M

ORITARIANCLASSROOMQBY MANO S I N G H A M I

V

T he professor at the conference handed around a copy of his class syllabus

to illustrate how he had implemented his teaching innovation. He seemed

a gentle, polite, and concerned teacher, someone who would be well liked

by his students. And yet, viewed through the lens of his syllabus, he ap-

peared a tyrant.

The arrogant tone ofthe document was all too familiar. Instructions to the

students read like imperial commands: "You will submit three projects...,"

"You will make a five-minute report...," "You will submit a written version...,"

"I will expect regular participation...," "You must attend class...." His institu-

tion's policy on electronic submission of assignments, quoted in the syllabus,

was even sterner: "Students bear sole responsibility for ensuring that papers

or assignments submitted electronically to a professor are received in a timely

manner" and are "obliged to have their e-mail client issue a receipt verifying that

the document has been received." Indeed, they should "retain a copy ofthe dated

submission on a separate disk," presumably as proof of having met the deadline.

Mano Singham is director of ihe University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education(UCITE) and adjunct associate professor of physics at Case Westem Reserve University. He isthe author o/Quest for Tmth: Scientific Progress and Religious Beliefs (2000) and The Achieve-ment Gap in U.S. Education: Canaries in the Mine (forthcoming in May 2005). A Fellow oftheAmerican Physical Society, he is also the winner of Case's 2000 Carl F. Wittke Award for Distin-guished Undergraduate Teaching.

CHANGE • MAY/JUNE 2005 S I

The schoors policy oti dis-abilities was yet more legalistic."Studetits with a documenteddisability tnust inform the instruc-tor at the close of the first classmeeting...,If you do not consultwith the instructor atid follow upat the Student Support Servicesoffice during the first two weeksof classes. ..yow will thereby waiveany claim to a disability and iheright to any accommodation per-taining thereto" (emphasis added).

This harshness is, unfortu-nately, not uncommon in syllabi.At a subsequent faculty discus-sion of power in the classroomat my own university, I quotedthese sections of thesyllabus as examplesof an authoritarianfaculty mindset. Therewere embarrassedsmiles of recognitionall around. One facultymember, also a kindlyand concemed teacher,shamefacedly admittedthat those phrases couldhave been lifted directlyfrom her own syllabus.She hadn't realizeduntil that moment howrude they might soundto students.

But the sad fact isthat students don't seemto be offended by be-ing ordered around incourse syllabi. Cynicsmight argue that thisis because no studentactually reads them.But even if they do, bythe time they come intoour college classroom,students have received

many similar edicts. They have probably come to think of themas the normal way of doing things.

I find it hard to believe that teachers always treated studentsso rudely in their syllabi or that syllabi were always so detailedand legalistic, trying to cover almost every eventuahty. It islikely that the authoritarian syllabus is just the visible symptomof a deeper underlying problem, the breakdown of trust in the

52

likely that the

authoritarian

syllabus is just the

visihie symptom

of a deeper

underlying problem,

the breakdown of

trust in the

student-teacher

relationship.

student-teacher relation-ship. When and why didthis state of affairs arise,and how did it become sowidespread?

One reason for thisbreakdown is undoubtedlythe lengthening reach oflocal and national legisla-tures into the classrooms.For example, a facultymember at my universitywas surprised to be told thathe had been reported forviolating the law by leavinggraded homework outsidehis office for students topick up at any time. He con-tacted my office to find outif such an arrangement, con-venient for both instructorand students, was indeed il-legal. (These issues are dealtwith in my own institution'sUndergraduate Instructor'sManual, but faculty igtiorethis document the way stu-dents ignore syllabi.)

1 checked the manualand found that it was:"Graded exams, papers,and homework shouldnever be left outside ofoffice doors or otherwiseunattended for students toclaim; this is a violation ofFERPA and an invitationto theft. Instructors shouldretum graded material tostudents individually, inclass or in office hours, orshould arrange to mail final

material to students once the semester has ended."

FERPA, as we all come to know sooner or later, stands forFamily Educational Rights and Privacy Act, federal legislationthat govems the privacy of student educational records.

So it has come to this, that the innocuous act of retuminghomework to students is now overseen by federal statute.

College faculty across the country are probably routinely vio-lating this law one way or another, wittingly or not. For example,in my own 200-student physics course, I had been assigninghomework for each class (which met three times a week). Theassigtiments were handed in at the beginning of each class, grad-ed, and rettimed at the beginning of the subsequent class.

