There is a national conversation on the role of the university in American life. Here at Tufts, it revolves around whether universities should have a political agenda, how students should relate to one another and the best way to engage students with the curriculum given the constraints of our times. We are graduating seniors who spent the last semester teaching an Experimental College class on the American presidency to 12 first-years. This experience gave us a view into some of these core and pertinent themes. Here is what we learned.
Our task was to bring the American presidency to life — not just who the presidents were, what they achieved and what their shortcomings were, but also to put the class in their shoes. We wanted our students to grapple with the fundamental issues that make societies succeed, to interrogate what we owe our fellow citizens and to examine the government’s proper role in our lives. We hoped our students would grapple with the weight of these questions and begin to map out answers alongside their peers through rigorous and collaborative study. In short, we sought to use the cases of American presidents as a vehicle for exploring what is good and bad, right and wrong and just and unjust in American life.
When we started teaching class this fall, our attitude was markedly different. We saw our job as maximizing the historical facts, political narratives and presidential policy positions our students would take away from the course — how many bills they could explain and how Bush’s Cabinet differed from Clinton’s. While this approach certainly had its pedagogic merits, we came to realize that we needed to find ways to better demonstrate to our students that the material was directly related to them as individuals. Bridging this gap between the historical and the personal would allow our students to fully understand the material and engage with renewed vigor.
We found that a productive way to achieve this goal was to open class with a series of open-ended normative questions, which, after a spirited debate, we would relate to the presidency. To that end, we often asked our students questions aimed at determining what it means to be an American. Is American identity creedal or ethnic? What does it mean for it to be either of those things, and what are the relative benefits of each? How can a president define these boundaries, and how do they keep them porous? The extent to which these students were able to grapple with these perspectives with depth and maturity was surprising and refreshing. The partisan valence of any position did not stop them from interrogating their true beliefs. This dynamic applied to other questions we asked, such as what we owe to the least of us in society and who owes what to whom.
We did not assign our students an essay on these topics or limit their engagement with them to discussion posts and take-home readings. Every Tuesday night for two and a half hours, our students discussed and debated these topics among their peers face-to-face. We would push back, and they would consistently reconsider their preconceived notions and prejudices, reasoning every step of the way. Our students drew on their accrued knowledge of the presidency, their personal experiences and their independent research (our midterm assignment asked students to research and present on a topic of their choice relating to the presidency) to make thoughtful arguments and counterarguments.
We believe the unique circumstances of an Ex-College class led by two seniors contributed to this positive environment, but that some lessons might be extrapolated for general use. For starters, our class was pass/fail. This allowed students to truly engage with the material without fear of jeopardizing their grade; thus, they were freed to pursue knowledge for its own sake. Little mistakes would not have significant consequences, and therefore our students could take intellectual risks. Of course, grades are a necessary and important part of the university, but they must be seen as one measurement of education’s ultimate goal, not the end itself. A well-rounded education ought to strive beyond prioritizing merely the factual that standard grading encourages and instead pair an understanding of the world as it is with a deep meditation on the world as it should be. A fuller education pushes students to form normative arguments about the world around them, grounding those arguments in factual, historical knowledge.
Another reason we believe our class was open to learning and comfortable with a diversity of viewpoints was that it consisted of a group of 12 first-years. Our class was among their first experiences at the university. As a result, their views had not yet had time to ossify and did not fall neatly into any mold. They were, perhaps, more receptive to different opinions than older students because their approach to learning was not as narrowed as it may become after declaring a major and deciding on a career path. Furthermore, some of the cohort’s most trenchant political insights were posited by biology or economics majors. To fulfill its mission of intellectual breadth, the university must recommit itself to encouraging students to explore beyond their major and apply this knowledge to new disciplines.
As we leave Tufts next month, teaching this course will have been our most formative college experience. We learned that the university today must recenter learning for its own sake and involve asking ourselves and each other hard, normative questions. The ramifications of realizing that principle extend beyond the university and can help guide individuals toward an always curious, fulfilled life. We hear these sentiments often from our peers and our professors: that the university and our society at large are missing something fundamental. This experience showed us that change can only happen with meaningful, deliberate engagement.
If universities fail to inculcate this kind of engagement, we risk producing graduates who know a great deal but who believe in very little. Our experience suggests a different path is both possible and preferable. The university ought to steer clear of teaching students what to think, but learning to make value judgments is mission-critical. In the battle for a more thoughtful, kind and civil society, all of us must do our part — and universities can lead the charge.
