Roundtable on Pedagogy: Renunciation as Pedagogy

Roundtable on Pedagogy:Renunciation as PedagogyVanessa R. Sasson*

Grades are like a student’s drug addiction. We revolve our lives aroundthem, we sabotage for them, we will do anything for the high of getting agood grade. We hurt ourselves for them.

THE ABOVE QUOTE is from one of our best and brightest students.She put into words a feeling many of our students are intimately familiarwith. It is an awareness of this sentiment that initially encouraged me tostart thinking outside the box.

I have been teaching at an elite, private, Canadian college1 for twelveyears. I watch students walk into my classroom for the first time over andover again. They are eager, competitive, and often even aggressive abouttheir learning. They take classes because they have to for their program

*Liberal and Creative Arts, Marianopolis College, 4873 Westmount Avenue, Westmount, QC,Canada H3Y1X9. E-mail: [email protected]. This study is the product of the manyinsightful and challenging discussions that took place each time Virtuous Bodies was taught. Myprofound gratitude goes to the students of those classes most of all. I am also indebted to theMarianopolis College administration for encouraging and supporting this experiment, to RuzbehTamjeedi for his research assistance, and to the “Program de recherche et d’expérimentationpédagogiques” of the Association des collèges privés du Québec (ACPQ) for its funding. I would alsolike to acknowledge the International Institute for studies in Race, Reconciliation and Social Justice atthe University of the Free State, where I am a Research Fellow.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, June 2014, Vol. 82, No. 2, pp. 313–328doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfu005Advance Access publication on February 18, 2014© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy ofReligion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]

1The college system in Québec, called C.E.G.E.P. (Collège d’enseignement général etprofessionnel), is unlike any other in North America. High school in Québec ends at Grade 11;students then spend two years in college and three years in a Bachelor program. They therefore do theAmerican equivalent of their last year of high school and first year of university in college.Marianopolis is one of the leading colleges in Québec, and students are as fiercely competitive aboutgetting into it as they are about getting the grades they seek in order to qualify for the programs theyhope to get accepted to thereafter. It is a very particular interim experience.

at University of C

alifornia, San Francisco on September 9, 2014

http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/D

ownloaded from

http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/

requirements, and they go to school because they have to for their liferequirements. They tend to equate learning with grades and to believethat their future potential can be measured by the floating numbers weprovide. My competitive young students have few illusions about whythey are sitting in my classroom on hard plastic chairs. Unfortunately,they have few expectations too.

I am not sure I had many more expectations of higher educationwhen I was their age. To be honest, I wasn’t paying that much attention.Like them, I was there because I had to be, perhaps because I lacked theimagination to envision myself elsewhere. It was only in graduate schoolthat learning became an end in itself, a realm of discovery in whichhumility and personal elevation poetically intertwined. So maybe I amhoping for too much, but as a faculty member, a pedagogue, and a pas-sionate human being, it has become increasingly difficult to accept themediocre level of curiosity I often see in my students’ faces. I want themto be excited about learning, to see its astonishing potential, and morethan anything else, to appreciate the privilege it is for them to have learn-ing as their primary occupation. They need not make a career out ofevery course they take, and this type of education does not suit them all.Indeed, we do our youth a terrible disservice by imprisoning them with anarrative of academic supremacy. But while they are with us, even if it isnot the perfect fit, for that brief period of their lives I want them toexplore, think, and most of all appreciate the privilege their lives havemade available to them. Perhaps this is a marker of my getting older, butI cannot help it. This privilege is not available to everyone. Whether aca-demia is right for them or not, while they are in it, I want them to give ittheir full attention.

THE EXPERIMENT

The experiment begins with a course on renunciation practices inAsian traditions. I entitled it Virtuous Bodies, plagiarizing (with her fullpermission) Susanne Mrozik’s book title (2007). Given how counter-cultural the material promised to be for the students, the challenge was toget them to relate to it. As Cathy Davidson argues in her book Now YouSee It (2011), one of the most important ingredients in any teaching envi-ronment involves relating. Students need to relate if they are going tolearn. Relating creates interest. If they cannot see a connection to theirown lives, they are not likely to engage. For months prior to teaching thecourse, my mind played with the question of how this could be achieved.

