To Teach Youth Better

Abstract

Behind Danforth Foundation awards of $10,000 each to ten college teachers for excellence in class room is a recognition that quality of col lege is not all that it should be. Unhappily many of devices used to improve college have little effect. Danforth award to John McDermott of Queens College, for example, will have little impact on thousands of other college teachers in New York City. A ritual of rewarding teachers is of recent origin, although it had been done occasionally in past at graduation ceremonies to ease a sense of guilt as some faculty member was retiring, unsung, unpraised, and unrewarded up to that moment. Over 360 colleges and universities now give great teaching awards al though they are nowhere near as generous as Dan forth awards. Liberal Arts colleges and universities lead in this practice. One enthusiastic alumnus read whole idea into Congressional Record of January 20, 1959, where wishful benefits from this ceremony are recorded for posterity. epithets attached to reward of Great Teacher tell much about practice. In some institu tions professor is called The Best Teacher, Top Prof, Prof of Year, Man of Year, as well as Professor with Greatest Influence on Students. These terms for excellence in indicate seriousness or lack of it which accompanies award by a college. In some institutions, ritual of teacher awards has Midas Touch of Madison Avenue with ceremony, check, pictures, and news releases. In many colleges rewarding of teachers was not initiated by faculty action, faculty consultation, or faculty par ticipation, but by administrator managers as a thing because other colleges are doing it. In one institu tion, a faculty senate chairman spoke in public against practice, but yet approved idea in his Senate vote, saying If I can get a thousand dollars for a colleague, Til not vote No ! Are teacher awards beneficial? No one is against recognizing an outstanding but there are questions about practice that need to be asked. Do such awards really award teaching? Do they re ward teachers in way in which they want to be rewarded? Do they inspire greater among faculty? It is unfortunate that colleges do not ask such questions before they fall in line with practices so full of assumptions, subjective judgments, and mumbo jumbo of public relations. major difficulty is in definition or concept of what is great. No two professors seem to agree. Among students of a great teacher, some will rank same professor as a great teacher, others lousy. Great may mean different things to deans, departmental chairmen, and to different students. Great teachers are often confused with distinguished reputations and frequently high salaries designate a reputation more than they indicate teaching. A study at New York University revealed a negative rela tion between students' evaluation of some teachers and departmental chairmen's judgment with respect to class room performance of these teachers. best of teachers fail with some students, and dullard is sometimes praised by a student. Who is to judge? Descriptions of teachers reveal no com mon consensus. Some are described as platform per formers of first order, keeping students on edge of their seats with their command of language and their apt phraseology. Woodrow Wilson was such. Others are less exciting. John Dewey was not exciting as a lecturer, but students saw a mind at work and some minds were developed in process. trouble is that a teacher means many different things. This is even true for teachers themselves, who mistake silent, eyes opened student as one who is thinking. Deans and de partmental chairmen operate in virtual darkness as to what does or does not go on in classroom and rate teachers on basis of a chance remark or letter. No one within college or university seems to be a good source for selecting the greats. Great should cause students to change in some way. A student who acquires knowledge that makes no difference to him is a student who remains unchanged. Students who learn either behave differently or behave with greater conviction because of what they have learned or have examined what they know or what they believe in. A self-confrontation, which is essence of teaching, produces changes in some students. Some students resist change, while some professors are unable to create any internal self-confrontation by their students.