you better prepared to contribute to the discussion when you skim the reading the night before class or when you spend the night with the book in your lap, churning out four to six pages on the subject? There are the uncommon few who read everything thoroughly beforehand, but most students will procrastinate reading Das Kapital or The Leviathan until they are forced to write about it.
When students skim the reading, fewer people speak up, and the professor is forced to spend an inordinate amount of time drawing out basic themes rather than facilitating deeper analysis. We should come to class armed to debate Hobbes’ theory of knowledge, not poised to distill the professor’s argument in a Word document.
This passive approach to class also affects our writing process. Too often, the file initially saved as “Sosc 10/19” gets relabeled “Marx outline” two weeks later. The writing process becomes a skilled effort at organizing a series of quotes under the bullet points you took down during class.
Some professors have attempted to foster a more active, independent approach to the material by requiring students to post comments or questions about the reading on the Chalk site before class. But it takes only 10 pages or so of reading to craft a satisfactory—and satisfactory seems to be the goal—question or paragraph response. Even two-page response papers are easy enough to bluff without seriously engaging the text.
We know that procrastination is endemic. Why shouldn’t we take existing strategies to their logical conclusion? Is precedent not worth sacrificing to achieve greater substance?
There might even be some less obvious benefits in adopting this new approach. If the paper schedule for classes like Hum or Sosc is simply moved up a couple of weeks, the final would be due sometime during eighth week. In this circumstance, students would have extra time to focus on exams or term papers for other classes at the end of the quarter. It’s true that there would be many problems with writing (or trying to write) a 20-page paper before discussing the relevant texts—the time lapse between writing and discussing would be impractically long and the powerful incentives to lose focus would far outweigh the benefits of being prepared—but for the four- to six-page assignments that are standard in many courses, the system would work well.
If the key to making class time truly meaningful for everyone were really this simple, some institution probably would have adopted it by now. Maybe it was explored and ultimately discarded. Or maybe we have been too focused on theory and the macro-level of the core curriculum to consider simpler solutions that would, in the end, enable us to better use our class time.
Evan Coren is a fourth-year in the College majoring in political science.
I really like your idea. It does seem that not much is done in class discussion. It seems like a real waste of time. But fleshing out ideas in a paper focuses everything for me, I definitely learn more through that. I think it adds more pressure to the student to understand concepts in the text or themes in the text. Even if they procrastinate it would still facilitate discussion more, because they actively discuss it in a paper before class starts. If only students would agree to it.
I think this is a good solution, but part of the problem also is class size. Many of my core classes were roughly the same size as a HS class (maybe 5-7 students less) where discussion hardly ever took place. In any case, I think classes with 18-22 students are far too large for a proper discussion. In classes where I have had 10 or less students, the discussion has been outstanding. Some students who are normally silent, myself included, speak up much more than usual. In addition, everyone comes exceptionally prepared. These were the only classes that didn’t have the feel that people raised their hand to say the necessary to 1-2 comments to get satisfactory class participation. I know that it may be too much to ask to have all classes be conducted this small, but if this is the case, we should reconsider how we teach the core. Personally, I thought the core would’ve been better had it been large lecture classes with no discussion. The idea of a 1st year undergraduate really having good discussions on these difficult texts is pushing it as it is, and it’s not helping that the classes are so large. Imagine how fun it would’ve been to have a 200 person phil perspective class taught by one of the real hot shot professors at this school..
One thing we agree on: something needs to be done about core participation
I like this idea as well. I think the idea behind the seminar format of the core is that it is important that undergraduates learn not just the meaning and historical significance of the texts (knowledge which could be conveyed through lecture), but also learn the skill and habit of intellectual discussion and argument. And if we think that there is some value in throwing 1st-years students, largely untrained and untested, into small classes to develop and critique each other’s ideas about difficult texts through conversation (as opposed to simply absorbing a big-shot professor’s ideas, brilliant though they may be), then it certainly makes sense to throw them into the challenge of putting their ideas onto paper without getting several classes of the professor’s summary and analysis beforehand.
There would of course be the question of what the professor and students would do during the first few classes, before the first paper is due.
I think there’s already a good solution in existence: the response paper. It is due on the day of discussion, and forces one to read enough to grasp the basic ideas that the discussion is based on.