| "SCHOOLING VERSUS EDUCATION AND
OTHER BALANCING ACTS," by Richard M. Felder, Hoechst Celanese Professor
of Chemical Engineering, North Carolina State University, ERM
Division Plenary Lecture, 1999 Annual ASEE Meeting, Charlotte, NC,
23 June 1999
Summarized by James T. P. Yao, 7/26/99 (revised on 8/6/99)
"College teaching is a lot like real life—good stuff and bad stuff,
yin and yang…and college professors are a lot like real people.
We have real dilemmas to deal with…we’re pulled in different directions
by things we’re supposed to do, things we want to do but don’t have
time for, and things we’d like to do but can’t because of petty
bureaucratic restrictions."
"One of these dichotomies is the title of this talk. This is what
inspired it.
"I try not to let my schooling interfere with my education.
(Mark Twain)"
"We want to turn out graduates who are appropriately schooled
in the professions for which we are preparing them, partly because
it’s our job and partly out of fear for our lives. I like to drive
over the bridges they design and walk into their buildings and fly
in their airplanes and drink the output from their water treatment
plants…"
"At the same time, we want our graduates to qualify as educated
citizens, able to talk intelligently about things besides the diffusion
equation and bending moments on composite I-beams. We want them
to read the newspaper and listen to political speeches and know
what the columnists and politicians are talking about and how much
of it to believe."
"… The key to resolving the dilemmas is balance. We keep
both a gatekeeper’s hat and a coach’s hat handy at all times, and
play both roles. Gatekeeper: If you want to do well in this
course, you’re going to have to get over some high hurdles. Coach:
I’m going to do everything in my power to help you get over them."
"How do you manage this tap dance? You alternate. You might
come in on the first day of class wearing the gatekeeper’s hat.
… Policies and rules, high expectations—memorizing and plug-and-chug
won’t get you where you want to go, no curving grades."
"Take off that hat and put on the coach’s hat … Announce when you’ll
be available, motivate learning by establishing the relevance of
what you’ll be teaching to what they already know and care about."
"Don’t keep both hats on at the same time—you’ll forget what you’re
doing and most of the students will be even more confused than they
usually are. "
"Alternate throughout course. Gatekeeper—write instructional
objectives including some at high Bloom levels—some schooling, some
education. Make the tests consistent with the high objectives. Coach—give
practice in the required knowledge and skills…active learning exercises
in class, relevant homework assignments done cooperatively, everything
else Stice & Smith & Woods & Miller & Olds and a
couple of dozen other people who inhabit the ERM Division of the
ASEE have been encouraging us to do for years."
"As coach, tell the students what the gatekeeper’s objectives are
so they won’t have to guess what you want them to know. To quote
my dear friend and my favorite educational philosopher, Jim Stice,
‘Teaching should not be a mystery religion.’"
"Be coach most of the time, gatekeeper on tests and the final exam.
Balance them—embrace the contraries."
"Another dilemma is how to balance the competing demands of teaching
and research. ... For many of you, disciplinary research is an activity
of the heart—challenging, stimulating, and deeply rewarding when
you succeed in disentangling whichever knot you’re struggling with.
You shouldn’t dream of dropping it. For others, teaching and learning
may be where your heart lies. You may need to consider taking
the road less traveled by, at least after you get tenure."
"It’s not an easy road. You may have to struggle to get the respect
you deserve from colleagues who don’t understand what you’re doing
and why. You may not get the ultimate brass rings of our profession—the
full professorship, the named chair (although you may, and some
have). But there’s a pretty good chance that even after you’ve been
doing it for years, you’ll still look forward to getting up in the
morning and going to the office, and you may have the unparalleled
privilege of getting letters from former students telling you what
a difference you made in their lives. You want personal fulfillment?
That’s as good as it gets."
"So the road may be difficult, but it leads right down the middle
of the tightrope. Your research and your teaching are inseparable.
You set standards as high as you think it’s possible for the students
to reach—trying both to school them and educate them—AND you do
everything you can to help them meet those standards, and you keep
trying to discover ways to do it better. It’s a difficult road but
a great one, the road less traveled by…and for me, taking it has
made all the difference."
Return to
the Lohman homepage |