The Bhagavad Gita was my Newtonian apple. According to the Gita,renunciation is not about giving up material comfort; it is not about

Journal of the American Academy of Religion314

at University of C



ownloaded from


starvation or self-mutilation. Renunciation is, rather, a mental experience.More specifically, it is about releasing oneself from the outcome of one’sactions. In the words of the Gita, “just as the unwise ones act while cling-ing to action, so the wise should act without clinging” (Patton 2008: 42–43). To get students to relate to the material, they were going to becomerenunciants themselves. In other words, they were going to have torelease themselves of the outcomes of their actions. In a pedagogicalsetting, that meant only one thing: they were going to have to let go oftheir grades.

My idea was this: students would produce work in this course just asthey did in their other courses. I would mark their material and providefeedback, but the mark itself would not be revealed to them until after thecourse was over. In return, and because renunciation is about perfection,they would be granted the opportunity to write the same exact papersand the same exact tests as many times as they wanted. They couldperfect their knowledge by writing and rewriting, never knowing theoutcome of their efforts. When the course was over, I would release all oftheir grades to them at the same time that final grades were submittedinto the system. Students would have to sign a legal document, producedby the college’s administration, if they agreed to the experiment.

When the next batch of students walked into the Virtuous Bodiescourse, they were met with a most unusual proposal. They were handed acontract that they could choose to sign or not (they were given the optionto take the course the ordinary way, with grades and without rewrites). Ifthey signed, however, it was legally binding. They would sign away theirright to see their grades for the duration of the semester. The only excep-tion would be if they failed a submission, in which case I would tell them.Otherwise, they would not see their grades until the semester was over.

The ritual power of the legal contract is not to be underestimated.They each hold the paper in their hands as though it will speak to themlike the burning bush. If they sign it, there is no turning back. Studentshave described waves of nausea, anxiety, and distress washing over themupon hearing what this course might entail. Many seem at once excitedand terrified by the prospect. One student broke down in tears momentsafter hearing what I was suggesting. The idea of losing control of seeingtheir grades has some of them in knots. I remind them that the only thingthat will change is that they are relinquishing the ability to see theirgrades, but for many that alone is debilitating.

At the end of the term, students are asked to write about their experi-ence in a reflection paper, and of all the comments they make, one of themost common is their admitting to having thought I was crazy on thatfirst day. One student claimed that every one of her friends, upon hearing

Sasson: Roundtable on Pedagogy 315

at University of C



ownloaded from


about the course, also thought the idea was madness, and her parentsbegged her to switch out. Another described me as an “academic heretic”spouting off insanity in public. The idea baffles many students, defiestheir imagination, and sends many reeling with panic despite the fact thatthe odds are hugely in their favor. By just giving up seeing their grades,they are granted the opportunity to virtually perfect their unseen scores.And yet, this simple difference has a tremendous impact on their livesand self-understanding. It is only when the suggestion is made that theylet go of their grades that they suddenly realize how deeply attached theyhave become to them. Grades are academic currency. Students identifywith them and believe their futures are determined by them.

To some extent, they are not wrong. College scores play an importantpart in the futures the students are trying to carve out for themselves, andone should not underestimate the impact grading has on their lives. Butfutures are the product of many diverging forces and interconnectingrealities; a student’s future does not rest on grades alone. The powergrades have been granted in student consciousness deserves to be chal-lenged, reconsidered, and possibly even reconfigured. When grades areeliminated from their immediate purview, students are forced to contendwith their education in a very different way. They may ask themselves,perhaps for the first time, what their education means to them withoutnumbers attached. What is an education free of any outcome? Is it possi-ble to teach and to learn in a system stripped of its reward system? Onestudent compared grading to ranking livestock in his reflection paper. Ifthat is what we are doing to students the question certainly warrantssome reflection.

