Is teaching work? Is learning?

I don't mean to be asking nonsensical questions here, but the more I think about what work means the more I wonder whether teaching and learning, as we usually practice them, are work.  Here is what I mean.

By one standard both teaching and learning are work--people get paid to teach (and receipt of pay is one measure of work in capitalism); people put in substantial effort to learn (and the application of effort to a challenge is another measure of work).  Work is happening.

But there is uncertainty about teaching, learning, and work in society.  Take for example those people who teach on the side because they simply love to teach.  Ask them if teaching is work, and they are likely to say no, that teaching is a pleasure, and therefore not work (dissatisfaction with the effort being another sign that something is work rather than, say, leisure).  Or ask the critics of schools of education if teaching is work, and they are likely to deny it, suggesting that developing content knowledge is real work; while pedagogy is merely an effort to gussy up a natural human skills with a scientific patina, or to indoctrinate students with "progressive ideologies".

Learning is equally suspect.  Our system of education traditionally puts learning before employment, or put another way, before work. And the opportunity to learn is sometimes sequestered from work.  Students leave school because they have to work to afford it.

Why does this matter?  Because uncertainty about the status of teaching and learning impedes our ability to know if they are happening, and happening well.  For example, if teaching is essentially a pleasure for the teacher, then how do we judge its value?  What would allow us to say that a four-hour lecture is less effective than four hours spent otherwise?  Or if learning is work because it is essentially effort, then why bother to have such a thing as a class?  Why not just give students tasks and wish them well?

At the risk of sounding like a fan, I want to suggest that Shop Class as Soulcraft has a lot to teach about the ways in which teaching and learning are work.  The most intriguing to me is the notion that work has a particular telos--an end to which it points.  In the case of motorcycle repair it is to get the bike running as if it were new--to "fill the measure of its creation" to borrow a phrase from my religious tradition. (For a great poem on this notion read Zbigniew's Herbert's "Pebble."
Pebble
                     by Zbigniew Herbert
                     The pebble
                     is a perfect creature
                     equal to itself
                     mindful of its limits
                     filled exactly
                     with a pebbly meaning
                     with a scent that does not remind one of anything
                     does not frighten anything away does not arouse desire
                     its ardour and coldness
                     are just and full of dignity
                     I feel a heavy remorse
                     when I hold it in my hand
                     and its noble body
                     is permeated by false warmth
                      - Pebbles cannot be tamed
                      to the end they will look at us
                      with a calm and very clear eye
                                       Translated by Peter Dale Scott and Czeslaw Milosz
Now I know that essentialism has been on the outs in academe for a long time.  But many people, including academics, point to experiences where they felt that they had discovered a bit of their essences as human beings--the characteristics that make them who they are at this time.  And it seems to me that if we want to understand teaching and learning as work then we need to attend to those moments where teacher and learner together come across experiences where they jointly discover bits of who they are and truths about how the world works.  To push a bit further, I want to suggest that neither teaching nor learning can achieve their teleologies without the other.

Mark those moments that seem like the times when understanding has emerged. ;If Crawford is right in Shop Class then they are the rare moments when work happens.  The rest of the time we might be engaged in labor, or effort, or struggle, or leisure, but we haven't yet done any work.

The geography of extra work

This has been a season for thinking about extra work in higher education.  We are hiring adjuncts for fall--many of them in the Bill and Vieve Gore School of Business are executives who also teach a course or two.  At the college, nearly every adjunct also has another job (or two, or three).  New projects that pop up have to be taken on by existing employees--it is too late to do searches for fall (hence my second job as Interim Dean).  Faculty are finding projects to supplement their incomes--consulting, facilitating meetings, joining new initiatives, etc.

Though these types of extra work are disparate, they share two characteristics.  First, they all use pay as an incentive to encourage people to take on work that is not in their main job description.  A small point to be sure, but one that is increasingly common in higher education, where a little bit of pay is the central form of encouragement to try new things.

Second, when people talk about this type of work, they always use a geographical metaphor.  They are doing work "on top of" their regular assignments.  Or they are doing the additional work "on the side." Or they are picking up work "here and there."

What does this connection between geography and work mean?  It seems to indicate that whatever our jobs, we conceive of them in space--the assignments in a geographical relationship to each other (as opposed, I guess, to temporal relationships or relationships based on priority.)  It also means that this extra work is just that--extra, not part of the core of what we do.

I am particularly intrigued by the use of the phrase "on the side."  It has had negative connotations. Consider, for example, the way we say that an unfaithful spouse has a lover "on the side" or the connotation that side-work is secondary. But the phrase is getting some rehabilitation in the call for faculty to move from being "Sage[s] on the stage" to "guide[s] on the side." In that use of the phrase, being on the side is a good thing, something that allows others (students) to take responsibility for their work.

