About SAGES -2: Implementation issues

When I talk about the SAGES program (see here for a description of the program and how it came about) to faculty at other universities they are impressed that Case put into place something so ambitious. They immediately see how the program addresses the very same problems that all universities face but few attempt to tackle as comprehensively as we have sought to do.

Of course, the very ambitiousness of the program meant that there would be challenges in implementation. Some of the challenges are institutional and resource-related. Creating more small classes meant requiring more faculty to teach them, more classrooms (especially those suitable for seminar-style interactions), more writing support, and so on. This necessarily imposed some strain on the system.
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About SAGES -1: The genesis of the program

As might be expected, some people at Case are all of atwitter about the snide op-ed in a newspaper supposedly called the New York Times by someone supposedly called Stephen Budiansky. (Note to novice writers hoping to develop their snide skills: Putting words like ‘supposedly’ in front of an easily discernible fact is a weak attempt at sarcasm, by insinuating that something is sneaky when no cause for suspicion exists. Like the way Budiansky says “SAGES (this supposedly stands for Seminar Approach to General Education and Scholarship)” when he has to know this for a fact since he says he has been reading the SAGES website.)

But my point here is not to point out the shallowness of Budiansky’s article and make fun of it, although it is a good example of the kind of writing that uses selective quotes and data to support a questionable thesis, and uses a snippy tone to hide its lack of meaningful content. My purpose here is to articulate why I think SAGES has been the best educational idea that I have been associated with in all my years in education in many different institutions. It is clear to me that many people, even those at Case, have not quite understood what went into it and why it is such an important innovation, and this essay seeks to explain it.

I have been involved with SAGES from its inception in the summer of 2002 when I was appointed to the task force by then College of Arts and Sciences Dean Sam Savin, to investigate how to improve the college’s general education requirements (GER). American colleges have these kinds of requirements in order to ensure that students have breadth of knowledge, outside their chosen majors. Case’s GER were fairly standard in that they required students to select a distribution of courses from a menu classified under different headings, such as Global and Cultural Diversity.

While better than nothing, the task force felt that these kinds of requirements did not have any cohesive rationale, and result in students just picking courses so that they can check off the appropriate boxes. The task force wondered how we could make the distribution requirements more meaningful and part of a coherent educational philosophy. In the process of studying this question, we learned of other problems that were long standing but just lurking beneath our consciousness. Almost all these problems are endemic to many universities, not just Case.

One of these was that students entering Case tended to come in with a sense of identity that was identified with a specific program rather that the school as a whole. They saw themselves primarily as engineering students or nursing students or arts students and so on, rather than as Case students. This fragmented identity was aided by the fact that in the first year they had no common experience that transcended these disciplinary boundaries. So we wondered what we could do to help create a sense of oneness among the student body, a sense of overall belonging.

Another problem we identified was that it was quite possible, even likely, for a first year student to spend the entire year in large lecture classes where they were largely passive recipients of lectures. This could result in students feeling quite anonymous and alone, and since this was also their first year away from home, it was not felt to be a good introduction to college life, let along for the emotional and intellectual health of the student. Furthermore, we know that first impressions can be very formative. When college students spend their first year passively listening in class, we feared that this might become their understanding of their role in the university, and that it would become harder to transform them into the active engagement mode that was necessary when they got into the smaller upper division classes in their majors.

Another problem was that students at Case did not seem to fully appreciate the knowledge creation role that is peculiar to the research function of universities. While they had chosen to attend a research university, many did not seem to know what exactly constituted research, how it was done, and its value.

Another thing that surprised us was when even some seniors told us that there was not a single faculty member they had encountered during their years at Case whom they felt that they knew well, in the sense that if they walked into that faculty member’s office that he or she would know the student’s name and something about them. We felt that this was a serious deficiency, because faculty-student interactions in and out of the class should play an important role in a student’s college experience. We felt that it was a serious indictment of the culture of the university that a student could spend four years here and not know even one faculty member well.

Another very serious problem that was identified was that many students were graduating with poor writing and presentation skills. The existing writing requirement was being met by a stand-alone English course that students took in their first year. Students in general (not just at Case) tend to dislike these stand-alone ‘skills’ courses and one can understand why. They are not related to any of the ‘academic’ courses and are thus considered inferior, merely an extra hoop to be jumped through. The writing exercises are necessarily de-contextualized since they are not organically related to any course of study. Students tend to treat such courses as irritants, which makes the teaching of such courses unpleasant as well. But what was worse was that it is clear that a one-shot writing course cannot produce the kinds of improvement in writing skills that are desired.

