No more syllabi!
This was published a while back in insidehighered.com, but it deserves more attention than it got!Against Syllabi
The syllabus as a "contract" between student and professor has become more and more legalistic in the time since I've been a student. Its present state reflects more than anything a certain kind of acquiescence to "soft" surveillance. First you have to give a copy of your syllabus to the department secretary, then you're putting it on line.
My former colleagues would scrutinize each other's syllabi during merit review time and try to discredit those whom they thought were snoozing on the job by using the syllabus as a sign of their commitment to teaching. In the feverish competition to see who was most meritorious, syllabi began expanding to five, six, ten pages with detailed bibliographies. And yet, it has never been proven that courses with a skeletal syllabus are innately inferior to courses taught with a monstrous one.
And then there were the students, each of whom was asked in the evaluation about the organization of the course. It was here they could express their discontent with the syllabus. I ended up learning how to adapt to the situation and offered as few surprises as possible in the course of the semester.
Here in Taiwan, due the difficulty of tracking down readings and films, we change course in the middle of the semester if I feel like it and no one freaks out. I am taking advantage of my students' flexibility, even as I anticipate writing the five to six page syllabus when I return stateside, although not thankfully, to the University of Minnesota.
The syllabus as a "contract" between student and professor has become more and more legalistic in the time since I've been a student. Its present state reflects more than anything a certain kind of acquiescence to "soft" surveillance. First you have to give a copy of your syllabus to the department secretary, then you're putting it on line.
My former colleagues would scrutinize each other's syllabi during merit review time and try to discredit those whom they thought were snoozing on the job by using the syllabus as a sign of their commitment to teaching. In the feverish competition to see who was most meritorious, syllabi began expanding to five, six, ten pages with detailed bibliographies. And yet, it has never been proven that courses with a skeletal syllabus are innately inferior to courses taught with a monstrous one.
And then there were the students, each of whom was asked in the evaluation about the organization of the course. It was here they could express their discontent with the syllabus. I ended up learning how to adapt to the situation and offered as few surprises as possible in the course of the semester.
Here in Taiwan, due the difficulty of tracking down readings and films, we change course in the middle of the semester if I feel like it and no one freaks out. I am taking advantage of my students' flexibility, even as I anticipate writing the five to six page syllabus when I return stateside, although not thankfully, to the University of Minnesota.
1 Comments:
I agree--the trend toward the syllabus as a "legal contract" is a problem. First, I'm a college professor, not a lawyer, so I don't feel qualified to draft a legal document, even though that's how it's described to me by some admins. Second, I don't like the idea of students feeling they can rest on this structure, when as you point out changing circumstances during the semester can necessitate changes. That's usually not a big deal for students, thankfully. I know of one fellow prof who regularly gives out syllabi 30+ pages; it's really so much legalese that no one reads it and it defeats the point. :)
Post a Comment
<< Home