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KVOS Special: The Professor Looks At His College

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It's a difficult time for anyone between the ages of 18 and 21.
They're becoming people, and up to this point in life,
they've been dependent.
They've been children in the home of their fathers.
Very frequently, as with most of our students,
they're away from home for the first time in their lives,
and they're having to make decisions
for themselves of the sort that were normally made,
if not as a group, made in consultation with some one
other person in the family.
But it's a very, very hard time in life for them.
They're expected to become intellectually mature,
emotionally mature, and physically mature
all at the same time.
And the youngsters today, they come into your office,
they'll often come to talk to you about their classwork.
The professor learns at his colleagues.
This program was edited from four hours
of separate conversations, and has been
arranged to form a dialogue.
Participating are professors Katherine Carroll,
Charles Flora, Arthur Hicks, James MCAree, Richard Reynolds,
Herbert Taylor, Ralph Thompson, and Mary Watrous,
all of Western Washington State College in Bellingham.
They think that they are going through this alone,
that the experience is unique, that no one else has ever
gone through it.
But this would happen, of course,
I think, even to students, or even to young people outside
of a college.
It happens, however, without the kind of intensity
that is common here.
It is the nature, I think, of young people whose lives
are changing greatly under the impact of learning to feel
sometimes like odd men out.
And all too often, if you cannot understand this intellectually
and respond to it accordingly, you respond to it in outbursts,
either a good-humored prankishness.
Or sometimes, you respond to it in outbreaks of just plain
out and out violence.
I refuse to be very seriously alarmed about such an episode,
for instance, as the smashing of a piano.
Much as I love music and much as I admire the piano
as an instrument of musical expression,
I refuse to be very seriously disturbed
by this little incident.
It's a part of the nature, I think,
of young people to let off steam.
It has always been so.
As an historian, for instance, I am always
impressed when I am reading documents of the Middle Ages
at the kind of hijinks that the students went through even
then.
For instance, there is a celebrated proclamation
issued by the regent of the University of Paris
back in the 13th century in which he
warns that any students caught in the future playing
dice on the high altar of Notre Dame Cathedral
will be forthwith dismissed from the institution.
I think it's natural, because I think
an 18 or 20-year-old individual, a 17-year-old individual,
a 16-year-old individual probably one of the main things
they think about life is sex.
Now, they're unable to realize their ambitions in this regard.
So I think there ought to be some outlet for their energies.
And this is one possible outlet.
The value of extra curricular activities interests me.
Some of the students seem to think of them
as a means of release.
The college curriculum, by necessity,
is very well structured.
And yet the student activities program in itself,
by its very nature, is flexible.
For instance, within a department,
if a group of students are interested in pursuing,
let's say, a foreign language, or a particular subject
in biology or botany, that they can do this
on an extracurricular level.
They can go beyond what is done in the classroom.
These tend to attract a minority of students.
No, I don't think these extracurricular activities
actually do siphon off any great amount of energy.
They tend to give a forum to those students who have already
marked out perhaps some professional objective which
can be advanced by participation in student government,
in the newspaper.
I, on the other hand, I think that if they did not
have student government, and if they did not
have the newspaper, they would be most unhappy, because it's
traditional to have these things,
and they're convinced that they don't have them,
they're missing something that's a proper right to have.
But I don't think it does most of them an ounce of good.
Now, in the social field, I suspect
that social relations of college students
become most difficult when they have to live in group housing.
Many of them haven't had to live with large numbers of students
in dormitories or in college housing.
And problems of study--
when you have large numbers of people, the temptation
to socialize instead of study, if you're not
inclined to want to be a learner anyhow,
this is very attractive.
You can always go off someplace, and talk to somebody,
and have a lot of fun.
I tend to deplore the system that
presumes that each student must have a roommate or two or three
roommates.
I rather like the European system,
where each student has his own room and his own private place
to study.
I think we pursue group activity ad nauseum at times.
If a student feels that he does belong to an institution,
he is going to do better in his academic life
than if he feels he does not really fit in.
A dormitory can go a long way toward building this self
feeling that you do belong to an institution.
I can remember my own dormitory life,
and all the dormitory was for me was a place
to get out of as quick as I could when
I wanted to learn something.
It interfered more than it ever contributed.
Now, this might have been the fault
of the dormitory I was in.