Furthermore, some tentative internal research seemed to suggest that the one quality that universities seek above all to develop in their students, the level of ‘critical thinking’ (however that vague term is defined), was not only not being enhanced by the four years spent here, there were alarming hints that it was actually decreasing.

And finally the quality of first year advising that the students received was highly variable. While some advisors were conscientious about their role and tried hard to get to know their students, others hardly ever met them, except for the minute or two it took to sign their course registration slips. Even the conscientious advisors found it hard to get to know students on the basis of a very few brief meetings. This was unsatisfactory because in addition to helping students select courses, the advisor is also the first mentor a student has and should be able to help the student navigate through the university and develop a broader and deeper perspective on education and learning and life. This was unlikely to happen unless the student and advisor got to know each other better.

Out of all these concerns, SAGES was born, and it sought to address all these concerns, by providing a comprehensive and cohesive framework that, one way or another, addressed all the above issues.

The task force decided on a small-class seminar format early on because we saw that this would enable students to engage more, speak and write more, get more feedback from the instructor and fellow students, and thus develop crucially important speaking, writing and critical thinking skills.

Since good writing develops only with a lot of practice of writing and revising, we decided that one writing-intensive seminar was not enough. Furthermore, students need to like and value what they are writing if they are going to persevere in improving their writing. In order to achieve this it was felt that the writing should be embedded in courses that dealt with meaningful content that the students had some choice in selecting. So we decided that students should take a sequence of four writing intensive seminars consisting of a common First Seminar in their first semester, and a sequence of three thematic seminars, one in each subsequent semester, thus covering the first two years of college.

The need for a common experience for all students was met by having the First Seminar be based on a common theme (which we chose to be on The Life of the Mind), with at least some readings and out-of-class programs experienced in common by all first year students. The idea was that this would provide students with intellectual fodder to talk about amongst themselves in their dorms and dining halls and other social settings, irrespective of what majors they were considering or who they happened to be sitting next to. The common book reading program for incoming students was initiated independently of SAGES but fitted naturally into this framework. The First Seminar was also was designed to get students familiar with academic ways of thinking, provide an introduction to what a research university does and why, and provide opportunities for them to access the rich variety of cultural resources that surround the university.

The decision that the First Seminar instructor also serve as the first year advisor was suggested so that the advisor and student would get to know each other well over the course of that first semester and thus enable the kind of stronger relationship that makes mentoring more meaningful

The University Seminars that followed the First Seminar were grouped under three categories (the Natural World, the Social World, and the Symbolic World) and students were required to select one from each category for the next three semesters. Each of these areas of knowledge has a different culture, investigate different types of questions, use different rules for evidence and how to use that evidence in arriving at conclusions, have different ways of constructing knowledge, and develop different modes of thinking and expression. These seminars would be designed around topics selected by the instructor and designed to help students understand better the way that practitioners in those worlds view knowledge.

By taking one from each group based on their own interests, it was hoped that students would learn how to navigate the different academic waters that they encounter while at college. Taken together, we hoped they would complement each other and provide students with a global perspective on the nature of academic discourse.

In order to prevent the risk of content overload that eventually engulfs many university courses, it was decided that the University Seminars would have no pre-requisites and also could not serve as pre-requisites for other courses, thus freeing instructors from the oft-complained problem of feeling burdened to ‘cover’ a fixed body of material and thus cutting off student participation. Now they were free to explore any question to any depth they wished.

For example, in my own SAGES course The Evolution of Scientific Ideas (part of the Natural World sequence) we explore the following major questions: What is science and can we distinguish it from non-science? What is the process that causes new scientific theories to replace the old? In the process of investigating these questions, I hope that students get a better understanding of how scientists see the world and interact with it. And I do not feel pressure to cover any specific scientific revolution. I can freely change things from year to year depending on the interests of the students.

A senior capstone experience was added to provide students with an opportunity to have a culminating activity and work on a project of their own choosing that would enable them to showcase the investigative, critical thinking, speaking, and writing skills developed over their years at Case.