GRADING

Grading has undergone a continual metamorphosis since its incep-tion about three hundred years ago. Every institution has wrestled withthe question of evaluation, easy answers rarely presenting themselves. Anumber of historians have attempted to chart the complicated web of his-torical realities that have converged to create the grading context we findourselves in today (Montgomery 1965; Stray 2005; Durm 1993). Thesestudies demonstrate how often universities have oscillated in their conclu-sions as to what constitutes best practice. The oscillation generated partic-ular momentum as student numbers expanded and fields of study grewincreasingly specialized—logistical realities that continue to challengeinstitutions today. In the eighteenth century, these new realities gave riseto the written examination process that remains one of the staples of thecontemporary system. Before that, the classical viva voce (oral


at University of C



ownloaded from


examination) of Oxford and Cambridge Universities was the primarymethod in use; instructors spent quality time with each of their students,challenging them with material that suited each one best, but this waseventually rendered obsolete in favor of the written exam.

Logistical concerns were not the only driving forces behind thischange: new cultural norms emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies that rendered the development inevitable, such as the idea thatall students must be evaluated equally. No longer would nobility betreated separately from the ordinary undergraduate, but all studentswould have to pass through the same process to gain and maintain theirprivileged seats in the university classroom (Stray 2005: 96; Hoskin 1979:135–46). The rise of the individual as a concept had as much to do withthe transformation of grading over the centuries as did logistics. Raisingthe issue today may therefore be a way of paying homage to what hasclearly become an age-old academic tradition.

Michel Foucault (1977) argued for the direct correlation betweenknowledge and power, drawing a parallel between the development of theprison system and the development of the classroom as we know themboth today. He considers the eighteenth century model of punishment asone of spectacle and performance, citing in his opening pages theexample of Damiens, who was brutally and publically tortured forattempted regicide. He sees in Western history a move from the spectacleto surveillance, a technical mutation that individualizes and normalizesevery citizen, rendering them a subject of intense scrutiny in which everyact is observed and controlled. The classroom is, for Foucault, an exten-sion of the same mores that gave rise to the prison—a realm in which anauthority figure exercises control over a large group of individuals, per-petually screening, evaluating, and examining them, normalizing them asthey internalize the power structure to which they are subservient.

Foucault uses the expression “the punitive city” (1977: 113) todescribe the world we find ourselves in today, where an unyielding list ofpossible infractions threaten. As I read his work, I cannot help but thinkof my list of classroom policies that ceremoniously seal every syllabus Idistribute. I think of the college requirements we face as we are asked toensure a regular litany of performative submissions punctuating thesemester. Foucault’s words have made me wonder whether the classroomreally has developed into a normalizing prison with me as its taskmaster.

Perhaps it is. I am quite certain that a number of our students experi-ence education in this way, as a punishing city in which they feel perpetu-ally cornered. Grading certainly has an element of punishment to it, andas enrollments continue to surpass those of previous generations, thefactory-feeling of educational institutions is bound to grow. But Foucault


at University of C



ownloaded from


did not see the development of surveillance as exclusively negative. Hesaw in it the seeds of creativity as well. As he writes,

We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in nega-tive terms: it ‘excludes,’ it ‘represses,’ it ‘censors,’ it ‘abstracts,’ it ‘masks,’it ‘conceals.’ In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it producesdomains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowl-edge that may be gained of him belong to this production. (Foucault1977: 194)

The history of grading demonstrates that we are not married to ourmethods for eternity. Methods are in a perpetual state of transformation.As we supervise our students and rigorously evaluate them, we are notmerely exercising control over them. We are also exploring possiblevenues of creativity, helping them grow into their respective individual-ities, and attempting to negotiate the challenging terrain of increasingstudent enrollment. What we do now, we need not do tomorrow; ourevaluative methods thus beg their own regular evaluation.

STUDENT RENUNCIANTS

When students encounter my proposal, most look at me like deercaught in headlights. What kind of a teacher suggests such a thing? Byproposing that I shield their grades from them, I am trampling on thesacred ground of their personal trajectory. Without grades, the veryreason for their education is potentially jeopardized by existentialdiscomfort.