It might in part have been my fault,
the fault of the students.
It might have been the fault of the college.
I don't know.
I don't think that dormitories, as I have seen them,
are very conducive to the learning process.
I think also, coffee shops are much overrated in this regard.
I don't think that they are very effective places in which
to learn.
If they weren't here, I don't feel
that they would be spending their time in the library
or they would be spending their time in their biology
or chemistry lab.
They probably would be sitting in a dorm, or in the lounge,
or on the stairways of a building,
and I don't think that is really detracting
at all from their studies.
I think that the coffee shop should
be a place where faculty as well as students comingle,
and that the faculty member should see in himself
the responsibility of using that coffee
shop as some kind of classroom.
I think it might even be wise occasionally for the faculty
member to prepare for that classroom,
and to go to the coffee shop with a particular series
of problems or questions in mind,
or even occasionally to bring something with them about which
he can develop some kinds of problems,
and then lead this discussion.
In that sense, I think that the coffee shop can
become a learning situation.
I don't think they normally are.
I think they're a waste of time.
I think the primary function of a college
is intellectual awakening.
We've got to awaken curiosity about the whole great big
wonderful world, not just the present,
but the past world, too.
The human being is a strange sort of creature.
At infancy, as it begins to walk, talk, and become aware
of the world around it, its curiosity
knows no limits whatever.
It will lead a child, an infant, into very dangerous positions
investigating things that catch the eye and make a blunder.
Now, we lose this as we grow older.
We accumulate a certain amount of information
and assume that that's all there is that we need to have,
that there are limits upon what we need
to get along in this world.
One of the exciting things about being a teacher
is to point out that the world is so infinite in variety
that we can make a student awaken up to the idea
that the whole wide world is there to be seen,
to be investigated as an infant would investigate
it, and perhaps get himself out on a dangerous limb
in the process, hoping, of course, you'll come back.
But you must go out and look at these things.
How do we awaken curiosity in a student?
Well, first place, I think the professor must surely
be an example.
He must demonstrate that he himself has curiosity.
He must demonstrate that he has enthusiasm for his subject.
And one of the ways of demonstrating
that you have enthusiasm for your subject
is to demonstrate curiosity.
Now, these things are important that you demonstrate them
as an instructor because the student is
to assume very surely if you don't demonstrate these things,
that there isn't anything in the subject worth demonstrating
them about.
For example, I could simply teach my subject
as a fact by fact by fact account
of how something happened.
But in reality, I have done nothing but give the student
a factual chronology, or a number of facts
strung on a chronology, like beads on a string.
The notion that you can package this stuff
as you would sardines, and knowledge is packages
of sardines is pure nonsense.
What you must do in the classroom is having presented
a certain number of facts, you lead the students to interpret
what those facts mean.
Indeed, it's, I think, a perfectly delightful experience
to lead a young person who has some factual information
through a logical process.
And suddenly, a kind of awakening,
and he suddenly feels, I thought of the idea
that those facts sum up, you see.
Furthermore, directly, I think you
can initiate some of this kind of curiosity
in asking questions, which I think
is really synonymous, by demanding this kind of activity
of your students.
You can virtually order them to be curious.
Not saying, be curious, now, but rather,
you can set up situations where it
is required that they come up with observations of their own,
and that they postulate, that they ask questions that
are their own, that they seek answers in ways that
are their own, that they postulate solutions
to questions that are their own.
You can expect this of a student.
I have found that when I expect this, I tend to get it.
And I know that further, when a student develops
the habit of doing this through being expected to do it,
it carries on.
It's not a one-shot enterprise that he does it here
and then stops it.
You can't turn it off that way.
Once you've gotten into the habit
of being curious about things and asking
why this particular worm is located at this particular spot
now, pretty soon it becomes an entrenched attitude
and will carry on.
But it takes more than just curiosity.
You can be curious without having any tools to pursue
the curiosity.
You have to go beyond curiosity to the tools, to the media,
to the independent study habits.
And it's almost a habit of pursuing an idea until you're
satisfied with the conclusion.
And if you don't do this, you can
be curious all your life about something
and never get the answer to it.
I think it is impossible to teach a course in biology
in which the qualities of curiosity
are awakened without their learning
at the same time, the more mundane aspects of biology.
My goodness, any discipline today,
and the way that the information in a discipline is building up,
you can't tell them everything.
