Every Classroom is a Laboratory
In the ongoing debates about the safety of opening universities a lot of focus has been on the necessity in some fields of having laboratories. As a result many schools and education experts have sought to distinguish between students who need to live on campus where they have access to labs, and students who can as easily “learn online.”
This is a false distinction that demonstrates how little some people (not least some faculty and administrators) understand what a private liberal arts university really is.
We are not vocational schools, whether at the undergraduate or graduate level. We don’t hand out knowledge and skills, test on them, and then hand out certificates so new workers can enter some professional world. There are plenty of universities that do this and many are already online.
The liberal arts university only produces skilled workers as a byproduct. Its real job is to prepare men and women to be leaders, in their professions to be sure, but far more importantly in society. And leadership isn’t learned online, although if you are a competent troll you can lead that part of society that places the ring in its collective nose in your hands.
Leadership, the kind that frees people and moves society to higher levels of equality, justice, and humanity, is learned in a laboratory. And one important laboratory is a classroom where students learn not only knowledge and skills, but both personal intellectual virtues and most importantly how to work with their fellow students toward mutual understanding and shared goals. And this liberal arts university classroom laboratory extends into study groups and group projects.
(I’ll grant that on a university campus there are many other interpersonal experiments students are engaged in, all of which are equally vital to the future of the species. However, whether on campus or back at home the ability of university administrators, like that of parents, in keeping those experiments safe has always been limited. University students are adults, and if they are given even a little money and/or a set of car keys restraining their behavior is difficult. It happens that at this moment both parents and students believe they are as safe on campus as at home. In any case, despite popular rhetoric and the expensive facilities a liberal arts education is not about the "campus experience." It is about the shared learning environment of the classroom where humans meet and interact face to face around an intellectual endeavor.)
This is why the great majority of students want to be on campus and in the classroom.
In my school, for example, where there are no resident students and commutes to class are often arduous, the students are still asking for face to face instruction. If they wanted parties, shared meals, a gym, and a climbing wall it would be cheaper to take a cruise and sign up for an online seminary.
Students know, even if faculty don’t, that they need to be in the lab to learn how to be leaders. And closing down the lab not only delays reaching that goal; if it is replaced by an all online education it actually diminishes it. No matter how many courses are passed and credits gained, a semester outside the classroom is one semester less learning to be a leader.
It may be that given time and rapidly developing technology the classroom laboratory may be more effectively extended to students who cannot participate in face to face interactions. This would be a huge boon to some students and should certainly be pursued with vigor as a virtue in its own right. I have often said that a purely face to face education such as my graduate school offered until very recently is, no matter what the physical arrangements of the school and classroom, an affront to every student whose disability is that they live more than a reasonable drive from the school.
But even where there have been pioneering advances in online education there is no evidence that they can replace the classroom laboratory. Certainly not this year and probably not in the foreseeable future. Hybrid classes, if carefully constructed may be a useful and even necessary substitute. Synchronous online classes are almost certainly less effective even with serious attention to new pedagogical tools and advanced technologies. Asynchronous online classes simply won't develop the kinds of leaders that come out of a classroom environment.
Now it is time for me to get back to the lab, where like it or not we’ll be running all sorts of complex pedagogical and even physiological experiments this semester. Like all experiments there will be dangers. I happen to think the efforts to mitigate these are more than adequate so I'm all in. More importantly these experiments, if we do our jobs as teachers, will produce stronger leaders even if in some respects they don't succeed as planned.
This is a false distinction that demonstrates how little some people (not least some faculty and administrators) understand what a private liberal arts university really is.
We are not vocational schools, whether at the undergraduate or graduate level. We don’t hand out knowledge and skills, test on them, and then hand out certificates so new workers can enter some professional world. There are plenty of universities that do this and many are already online.
The liberal arts university only produces skilled workers as a byproduct. Its real job is to prepare men and women to be leaders, in their professions to be sure, but far more importantly in society. And leadership isn’t learned online, although if you are a competent troll you can lead that part of society that places the ring in its collective nose in your hands.
Leadership, the kind that frees people and moves society to higher levels of equality, justice, and humanity, is learned in a laboratory. And one important laboratory is a classroom where students learn not only knowledge and skills, but both personal intellectual virtues and most importantly how to work with their fellow students toward mutual understanding and shared goals. And this liberal arts university classroom laboratory extends into study groups and group projects.
(I’ll grant that on a university campus there are many other interpersonal experiments students are engaged in, all of which are equally vital to the future of the species. However, whether on campus or back at home the ability of university administrators, like that of parents, in keeping those experiments safe has always been limited. University students are adults, and if they are given even a little money and/or a set of car keys restraining their behavior is difficult. It happens that at this moment both parents and students believe they are as safe on campus as at home. In any case, despite popular rhetoric and the expensive facilities a liberal arts education is not about the "campus experience." It is about the shared learning environment of the classroom where humans meet and interact face to face around an intellectual endeavor.)
This is why the great majority of students want to be on campus and in the classroom.
In my school, for example, where there are no resident students and commutes to class are often arduous, the students are still asking for face to face instruction. If they wanted parties, shared meals, a gym, and a climbing wall it would be cheaper to take a cruise and sign up for an online seminary.
Students know, even if faculty don’t, that they need to be in the lab to learn how to be leaders. And closing down the lab not only delays reaching that goal; if it is replaced by an all online education it actually diminishes it. No matter how many courses are passed and credits gained, a semester outside the classroom is one semester less learning to be a leader.
It may be that given time and rapidly developing technology the classroom laboratory may be more effectively extended to students who cannot participate in face to face interactions. This would be a huge boon to some students and should certainly be pursued with vigor as a virtue in its own right. I have often said that a purely face to face education such as my graduate school offered until very recently is, no matter what the physical arrangements of the school and classroom, an affront to every student whose disability is that they live more than a reasonable drive from the school.
But even where there have been pioneering advances in online education there is no evidence that they can replace the classroom laboratory. Certainly not this year and probably not in the foreseeable future. Hybrid classes, if carefully constructed may be a useful and even necessary substitute. Synchronous online classes are almost certainly less effective even with serious attention to new pedagogical tools and advanced technologies. Asynchronous online classes simply won't develop the kinds of leaders that come out of a classroom environment.
Now it is time for me to get back to the lab, where like it or not we’ll be running all sorts of complex pedagogical and even physiological experiments this semester. Like all experiments there will be dangers. I happen to think the efforts to mitigate these are more than adequate so I'm all in. More importantly these experiments, if we do our jobs as teachers, will produce stronger leaders even if in some respects they don't succeed as planned.
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