PerspectivesAre you interested in submitting a Perspective Article? Be sure to read The Science Advisory Board's Editorial Guides for Perspective Articles. Click here. Perspectives on Higher Education by William W. Ward, PhD. William W. Ward, PhD., Associate Professor of Biochemistry Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 USA Director, Center for Research and Education in Bioluminescence and Biotechnology CREBB Website President, Brighter Ideas, Inc. Brighter Ideas, Inc. Email contact: crebb@rci.rutgers.edu At a time when sea life was still plentiful, a wise philosopher once said, "Give a man a fish and he is fed for a day. Teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for a lifetime." While the principle behind this educational message is still valid in 2008, the details of the metaphor have changed quite dramatically. Fish are disappearing! Learning how to bait a hook is no longer a viable survival skill. Likewise, teaching rigid lessons of the day is no longer a viable educational option. We need to teach people how to cope with change. We need to teach thinking and self-reliance, not rote memorizing. The earth changes, society changes, the economy changes, technology changes, and influential world leaders come and go. Such changes have always been part of the human experience, but in the 21st century, the pace of change has been accelerating. Smart, well-educated people can adjust to change. But, just as global marine ecology has changed over the past several decades (and with it the fishing industry), so has the definition of "smart." "Smart" no longer means selecting correctly among five plausible answers to a multiple choice question. "Smart" no longer means plugging into a provided formula numbers to generate the correct answer to a physics problem. "Smart" no longer means being first to push the "Jeopardy" button. "Smart" is not correctly filling in the blank with the name of the planet fifth from the sun. "Smart" in today's world is being able to think, being able to solve complex problems, and being able to communicate ideas and insights clearly to others in problem-solving teams via reading, writing, and speaking. "Smart," in the year 2008, is not the same as "smart" in 1958, 1858, or 1758. It is true that teachers no longer force recitation of memorized bible lessons in one-room schoolhouses, students don't mindlessly scratch the times tables onto slate tablets, and our teachers have long since put away the hickory stick and the dunce cap. These archaic methods are gone. But, in their places are countless other "modern," pedagological practices just as ineffective in producing a "smart" populace. At all educational levels, we teach to the standardized test of memorized facts. With the fiasco of President Bush's "No Child Left Behind," we punish teachers, principals, and school districts whose students fail to achieve the arbitrary standards of memorization "excellence." Even worse, to create the appearance of achievement, some school districts under "No Child Left Behind" now classify culturally deprived, under motivated, and bright (but mildly dyslexic) students as having special needs. These students probably do have special needs, but the real motivation for the classification is to ship these students out to special classes or special schools under the federally-imposed pressure of having to raise the school's "No Child Left Behind" average test scores. In this way, school districts no longer have to fold test scores of the lower achieving students into the school's average. So "excellence" is achieved by selecting the best test scores while discounting the lowest scores. Is this practice of performance segregation any more effective than bringing back the dunce cap? I think not. I was "educated" at the University of Florida in the early 1960's, not long after automated machine grading of multiple choice tests became the educational norm in large state universities throughout the country. Requirements for success on M/C tests included remembering to carry a collection of well-sharpened # 2 pencils and a wooden K & E slide rule (generously lubricated with graphite from one of those # 2 pencils). But, most important for success was developing the uncanny skill of guessing the correct answers to several hundred objective test questions. Hints like, "The longest answer is always correct unless one of the other answers is shorter," simplified the guessing game. But exercising such hints never seemed to improve one's score. Some details have changed since my undergraduate years, but the basic pattern of undergraduate education remains the same. Instead of teaching process and instead of designing educational exercises that enable students to think on their own and to solve problems on their own, we still pump our students' heads full of facts and then test them on short term recall. If the point of education is to enable students to think on their own, then our courses (surely our science courses) should follow the scientific method. A single, well-chosen complex question (or small series of related questions) could provide the focus for an entire semester's course, so long as the scientific method (outlined below) is employed. -- Students should make careful observations about a phenomenon presented to them via an experimental data set. -- They should then pose a testable question (an hypothesis). -- Then, using all methods and all tools at their disposal, students should objectively test that hypothesis. -- If exhaustive testing of this sort confirms the hypothesis, then students should state the hypothesis in the form of a theory. Different students may come up with conflicting theories. If so, they can work in groups to re-evaluate their data, hypotheses, and theories. --Very few theories in science have been refined so far as to become "laws," so we can skip this step of the scientific method. My most effective course at Rutgers University is called "Problem Solving in Biochemistry." This is a capstone course for second semester senior biochemistry majors. In Problem Solving, I do the experiment while the students observe the experiment and question the results. I usually select an experiment that introduces a scientific anomaly, runs counter to the expected norm, or produces two or more conflicting results. During the experiment and immediately thereafter, students are given unlimited time to question me about everything