I wonder if there is possibility in that use for all of us who take on work "on the side."  It is worth asking whether there is anything in the view of work encapsulated in "guide on the side' that suggests how we can do extra work.  Perhaps as work moves more to the side the person responsible must be more facilitative than directive.  Or perhaps where several people are working on side projects, we would be wise to follow the model of collaborative work on the internet, where, to use Clay Shirky's phrase, we contribute from our cognitive surplus to projects of which no one is in charge.  Or it could simply suggest that the more work we do on the side, the less centered our work is, for good or ill.

What about work?

(For the next while I am trying a new approach to this blog.  Each Monday I will post on a particular theme for the week.  Any posts that follow during the week will expand on the theme; the following Monday I'll write about a new theme.  Trying to put a bit of organization to my writing here, in hopes that it eventually adds up to something in addition to discrete mini-essays on learning...This week's theme is Work.)

With all of the attention higher education gives to getting graduates employed, it is astonishing how little interest we have in work. By this I mean simply that it is rare for an institution to help its students consider what work is, how it shapes human beings, and how it gives meaning to life.  I cannot think of any college (though I am sure there are some) that requires courses about the meaning of work, only a few campuses that consider the learning that comes from employment while in school, and only an handful of business programs that attend to the questions about justice, human fulfillment, and the social good that emerge from the way that employers structure work.

This issue is on my mind for several reasons.  I've spent the past 18 months on a task force working to connect student employment at Westminster to the college's learning goals.  Our hope is that every student who works on campus will have a job that leads to learning, and that that learning will be of value to the student.  My wife's job currently requires 14 hour days and weekend work, with almost no consideration of the toll a workload like that takes on her, us, or the quality of her work.  And I have been asked to take on a major additional assignment at the college, serving as Interim Dean of the Bill and Vieve Gore School of Business, an assignment that raises questions about my ability to complete good quality work while maintaining the balance and clear-sightedness that might make it possible to do that work.

Our inattention to work is not for lack of meaningful content to study.  The meaning of work is a core concern of many major religions (right livelihood in Buddhism; the notion of a holy day of rest in Western religions); assumptions about it undergird Marxism and Capitalism; the topic is more universally experienced by students than anything except sleep.

What is more, the recent economic downturn has pushed the meaning of work to the fore of American culture.  I had lunch last week with two former students, honors graduates of the college, recipients of graduation awards, perhaps the two most civically engaged students I have ever known.  Neither has full-timer permanent work.  One works temporarily for the state doing field biology; the other takes tickets at the local aviary.  Work is a huge issue for them--they both have large amounts of student debt, but they both also want to live decent lives and be part of the human conversation rather than structuring their lives around their jobs.  And on a more abstract level, the problem of work is at the center of some of the most influential books published in the past year--Rework and Shop Class as Soulcraft among them.

I don't have any idea about how to insert (or is it re-insert) the study of work into the curriculum.  But it seems that if faculty, staff, administrators, and students do not take up the questions that come out of work seriously then our institutions are failing our students, and we are failing ourselves.

Why are we still asking if it is OK for someone to choose not to attend college?

In response to my last post Bryce Bunting wrote the following:

Crawford's ideas got me thinking about the current push to increase accessibility to higher education. Everywhere you look these days there is a new online college, community college, or for-profit venture that touts its ability to increase access. 

Is there any danger that the rhetoric of organizations like KIPP ("every single person in this room is going to college") and the oft-heard message that college is the best path for everyone, will devalue the role of the crafts in society? If Crawford is right and certain crafts can provide the financial security and cognitive fulfillment, should we be so concerned with getting everyone to college? Will there come a time when a college education doesn't lead to good jobs and meaningful work and we'll end up wishing for more mechanics and skilled repair-men?


I can't answer Bryce's questions with any certainty.  It seems that the future Bryce imagines is a possibility; on the other hand, the "a college degree will be essential to the employment possibilities of every American" seems equally likely, especially given the way that the educational, economic, and political establishments have lined up behind that view.


But Bryce's question raises another question that I would like to take a shot at: Why are we still asking if it is OK for someone to choose not to attend college?  There are two answers, I think, both rooted in America's cultural ambivalence towards history.


First, we have to ask that question because our discussions are haunted by the history of discrimination in American education.  More particularly, this discussion is haunted by the way that progressives created  a tiered educational system where the children of WASP families were encouraged towards university while the children of Jews, Blacks, Latinos, plus women were encouraged to pursue the trades.  (For a compelling history of these actions, take a look at Diane Ravitch's  book, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms.) In our history, then, the argument that certain young people ought not to attend college is always linked with our history of racism and sexism.  


