Is teaching meaningful?

In a post over at Philosophical Disquisitions last week entitled, 'The Trouble with Teaching: Is Teaching a Meaningful Job?', John Danaher (National University of Ireland) gives a mostly negative answer to his title question, concluding not that teaching is totally meaningless, but rather "It’s just not as noble or inspiring as some people suppose." Still, Danaher is open to having his mind changed, writing "I hope that someone will convince me that I am wrong." So, let me try to give it a shot.

I agree with much of what Danaher writes. I agree that teaching is "a job and often a frustrating one." I also agree with many of Danaher's negative arguments, such as the general purposes and value of education are dubious, that teaching tends to fail to achieve its aims (viz. 'student learning outcomes'), that the feedback we receive as teachers is of dubious value, that there are institutional constraints that can seriously undermine the meaningfulness of teaching for those who engage in it, and so on. I agree with virtually all of this. And yet I still find teaching profoundly meaningful. Why?

The answer, for me, is grounded in a phrase that (surprisingly to me, at least) does not occur in his post: namely, making a difference in at least some of our students' lives. I not only think that teaching does make a meaningful difference in some of our students' lives, and in ways that probably few other occupations do. I also think that teaching can meaningfully approximate Platonic love (agápe, or empathetic universal love) and Aristotle's conception of true friendship. Allow me to explain.

At one point, Danaher writes the following:

Here’s a definition of teaching that I have long admired and, indeed, quoted in my own teaching statements:

…the real aim of education [is]: to waken a student to his or her potential, and to pursue a subject of considerable importance without the restrictions imposed by anything except the inherent demands of the material. 

(Parini 2005, 10)

But what does that mean? What is a student’s potential? Does it vary from student to student? Everyone is unique so this would stand to reason. So is it really possible for me, as a teacher, to waken each individual to their unique potential? Also, what are the inherent demands of the subject? It’s not clear. It turns out that I may like this quote because it is so vague. It speaks to the high falutin’ aspirations of teaching as a profession, but means relatively little in practice. The purpose is vague and its value unclear.

I agree that the idea of 'awakening students to their potential' is vague and its value unclear. But I think there is probably a reason why Danaher has long admired this definition of teaching, and that this reason is that the definition is not all that far off from the truth. What do I mean? My experience, both as a student and as a teacher, isn't that teaching is meaningful because it 'wakens each individual to their unique potential.' Rather, it is that teaching can and sometimes does make a profound and meaningful difference in at least some of our students' lives. Allow me to illustrate though some stories.

Most of the time, when I've heard people say that someone else "made a real difference in their life", the people they talk about tend to fall into several categories: teachers, mentors, friends, family member, and romantic partners. My spouse, for example, has made an immense difference in my life. I find life with her incredibly meaningful, for all kinds of reasons--more than I can possibly put into words. She, quite literally, changed my life. Prior to meeting her, my life was on one path; afterwards, it has been on a very different, more meaningful one. Now, of course, while she is a special case, I've often heard people say something similar about various teachers: that a particular teacher or other many years ago 'changed their life.' Why? Well, the short answer, it seems to me, is that teaching is a rather unique occupation. When I go to a coffee shop and buy a coffee, my interactions with the employees there are ordinarily going to be rather limited. Maybe we'll chat for a few minutes--but unless I know them as a friend, I'm not going to have long conversations exchanging ideas, challenging each other, etc. Notice that most occupations are like this: we primarily engage with employees for some service or other, one that involves some kind of exchange of tangible goods (e.g. buying food, a lightbulb, a car, etc.), and not much more than that. Teaching is very different. We spend hours in the classroom with our students, exchanging ideas and perspectives with them, challenging each other, and so on, it seems to me, in what can be uniquely meaningful ways. Allow me to illustrate through a series of stories, beginning with some unique to my life and then some not.

Personal Story 1: When I was a child and teenager, I had no great passions in my life. There were some things I rather liked. I liked baseball. I also liked my English literature classes, as well as politics, as I liked art and was an idealist who wished the world could be a better place. But, at the same time, it bugged me a bit that there wasn't anything that I seemed to be truly passionate about. My brother was passionate about music for instance: he 'lived and breathed' it. There wasn't anything like that for me. Well...until I had the luck of ending up in a few philosophy classes with a couple of outstanding teachers. When I was 16, I took a summer class at Stanford on philosophy and literature taught by Taylor Carman (Barnard). We read all kinds of philosophy, but also literature (Voltaire, Italo Calvino, etc.). Among other things, we discussed existentialism, the absurdity or life, and the problem of evil, which as a young person had been dimly in the background my mind somewhere my whole life, but which the class challenged me to really think about for the first time. A couple of years later, when a family member died (the first in my life to that point), those discussions made a meaningful difference to me as I was grappling with her death.  

