Jay, I appreciate your optimism here! Although I've never
personally experienced the FORM of education that you describe here,
its SPIRIT is one that I have experienced in both my undergraduate
and graduate institutions, where learning was valued for its own
sake, and the attitude was that students took courses because
courses supported their desire to learn about a specific topic.
One of the greatest sources of disillusionment for me as a
beginning faculty member was encountering an attitude common among
certain (not all) students: I'm taking this course because I need
the credits to graduate, so I can get a better job. When I tried
to share my own ideals with students, one of them basically said
to me: "Don't try to foist your value-system regarding education
onto us; we have to worry about the real world." (I.e., a perception
that somehow all that matters in the "real world" is not the
capacity for critical thought and intrinsic motivation, but
the "three credits"--I disagree with this perception, but there
it was.) Just yesterday, an undergraduate came to me for "advising"
on her schedule. She explained to me that she was taking a summer
course in English because she "needed the three credits" and it
was an "easy" course. I said, "That's not a good reason to take
a course--because you need the credits and it's easy." She was
puzzled, and reacted to my comment as though it was hopelessly
naive and misguided. She explained to me that if she was going to
graduate "on time" then she needed the credits, and she needed
an "easy" course so she wouldn't "burn out." I questioned her
need to graduate "on time," but she also considered this
to be a misplaced concern of mine.
This is the sort of interaction I have with students which leads
me to ask the question: How do I engage students in learning? How
do I provide a context which is more likely rather than less likely
to awaken within them an intrinsic desire to learn? And--how do I
do this within the institutional structures provided for me?
And I must point out that I'm also trying to answer this question
within my own professional context which finds me rather "burned out"
on learning at the moment myself--teaching courses full of apathetic
students has an impact on the professor as well as the students,
and I don't believe the problem is entirely me and my coercive
practices, but an institution that I am entering that has a long-
standing history totally apart from me. Moreover, I think this
sort of "consumeristic" attitude (I need the credits) towards
education is deeply rooted in other aspects of our culture, and
is not easily blamed on the university itself, though I'm not
entirely sure where exactly to place blame.
Robin