But what you can do is teach them
a method whereby they analyze the materials
of the discipline, and then turn them loose,
and with any set of materials that come to hand,
to use that process in interpretation.
And it is actually awakening them to their own potential
to analyze and to understand the information which comes
to them from diverse sources.
Not just from libraries, but from the experience
of life itself.
The notion that the job of the professor
is to open up the student's head and dump
in a lot of information is a misconstruction
of the functions of teaching in [INAUDIBLE]..
It would be a bad teaching at any level, kindergarten
through graduate school.
The main function of the teacher knowing the materials
in his field is to set some structures
within which the student may work
to find new areas of knowledge for himself.
I do not regard myself as primarily a teacher.
A teacher, I take it, is charged with a much weightier
responsibility than mine, and that is to, in some sense,
induce, inveigle, force, or persuade children to learn.
It is my test to take a given discipline,
and in a series of lectures and/or seminars,
to present this discipline as interestingly
as I may and as authoritatively as I may,
keeping up with current literature in the field.
Let them learn who will.
Let those attend who will.
But those fail to learn or not attend who will.
I think this is an intrinsic difference between a professor
and a teacher.
It is my conviction that if the professor has
an enthusiasm for his subject, and not only
an enthusiasm for the subject, but certain rather
definite and positive convictions on issues
raised by the subject, assuming, of course, that he does not
try to ram those convictions down his students' throats,
that he will have a greater impact upon the class,
that they will learn more from him.
They will be more likely to engage in a discussion with him
than if he assumes a top lofty bystander's point of view,
as though he were utterly aloof and indifferent.
It's a great intellectual battlefield.
I like to approach my classes in biology with the idea
that I want to win every student in that class
into biological science.
This is the way in which I gather
the enthusiasm I need to properly present that course.
I want every one of them into that class, not just
the bright.
But I want the miserable ones, the mediocre ones,
and the very fine ones to enter biology as a field.
I don't really want this, because you
can imagine how unfortunate it would be if they all did this.
I simply want to approach it with that attitude.
Well, I think that if all college professors entered
every class with this in mind--
imagine it in history, in anthropology,
and in every discipline that a student is exposed to--
that when it came time that he had
to select a profession, that he would be in a great dilemma.
He would not be able to say, I want
to enter this discipline because Professor X was so very good.
Instead, what he would have to say is, gee,
I've had such fine instruction from so many people
that I had better select a discipline that
is more adaptable to my own interests,
and my own personality, and my own abilities.
I believe that the personality of the instructor is important.
There are brilliant scholars who can't teach worth a darn.
On the other hand, there are some teachers
who are not as brilliant scholars who
can guide, inspire, and sort of catch the student on fire.
And quite frankly, I think that the best teacher
has an obligation to try to set the student on fire,
to challenge his imagination, to excite him,
to excite his curiosity, and to lead him to something that he
knew not of before.
Professors in time come to believe
that they are, if not demigods, at least the vice regents
of the Lord on this earth.
And their classes come to be posed with this in mind that
make what goes in their truth, and much more
important than what goes on in the outside.
I suspect that most professors--
certainly I feel this way concerning myself--
are at times subject to the imperial madness.
In our own classroom, we are virtually all-powerful.
And we therefore come to believe what we say from the lecture
podium, rather than realizing that at best, we approximate
truth, that we frequently mutilate it,
and that in any event, we don't know
enough to be effective in some of the areas
that we purport to cover.
I believe that the teacher has an obligation to pursue truth
and to tell the student, or to show the student, put
the student on to, if only through books,
what is generally conceived to be truth
or to let him look at truth.
On the other hand, the student can
read much of the past in books.
And I think the student wants to know what the professor thinks.
The thing that worries me is that sometimes, the professor
may expound as truth what he only thinks,
and not let the student know that this is just
his own opinion.
I hate to see this kind of subtle indoctrination happening
in the classroom.
Well, indeed, of course, the professor
does have a great deal of influence.
He can set patterns of thought, can even by his example,
set patterns of behavior in his students that will last perhaps
a lifetime.
And he's got to be very careful, I think, in his relationship
with a student in order not to impress upon him
certain patterns that might not really be desirable
or might not be suitable to that young person.
He can wield a kind of Machiavellian influence,
too, if he wishes to.
