If you haven’t read this book, in a nutshell it’s “50-something anthropology professor spends a year living in the dorms as a freshman at her university.” Yes, it was done before, about 25 years ago by Michael Moffat at Rutgers. Not surprisingly, some things have changed; some have not.

Overall, I would have to say the findings are not surprising, and yet there’s still an impact when one is confronted with them. Campus life is an intensified microcosm of the postmodern American cultural landscape: permeated with media, pop culture, and consumerism; fragmented and schizophrenic with its myriad menus of personal preferences; high speed with little or no time for reflection or rest; isolating (individualistic) with an ambivalent attitude toward any sense of community or certainly communal obligation; and ultimately orchestrated by a resolute capitalistic, marketplace logic.

What is represented here is that on some level students do want to learn. But learning is not a priority. There is significant mistrust between students and the institution (that’s a two-way street), which, as Nathan points out, goes back to the 18th century. This, in part, explains student reluctance to speak in class (especially in General Education classes). Student priorities lie with balancing social demands with academic success (the latter defined as getting the degree, GPA, and other trappings that lead to a desirable career).

Is any of this surprising? I don’t think so. It might sound a little jaded or cynical, but it also makes sense. The bottom line is that students don’t share values with faculty. And you get the sense here, and perhaps this is b/c Nathan is an anthropologist, that college is a rite of passage. It’s a ritual. And like all rituals, it’s value is more symbolic than real. That is, college is a set of gestures; it’s about going through the motions.

It’s not about learning something that actually sticks. Think back to your own undergraduate days. I can remember some moments of learning… sort of. However if I spent four years of my life in order to acquire the few random bits of information I still remember then I really was wasting my time. I mean the pieces of information I do remember—plots of novels, events from the Crusades, the plight of Native Americans, models of American Cold War foreign policy—aren’t of any use to me anyway. At least not in any direct way.

But that’s not what this is about, right? I mean, no one would argue that learning discrete parts of a liberal arts curriculum is what makes it valuable (actually I imagine quite a few faculty would insist this is the case). However, we also insist that the “real” value of a liberal arts education is something more abstract: “critical thinking skills,” literacy, worldliness.

Understandably, students have a hard time recognizing these abstractions. Faculty have a hard time explaining them and the relationship between their material and these abstract values. It would beg the question: if you want me to learn critical thinking skills then how come I’m taking a multiple choice exam on the content of your lecture notes?

Anyway, reading Nathan, a professor could easily come to the conclusion that the thing to do, the thing students will respond to, is to assert the panopticon:
Take attendance;
Give a quiz on every reading assignment;
Require students to hand in drafts;
Require participation (devise some method to track it).

I couldn’t blame anyone for going in this direction. Even if we recognize student behavior is cultural/ideological and not a “moral” failing. Even if we recognize that the college experience is not about learning specific content… or perhaps even learning at all, at least in the conventional sense of mastering discrete pieces of knowledge and/or processes.

I would hate my job if I moved toward the panopticon. I didn’t enter academics to be a learning cop or a pedagogic bookkeeper. Obviously there is a degree to which teaching requires evaluation, when evaluation serves a rhetorical/pedagogic purpose, as well as a ritualistic one, and I value that. But I’m not moving further in that direction.

So what does that leave?

To me it leaves simply this: a course is an opportunity for learning. I’m not going to go out of my way to try to force, harangue, or cajole students to learn. It’s an opportunity. In this course you can learn these things and here’s basically why you might choose to learn them, why I choose to offer them to you. My courses are largely project-based, as most writing courses are, with some opportunity to engage in discussion (e.g. a class blog). So you can choose to not read the book on how to use Dreamweaver or employ CSS: good luck building those web sites. You can easily choose to not read Gardner’s Art of Fiction in my Writing Fiction class. I just think reading it might help you become a better writer.

If college is not about learning discrete pieces of information or processes, if it is a rite of passage, what is it a passage to? Adulthood? A career? Obviously the contemporary condition is one where learning becomes a lifelong exercise. So you don’t come to college to learn, b/c you’ll always be doing that, at least as long as you want to remain successful in your career. You could say college is where you learn how to learn… whatever that means.

College remains a site of potential mutation. In part its about growing up, learning how to survive day to day, get through your classes, negotiate your major, graduate, deal with other people, etc. But it’s also about just a few moments. The experience where something really happens, where you really do learn something that sticks, where you change. Perhaps teaching remains creating such opportunities.