Not all students react this strongly. In every class of twenty-five stu-dents, there are always two or three who encounter my proposal with exu-berance. They are the ones who have already pulled back the curtain inOz and no longer believe in the sovereignty of grades. The majority,however, remain so absorbed by the process that they rarely reflect onwhat it might actually mean to them without an outcome attached. Forthese students, the proposal is an assault on their motivation.

Students are not required to sign the contract at all or even immedi-ately. They are given until the first assignment is due to sign it, if theychoose to. This gives them time to think about the proposal, to get toknow me as a teacher, and to decide in their own time whether they arewilling to take part in this most unorthodox of experiments. I have taughtthe course three times and amazingly, every student in each of thoseclasses has chosen to sign. I have yet to teach the course in such a waythat I have some students renouncing and others not. One hundred


at University of C



ownloaded from


percent of students who have taken the class have renounced their grades.Some sign the contract within minutes of hearing the proposal, whereasothers deliberate much more carefully over the ensuing weeks. The con-tracts trickle in slowly, but I consistently wind up with one hundredpercent participation before the deadline closes its door. The most inter-esting piece of this puzzle is that the students don’t know that everyoneelse in the room has signed. I don’t mention the contract again after thefirst day; I don’t want to pressure the students, so I tell them about it andthen get on with the course, watching with curiosity as student dynamicstake shape. It is only on the day of the deadline that I look at the collec-tion of contracts I have received and discover to my perpetual surprisethat every single student has chosen to sign.

Statistically, one hundred percent is suspicious. Since the studentsdon’t all know each other, and since I don’t even know how many havesigned until I count the contracts I have received on the day of the dead-line, no one is aware of how many students have agreed to participatebefore the deadline seals the deal. After having reached this result a thirdtime, I decided to ask the students directly about why they chose to sign.Their answers included a range of explanations. For some, I made a con-vincing case on the first day. I can be quite persuasive and a number ofthem simply bought the pitch. Some admitted that, although they didn’tknow me, they couldn’t help but wonder at the fact that a seemingly intel-ligent person was suggesting something so radical. They signed out ofsheer curiosity. One articulated that, from his perspective, of the twenty-eight classes he had taken at Marianopolis, “twenty-seven were the sameand one was different.” The variation alone was reason enough. The oneexplanation that shocked me, however, makes the case for this coursemore than any other: according to one brave student, she signed becauseshe was afraid that I would mark her more harshly if she didn’t. My jawdropped at this explanation. I had never even thought of that as one oftheir potential concerns, but there it was. Even more alarming, a numberof students nodded in agreement as she spoke. They jumped to comfortme, my despair having become immediately obvious at this news, promis-ing that they now understood what I was up to and were so relieved tohave taken part, but that before they knew me or understood what I wastrying to achieve, their primary concern was for their marks and theywere quietly calculating how best to protect them. If signing a contract fora crazy experiment is what was required of them, then they would. Overand over again, students revealed their fear of grading along with theirconviction that the currency we were bartering was not to be trifled with.

A number of students over the years have noticed, perhaps for thefirst time as a result of this course, that they rarely discuss their education


at University of C



ownloaded from


outside of class, but belabor issues concerning their grades continually.This is obviously not the case for all students. I have often witnessed stu-dents arguing passionately in the hallways about poetry or politics; Ismile contentedly every time I hear them jamming or reciting aShakespearean sonnet in the stairwell. Those moments are the hallmarksof the idealized college experience, and we all enjoy them with nostalgiaand pride. Our students are not unilaterally blind to the beauty of theeducation they are receiving. But the power of the grade remains andoften manages to overtake the privilege. As the papers pile up and thework overwhelms, the magic of education is too easily lost and all stu-dents seem to worry about is how to survive with their grades (and hope-fully some of their sanity) intact. This is when education becomesdrudgery rather than a privilege. This is what I am trying to avoid.

