In my last post, I mentioned a teaching method called inquiry-based learning. In many respects, it's awesome. I even presented it to former students recently, who basically said, "yup, that looks like what you did, and we liked it a lot." But Burke… I really like what I know of IBL, and I would gladly prefer either Burke's ideas or IBL to today's standardized testing culture and its after-effects, even into upper-level college courses. Yet what Burke proposes, and what Jean-Jacques Rousseau really played up in his near-contemporary book on education, Émile, goes one step beyond what I see in IBL.
Dear IBL folks, please correct me if I've misunderstood here. From what I have heard from students at a couple of schools here in Michigan--and a few teachers--IBL seems like a very hands-off approach, basically saying to students, "go figure it out for yourself." I like this. I do it all the time. I send my own students to the university library and occasionally local archives, courthouses and public record offices, and leave them more-or-less with the instructions, "find out more about something that interests you, and teach me something about it." I've gotten papers back that cover anything from medieval European fragrances to archaeology on Clovis Points, to the naming of Tecumseh, Michigan. Neat stuff! And my involvement in the process: well, honestly, minimal. I explain to students how my game works, set a few bounds and standards, try to rile up some excitement in the classroom, and then send them off.
Not that I take my job lightly, or pretend that it's easy. This IBL stuff on its own is a huge departure from the conventional learning and testing culture, and it takes a lot of students by surprise. Even at the college level, a lot of my students are dumbfounded by the amount of freedom I give them to go and explore. Of course I am available to help, guide, encourage, etc., especially for those who are willing to email or come to office hours, but even with those aids my personal interpretation of IBL seems to go a step too far for a lot of students, so they're left a little aimless. I try to help through jokes in lecture, and even a bit of personalizing--"I find this obscure bit of history really interesting because…"--but where they remain concerned with grades and diplomas and "how do I pass this course," IBL still fails me.
And then there's Burke and Rousseau. Especially with the latter, let me just say I disagree with how he orders things: I think modern child / developmental psychology studies might show his reasoning to be a little off as far as what gets taught when. But what both men say about relating to students, being more deeply involved at a personal level, taking a genuine (dare I say social?) interest in students' lives, I'd like to say it's gold, but in point of fact I think it's more like plutonium. I don't quite want to say, "hey look, a relational, shared-learning-experience variety of IBL is like pure plutonium," because clearly that's weird. But what I mean is that the idea is valuable, hugely powerful, and very dangerous.
On the good side, there's just basic common social sense. People do things for their friends that they would not do--at least not as willingly--for someone in a formal power structure. Maybe the work itself would get done, but would the work ethic be there? And sure enough, some students I have known at the B, C, and even D levels, once they had enough pressure, or curiosity, or simple bravery to approach me, often saw their grades go up toward the A-range. I don't think this is just because I knew a bit more about them. Rather, I question along with Burke, Rousseau and others whether that social exchange really changed something about their approach to the class.
The bad side, of course, almost goes without saying. There is plenty to say about teacher's pets, teacher bias in general, and I suppose at the extreme end of things… right. Just not good. And of course, these dangers are all (notionally) avoided by keeping teachers under an ethical lock and key. Some of that same lock and key seems like it has played into standardized testing culture and its legacy, with larger, more impersonal classes, tests given and graded by machine, and--well, not that all of them are bad by any means, but I would still venture to say the worst in online courses and virtual classrooms. IBL also allows the ethical lock and key to work, by promoting independent work among students. Good so far as that goes, but where are the real and relational affirmations that some (all?) students need to show the value of a job well done for someone?
This is another huge negative for Burke and Rousseau. The ideas they propose strike me as brilliant: in essence, IBL with a strong relational, affirmative component that makes the student feel valued, special, individual as well as independent. All to the good, yet emotionally involved for the instructor; and that kind of attention--noted in a very different, spiritual context by Simone Weil in her "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies"--is hardly commensurate with the kind of mass, industrial education that today defines the public school system. Such attention, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer's conception of God's grace in his Cost of Discipleship, does not come cheaply.
So at the end of a long post, I'm left stuck, and torn. Standing before me--and perhaps before many in my shoes--is this ideal of investing deeply in students, affirming them not just as students but as whole people, thus enabling them to learn not just for education's sake, but in the context of relational trust, vulnerability, even as Burke proposed, a shared experience of learning. On the other hand, this one step beyond a great learning system like IBL promises to be enormously taxing, for many definitions of that word. In the current system of education, I am left to think IBL may be the best that one can hope for, and even that has its limitations… I can only wonder what kind of societal change would be necessary for parents and students even to vocalize the desire they seem to have for what Burke and Rousseau apparently offered, let alone changes to the education system.
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