CHANGE • MAY/JUNE 2005

This resulted in a lotof paper moving around:at the beginning of eachclass. 200 students had tohand in their new home-work and pick up theirgraded assignments. Inorder to manage this pro-cess efficiently. I sortedthe graded homework intoassigned groups of fourand placed the piles infront of the class, so thatany one member couldpick them up for the entiregroup before class began.The system worked sowell that I did not lose anyinstructional time at all.despite the seeming com-plexity of the operation.

But was 1 breakingthe law? Possibly. I was,after all, not returninghomework individually.and students were pick-ing up someone else'shomework in additionto their own. But afterdoing this for 10 yearsfor a total of about 4.000students, 1 have not heardone student complaint.Maybe the students did

not know about FERPA. But even if they knew, they didnot care. I think that most students understand whensomething is done to advance legitimate educationalgoals, and they will look for rules to invoke only if theyfeel that the teacher does not have their best interestin mind. It is when that sense of trust is broken that rulesand laws become important.

If we were to take the number of rules in a typical syllabusas a measure of that lack of trust, we would have to concludethat at present the college classroom is in a very sorry stateindeed. Of course we need some rules and policies at theinstitutional level. But there should also be room for commonsense and judgment about what is and is not appropriate in theclassroom, and good learning practices should be the drivingforce. My concem is that trust, respect, and judgment are beingsqueezed out by an increasingly adversaria] relationship be-tween teachers and students.

There is no doubt that in the college classroom, the teacherwields a great deal of institutional power, and students havevery little. College ideals about academic freedom are for the

CHANGE • MAY/JUNE 2005

benefit of the faculty, and studentsknow this. As long as we are notcapricious, abusive, or flagrantlyunjust, we can pretty much setthe rules of the classroom, andstudents have to live with them.The problem is that many teachersare not using this flexibility to ex-plore teaching methods that mightenhance leaming. Instead, wedefend ourselves against potentialchallenges to our authority bywielding the course syllabus, our

chief instrument of power,like a club.

My own institution'sUndergraduate Instruc-tor's Manual is full ofuseful information onhow to prepare coursematerials, prepare andconduct exams, deal withstudents with disabilities,respect confidentiality.etc. All these issues arepresented with the aimof helping the instruc-tor—especially the nov-ice—avoid the kind ofblunders that might gen-erate disputes.

But the tone of the sec-tions that deal with coursesyllabi are formal and de-fensive, as if a committeehad looked at all the pos-sible things that could gowrong and all the possiblelaws that might apply, andthen had devised rulesto prevent disaster. New

faculty are also given friendly advice by academic administra-tors that the syllabus is like a legally binding contract, so they.should put in it everything that they expect of students and goover it on the first day of class.

I have before me a legal newsletter from another universityin which the author clearly lays out the implied contractualnature of the syllabus:

Themostcommonofthese types of implied agreements, at leastfrom the faculty perspective, is the written syllabus and/or oralrecitation of the rules, policies, procedures, and expectationsgiven to students by faculty at the beginning of each academiccourse. When a dispute arise.s with a student over course require-ments, satisfactory resolution of the dispute frequently rests on

53

hould be room

for common sense

and judgment

about what is

and is not

appropriate

in the classroom,

and good leaming

practices should be

the driving force.

the legal enforceability ofthe terms and conditions ofthese implied agreements.

The author then proceedsto describe what a facultymember needs to put in thesyllabus in order to have asolid legal case in the eventthat a dispute wilh a studentshould go to court.

Given this attitude, itshould not be surprising thatthe classroom has become aquasi-courtroom. I have seencourse syllabi that extendover 20 pages. A colleaguetold me the he spent almostall the time of his first three-hour class walking the stu-dents carefully through thesyllabus, because otherwisehe could not be sure that theywere aware of ail the rules hehad established for them tofollow. But the result of suchan attitude is that we end upviewing all students aspotential courtroomadversaries.

I am sure that it is not pleasant for stu-dents or teachers or universities to have togo through judicial proceedings because ofsome classroom disagreement. But why dowe assume that this is the worst thing thatcould happen and must be avoided at allcosts? If the price that we pay for our legalprotection is the creation of a controllingclassroom atmosphere that stifles leaming,isn't that a much worse result? Repeated questions by studentssuch as "Will this be on the test?" and "Do we have to knowthis?" are symptoms of the extent to which following mles hasreplaced leaming as the chief goal in the classroom.

To begin to understand the phenomenon of creeping authori-tarianism, I need go no further than my own courses and syllabiand see how they have evolved over the years. When I startedteaching my large introductory physics courses, I was con-vinced that the only way to keep on top of things and maintainclarity, faimess. and uniformity was to be highly organized.