Next in this series: Implementation issues

POST SCRIPT: Talk on Monday about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo

On Monday, May 1 at 4:00pm in Strosacker Auditorium, Janis Karpinski, who was a Brigadier General and commanding officer of the Abu Ghraib prison when the prisoner torture and abuse scandal erupted and who feels that she was made a scapegoat for that atrocity and demoted, and James Yee who was U.S. Army Muslim Chaplin at Guantanamo, was arrested for spying and later cleared, will both be speaking.

It should be interesting to hear their sides of the story.

The talk is free and open to the public. More details can be found here.

Dover’s dominoes-6: Religion in schools

(See part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5.)

Contrary to what Bill O’Reilly and other hysterical people allege, there is no ‘war on Christianity’ or ‘war on Christians’ in the US. To say so is to just be silly and to disqualify yourself from being taken seriously. Nor is there is a blanket ban on teaching about god and religion in public schools. The latter assertion is based on a common misunderstanding about the US constitution and it is worth exploring. The relevant question is how you teach about god and religion and for what purposes. (Usual disclaimer whenever I am discussing the implications of rulings by the courts: I am not a lawyer but would love to play one on TV.)

The issue of whether religious beliefs can be taught in public schools is governed by the establishment clause of the First Amendment (which I have discussed before here) which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

A key interpretation of this clause was provided in 1947 by Justice Hugo Black in the case of Everson v. Board of Education (330 U.S. 1, 15-16 (1947) where he wrote: “The “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.”

This was further clarified in Epperson vs. Arkansas 393 US 97 (1968) which said that the “First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.” (Kitzmiller, p. 91)

This was further clarified in 1971 in the case Lemon v. Kurtzman (403 U.S. 602, 612-613 (1971)) which said that to pass constitutional muster, a law must pass all three of the following tests:

First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose;

Second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion;

Finally, the statute must not foster “an excessive government entanglement with religion.”

In the Dover case, both sides agreed that only the first two prongs were relevant to that issue. The first prong of the Lemon test explains why IDC proponents are so anxious to have their beliefs accepted as part of science. If that can be achieved, then they can meet the first prong, since the teaching of science in a science class clearly has a secular purpose. Hence Judge Jones’ conclusion that IDC is not science must be seen as a serious blow to their ambitions.

Judge Jones also invoked another US Supreme Court precedent (County of Allegheny v. ACLU (1989)) which said that “School sponsorship of a religious message is impermissible because it sends the ancillary message to members of the audience who are nonadherents ‘that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.'”

This is another reason why a secular public sphere is to be preferred. (See here for an earlier discussion of this issue.) If you have a public sphere (in schools or elsewhere) in which one particular religious view is favored or endorsed, then it sends a message that others who are not of this particular religious persuasion are not full members. The Allegheny case resulted in the following ‘endorsement test’ that could be applied to any laws. It says that there is a “prohibition against government endorsement of religion” and that it “preclude[s] government from conveying or attempting to convey a message that religion or a particular religious belief is favored or preferred.” (Kitzmiller, p. 15)

As Judge Jones pointed out (p. 46) all these precedents imply that “[T]he Establishment Clause forbids not just the explicit teaching of religion, but any governmental action that endorses or has the primary purpose or effect of advancing religion.”

There would be no problem under these guidelines (as I read the law) about a philosophy course that examined, in a neutral way, the religious beliefs of people. There would be no problem in discussing in a history or social studies course the role that Christianity played in the American political process or the role that Islam played in the development of the middle east. In fact, it would be hard to keep religion out and teach those topics in a meaningful way.

A problem only arises if you use a course to promote religion in general or a specific religious point of view. Now we see more clearly why the El Tejon policies were problematic. It is not how a course is labeled (whether science or philosophy) that is at issue, it is how the course is taught. The El Tejon course was explicitly advocating a particular religious point of view, that of young Earth creationism. And the people at the Discovery Institute (rightly I think) saw that this would be easily ruled unconstitutional. And since the course dragged in IDC ideas as well, a negative ruling on this case would be interpreted as meaning that IDC ideas should not be allowed even in philosophy classes, which would be a huge public relations setback for them.

This is why they must have breathed a huge sigh of relief when the El Tejon school board decided to cancel the course.

Next in this series: Another domino falls in Ohio

POST SCRIPT: First amendment freedoms and the Simpsons

A survey of 1,000 Americans has found that just one in 1,000 people could name all five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (religion, speech, press, assembly, petition the Government for redress of grievances.) while 22% of Americans could name all five Simpson characters.

I am shocked by this result. The Simpsons have been on TV for 17 years. Surely more than 22% should be able to name all five characters?