LIBERATION FROM GRADES

It is therefore heartening to discover that the most recurring adjectivein students’ end-of-term papers is “liberating.” Indeed, virtually fiftypercent of the papers submitted thus far include the word “liberation”somewhere along the way. Students are fully aware that their renunciationis incomplete because they are still being graded; the only difference isthat they don’t see the grades they are receiving. Nevertheless, studentshave repeatedly expressed that they find the simple fact of their not beingable to see their grades transformative. Opening up the college computergateway and not receiving a notice that a grade has been entered in theirportfolio is apparently a tremendous relief. They can see all their othergrades, but not seeing the ones from this course is one less number toworry about. When they leave class with their papers or tests in hand,they cannot compare it with those of their peers, because all they have arecomments. There are no numbers or letters to show anyone else. Theage-old question, “What did you get?” can neither be asked nor answered.

This relief was not only connected to their renunciation of grades;many obviously also felt relief at being granted unlimited chances toexcel. They were allowed to make mistakes, to fail, and even to take intel-lectual risks with their assignments as a result of the open rewrite option.The tightly screwed pressure valve was released, and students could walkinto their tests or submit their papers with significantly less performanceanxiety. As one student wrote, “100% is 100%, no matter how long it tookyou to get there.” He, and many others, felt that space was finally beinggranted to really learn, to try, and fail and try again until the knowledgehad firmly taken root. As another expressed, “I felt like the professor wasnot looking at how I did at the moment, but rather, at what I am capable


at University of C



ownloaded from


of doing when given the space and time. It was an absolutely liberatingfeeling.”

PLAGIARISM

Providing students with the option for unlimited rewrites also had theeffect of rendering plagiarism largely irrelevant. Plagiarism is not a newproblem, nor is it an unusual one. Academic syllabi have been trans-formed into legal documents that dictate intellectual boundaries, and thepenalties students can expect should they get caught cheating in any way.Professional paper-writers can apparently earn a very good living writingstudent papers. Some profess to have even written entire graduate disser-tations! The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article in 2010 inwhich a ghostwriter revealed his income and the quantity of work heclaims to receive from students on a regular basis. The article (Dante2010) received more hits and blog posts than any other article in theChronicle’s history, ranging from general outrage to knowing acknowl-edgment and everything in between.

I have surveyed my students on a variety of issues pertaining to thiscourse, including a question about plagiarism. The question is simple. Itreads: “Since my arrival at Marianopolis, I have cheated or committedplagiarism to some degree.” They can choose either YES and NO and arethen provided with a few lines to add comments. Of the fifty-sevensurveys I have collected, twenty-nine circled YES to this question. Inother words, fifty-one percent of students surveyed have anonymouslyadmitted to some form of cheating since they began at our college. Onestudent, who circled NO, explained in the comment section that hewould plagiarize if he could, but “my classmates are too stupid. Iwouldn’t trust their work over mine.” Clearly, the numbers themselvescannot tell the whole story.

One of the most surprising admissions concerning plagiarism cameto me unsolicited a few years ago. A student revealed to me that he hadpaid for his tuition by providing fellow students with his services as apaper-writer. In exchange for immunity, he revealed his “paper-writingmenu” in which prices were listed for the different kinds of papers hecould produce. Cheating and plagiarism are probably as old as our insti-tutions, but in competitive environments with factory-style evaluationsand an increasing population fighting for their seats in the system, it isinevitable that the issue itself grows accordingly. By providing studentswith open rewrites, however, the dynamic shifts: there is simply noreason to risk cheating when second chances are offered on a silverplatter.


at University of C



ownloaded from


LEARNING BEYOND THE REQUIREMENTS

Liberation manifests in another way for the pedagogue: liberationfrom having to repeat myself in class. Although this evaluation methodrequires an unrelenting pile of corrections and thus extraordinary repeti-tion by way of marking, in class I can lecture with complete confidencethat every single student is up to speed at all times. I can make referenceto readings and use Sanskrit terminology without ever having to doublecheck that they are following. As a result of the rewrites, the studentsknow the material inside out. They are intimate with the course, with theterminology, and with the readings. They remember the details in ways Idon’t encounter in other classes.