So my syllabi were very detailed, laying out what topicswould be covered and when, all the deadlines for homework anddates for exams, detailed penalties for missing anything, and theexact format for writing papers (down to page length, fonts andfont sizes). I even had instructions for how the homework sheetswere to be folded before being handed in, and students lost points

54

the price that

we pay for our

legal protection is

the creation of

a controlling

classroom

atmosphere that

stifles learning,

isn't that a much

worse result?

if they folded them incor-rectly or not at all.

What is telling is that mymonster syllabus cameabout even though I wasn'ttrying to prevent legalactions. I had good educa-tional reasons for all therules, and for dealingefficiently with large class-es I can still justify a few ofthem. But the list of rulesgrew year by year, drivenby its own intemal logic.Initially, for example, I hadno penalties for missingdeadlines, since I assumedstudents would meet them.When a significant numberof students did not, my syl-labus the following yearhad penalties that increasedeach day that the assign-ment was late,

I also didn't have penal-ties for papers that had ty-pographical or grammaticalerrors; I simply assumedthat students would proof-

read anything they handed in. Whenthat didn't happen, I introduced detailedpenalties for those infractions too. Eachadded rule produced requests for excep-tions from students who couldn't meetit. So other rules were tacked on to dealwith the possible range of exceptions.And so on. Like Abou Ben Adham, myname led all the rest when it came to

comprehensive, detailed, and authoritarian syllabi.

I confess that my system worked extremely well. The paperscame in on time, carefully proofread and edited. Homework washanded in like clockwork, folded correctly. I, like so many teach-ers before me, had discovered the power of the detailed syllabusto achieve precisely targeted goals. That power went to my head,like power usually does, and I began to think that I could createa rule to achieve whatever I wanted. Some departmental col-leagues, marveling at the smoothness with which my course wasmn, adopted many features of my syllabus for their own courses.Thus are the vimses of complex syllabi spread through academia.

But I discovered that there were important things that I justcould not do with my syllabus. I could not make students careabout the work, be creative and original, be considerate ofothers, or write and speak well. All I could do was force themto do very specific things. As I started reading the research

CHANGE • MAY/JUNE 2005

literature on good teachingpractices, I came to realizethat this failure was not dueto my technical inability todevise ingenious rubrics toadd to my syllabus to achievethose more worthwhile goals.Rather, it was that the veryact of creating detailed courserequirements and forcing stu-dents to obey them actuallyworked again.st the highergoal of leaming.

The emphasis on tightclassroom management.although widespread, goescounter to some of the mostcompelling research onleaming. In The Learner-Centered Classroom,Maryellen Weimer arguesthat leaming ensues wheninstructors relinquish muchof their power and cedesome decisionmaking powerto students. Alfie Kohn, inPunished by Rewards, pointsout that student motivation isenhanced when rewards andpunishments are minimized,students are given choicesabout what and how theyleam. and students and teach-ers collaborate in classroom-policy decisionmaking.

In Power in the ClassroomVirginia Richmond and James McCroskey emphasize thatstudents have more power than we realize and that the morewe try to exercise direct authority, the more likely it is thatthey will devise ways to thwart us, leading to reduced learn-ing. Robert Boice's work on classroom incivilities in Advicefor the New Faculty Member shows how student resistanceto leaming is not necessarily innate but arises from the at-mosphere created early on in the classroom.

All this made sense, once T realized what I should haveknowti all along, that leaming is an inberently voluntaryact that you can no more force than you can force someone tolove you. Authoritarianism and fostering a love of learning justdo not go together. If they did, the best leaming should occurin prison education programs, where the "students" can be co-erced to do almost anything.

When I stepped back and looked at my syllabus in the lightof this new understanding, it appeared completely foreign tomy conception of what an ideal teacher-student relationship

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should be. Somewhere along the way.I had lost sight of the fact that a leam-ing community has to be a communityin the best sense of the word. I hadmade my classroom into a dictatorship.Since I seem relaxed and approachablethe students did not complain; it wasa benevolent dictatorship. But it was adictatorship nonetheless, since I unilat-erally made all the decisions thataffected the students. My focus on hav-ing the trains run on time had preventedme from achieving more fundamentaland important leaming goals.

I became increasingly uncomfort-able with the way my classroom wasstructured. So when I had the chance

to teach a new seminaron the evolution of sci-entific ideas to a muchsmaller class of 17sophomores. I decidedthat the time had come tomake changes. But ratherthan make incrementalchanges I decided—likean addict who concludes[hat the only way to be-come free of the depen-dency is to make a cleanbreak—to dispense witha formal written syllabusaltogether.

