“Do we want to excite and encourage students? Or do we want to prepare them for their profession?”
Phrased this way, it’s clearly a false dichotomy. What we most likely want is for students to be excited, encouraged, and motivated by their own steps on the path as they prepare for their profession (or for their subsequent explorations when they graduate).
What does it mean, then, if that which excites students is not the “real” stuff of the work they will be doing later in their studies or after graduating? Alternatively, what does it mean, if the work they will be doing later might not require the preparatory tasks we are assigning them? The former seems like a “bait and switch,” and the latter seems like inappropriate rigor.
Even in the absence of an answer that makes sense for everyone, we ought to notice the mismatch of fire and function when we see it in individual students. When we do, perhaps we create an opportunity for fruitful, generative conversation.
If I could teach anything, it would look like this: a student would leave the classroom more inspired, more open to life, more patient with the folding and unfolding of things, and less burdened by the trappings of self.
But I don’t think it’s possible to teach anything of value directly, in the sense of making someone shift their configuration of mind from what it is now to what it is able to be next. Nothing that can be impressed on another–through rote training, through a schedule of rewards or punishments, through algorithm–has the value that I’m talking about here.
I understand that this claim may be more simply understood as a statement of values rather than as a fact.
The proponents of “assessment” in education claim it is important to examine the quality of teaching, because students are falling behind and resources are limited.
The problem might not be that the assessment methods aren’t helping enough. The problem might instead be that teachers are kept from teaching —and students are falling behind—because of the widespread addiction to assessment.
The latest way to “measure” the university’s performance? Count the number of graduates. The measurement will figure in to how much money the state spends to support its university: more graduates, more money.
But as long as we’re looking at money, consider whether it requires more money to a) spend time working with students, helping them develop into thoughtful, discerning, creative participants in the world, or b) just give everyone a degree.
The ethical teacher is always under pressure.