But my enthusiasm is a result of more than that. Students go the extramile in this course time and time again. In their test rewrites, forexample, I have found information in their answers that I am certain wasnot provided in the course. This has happened so often that I finallyasked where it was coming from. Students explained that knowing thequestions ahead of time and having attempted to write out their answersonce already, they develop an appreciation for the material and suddenlywant to know more and understand the issue with more depth. My testsconsist primarily of essay questions, so the potential to elaborate anddevelop is endless. While there is information that needs to be properlyassessed, the range is vast and there is no predicting where students cango with the information itself. They realize this and their answers developwith every rewrite they produce. They do research between each rewrite,studying beyond the course pack and class notes, exploring the materialfor themselves as independent thinkers. They become, in other words,what every one of us wants to see in our classrooms: intrigued.

It may be suggested that students are doing the extra work simplybecause they can, because it is in their best interest. They realize that themore rewrites they participate in, the better their grades will likely be,which is something students at this college are keenly interested inachieving. This may be the case, but the amount of work these studentsput into this one course is unusual. In most cases, the primary objectivein the classroom is to figure out how to score the highest grades with theleast amount of effort. In this course, however, students dedicate a tre-mendous amount of time and effort. Not only do they spend more timereading and learning beyond that which is required, but they dedicatemany additional hours to rewriting the same material despite heavyworkloads that would have them using their time otherwise. By the endof the semester, these students have spent an inordinate amount of timeon this course of their own free will. They choose how many times they


at University of C



ownloaded from


want to rewrite and retest, and repeatedly I discover that they choose todo so more often than I could have anticipated.

The obvious question begging at the door at this point is, why? Whywould busy, competitive, and overworked students spend so much timedoing so much work for a course that for most of them will be inconse-quential to their grade-point average or the academic careers of theirfuture? What motivates this result?

EDUCATION FOR LEARNING

Although I may be accused of romanticism, I cannot stop myselffrom hoping that these results have their source in a freshly awakenedpleasure of the mind. Time and again, students have voiced their beliefthat higher education is a tool, not an end. It is for their futures, to land agood job, to have a role to play in society, and to make others proud. Onestudent described her experience of education in this way:

If we study hard enough, if our grades are good enough, if we just sleep alittle less, if we cram just a little more, if we just drink some more coffee,eat a little faster, have a little less fun, pay attention in class, constantly bealert . . . GASP, and never take a breath, then maybe we will get some-where in life.

The pressure to succeed is immense. The fear of failure is evengreater. These students are burdened with the worry that if they don’tfight for the top, they won’t get anywhere at all. It doesn’t help that theeconomic recession keeps threatening a jobless future. Even with the bestgrades, they are beginning to realize that they might not find a place forthemselves in the career-venues they aspire to.

Students are not simply frightened anymore. Some are downright angry.A number of colleges in the United States are currently being sued for nothaving adequately prepared their students for the workforce (Kessler 2009;Zaretski 2012; Chapell 2012). Students face insurmountable debt due toever-increasing tuition fees2 with no realistic job prospects. It is no

2While Canadian, and especially Québec, tuition fees may seem insignificant in comparison withmany private institutions in the United States, and the recent student protests in Québec can seemout of proportion as a result, the issue of tuition fees in Canada remains an important issue ofcontention and cannot be dismissed simply because they do not match the kinds of fees required ofstudents elsewhere. The very fact of such a widespread movement in Québec is evidence that concernabout student debt is real, regardless of the fact that Québec students do not face the same cripplinglevel of debt that has become common for many American students.


at University of C



ownloaded from


surprise that the lawsuits are piling as a result. The education we are pro-viding students with is laced with anxiety and competition is sometimesits only heartbeat. The privilege of an education, for us as much as forthem, cannot be appreciated when it is hijacked by such a wide range ofthreats.

When students let go of their grades, many of these lurking threatsbegin to recede. The competition is, for many of them, left at the door.Students begin to engage with their education as an opportunity forlearning rather than as an early manifestation of the rat race. The veryfact that they can rewrite as often as they require replaces stress withrelief; the fact that so many students rewrite so often is evidence thatlearning itself is beginning to gain value. This becomes all the moreevident when one considers their traditional relationship to teacher-com-ments. I am sure I am not alone in feeling some frustration that studentsrarely pay attention to the many comments we cover their work with. Wespend hours correcting despite our suspicion that students barely glanceat what we return to them. They look at the mark, assess what itmeans for their final score, and throw it away. One colleague of mine whohas become jaded with frustration has simply given up writing com-ments. He scrawls a grade over the top of the work and students areinvited to take an appointment if they would like to hear more.Apparently, few ever do.