1 walked into the firstclass with only a read-ing list and a tentativeschedule of readings forthe first few weeks. Wedid not talk about rulesor grades at all; insteadwe went straight into adiscussion of the coursesubject matter. While Ifelt almost naked goinginto the class with nosyllabus in my hand or

already posted on the Web, the students did not seem to be at allconcerned by its absence. No one mentioned it, lending furthersupport to the thesis that no student ever reads it.

It was only after about five weeks into the course, when thestudents were getting their essays retumed with detailed feed-back, that one asked whether the essays would be eventuallyassigned a grade. It was then that we had a class discussion onthe topic of course requirements. I told them what my leaming

55

...Learning

is an

inherently

voluntary act

that you

can no more

force

than you can

force someone

to love you.

goals for the seminar were and saidthat I was open to discussing how theywould be evaluated. However, I alsosaid that I had an ethical obligationto my institution to ensure that thegrades were meaningful measures oflearning, and also to my discipline toensure that the course was advancingknowledge in that area.

Within those constraints, wereached a consensus on what the stu-dents would need to do to reach theleaming goals and to earn their coursegrades. We selected a fairly traditionalmix of short essays, a research paper,a formal presentation, and par-ticipation. We also decided onthe approximate weights of theassignments, with some flex-ibility for individual choice.

We reached an agreementabout broad criteria for evalu-ating each item in the mix,with the consensus being thatthey would leave it up to meto make the final judgmentbased on my experience andexpertise. What was especial-ly interesting to me was thatthey did not want a reduction-ist, detailed, itemized scoringof elass participation (such askeeping track of how manytimes each person spoke, thequality of what they said,etc.), which is exactly thekind of thing a legalistic syl-labus might spell out. Theyfelt that this led to artificial,points-related behavior andhindered genuine discussionand leaming.

They preferred that I make aholistic judgment. I told them that ultimately, assigning a gradehas an unavoidably subjective component and that the systemwould work only if they trusted that I would judge them fairly.The students seemed to treat that statement as if it were obvi-ous, and it went unchallenged. (This is another example of thedifferences between student and teacher perceptions. While wego to great lengths to persuade students that our grading isobjective they, despite our protestations, seem to assume that itis quite subjective.)

We also set up a schedule of deadlines for assignments,again with some flexibility built in to accommodate the stu-

56

classroom works

best when students

and teachers

perceive it as a place

where there is a

continuing

conversation among

interested people,

similar to what

one might

have with friends.

dents' individual schedules(we sometimes forget thatstudents have other coursesand even personal hves out-side of our classes) and withrespect for mine (I have a lifetoo).

In about 30 minuteswe thus jointly created ade-facto syllabus. There wasno controversy, though thestudents were extremelysurprised that they werebeing given such leeway itisetting up the structure ofthe course. The course hasended, and so far no one hassued me or even complainedabout grades or course re-quirements. A few studentsmissed some of their self-determined deadlines, butonly by a few days, and theywere profusely apologetic.The students came to class,discussed serious topics in arelaxed way, and wrote ex-cellent papers on topics theychose for themselves andseemed really to care about.In fact, the end of the semes-ter brought with it genuinesadness that we were going

our separate ways. It really felt like a community,and the semester was one of the most enjoyableteaching experiences of my life.

Will this idyllic result occur every time? Probablynot. When I speak about my experience with col-leagues, I am asked what I would do if a student con-sistently missed deadlines or took advantage in someway of the flexibility and freedom I provided. 1 say Idon't know. I would deal with such situations on anad hoc, case-by-case basis, because each such case is

likely to be caused by factors unique to that individual student.Tolstoy's famous opening line in Anna Karenina that ''all happyfamilies resemble one another, but each unhappy family isunhappy in its own way" applies to students too.

By devising complex general rules to cope with any andall anticipated behavior, we tend to constrain, alienate, anddehumanize students, and we remove a great deal of theenjoyment from the learning experience. Surely students arelike us in flourishing under conditions of freedom. Why is itthat given the choice between creating a freer classroomatmosphere that risks the occasional problem and establish-

CHANGE • MAY/JUNE 2005

ing an authoritarian classroom that tries to anticipate andthwart any and all problems, we choose the latter? Surelycreating learning conditions that benefit almost all studentsshould be preferred to those aimed at protecting ourselvesagainst the occasional malcontent.

