Happy to learn?
In 2008, Dr. Mark Tucker, my dissertation adviser, arrived late to our meeting. He had taken a walk around the block several times to let off steam, and had come in looking both defeated and incensed.
He had returned corrected essays to the students in his class earlier, after spending the weekend crafting generous feedback to help them. He edited for grammar and punctuation, marked imprecise sentences, and asked questions in the margins to clarify the students’ ideas.
In response, the students bristled. One spoke for the class, “We weren’t trained to write like this in high school. Can’t you just give us multiple-choice exams?”
Tucker refused to modify the syllabus. He reminded the students what the course was: Introduction to News Writing.
He was angry, but he couldn’t identify who he was angry with. He couldn’t blame the students. They were merely products of a federal program that judged schools based on standardized test scores: if a school repeatedly scored low, it could face budget cuts or restructuring.
Given such dire prospects, teachers “taught to the test” by assessing students through multiple-choice exams. Students spent less time learning history, literature, music, or art. They hardly received detailed feedback on anything they worked on, save the yes/no, right/wrong characteristic of standardized tests.
“I wish the students could meet you!” Tucker gestured to me, “You went through so many classes in high school and you’re still so happy to learn. I wish our students realized that learning isn’t just about taking a test!”
Circumstances back then were different, but he wasn’t wrong. We used to complain about our workload in high school, but we nevertheless took on classes in literature, writing, speech, math, science, cooking, sewing, music, debate, and more. Our assessments varied. The knowledge was plentiful, and we kept seeking it out. Praised, we smiled; corrected, we bounced back. Such is the nature, perhaps, of such a full menu of courses: it trains students for the rigors of school and career, and keeps them teachable, graceful despite criticism, resilient, everlastingly curious.
It trains students to see that learning happens everywhere, and it is in being challenged that they truly grow.
That was perhaps what hurt Tucker the most: to see his careful feedback ignored and reduced to an obstacle to a grade, to witness the loss of a hunger for new knowledge in students who could not stand to have their habits and beliefs questioned.
I tell my students this story every semester as a way to illustrate the value of a broad, holistic, and rigorous curriculum. They might start off resentful, but many of my students eventually fall in love with the back-and-forth of philosophy, find their beliefs dismantled by a social sciences concept enough for them to take a minor in a new field, and recognize how detailed feedback can help them refine their thinking.
Years later, some of them come back with stories from the workplace or graduate school. They’re surprised that they have advanced research and writing skills. They appreciate many sides of an argument and are disappointed when they have to deal with people who reject evidence or shun discussions. They are shocked by careless thinking and aimless reasoning.
They thank us for the rigor, the feedback, the corrections. They appreciate our broad range of assessments beyond simple multiple-choice tests—because the human, fully formed and perfectly imperfect, is irreducible to mutually exclusive choices.
There is no guarantee that plugging in more expert knowledge and specialized skills will make our graduates better citizens. “Soft skills” are anything but: they are the foundations on which critical thinking, curiosity, and receptiveness to feedback can be built—and these are gifts prized across all fields.
In particular, detailed feedback, given in good faith, is designed to help students do better. The reaction to such feedback can reveal much about the one being criticized: whether they are open to correction, are still curious, can participate in democratic processes.
Take the recent example of a senator who tried to justify the use of unusual pseudonyms of people who received money from the Office of the Vice President. Our own heroes had aliases, too, he said. People thankfully corrected him: our heroes’ aliases served to protect patriots fighting for the country, not shield them from accountability.
In reply, the senator called the naysayers “paid troll farms,” claiming he was answerable only to the “real people” who voted for him.
Correction: he is answerable to the entire country whose taxes fund his salary. Maybe he needs a class in philosophy and governance, or a lecture on history and how to use analogies correctly.
Or maybe he just needs feedback about what the Senate is: a space for discussion and disagreement, where people learn from each other and through correction, and are always hungry to learn more.
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iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu
