Dissecting Students: Insights from a Scholar
Those of us who see ourselves as being lifelong learners would do well to read Michael Roth’s dive into the history and makeup of students. Roth, who is currently the President of Wesleyan University and a Professor, has penned other works on education including Why Liberal Education Matters and Safe Enough Spaces. I personally encountered Roth through Coursera, where he teaches The Modern and the Postmodern and How to Change the World. I was gripped straightaway by his interdisciplinary erudition and his ability to inject freshness and relevance into the works of Kant, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Darwin and Flaubert.
In The Student, he raises questions worth pondering not just inside institutes of higher learning, but also in workplaces that require continuous learning. Michael, of course, has been a student himself. As a first generation learner in his family, he took to books like the parched might to water. Studying at Wesleyan in the 1970s, he forged his own major on the history of psychological theory, demonstrating a synthesizing fervor that has clung to him ever since. He also had inspiring mentors – including Henry D. Abelove, a historian and one of the founders of queer theory – but his path has been thornier than it might seem in hindsight.
After his Bachelor’s at Wesleyan, his mentors tried to dissuade him from applying to graduate school. They implied that landing an academic position would be impossible for someone like him. Fortunately his father, who sold used fur coats, encouraged him to take the risk. Roth ended up with a PhD in history from Princeton, and a long, distinguished academic career thereafter.
He has also observed students from the other side: as a teacher over many decades. At high school, he tutored kids and coached swimmers during the summers. In the 1970s, as a doctoral student, he taught undergraduates: “I was surprised to discover just how much I enjoyed sitting in the professor’s seat.” While acknowledging clear distinctions and power differentials between a professor and student, he has always evaluated his own teaching success by his capacity to prod students to stay “open to learning, discovery and even transformation.”
Minds on the Move
Students can be categorized into types. One can almost position them on a spectrum, ranging from the “Eager to please” to the “Overly critical”. Somewhere in the middle, are those that seek harmony. But the objective, at the end, is to remain an independent mind, to “think for oneself.” And since the Enlightenment, learning has always been conceived as a path to freedom. Such notions of freedom eventually compelled American institutions to open their portals to women and African Americans, among others.
Lessons from Legends
By examining the lives and methods of three historically revered teachers – Confucius, Socrates and Jesus – Roth posits three ways to be a student: as a “follower”, an “interlocuter” and “disciple.” These student types were also partially determined by the objectives of their teachers. While Confucius hoped to impart social harmony, Socrates wished to produce sharp interrogators. Jesus, of course, operated at a different realm, fostering both imitation and surrender. And there are overlaps between the three. For example, devotees of Jesus might have used Socratic methods to denounce traditions or former lifepaths.
Rethinking The Purpose of Education
In medieval times, when schools weren’t quite so widespread, universities or institutions might have been perceived as avenues to escape the humdrum of convention, the tyranny of families or the despair of ignorance. But in contemporary times, when schools have mushroomed all over the place, we have to ask what role they really play? As Roth puts it: “Are schools truly helping students think for themselves, or are they only indoctrinating them into the latest conventions?” A related question is, if everyone is being fed the same or similar knowledge, how do schools revive their original mission: to produce autonomous and singular thinkers?
In the U.S., universities are being critiqued by both the left and right wing establishments. The left feel that they’re merely serving to entrench privilege, since the costs are so high at many elite colleges. That apart, they are also critical of the fact that many contemporary students approach college with instrumentalist or careerist intentions. Landing a job at Goldman Sachs or Google is often the end-objective, rather than wrestling with philosophy or the wonders of the cosmos. The right feels that universities have become cauldrons of the woke or cancel culture, with political correctness robbing different thinkers of the space to express opinions.
Both these perceptions have also provoked backlashes or consequences. The careerist objectives are being met inside campuses by the transmission of workplace skills – like programming or financial modeling. As Michael observes: “Perhaps this is the capitalist version of Confucian harmony: students as learners shown how to productively fit in, how to conform so as to succeed.” On the other hand, reactions from the right have tried to ban the teaching of African American history in high schools, or even some books on the holocaust like Art Spiegelman’s graphic Maus.
Students of Iconic Teachers: From Exemplars to Traitors
Beyond dissecting the lives of iconic teachers, Roth picks examples of students of each. In the case of Confucius, he describes a businessman (Zizong), a brash warrior (Zilu) and a young exemplar (Yan Hui), whom the master favors. The ideal student, to Confucius, is one who persistently and perennially loves learning. This goes beyond espousing the flippant – I’m a lifelong learner – that many of us might attach to our resumes or LinkedIn profiles. This requires an ongoing willingness to change course as life and texts subject you to various tests.
Socrates, who was a rather sharp and ceaseless interrogator of anyone and anything, was often annoying and provocative. His intent was to strip his opponents of any pretensions to “knowledge” – especially those who were smooth-talkers (or Sophists). Naturally such an approach won him many enemies. His students include a hardheaded but pragmatic military man (Xenophon), the painstaking transmitter of his teachings (Plato) and his enemies, the citizens of Athens. At the end, the jury (composed of 500 Athenian citizens), who decided to kill him, learned from him too. That this was a philosopher who was willing to puncture powers-that-be and contemporary public figures, to make a point. Socrates might have died, but with the grudging respect of his indicters.
For Jesus, there was Peter, a steady ship with unshakeable faith in the Master. And then Matthew, who represents the potential to transform in erstwhile sinners. Judas, who betrayed Jesus, and Paul, who never met Jesus in the flesh, but became his most zealous missionary, spreading his message to the world.
Regardless of whether we dwell in Instagram-fueled Socratic caves, lost among real or virtual shadows, Roth emphasizes that “a true education recognizes that the power to learn is present in everyone’s soul and the instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned from darkness to light without turning the whole body.” That’s a lesson that should be absorbed by all, but especially by teachers, who must realize that they too are, as Michael recognizes, perennial students.
References
Michael S. Roth, The Student: A Short History, Yale University Press, 2023