And it's done.
It's done.
Yes, I think there is a danger of forming
a student in your own image.
If we can imagine a college campus
where there are 300 miserably poor teachers--
granted, this is a theoretical situation--
but 300 miserably poor teachers and one shining star,
then I think the problem is real,
that there will be a tendency for almost all
the students to try and go into the profession of the shining
star.
I think that if you have a great many very fine professors,
the odds of this kind of thing developing are poor.
But by the time the student comes to college he is--
and I think layman and professor are alike that we tend
to forget this on occasion--
a man or woman grown.
He is not easily changed in terms of moral value judgments.
A great deal of the ink that is spilt and anguish that
is poured out over professors influencing the tender
minds of the students ignore the fact
that the Boobus Americanus Collegiansus is probably
about as tough-minded an individual as ever come down
the pike normally.
Now, that they're not readily influenced
by their professors-- that much more readily,
they question what a professor says
than accept it whole cloth.
And certainly, this is true when the professor
begins making pronouncements ex cathedra concerning
manners, morals, mores, politics, or religion.
At the same time, I think we have a heavy obligation
to let the student know how we feel about these things.
If we don't, there certainly isn't anything
that the student can't get over in the library.
Are you familiar with the study which the editors of Time
did in publishing in the book called They Went to College?
No.
They addressed themselves to this problem in a chapter
on the inculcation of religious, philosophical, and political
attitudes and beliefs.
Specifically, they asked the question,
are college students changed in political belief
by the effect of going to college?
The editors of Time could find no conclusive evidence--
indeed, very little inconclusive evidence--
that the political beliefs of the instructors
influenced the child at all.
In fact, I think it is notorious that the Ivy League
colleges, the overwhelming majority of PhDs instructing
in the subjects are Democrats.
The overwhelming number of the alumni, on the other hand,
are Republican.
And it's been this way for donkeys years.
What it seems to me a good teacher
does is to teach a student to respect his own opinion,
but to be certain how he handles the facts as he reaches
that opinion.
Much of the teaching process-- and I think this is true of any
discipline, and it's a kind of truism that will apply to every
subject--
is to teach the student the facts by themselves are not
adequate, but that the facts as interpreted by the professor
are not the only adequate means of explaining
any particular phenomenon.
But that he must bring the totality of what
he knows to a particular topic under consideration
and reach mature and sound judgments of his own.
I think in discussions of this sort,
we frequently ignore the responsibility
of the student in the business of academe.
But obviously, the primary responsibility
for any kind of learning rests squarely upon the learner.
And all that any instructor can do at any level is hope to lead
them in a path by which they can most efficiently do this,
but they cannot make them learn.
They must do this themselves.
I think many students just take courses because they're there
to take, and they have to be taken, without reference
to, what am I doing now?
Why am I doing it?
What is it going to lead to?
And they live, in a sense, from day to day, from examination
to examination, from textbook chapter to textbook chapter
without reference to overall learning goals.
They have a saying in the student argot
that I've psyched the professor out.
I know what he wants.
He'll give it back on an examination.
Sometimes, college students begin
to inquire of each other, who is the person who
teaches this course from whom I'm
likely to get the best grade?
If they're swapping stories about professors,
as they usually do, then many times,
they are less interested in digging in and working
for themselves.
And they are, well, I won't say a social wrong,
but I'll say that they're perhaps
interested in taking an easier way out,
particularly in some of the difficult courses.
I think I would have to add, in justice, that frequently,
classes get in the way of acquiring an education.
A professor will require a student
to do rote work in the classroom when
the student would be better off reading books on his own hook.
Sometimes, I think therefore, a student
should rebel, particularly the very bright student.
Here, I might point out the haunting fact
that students who make the honor roll
are rarely the brightest students in a college
or university.
The brightest student in a college or university, ever
and anon decides that he will not study for a given exam.
He instead will read a book, or write a poem, or go for a walk,
with the result that he makes high B.
And the grind student, superior but not very
superior in intelligence, tends to make the A.
But primarily, I think with regard to study,
or the studies of college, his obligation
is to bring into the learning situation as much effort
as he can to learn to be self-directive in learning.
I think that any student coming to a college
is undertaking a type of contract
with the society that provides the college for him
and with the academic community to which he comes.
