Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/56537
Your Turn Teaching Stuff The opening line of Paul Simon's 1973 song "Kodachrome" makes me laugh no matter how often I hear it: "When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all." High school can be a frustrating time for students as they struggle to absorb massive quantities of "stuff"—a word I'll use instead of Simon's more descriptive term. Few stu- dents seem to graduate from high school believing that the primary purpose for the experience was to learn how to think. Simon's line is, indeed, funny. But if "high school" is changed to "busi- ness school," is it still so humorous? Those of us teaching in business schools bristle at the mere sugges- tion. Yet do business professors in 2009 encourage critical thinking any more successfully than high school teachers did in 1973? Whenever I make teaching pre- sentations around the country, I ask one simple question: "What is the biggest problem in college education today?" My answer—"The obsessive desire to teach stuff"—elicits a rather hearty laugh, or perhaps it's a guilty one. My audience knows that, at some essential core, college programs aren't all that different from those found in high schools. Our students might not realize that our top prior- ity is to aid them in the development of critical thinking skills. They might think we just want them to learn a bunch more stuff. We are inundated with wise quo- tations about education. My favor- ite comes from Malcolm Forbes: "Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one." Unfortunately, professors find it 64 BizEd MAY/JUNE 2009 by Joe Hoyle simpler to teach stuff than to help students learn to think logically and reason for themselves. But I believe it's possible for busi- ness schools to evolve from "stuff- based" curricula to "thinking-based" curricula. I have three suggestions for achieving that goal: One: Outlaw lectures. Lecturing is easy. All the participants know their roles, so they can operate on autopilot. The professor does all the preparation and thinking, while students serve as stenographers. A student's failure to prepare or reluc- tance to participate is irrelevant. The main challenge is keeping the audience awake. It's true that facts, lists, rules, formulas, dates, and similar stuff can be conveyed through lectures. How- ever, anything students can learn by sitting through a lecture they can learn just as easily, and more cheaply, by reading a book. More than 200 years ago, Samuel Johnson asserted, "Lectures were once useful; but now when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary." If administrators want to change education in a radical fashion, they should establish a rule that profes- sors can do no more than 50 percent of the talking in any one class. That single change would push the whole realm of business school pedagogy rapidly into the 21st century. Some may question how students can learn if professors don't lecture. Ken Bain interviewed outstanding teachers for his wonderful book, What the Best College Teachers Do, and one of them described the learn- ing process as "sort of Socratic." He said, "You begin with a puzzle—you get somebody puzzled, and tied in knots, and mixed up." Those puz- zles and knots generate questions for students, and the professor helps them untie the knots. To me, that approach represents college education at its most exciting. Forget lectures. I think professors should set up a scenario and pose the question "Why?" at every pos- sible juncture. Or, perhaps "What will happen next?" or "What differ- ence does this make?" or "How does this change the situation?" Teachers should push students to provide their own speculations, and then force them to defend the underlying logic. In the real world, they will have to support their assertions, so they should practice the skill in class— every day. At that moment, students are no longer learning stuff; they're developing critical thinking skills. Two: Change the nature of exams. I think students should be allowed to use books and notes during every test. If this sounds unorthodox, I'll ask one question: What can possibly be the advantage of establishing a grade through an examination ques- tion whose answer can be found in classroom materials? Test questions should be better than that. Books and notes might serve as useful tools, just as they will in the real world, but they should not supply the whole answer to any test question. When a professor informs students that they will be allowed to use their books and notes during an examina- tion, he's fired a warning shot. Such tests cannot possibly stress memo- rization; the teacher is seeking a complex level of comprehension that incorporates analysis, understanding, and making logical connections. The stakes have been raised for both stu- dent and professor. The entire tone of the class has changed. The announcement of an open- book policy will reverberate in a