Personal Story 2: Carman's summer class interested me in philosophy. But I still hadn't discovered anything like a 'lifelong passion' for philosophy. I entered college still sort of listless, imagining that I might be an English major, or perhaps a Psychology or Political Science major. I remember having vague thoughts about pursuing a career in politics, again in the hopes that I might make some kind of positive difference in the world. But then, as a matter of sheer luck, I got placed in an introduction to philosophy course taught by Dan Dennett. The course and everything surrounding it blew my mind, so to speak. Dan not only challenged us with a bunch of philosophical classics, but also in his lectures with his unique, naturalistic spin on things, including some of his critiques of a priori, armchair philosophy. I remember realizing then and there that I wanted to be a philosopher. Dan's class changed my self-identity and life path. I no longer saw myself as just another person with some vague interests in things. I saw myself as an aspiring philosopher. That was incredibly meaningful to me then, continues to be deeply meaningful to me today. It not only changed my life. It has also affected the kind of researcher and teacher that I sought to become.

Personal Story 3: One of the more notable features of Dan's intro class was that he assigned us 5 term-papers, allowing us to rewrite them as many times as we wished. I rewrote my first paper for him 4 or 5 times, and each time he gave line-by-line corrections and a page or two of typed of up comments. This stunned me. Here was this super-famous philosopher who could have almost certainly done the bare minimum as a teacher, and yet, he cared about our improvement, dedicating time and energy to us. This too made a meaningful difference to my life: it conveyed to me an idea of the kind of person and teacher that I should be, showing me how it can matter to a person and student to be meaningfully challenged and encouraged. The experience has always stuck with me. When I became a teacher, I've always tried to live up to Dan's model--and while I haven't always succeeded, I've often had students say in notes and course evaluations that the approach to teaching has meant something to them too.

Family Story 1: When I was a child, I always remember my brother talking about a particular physics teacher at his high school. The teacher was super-demanding, and my brother struggled in his classes. And yet it meant something to my brother. My brother didn't become a physicist; he's a life-long musician and artist. And yet, it seems to me, that high school teacher's sense of holding oneself to a high-standard--of demanding a lot of oneself--made a profound difference in my brother's life. My brother has lived that way of approaching art the rest of his life. It is a meaningful part of his self-identity.

Family Story 2: My mother is in her mid-70s. It has been well over 50 years since she went to college (as a lower-middle class first-generation college student). Since then, she had a high-powered executive career, been a stay-at-home mother, started a small business related to her life-long passion, and many other things besides. She has, in a few words, lived a life. And yet, oddly perhaps, over all of that time she has returned in conversations, time and time again, to a (philosophy!) professor she had in college. I needn't go into the details here, but the context is that the class was the only real time in her life that she was challenged to think about good and evil. The professor asked her a question about whether human beings are good and evil, she gave an answer, and she relates the ensuing discussion and how important it (obviously) was in her life. It often comes up in conversation, by the way, when things aren't going so well in the world (as is often the case): when, for example, there is war, oppression, etc. My mom is in no way an academic. And yet...that one conversation she had in a classroom, started by a teacher, stuck with her for the rest of her life: it has meant something in her life.

Teaching stories: As Danaher points out, teaching can be frustrating. It can involve a lot of drudgery: grading stacks of exams, for instance. And yes, from time to time, I can wonder to myself what is so valuable or meaningful about it. But then a nursing major tells me they plan to pick up a philosophy major, saying my class changed their perspective in some way, opening their eyes to the world in a way they never expected. Or, as department chair, I read student comments on another instructor's performance in my department, saying the instructor's class opened their eyes about the nature of reality or racial justice. Or, I have a student who struggles with a paper, rewriting it multiple times, finally getting things right, and seeing what they are capable of. Or, after a student graduates, I receive a card in my mailbox expressing deep thanks, saying how much their time as a philosophy major or particular classes affected their outlook on the world, their chosen career path, or path in life in general. Then, years later, I see the student (perhaps on social media) flourishing in that life or chosen career. It's the unexpected little moments like these where teaching feels deeply meaningful to me.