He is admitted because he's brighter than average,
and because he's done reasonably good work in high school.
It is assumed that he is here to learn.
I don't think we have the time, nor do we possess the police
powers to force him to learn.
Now, here we get into an interaction
between professorial responsibility and student
responsibility.
In many cases, we simply do not interest the bright student
enough to cause him to put out the maximal effort.
In many cases, on the other hand,
demands of urgent biology, the social life,
the desire to be a big man on campus, or what have you,
get in the way of acquiring an education.
As I look at the developments in the areas of knowledge,
I don't think we're going to be able in four years of college
to say that a person at any point in his life
is now an educated person.
You can say about him only, he has the characteristics
of an educated person.
But to say that he is now educated, no.
He doesn't bear the stamp of educated.
He bears the stamp of, he is now educating himself.
He has the tools to educate himself.
Because as knowledge expands in all areas,
as more is to be known, as fields are changing rapidly,
and as people have to be retreaded, if you will,
for new jobs, this becomes an ever-increasing problem
with our society.
We have to acquire facility and acquiring new knowledge.
And if we are not self-starters, if we are not
independent learners, when we get out of the public schools
or when we get out of college, there's no hope for many of us.
We'll be obsolete in 10 years, or eight years, or five years,
in some fields.
We have to keep learning.
The doctor has to keep learning.
The teacher has to keep learning.
The engineer has to keep learning.
The citizen has to keep learning.
There's no end to learning.
So we can say now about the educated man,
he is a man who learns, not he is a man who knows.
I think it was Eliot of Harvard, who in an earlier day,
once defined the proper process of higher education.
And that was to lead the students
through the charted fields to the edge of the unknown woods,
and to say, this far and no further came your fathers.
Now, press you on.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(SINGING) Guarded all around by mountains
crowned by Baker's dome.
The Professor Looks at His College
was edited from over four hours of recorded interviews
with eight professors of Western Washington State College.
This program was produced by Al Swift and John Spalding,
and presented by the KVOS television
department of public affairs in cooperation with the college.
(SINGING) All hail to you.

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KVOS Channel 12 Films

Details

Title: KVOS Special: The Professor Looks At His College
Description: This reel consists of narration superimposed over images of student life at Western Washington State College (later Western Washington University), chosen from over four and a half hours of footage and interviews. Eight faculty members speak separately on aspects of student life and teaching at Western: Katherine Carroll (Education), Charles Flora (Biological Sciences), Arthur Hicks (English), James McAree (History), Richard Reynolds (Education), Herbert Taylor (Sociology-Anthropology), Ralph Thompson (Education) and Mary Watrous (Education). Topics include their educational philosophies, teaching styles, students and the college experience, extracurricular activities. Footage includes the campus - Old Main, Wilson Library, the future site of Red Square, the Carver Gym; footage of professors lecturing, students in laboratories, students performing music and creating visual arts, playing football, etc. Off-campus footage includes biology or zoology students exploring tide-pools along Bellingham's shoreline, and visiting Whatcom Falls.
Date issued: 1964-10-24
Type of resource: Moving image
Contributor: KVOS-TV (Television station : Bellingham, Wash.) (broadcaster)
Carroll, Katherine M.
Flora, Charles J. (Charles Jerry) (narrator)
Hicks, Arthur C. (Arthur Clark), 1901-1994 (narrator)
McAree, James (narrator)
Reynolds, Richard C. (narrator)
Taylor, Herbert Cecil, 1924- (narrator)
Thompson, Ralph H. (narrator)
Watrous, Mary Woodworth, 1915-2007 (narrator)
Genre: television programs
Media type: video/mp4
Form: 16mm film
Related to: KVOS Channel 12 Film
Related item link: http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv75590
Physical location: WaBeCP
Western Washington University
Repository: Center for Pacific Northwest Studies
Access conditions: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
This subject is in copyright (subject to U.S. and international copyright laws) and is displayed for educational purposes. For more information about rights or obtaining copies of this resource, please contact the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Western Libraries Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9103, USA (360-650-7534; heritage.resources@wwu.edu) and refer to the collection name and identifier. Any materials cited must be attributed to the KVOS Channel 12 Films, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Western Libraries Heritage Resources, Western Washington University.
Identifier (local): kvos_special_19_01_s20a
Identifier (mabel PID): wwu:31395

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