Bush, language, and ideas

The professor of English came into the classroom and gave the assembled students an essay and asked them to critique it. The students went at it with gusto, gleefully pointing out the many grammatical errors, the poor choice of words, the terrible syntax, the non sequiturs, the poor construction of the argument, the awkward metaphors, the lack of attributions and citations, and so on. They were unanimous in concluding that it was an extremely poor piece of writing.

When they were done, the professor quietly told them that he was the author of the piece. The students were stunned into embarrassed silence by this revelation. They sank even further into their seats as the professor said that he had worked long and hard over many days at writing it.

The professor finally said: “The reason it took me so long to write this was that it was really difficult for me to incorporate into it all the errors that you pointed out. What amazes me is that all of you seem to so easily write this way all the time!” [Read more…]

Dover’s dominoes-5: A Dover domino falls in California

(See part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.)

The first domino to fall as a result of the Dover verdict was in California where a teacher had decided to create a new optional philosophy class that would promote IDC ideas. This decision was interesting because the people behind it had seemed to draw the lesson from the Dover ruling that while it was problematic to teach IDC ideas in science classes, that it was acceptable to teach it in philosophy courses. As the LA Times reports (link to original article no longer working):

At a special meeting of the El Tejon Unified School District on Jan. 1 [2006], at which the board approved the new course, “Philosophy of Design,” school Supt. John W. Wight said that he had consulted the school district’s attorneys and that they “had told him that as long as the course was called ‘philosophy,’ ” it could pass legal muster, according to the lawsuit.

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Reagan’s welfare queen

Former President Reagan had the tendency to invoke anecdotes, his own guesses, and even just make up stuff as ‘evidence’ for his preferred political positions. For example, he is famous for saying things like “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do” (to support his position that more stringent automobile emission controls were not necessary) or (to presumably oppose any gun control legislation) that “In England, if a criminal carried a gun, even though he didn’t use it, he was not tried for burglary or theft or whatever he was doing. He was tried for first degree murder and hung if he was found guilty.” When his spokesperson was told that this statement about English gun law was just false, he said: “Well, it’s a good story, though. It made the point, didn’t it?”
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Dover’s dominos-4: How IDC lost in the Dover case

(See part 1, part 2, part 3.)

The stage was thus set in Dover, PA for what turned out to be an unequal contest in the courtroom of US District Judge John E. Jones III. Matthew Chapman, a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, attended the trial and provides an amusing description of its proceedings, the personalities involved, and of the events in the town of Dover leading up to the trial. In his account God or Gorilla: A Darwin descendant at the Dover monkey trial in the February 2006 issue of Harper’s Magazine, he describes how the plaintiffs team of lawyers, headed by the ACLU seemed to have the resources and materials at their fingertips while the Thomas More lawyers looked inadequately prepared and with few resources, even having to borrow the expert audio-visual services available to the plaintiffs.
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Dover’s dominos-3: The Dover school board battles the Discovery Institute

(See part 1, part 2 here.)

The Dover school board members were encouraged to adopt their policy by the offer, when they encountered the inevitable legal challenge, of legal representation by the Thomas More Law Center, based in Michigan, and which was “created in 1999 by Thomas Monaghan, founder of Dominos Pizza and a philanthropist for conservative Catholic causes.” The center supports all kinds of religion-based social policies, and was eager to take on the teaching of evolution theory in schools. To give you some idea of how extreme this group’s views are, the president and chief counsel of the center Richard Thompson believes that:

Christianity is under siege from all quarters, but especially from the federal courts, the American Civil Liberties Union, and what Thompson calls the “homosexual lobby.”

The ACLU and the courts are “basically cleansing America of religion and particularly Christianity,” Thompson said. “It’s almost like a genocide. It’s a sophisticated genocide.”

So it is clear that Thompson is a charter member (along with Bill O’Reilly) of the crazy cult that believes that it is Christians who are persecuted in the US. Anyone who uses the word “genocide” to describe the situation of Christians in the US clearly needs to lie down and take a nap until the fever passes.

The Thomas More center and the Dover school board were itching for a fight with those they saw as secular Darwinists. “Bring it on!” seemed to be their cry. Needless to say, the somewhat more sophisticated strategists at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute were not happy with their erstwhile allies in Dover shouting loudly about their blatantly religious motives. They could see their cautious, delicately-balanced, and expensive long-range plan, which depended upon carefully avoiding any mention of religion, falling apart because of the clumsy blundering of the Dover board, aided and even egged on by the Thomas More lawyers.

