Last week I posted an article by a current Dartmouth student providing his personal criticism of the lack of intellectual diversity at Dartmouth. There was an interesting follow-up letter in today’s issue of The Dartmouth, the traditional college newspaper by a recent Dartmouth graduate. I have expressed this view privately in response to emails from a numer of readers as to what I see as what should be the goal of a teacher. But I like the way that this fellow states it:
The problem, as I see it, is not that there are too few “conservative” professors in the system. To approach the problem from this perspective serves only to create an academic environment of segregated bias and segregated allegiances.
By and far, the most fruitful and later-beneficial learning experiences I had as an undergraduate came from those professors whose political/ideological leanings I was never able to put my finger on. They had no hesitation in presenting and criticizing poor reasoning used by authors who shared the same end conclusion as themselves. I can count on one hand the number of professors who represented all sides equally.
I know in my own classroom, this is the goal I strive for, and I think it is the most valuable way for students to learn. I’m sure that I don’t always succeed, but I try to present all arguments fairly to the best of my ability. (I guess you would have to ask my students to find out whether I succeed!). As the writer of this letter observes, “These professors reserved their personal opinions and leanings for discussions over coffee or during office hours. By not introducing bias to the classroom, they made clear that bias would not be rewarded in written work.”
I firmly believe that the goal of education, whether law school or undergraduate, should be to teach students how to think, not what to think. I also try to ask exam questions that force students to articulate persuasively both sides of a relevant issue, rather than to just state one side. I also know that many academics reject this view as old-fashioned or counter-productive, and believe that the goal of education should be to inspire students to activism to change society to make it more “just” or “egalitarian.” I personally just don’t agree that this is good for education or for the maintenance of a free society.
I do believe that intellectual diversity is nonetheless a part of a valuable educational experience. There is value to an institution exposing students to a variety of starting points and intellectual perspectives. No matter how hard a given professor tries, he or she simply cannot be expert in all of the different perspectives that might apply to a given issue. Having a variety of perspectives, combined with a dialogue among these various faculty approaches, is a valuable educational tool. Moreover, faculty themselves benefit from having a diversity of intellectual viewpoints, so as to make sure that the arguments they are presenting from the “other side” are real, serious portrayals of counter-arguments, and not mere straw men. While professors should strive to zealously articulate all perspectives within their classroom, I believe that the institution itself should similarly strive to have vigorous debate at the college level as well.
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