Second, we have to ask because of education's commitment to serve the progress of the nation.  There is of course an irony here: that in a decentralized educational system the aims of education are nationalist.  But that is indeed the case.  Again and again educational leaders have shifted the curriculum and mission of education to pursue whatever the "future" held.  At one time in the 1800s our future looked like a future of tradesmen, and so schools and universities set out to teach students the trades (hence the land grant colleges and universities, which originally were tuned to apply science both to agriculture and to mechanics, hence the "A&M" schools.) But since at least WWII the future has not be a future of tradesmen but of managers, knowledge workers, engineers.  And so that perceived need, driven by the Cold War then and by our obsessive fear that we are falling behind our global competitors today, means that any call for students to learn trades is a call for an America that looks backwards.  


Since neither of our major political parties is concerned with tradition, and since key sectors of government, the media, and business are convinced that the future is one of technology (as if there is only one future...), studying the trades appears to be as useless as studying history.

Learning through repair

Last weekend I spent several hours figuring out how to replace a valve and solenoid on the 32 year old sprinkler system at my house.  The week before I finished reading Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work.  The two events together got me thinking about the power of learning by fixing things that are broken.

Crawford's book is made up of a story and two arguments.  The story is autobiography.  Crawford grew up fixing things on a commune, worked construction while in high school, learned to fix motorcycles, got a PhD in political philosophy at the University of Chicago, ran a Washington DC think tank, and after a period of great doubt, abandoned the think tank to open a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond, VA.  The arguments are these: that by devaluing craft work, trade skills, and production, the educational system alienates all sorts of people and demeans meaningful work; and that the United States is desperately in need of building the sort of values associated with repair work: thrift, creativity, humility, self-reliance, and learning through labor.

These arguments are of course nothing new.  There is a long history of advocacy for production over consumption (and "knowledge work") best told in Christopher Lasch's The True and Only Heaven. And we are in a craft moment in American history, with "alternative crafts' springing up everywhere, and televisions replete with series focusing on re-use or repair: American Pickers, Pawn Stars, Extreme Home Makeover, etc.

I can't say whether it is possible to remake society around production, repair, and re-use.  But I can say that you learn some things by fixing broken sprinkler systems that you wouldn't necessarily learn elsewhere.  Here are the three lessons of my as-yet-unfinished repair of my sprinkler system:

1. Even the right tools don't mean you can do the work.  There is a lot of tool-focused education speak.  WE buy "tools" for assessment, or for teaching.  Students develop the tools they need to succeed in the real world, etc.  I own all of the right tools to replace a valve in a sprinkler system.  But it is still a damn hard thing to do when you have never done it before.  (BTW, instructions don't help a lot either.  they describe the ideal way to fix things, not the real experience of repair.)

2. Always dig the hole deeper and wider than you think you will need it.  Inevitably fixing something means fitting something meant to be assembled in a new system into an old system.  Which means you lack the clearance, the vision, the access to make the switch.  Too much of education still assumes students are learning new things rather than clearing space in a world view for new approaches to the truth.  I'm not sure the "deep, wide hole" rule holds in neuro-cognition, but without that space new ideas just don't fit.

3. In theory, doing the same thing again hoping for a different outcome is folly.  In practice, it is the way you repair.  Replacing a part means tugging on it, cleaning it, tugging on it again, catching your breath, looking at the piece again, tugging, getting it loose, tightening the tool, tugging again, doubting and so pushing a different direction, then tugging again.  Similarly, the learning of crafts requires the same perseverance, endurance, and obstinacy. Playing a musical instrument, writing research papers, nearly every task asks that you repeat the same steps again and again until your body is tuned to the problem.  Only science imagines that you can tune the world to your work.  For the rest of us we learn by coming up against our current weaknesses and then getting stronger by repeating our failed actions.

Tonight I buy the final correct coupling for the sprinkler system.  More learning ahead.

What if we learned from the decline in studying outside of class?

I heard a presentation today from Charles Blaich of Wabash College.  He leads the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, an effort to determine which practices lead students to develop the skills and orientations traditionally associated with a liberal arts education.

In his presentation Blaich pointed out a fact that we all recognize--students rarely spend 2 or 3 hours studying for every hour they spend in class.  At best it is 1 to 1; in many instances less.

We all have our favorite explanations for this fact.  Students just aren't committed to learning, or the rigor of higher education has declined, or student's lives are more complicated so they don't have as much time to spend outside of class, etc. etc. Whatever the explanation, though, we treat this fact as something to be denied or railed against.  I know of no effort in higher ed to reflect the fact of declining outside-of-class studying in the practices or curriculum of a school.

This is interesting in part because there is a healthy backlash against homework in the K-12 system.  Parents and educators argue that students spend enough time in school during the day, and that for ambitious students their homework routinely stretches into the wee hours of the morning, all with little evidence for improved learning.

