Quote:

“Do you feel like universities, predominately in America, have set themselves up correctly to be the places where people have the hardest conversations or walk away with a broader understanding of a topic or of other people?”

Well, do they?

I’ll start with my classrooms, because I know those better than anyone else’s and, to my excitement, my students have commented on this a bit as well. In my view, I’ve only had one class out of all of my semesters of teaching that allowed me to actually challenge them. I asked them the questions and left it to them to mine their way through the maze to figure out both sides of the answer/argument. With other classes however, I was met with extreme discomfort at the possibility of any student being publicly incorrect, which many people happen to be. This shouldn’t be a source of embarrassment but should instead be a gateway to learning and open conversation.

So back to the question of the hour. In a broad stroke (and even considering my student’s feedback) I’d say “no”, classrooms in America aren’t set up to leave us with the equipment necessary to have the harder conversations. They’re simply not. Let’s look into some important variables that need to be considered alongside this conversation:

1. Education and learning pre-and-post COVID-19 pandemic

2. The costs of keeping good professors in the classrooms

3. The prevalence and power of both social media and mental health issues, stigmas and embarrassment within the classroom (people are way to afraid of being wrong and getting corrections)

4. The limits that we place on ourselves when it comes to information input and adequate research (people are reluctant to change a view or opinion these days and super reluctant to conduct actual research to confirm/deny information)

In a university classroom however there are a couple of additional variables outside of the students that truly matter:

1: It depends on the class and the major

Some majors on university campuses require more rigorous studies than others (especially depending upon the career prospects and whether or not graduate studies are required after undergraduate studies). That’s a simple truth that we definitely don’t talk about because different things will be difficult in different ways for different people, right? Right!

An English major may struggle with classical literature in a way that a psychology student may struggle with abnormal psychology but these two struggles are, in no way similar, nor are they comparable. They each depend upon their own fields of study.

All of this said, with those differing backgrounds come different standards from the professionals who’ve worked within those fields (or haven’t but have done some research) and now have the fortune of teaching the next generation of professionals. So again, different majors require different study and professional requirements that will shape how difficult the program will be for each student.

Side note: Professors have also been taking different, and sometimes lightened, approaches to teaching since COVID.

2: It depends on the professor

See all of the above plus:

Some professors keep their classrooms strictly focused on the class and the class’s learning objectives. Other professors allow real-world news, topics, discussions and experiences to enter the classrooms which provides the space for open discussions and interactions with the students about real-world items.

This plus everything mentioned above will certainly shape how the classroom will respond to actually being a part of the conversation and hearing differing perspectives. It also serves as excellent practice for hearing differing opions, seeing how others view the world with curious eyes, and being a part of the pendullum no matter which way it swings.

The only way to get good at having these kinds of conversations is to practice. To do this, you need the proper forum and a good moderator — if your professor provides this space then even better! Take chances when it comes to researching and learning new information so that your contributions encourage others to do the same. Do all of this in a classroom and the outcome is certain to be even better.

With these two items out of the way, we can finally discuss the question at hand. Are classrooms today setting us up to be able to have the hard conversations? And let’s take it a step further, if they’re not, then what do we need to change to create space for these conversations?

My Answer Remains “No”

And I mean a solid and resounding, but emphatic, “no”.

There are just too many intervening factors to free thought today. There are streams of opinion about frivolous things flowing around but free thought on matters concerning education, not so much. We don’t take those types of chances in the classroom anymore. From my view, challenging students to take topics into their own hands and further their own understanding appears to come off as a personal attack on my students! They end up upset that I’ve had the nerve to challenge them instead of simply giving them the answers. Providing answers to everything does not leave space for hard conversations nor does it leave space for critical thought.

What Can We Change?

In order to be able to have these conversations there needs to be an openness that we’ve seemed to have stepped away from.

Education and learning pre-and-post COVID-19 pandemic

I think that we can all agree that the end of 2019, all of 2020, and all of 2021 were difficult. One of the industries that suffered the most was the academic one. Classrooms shifted, professors were forced to learn new skills, and universities were forced to implement new equipment to keep it’s students honest.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a huge discrepancy in learning that happened at home during the pandemic versus learning that took place in a classroom after the pandemic. Not to mention, there was also a surge in the sheer number of students who presented to large lecture halls with newfound anxieties and other mental health issues (possibly tied to COVID and stay-at-home orders, possibly not). These things dramatically change what happens within the classroom and the students who were just seen as “shy” before are now students that cannot be called on because their social anxieties were low enough to get them to the classroom but too high to allow them to participate.

We’ve got a new set of circumstances that makes returning to the more rigorous study model quite difficult. Without the ability to challenge students, not just on the material but with public speaking opportunities like presentations, fact-finding missions, in-class debates (that also show emotional intelligence, control and preparation skills), out-of-class papers (that are well written), critical thought and analysis skills.

Things have changed. This is not to say that it’s impossible to change how your classrooms are run, it’s just to say that we’ve got to actively work at it while being aware that we’ll get pushback from many students who’ve gotten used to the status quo.

Anyway, I love coming across quotes that make me think and answer difficult questions, so the quote series will continue, but for now thanks for reading!

Best,
Bree