What Have You Done For Me Lately?

Music fans from the '80s will remember that the title of this post is also the title of a Janet Jackson song.  Friends of mine will also find it odd that I made a pop music reference since my preferred entertainment is hair metal, but that is beside the point.  Janet Jackson's song perfectly captures the disposition of too many students with regard to their own education, and I would suggest that there is something more.

A colleague recently pointed out that when students realize that it is mathematically not possible for them to pass, or very unlikely that they will, they often turn to general misbehavior.  It is not necessarily anything violent, but with nothing to gain from the class, they create a disruption through talking off topic, playing on their phones, etc.

Many will begin pointing fingers at the teachers in whose classes this takes place.  They should have been more engaging.  They should continue finding ways to reach each student to the very last minute of the semester.  A student who has gained so little from the class is one more sad example of a system that is failing its students.

As I have written before and spoken on many occasions, while it is true that a teacher's poor efforts may be the cause of a student's failure to learn, failure to learn itself is no proof of a teacher's poor efforts.  Yet what I want to focus on here is the purely consumer mentality at work in students who think that if they gain nothing from the class, then there is no reason for them to be in it, a belief that in their minds justifies their misbehavior.

Each fifty minutes my students and I form a small community.  We explore together the language, thought, art, literature, and history of the ancient Roman world.  I would, however, be loathe to think of my students as parasites, only taking in knowledge and never contributing to the shared journey of discovery that is education.  Yes, they are taking something from my class, but they should be contributing something as well, and that contribution is not what they give me in the form of completed assignments and assessments, but the thoughts they speak within the interactions of any given class period.  Students have something to contribute by asking questions, both those of simple clarification of a confusing point and those of the genuine curiosity that is the root of the branching nature of learning.  They contribute by sharing the connections they make between observations in my class and the reading, learning, and experiences from other parts of their lives.  Their contributions take the form of iron sharpening iron as each member of the class makes the others better.

Those entrusted with the development of young minds, teachers, parents, coaches, administrators, teaching assistants, librarians, media specialists, and guidance counselors, along with those less directly yet significantly involved such as policy makers and pundits, must understand that a classroom is not Amazon.com where students place their orders and leave with a product.  The true classroom, whether or not it is bounded by walls, is a dynamic community of learning, and because it is both dynamic and a community, it requires something of all its members, not merely the teacher.  Students who are actively engaged in their learning, even though they may fail to reach a level of achievement that has been desired by someone somewhere, will nevertheless have contributed to the shared journey of discovery and may enjoy the proper confidence that their fellow travelers in class are the better for it.

The Logic of Learning

WARNING:  Direct, possibly rude, certainly philosophical language ahead!

If learning has not happened, has teaching taken place?

If the learner hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught.

These are variations on one of the most illogical notions to come down the pike.  It may well be, in the words of Bertie Wooster, "the rummiest thing I've heard in a lifetime of rummy things."  Let's dispense with pleasantries and get down to logic.

Definition:  necessary condition -- A necessary condition for some state of affairs S is a condition that must be satisfied for S to obtain.  (http://philosophy.wisc.edu/hausman/341/Skill/nec-suf.htm)

Definition:  sufficient condition -- A sufficient condition for some state of affairs S is a condition that, if satisfied, guarantees that S obtains.  (ibid.)

A simple undergraduate logic or philosophy class introduces these basic terms.  Let me illustrate with an example.

Oxygen is a necessary condition for me to live.  I must have oxygen to breathe.  If I do not have oxygen, I cannot breathe and will die.  Another way to say it is "without which not."  Since without oxygen I would not live, oxygen is a necessary condition for my life.

Oxygen is not a sufficient condition for me to live.  There is plenty of oxygen in the morgue, and we do not see dead people jumping up to do the mambo.  Another way to say it is "with which must."  It is not true that with oxygen in the room a person must live.  Oxygen, therefore, is not a sufficient condition for my life.

The absurdity of statements like, "If the learner hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught," is that they are based on the idea that teaching is a sufficient condition for learning, and this is not the case.  Here are a few of the approximately 1,873,244,952 infinite number of reasons why.

1.  Teacher teaches, student gives outward indication of attention, student is thinking about the cute so-and-so two rows over.

2.  Teacher teaches, student gives outward indication of attention, biological factors* cause student not to remember (*including lack of sleep, lack of food, medical issues, etc.).

3.  Teacher teaches, student gives outward indication of attention, social factors* cause student not to remember (*including relational issues at school, abusive conditions at home, etc.).

4.  Teacher teaches*, student refuses to learn (*teaching being taken to include all appropriate methods of classroom management, motivation, etc.)

I think we get the point.  It is entirely possible for a good teacher to teach well and for a student or even multiple students in the class not to learn.  In fact, I will go so far as to say that teaching is not even a necessary condition for all learning (remember the definition above).  If it were, then no one could learn without a teacher teaching, and that is obviously not the case.  No one needs to teach me that I will feel better if I put on a coat before going out in sub zero temperatures.  I can learn that just fine on my own by going out once or twice without one.

It is true, of course, that teachers and teaching are important.  In many, perhaps even most, cases, teachers provide the most efficient means of learning something.  There are even instances where teaching is, in a strictly logical sense of the phrase, a necessary condition for learning.  For example, there is no way I am going to learn quantum mechanics without a teacher teaching me.  Even then, it is no sure bet, but you can take it to the bank that it won't happen without a very patient, kind, patient, knowledgeable, patient, loving, and patient physics teacher.

Yet it is simply not the case that teaching is a sufficient condition for learning.  Does bad teaching make the learning more difficult?  It certainly does.  Can bad teaching stop learning entirely?  Of course it can.  What one cannot do, ever, anywhere, under any circumstances...EVER...is make the logical claim that because a student has not learned teaching has not occurred.  It may be true, mind you.  A student may not have learned because teaching, or good teaching, did not occur, but that is not a conclusion you can logically draw solely from the lack of learning itself.