By contrast, in this course, students scrupulously examine everyounce of red ink covering their work. In the student surveys, one of thequestions asked is whether students “paid more attention to teacher-comments because of the re-write option.” Of the fifty-seven surveys col-lected, fifty-three circled either “strongly agree” or “agree.” Students areforced to learn if they want to take advantage of the rewrite option. Theyrewrite and retest and they improve. Their writing matures and theirknowledge deepens. I cannot say the same for my other courses, althoughI wish I could.

I often wonder how many students genuinely improve in college. Ifeducation is primarily a numbers game, how different are students likelyto be from one semester to the next? With this course, however, as stu-dents write and rewrite, improvement is virtually guaranteed. Moreover,confidence develops in the process. As one student expressed, “Afterreceiving the first test which was missing a mark at the top of the frontpage, I felt a strange feeling of liberation. Instead of looking for the placeswhere I had lost marks, I searched for the right answers to those I hadgotten wrong.” They have every reason to learn.


at University of C



ownloaded from


THE MIND IS A SENSE ORGAN

When education is its own end, learning can be experienced as apleasure. Teaching this course over the past few years has proven to beintellectually satisfying for most of the students I share the classroomwith. Students improve their skills and become intellectually curious.They devote more time and energy than the course requires and they doso of their own free will. The course succeeds in giving education some ofthe meaning it traditionally promises. Anthony Kronman’s (2007) mas-terful book Education’s End reminds us that the great universities werefounded upon the promise that one entered the gates of the great institu-tions of the past in the hope of transformation. Harvard was not a collect-ing agency for information, but a passport to wisdom and idealism.Kimberly C. Patton wonders whether “we have reached a point where weneed to remind ourselves that true education has very little to do withmindless instillation or manipulation of information; that educare means‘to lead out of,’ not ‘to pour into’” (1997: 836).

Students yearn for meaning, but many don’t even imagine they canask for it. The Virtuous Bodies course has proven to me that studentsshow up if I do. They know that I am putting as much work into thecourse as they are, drowning as I often am in corrections that no teachertruly enjoys. That I do it for them does not escape their attention.

POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS ELSEWHERE

A course should be measured by whether the material and formatsucceed in capturing students’ interests, whether these awaken in them adesire to learn and to ask questions that they might not have done other-wise. I am convinced that for these reasons, the course is a success andthat it can therefore serve as a jumping off point for discussion in othercontexts.

I have a few ideas of how the conclusions from this study can beapplied in other contexts. First and foremost, I think it encourages us toreconsider our marking strategies; perhaps room can be made to providemore opportunities than the first try. Of course, this conclusion dependson whether educators are there to “draw out” or to weed. If our onlypurpose is to weed those who can perform upon demand from those whocannot, then providing second chances is counter-productive. If,however, our purpose is to teach, then second chances might be preciselywhat ismissing.

The improvement I have seen in students’ work has led me to asecond conclusion: that perhaps simplifying our criteria for each of our


at University of C



ownloaded from


classes is in order. Traditionally, faculty members are encouraged toprovide a few different methods of evaluation. Students may have to writea test, produce a research article, and give an oral presentation all in onecourse. Although this has the benefit of giving each student a chance atperforming the one method they are most comfortable with, the disad-vantage is that they do not really have the opportunity to fine-tune any ofthe others. The results of this experiment suggest to me that perhaps wecould each choose one or two evaluative methods and repeat thosethroughout the term. I doubt many faculty members will be prepared tooffer unlimited rewrites because it is obviously unsustainable, but to haveone type of evaluation repeated throughout the term might achieve asimilar result. So, for example, instead of requiring an oral presentation, aresearch paper, and a test, each course could request just one of thesetypes of evaluation many times over. One course would consist of six oralpresentations and nothing else; another would request a number of shortresearch papers and nothing else, etcetera. This might help studentsimprove one skill at a time, rather than distract them with too muchvariety. “Less is more” may apply to pedagogy as much as it doeselsewhere.