But once that die was cast and the Dover policy adopted, the Discovery Institute was placed in a quandary. The Thomas More center did not have the legal resources to mount the kind of sophisticated arguments necessary in such a case. Should the Discovery Institute completely disassociate themselves from the Dover school board actions and distance themselves from the case as it went down to likely defeat? Or should they throw themselves also into the fray, provide their own expert witnesses, pour all their considerable financial and legal resources into the case, and hope to secure victory from the jaws of an otherwise almost certain defeat?

In the end they waffled, initially agreeing to be part of the case, and then backing out when the Thomas More Law Center did not want the Discovery Institute’s own lawyers representing their clients. This caused bad feelings on both sides which spilled out into the open, as The Toledo Blade reported on March 30, 2006:

In fact, when Mr. Thompson decided to defend the Dover intelligent design policy, he angered the group most associated with intelligent design: the Discovery Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Seattle.

“We were incredibly frustrated by arrogance and bad legal judgment of goading the [Dover] school district to keep a policy that the main organization supporting intelligent design was opposed to,” says John West, the associate director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

The Thomas More Center acted “in the face of opposition from the group that actually represents most of the scientists who work on intelligent design.’’
. . .
In fact, these two prominent supporters of intelligent design couldn’t be much more at odds.

Mr. Thompson says the Discovery Institute bailed out on the Dover Board of Education when three of its experts refused to testify at the last minute, after the deadline for recruiting witnesses had passed.

But Mr. West says the whole thing was the More Center’s fault. Mr. Thompson wouldn’t let Discovery Institute fellows have separate legal representation.

The Discovery Institute has never advocated the teaching of intelligent design, and told the Dover board to drop its policy, Mr. West says. It participated in the trial only reluctantly.

“We were in a bind,” Mr. West says. “Our ideals were on trial even though it was a policy we didn’t support.”

Richard Thompson countercharges that the Discovery Institute people are essentially wimps, people who just talk a tough game but don’t put their beliefs on the line when it counts:

Mr. Thompson says the Discovery Institute’s strategy is to dodge a fight as soon as one appears imminent.

“The moment there’s a conflict they will back away . . .they come up with some sort of compromise.” But in Dover “they got some school board members that didn’t want compromise.”

This intramural battle between two groups supposedly on the same pro-IDC side did not augur well for the trial that was scheduled when some Dover parents led by Tammy Kitzmiller challenged the constitutionality of the school board’s decision.

The stage was now set for the courtroom confrontation.

Next in this series: Why the Dover school board lost the case.

Dover’s dominos-2: The Dover school board undermines the Wedge strategy

(See part 1 here.)

The reason that Judge Jones’ verdict in the Dover trial is likely to be so influential is because of the exhaustive nature of the testimony that he heard and the depth and comprehensiveness and scope of his ruling. In essence, the trial provided a place for IDC ideas to get a close examination under controlled conditions.

Prior to the trial, the case for and against IDC had been waged in the media, in legislative hearings, and in debates. As someone who has participated in many such things, I know that such forums can be a place where key ideas get examined and focused. But this happens only if the participants want them to. Otherwise skilled practitioners in those forums can evade tricky questions by diverting attention elsewhere and turn them into public relations exercises and question-begging.
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Dover’s dominos-1: Why Intelligent Design Creationism will lose

The Scottish poet Robert Burns in his poem To a Mouse cautioned those who place too much faith in detailed plans for the future. He said:

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, 

Gang aft agley.

When historians of the future write about the demise of Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC), they will likely point to the Dover, PA court decision as when the carefully thought-out plans and strategy of the IDC movement ganged agley in a big way.

If you recall, US District Judge John E. Jones III ruled on December 20, 2005 (Kitzmiller v. Dover) that the then Dover school board had acted unconstitutionally in its attempts to undermine the credibility of evolutionary theory in its biology class and in its attempt to promote IDC as a viable alternative. (See here for a previous posting giving the background to this topic.)

That case raised many fascinating issues and the final ruling clarified and put in perspective many of the issues clouding the role of intelligent design, science, religion, schools, and the US constitution. This series of posts that begins today will analyze that decision and the ripples it has caused throughout the country. I had been meaning to analyze the decision and its broader implications in depth for some time but kept getting deferred by other issues.
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