Can other occupations be meaningful? Of course they can. My father, for example, would probably say that his career has been meaningful to him. And yet, it seems to me, teaching is rather unique in the ways in which it can be meaningful. I am not 'selling a widget' to my students: a car, a lightbulb, or a shirt. No, teachers relate to their paying 'consumers' in a very different way than most occupations. We engage with students in world of ideas, we challenge them, they challenge us, we work together to try to understand the world around us--and, in philosophy at least, to think carefully and empathetically about life and the world around us. We are, in a manner of speaking, seeking knowledge and the good together (which is--very roughly--what Plato and Aristotle took love and the best kind of civic friendship to be). Whatever else teaching achieves or don't achieves, its pursuit in my experience can be truly meaningful in all of these ways. It can and often does make a meaningful and lasting difference in people's lives, and in ways that at least aim at trying to improve one another, and by extension, the world around us. To be clear, teaching may not always feel meaningful (Danaher is right, I think, about that much). But, as I think some of the above stories indicate, teaching can be meaningful in all kinds of profound and hidden ways. I don't think, for example, that my brother or my mother ever told their respective teachers how meaningful their experiences with them were. And yet, for all that, they were deeply meaningful. 

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Comments

[meaningful]

In my reading of the OP, the question seems to come down to whether making a difference for some students is sufficient to make teaching meaningful. I would say it is, in agreement with Marcus above.

Here is an argument from my own experience: I work mainly with first generation students, or students who grew up in environments that do not have much to do with academics. Exposing them to intellectual discussions, reading and engaging with texts for the first time and seeing how some students get to enjoy it and gain awareness of their talents feels meaningful to me. Of course, it can be claimed that this may happen in other classes, but I think there is something particular for philosophy classes and for particular abilities students develop (like reading and verbal skills). In line with the OP, one may object that they were already talented, intelligent etc, but there is marked improvement of those skills that would not have been possible outside university (and perhaps those students would not even have known they are good at doing a particular thing).

Perhaps this is something I am particularly sensitive to since learning more broadly and pursuing academic philosophy have opened a world I did not get to experience while growing up. Although I am not a first generation college graduate, I did not grow up surrounded by books or engaging in intellectual conversations, but once I got exposure to this - and I can trace it as far back as high school, to particular classes and teachers- any chance to participate in it felt like a reward.

Perhaps it is also relevant to clarify that I grew up in country with (what used to be) a strong public education system (so none of this would have been possible if my family had to spend a significant amount so I would get meaningful learning experiences). I think this is relevant when we think of the value of education - it can be meaningful insofar as it enables people to reach their potential beyond the condition they were born into, but less so if it is only a means of consolidating pre-existing privileges.

[Joe]

An interesting part of John's post is his thinking about the goals of education. Besides, his expressed frustration in an attempt to apply the active learning approach in teaching and implicit disappointment at his own formal education are thought-provoking.

Thanks to Marcus for sharing personal and family stories, some of which seem to be evidence for the good of education.

I also have a problem with teaching (Maybe should post this in another thread?). As a new philosophy lecturer, my enthusiasm for teaching declined significantly after I met a few students who greatly overestimated themselves. These students seemed to believe that they know many things and they must be right in most, if not all, of their beliefs, and behaved impolitely in class. I am not able to convince them as a math lecturer. Now I tend to only do "the bare minimum as a teacher", to avoid been frustrated or offended by these students, especially when my position is just temporary. But I know this may not be right. I wonder what are the thoughts of more experienced philosophy teachers?

[postdoc]

I usually enjoyed teaching but the quality of the students' work would worry me. I taught at a few Russell group universities in the UK. My impression was that most of the students did not have the intelligence, preparation, and/or desire required to learn and understand philosophy at the university level, much less write about it (I'd say that 5% of my students were hardly literate). I felt that the universities were just admitting students for the tuition, and that students who had almost no interest in intellectual pursuits were attending just because it was expected of them or they thought it would lead to better pay afterwards. I found the situation disheartening. Of course, there were always a handful of good students who would brighten my day. Largely though I felt the "education" the students were receiving was a waste of their time and money: they didn't really want to learn and the universities weren't really interested in teaching them, being far more concerned with how satisfied the students were with their experience.

[Rosa]

Here's something I have been doing for a few semesters now, and really loved: I assign a short essay at the beginning of the semester, asking them to reflect on their academic, professional, and personal goals for the course, and then assign a short essay at the end of the course asking them to reflect on whether they met their goals and whether they would have set different ones in light of what they know now. At the risk of sounding cliche, the things they have to say (especially in the second assignment) are both humbling and inspiring - and that's true of the large majority of students, not just one or two here and there. If we set our courses up in such a way that students will be invited to actively think about why they should matter to their broader lives, my sense has been that they really rise to the challenge, and that what comes out of it is deeply meaningful.

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Rosa: That's a really cool sounding exercise. Thanks for sharing it!