I am certain that other applications can emerge from this study, butthe one that strikes me as most significant is philosophical. What Ilearned from teaching this course is that students need to think abouttheir education and what it means to them. In the same way that theyhave to relate to the material, they have to relate to the process if it isgoing to mean anything at all. Too often, students undergo the rigors ofthe system blindly, doing it because they have to and giving it little con-sideration beyond where it will take them next. Although that is in part asurvival mechanism, it can eventually deaden the experience entirely. Bychallenging students to think about their education (and there is nothinglike unconventional pedagogy to achieve this), students are forced toreckon with the process they have committed themselves to. They have tothink about their grades, and by extension about their education. Itdoesn’t matter how we challenge our students, but the conclusion I havereached is that we simply have to. We have to find ways and venues tobroach the discussion of their education; it can be a terrible wrestlingmatch, but the outcome is inevitably a thoughtful one.

Too many students imprison themselves educationally. Our job is toencourage the opposite: to help them grow, to learn how to ask goodquestions, and to understand “the box” and what is outside it. By simplyasking them why they choose to sit on those hard plastic chairs before us,why they pay their tuition fees and compete for their grades, we areserving them as educators in the truest sense of the term.


at University of C



ownloaded from


REFERENCES

Chapell, Tauhid2012

“Law Students Suing Schools.” CollegiateTimes.com, 13 February. http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/19244/law-students-suing-schools.

Dante, Ed2010

“The Shadow Scholar: The Man Who WritesYour Students’ Papers Tells his Story.” TheChronicle of Higher Education, 12 November.

Davidson, Cathy N.2011

Now You See It: How the Brain Science ofAttention Will Transform the Way We Live,Work, and Learn. New York, NY: Viking.

Durm, Mark W.1993

“An A is Not an A is not an A: A History ofGrading.” The Educational Forum, 57/3:294–297.

Foucault, Michel1977

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York, NY: Vintage.

Hoskin, Keith1979

“The Examination, Disciplinary Power andRational Schooling.” History of Education, 8/2:135–146.

Kessler, Jason2009

“Alumna Sues College Because She Hasn’tFound A Job.” CNN.com, 3 August. http://articles.cnn.com/2009–08–03/us/new.york.jobless.graduate_1_job-search-job-placement-filed?_s=PM:US.

Kronman, Anthony T.2007

Education’s End: Why Our Colleges andUniversities Have Given Up on the Meaning ofLife. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Montgomery, Robert J.1965

Examinations: An Account of Their Evolution asAdministrative Devices in England. London, UK:Longmans.

Mrozik, Susanne2007

Virtuous Bodies: The Physical Dimensions ofMorality in Buddhist Ethics. New York, NY:Oxford University Press.

Patton, Kimberly C.1997

“‘Stumbling Along Between the Immensities’:Reflections on Teaching in the Study ofReligion.” Journal of the American Academy ofReligion, 65/4:831–849.

Patton, Laurie L., trans.2008

Bhagavad Gita. London, UK: Penguin.


at University of C



ownloaded from

http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/19244/law-students-suing-schools






http://articles.cnn.com/2009–08–03/us/new.york.jobless.graduate_1_job-search-job-placement-filed?_s=PM:US












Stray, Christopher2005

“From Oral to Written Examinations:Cambridge, Oxford and Dublin 1700–1914.”History of Universities, 20/2:77–130.

Zaretski, Staci2012

“Twelve More Law Schools Slapped with ClassAction Law Suits Over Employment Data.”AbovetheLaw.com, 1 February. http://abovethelaw.com/2012/02/twelve-more-law-schools-slapped-with-class-action-lawsuits-over-employment-data/.


at University of C



ownloaded from

http://abovethelaw.com/2012/02/twelve-more-law-schools-slapped-with-class-action-lawsuits-over-employment-data/







Documents

Roundtable on Pedagogy: Renunciation as Pedagogy