they observe and every tentative conclusion they reach. They question me that period, they question me later in the week in a separate 80-minute discussion section devoted entirely to Q&A, and they question me one week later just before we begin the next experiment. All students are encouraged to drop in to see me in my office—I have an open door policy—where I freely offer critiques of their draft papers. There are two requirements for Problem Solving. Following the principles of the scientific method, students are required to think and they are required to write cogent, coherent, and grammatically correct reports. Science pre-requisites for Problem Solving include a year of general chemistry, a year of organic chemistry, and a year of biochemistry (all of which include year-long, hands-on lab courses). Most of my seniors have had a year of physics, also accompanied by a lab course. Sadly, all of the prerequisite lecture courses emphasize rote memorization of facts and grading is based on the students' recall of those facts. Despite emphasis on memorization in these prerequisite courses, I find that very few of my students are able to recall facts they once learned or to use previously memorized facts in solving the problems I present to them. For many years, I taught this course in a lab equipped with faucet aspirators. Over a period of more than ten years, as a test of whether my physics-trained students remember a previously memorized fact, I asked them to explain how a faucet aspirator works. Sensing their difficulty, I drew analogies to the atomizer perfume sprayer and I drew analogies to wing lift in an airplane. I baited the students with as many hints as I could dream up. Never once, in more than a decade of classes, did a single student answer this question correctly. Never once did a student say, "Oh, yeah! We learned about that in physics. That's the Bernoulli principle. Right? A moving fluid across a "T" shaped joint will draw a vacuum. Same idea in airplane wings--longer path for the air above the wing creates a partial vacuum that lifts the wing." On the first day of Problem Solving class, I administer a short, 10-question "biochemistry readiness quiz." Half the questions demand factual recall of very basic and very essential science facts and half the questions require a bit of thinking based on prior classroom experiences (or common knowledge). I am always disappointed with the results. The class average is usually lower than 35%. This confirms for me that short term recall of previously memorized facts is accomplishing almost nothing of lasting value. Not only do the students fail to demonstrate an ability to recall memorized facts, but they have no command of facts in trying to solve problems. My first "biochemistry readiness quiz" question is, "The A in DNA stands for acid. Name that acid." Of the 25 students who took this quiz last semester, just one correctly stated "phosphoric acid." This is a success rate of only 4%. Near the end of each semester, after each student has submitted about 10 short papers (and I have covered most of their reports from end to end with red ink--often spending 20 hours a week grading), several students compliment me by saying this is the only course in college that has made them think. I am delighted that these students now seem to value thinking over memorizing, but I am saddened that they have never been asked to think before. In my most pessimistic moments, I summarize college education this way: "The purpose of college is to provide a safe place for young persons to grow four years older." I wish college education accomplished more. I wish college administrators placed some value on classroom teaching so that young professors would take the time and expend the energy to teach students to think. But, faculty mentors and department chairs coach assistant professors to keep away from the classroom as much as possible. Everyone knows that assistant professors will never get promoted if they spend significant amounts of time teaching. The fact is that university administrators place no value on teaching. Current promotion practices at large state universities value overheaded grant money higher than any other criterion. At Rutgers University, for example, a professor's one million dollar grant is "taxed" 56% by the administration. So, a professor's raising $560,000 for the administration essentially "buys" promotion. Numbers of refereed publications count second, and everything else, including teaching, counts zero. In some cases, excellent teaching performance will lower a professor's chances for promotion. Having unsuccessfully battled this promotion system for 31 years, I am now resigned to staying in my current rank for the rest of my academic career. As my last jab at the administration, I affix "The Still Associate Professor of Biochemistry" to all my email communications. Until university administrators begin to place significant emphasis on good teaching as a means to promotion, most professors will avoid teaching. When they MUST teach, they will teach facts, grading students on the short term recall of isolated facts that the students will promptly forget. Facts are easy to teach, multiple choice exams are easy to write, and computers are quite willing to do all the grading. So what if students remember nothing! What the typical university administration wants of a professor is that he/she be a major grants winner with lots of refereed publications. If that professor occasionally steps behind the podium to say something unintelligible to a few hundred students in a huge auditorium, that's OK. I feel that a college "education" at most American universities is one of the greatest economic rip-offs a person will experience in an entire lifetime. Students pay big bucks to be handed, by disinterested professors, a bunch of facts they could just as easily download for free from the Internet. After four years of memorizing and then forgetting those facts, the students are only slightly more prepared to enter the workforce than they were after high school. Once in the workforce, they will be PAID to learn what really counts. It is no wonder we are falling behind the other developed countries. We don't teach nothing important! Professor Ward invites comments, criticisms, and alternate points of view from readers. ### << Previous Next >> [ View All Perspectives ] |
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