So if it is the case that homework does not radically improve learning in K-12, and if it is the case that students spend less time doing it in college than we expect, perhaps we ought to begin to redesign learning with that fact in mind.  Such a redesign might in fact support some of the things we know lead to better student engagement and improved learning.  The critical change would be to have students spend more time in class than they currently do, while expecting that they spend less time outside of class studying. (This is by the way one of the side effects of the extended school day concept at many high achieving  schools.) 

What would be the result of this move?

1. Students could graduate more quickly because they could enroll in a larger number of classes (or preferably in the same number of classes but which bear more credits each).  If the minimum number of credits to be considered full-time shifted from 12 to 15 hours, students would complete a 120-hour degree in 8 rather than 10 semesters.  Where there is quicker graduation there is less cost to the student.

2. Students and faculty would spend more time together.  It is clear that student/faculty interaction is an important determinant of student learning and retention, though its impact varies across race, class, and SES.  It is also clear, though, that students are less likely to engage with faculty outside of the classroom than they are inside.

3. There would be more time for facilitated learning.  Many faculty turn towards lectures not because they are the best way of teaching but because they feel that lectures are the most efficient way of imparting information.  More can be said in 50 minutes than can be learned, the thinking goes. So instead we move some difficult ways of learning outside of the classroom, ensuring that students have to do them on their own time. More time in the classroom means more time for time-intensive and facilitation-needy pedagogies--reflection, group projects, student peer criticism, service-learning, mentoring, etc--in the classroom.

4. Learning might improve.  Time on task is a key predictor of learning.  How might faculty ensure that students spend quality time on task?  By having them learn in front of or with the faculty member.

5. A greater portion of faculty educational time would be spent leading learning rather than preparing to teach.  Let's stipulate that a shift to more time in the classroom does not mean more hours at work for faculty (just as it does not mean more hours "doing school" than is already expected of students).  Currently faculty spend a tremendous amount of time preparing for class, and grading outside of class.  In a more class time model, faculty would devote more of their attention to the relationships and interactions that lead to learning, rather than in the before and after of learning.

I know it is not a panacea, but if it is a given that students will not spend the time outside of class studying in a way that leads to learning, then spending more time in the classroom is a reasonable response. 

Perhaps an experiment is in order--give two groups of students the same schedule.  Have one group spend 12 hours a week in the classroom and try to get them to spend an additional 18 outside of class studying.  Have the second spend 18 hours a week in class and 12 outside studying.  Give both groups the same test at the beginning and end of the semester. Hold the faculty constant.  Which group of students will learn more? Which group is more likely to come back the next semester?

Black Swans and Blue Grasshoppers

By now the term “Black Swan” is part of common parlance, gaining a toehold in American English with the financial crisis and subsequent publication of Nassim Taleb's book of that title. A black swan is an event that no one predicted, but after its occurrence seems to have been inevitable. Tagging something as a black swan seems to serve two purposes: to indicate how complex the recent past has been, and to embark on an effort to turn that complexity into something understandable by explaining how the black swan appeared. So Black swan-ing is everywhere it seems—in the effort to explain the meltdown of the derivative markets and block its re-occurrance, in the explanation of the Gulf Oil spill and our response, in any event where someone in power vows “never again.”

Blue grasshopper events are less noted in the culture at large. I’m taking the term from Lewis Richmond’s book, Work as a Spiritual Practice. In its first chapter he tells the story of a blue grasshopper that arrived in the middle of a sesshin, and proceeded to slowly make its way across the zendo. It eventually encountered a statue of the Buddha, climbed its body, alighting on the head of the Enlightened One. The grasshopper seemed to change things, to portend something, though the change and the meaning were complex, unsettled, and thus worthy of repeated reflection.

I’ve been wondering about the roles of Black Swans and Blue Grasshoppers in learning. Black Swans change curricula. Business schools across the world are scrambling to respond to the lessons of the financial crisis—beefing up ethics programs, improving the quantitative skills of students, retraining executives in hard-to-grasp corners of the economy. Colleges and universities will ramp up immediately to respond to the Gulf Crisis. The unexpected success of Sputnik spurred the growth of engineering in the 1960s, a decade before the Cold War did the same for mathematics, physics, and language instruction.

But while Black Swans change curriculum they preserve the fundamental mindset of higher education. They suggest that all big things are understandable and need to be understood—in other words they seek to make inevitability become predictability.

It seems like Blue Grasshoppers—the unexpected, fraught, small, meaningful stories that make the world seem strange—ought to have a similar place in learning. If you talk to anyone about how they came to their current point in life they will almost always point to a Blue Grasshopper event. One day something happened that made life to that point strange. And since they have been pursuing the meaning, for them, in that strangeness.

But the impulse to make sense of Black Swans seems to overwhelm Blue Grasshoppers. They get explained away as coincidences, or spirituality, and therefore recede into the private parts of people’s lives. And so schools go ahead overlooking this key part of human life and with it the richness that comes out of musing on the strangeness of being alive.