The syllabus has also become a defensive shield againstgrade complaints. It is rare that students will complain directlyto the professor that they did not leam much in the course. Theymight make this serious charge to their peers, but complaints toteachers are almost always about grades or other sanctions. Theformal written syllabus, with all the lists of things that studentsmust and must not do and highly detailed grading schemes thatoutline how students are to be evaluated, is the teacher's pre-emptive strike against such complaints.

At some level, we know that grading is an art. not a sci-ence. We should come to our judgments with great care andall the expertise, objectivity, and honesty we can muster, butthey are judgments nonetheless. Elaborate grading schemesmerely create an illusion of objectivity and hide that judgmentunder a shroud of numbers. If a student complains, the sylla-bus with its formulas can provide a spurious precision that canmute criticism. We can sigh regretfully and tell the student:"You needed to get an 80 to get a B and unfortunately youscored only 78.6."

Complex and precise grading schemes remind me of thehighly dramatic ritual that occurs in football games if there isdoubt as to whether the hall has been advanced the required 10yards. A hush falls on the stadium as the game is halted and twoofficials are called from the sidelines to carefully place the 10-yard chains on the field. The referee then signals that either theeffort to advance the ball 10 yards has failed by a few inches orhas just harely succeeded. That this is an elaborate farce can beappreciated by noting that where the hall is spotted at the end ofthe play is only a rough approximation, as are the estimationsof the starting point and of the distances advanced in previousplays. But the players and fans accept the result unquestion-ingly, cowed by the solemnity of the ritual,

The research of Patricia King and Karen Strohm Kitchener,summarized in their book Developing Reflective Judgment,indicates that our incoming college students tend to be largelypre-reflective in their thinking. They view knowledge in black/white, right/wrong terms, and colleges do not do particularlywell in nudging them to take a more nuanced view of knowl-edge or in teaching them how to weigh evidence and argumentsin order to arrive at reasoned judgments. When we try to hidetbe role that judgment makes in our own decisions, we may beinadvertently reinforcing their low-level view of knowledge.

If we dispense with the authoritarian syllabus as a weapon,then the challenge for teachers is to give students confidencethat we have the competence to make judgments about theirperformance, that we have meaningful criteria for doing so,that our assessments are meaningful measures of importantleaming, and that we have the impartiality to make honest judg-ments. This is a harder task than creating a watertight syllabus.

CHANGE • MAY/JUNE 2005

primarily because it requires a change in mindset on the part ofteachers. But in the long run it results in a much more reward-ing experience for both teachers and students.

If we are not to be adversaries in the classroom, then wbatis the appropriate relationship between teachers and students?As I see it, it is that of good neighbors in a small community.The classroom works best when students and teachers perceiveit as a place where there is a continuing conversation amonginterested people, similar to what one might have with neigh-bors and friends. A sense of community is not created by rulesand laws but by a sense of mutual respect and tolerance. Goodneighborliness cannot be legislated—it can only be leamed byexample and experience, and it flourishes in an atmosphere oftrust and acceptance of differences.

Can we recover the ideal of the classroom as a coUegialconversation among faculty and students where the role of theinstructor is to provide the insight that experience and expertiseprovides, without invoking the institutional power vested inus to coerce students? Or have we gone too far down the pathof authoritarian, adversarial classrooms to regain that level oftmst, assuming we did have it at some point?

When I tell people of my attempts to create a freer class-room atmosphere, I am reminded of those political discussionsin which the future of this or that authoritarian country is dis-cussed, and the question is raised as to whether the people ofthat country are "ready for democracy."

I am asked, are students mature enough to deal with suchfreedom responsibly? Will they take advantage of the situa-tion to not do any serious work? Might they even sue hecausethe teacher did something that was not in the syllabus? Allthese things might happen, but this is a chance that I have totake. The possibility that my students may not be ready fordemocracy worries me a little, hut the thought that theyshould be ready for and accepting of authoritarianism troublesme a great deal more.

I am looking forward to teaching the seminar again. Andonce more I will start without a syllabus. @

RESOURCES

• Patricia King and Karen Strohm Kitchener,Developing Reflective Judgment, Jossey-Bass, San Fran-cisco: 1994.• Maryellen Weimer, Learner-Centered Teaching, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco: 2002.• Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards, Houghton Mifflin,Boston: 1993.• Virginia Richmond and James McCroskey, Power in theClassroom, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ:1992.• Robert Boice, Advice for New Faculty Members, Allynand Bacon, Needham Heights, MA: 2000. " ^