The PANANOLE News: FSU-Panama Student E-Zine

     “You don’t need a match – you can light your cigarette from the candle.” It was, as I recall, my idea, and I’m proud of it. I don’t smoke myself, but if I’m sharing a table with smokers, I’d rather they light their cigarettes in an elegant fashion. Further down the table, someone ostentatiously slipped a bottle of wine under his jacket for later consumption. The fine silverware, the high vaulted ceiling, the stained glass windows – they all seemed to demand that we adopt an air of casual decadence, and we were happy enough to play the part, drunk on our own vanity, and why not? The purpose of the meal had been to welcome us a freshers in Pembroke College, Oxford, and, after dessert had been served, the dons had been willing to allow us a little time by ourselves to savour the atmosphere of the hall. But after a short while the three of us who were studying Theology, or, in my case, Philosophy and Theology, slipped quietly away. We had an appointment to keep with Dr. John Platt, who had promised to explain to us our first essay in Theology.

     So we made our way across two quadrangles, up the stairs, and into his suite of rooms – the same rooms he had lived in as an undergraduate. He was in the mood for a little nostalgia that evening—as we sat down, he recalled his freshers’ dinner, and the words of advice that the then Dean had given to the freshers at the time. “Gentlemen” (for back then, Pembroke was a college for men only) “Gentlemen, at Oxford, we read for our degrees. You will not, I hope, be attending too many lectures.” Good advice, said Dr. Platt, and, whatever faults I may have had as a student, I religiously avoided spending too much time in lectures.

     His advice did not come as a surprise to us. We already understood the way teaching and evaluation was carried out in Oxford. At the end of our three years, we would undergo rigorous final examinations, which would be graded by a board of examiners appointed by the university. One member of the board would be invited from outside, to ensure that rigid standards were maintained. Those two weeks of examination would determine the class of degree we received, it was up to us to spend our time wisely up until then, so that we arrived prepared.

     We were not, though, left to our own devices. At least once a week, sometimes twice, we would be expected to spend an hour discussing a piece of work we had prepared with a tutor—usually an expert in the field, such as Dr. Platt himself, or his colleague, Bishop Kallistos Ware. Attendance to these sessions was obligatory, and poor work would be punished with ritual humiliation. If we wanted, we could attend lectures as well, where the same experts would expound their own views to anyone who bothered to turn up.

     Following John Platt’s advice, I found that a good lecture was one that left me excited about the subject, wanting to read more, think more and write more. A really exciting teacher such as John Muddiman could attract such a big audience that, in one instance, I had to sit on the floor because all the chairs were taken. Others, including some very distinguished professors who shall remain nameless, were capable of emptying lecture halls after a couple of weeks. More than once, I was the only student who turned up. Many times, I voted with my feet, deciding that my time was better spent in the library, doing real work, than in the lecture hall, pretending to listen and take notes.

Dr. Murphy in his student days, following his tutor's advice not to attend too many lectures.
     Now here I am in Panama. Alcohol is prohibited on campus, smoking is strictly an outdoor activity and the bottle of Old Speckled Hen in my apartment is, as far as I know, the only pint of real English beer in the whole country. In place of genuine silverware, the cafeteria has plastic knives and forks. The significant differences between Pembroke College, Oxford and FSU-Panama are not the differences in ambience, however. The truly significant differences concern the methods of teaching and evaluation, the two essential activities of a university.

     In some important respects, FSU-Panama is better. The Oxford system of final examinations is extremely unfair, favouring those who can produce the appearance of knowledge in a couple of hours at the expense of those who work hard for three years, but cannot perform well under pressure. The range of subjects studied is far too narrow: in all my time at university, I did not take a single science course. To have studied a course involving philosophy and science would have limited my options on the theology side and there was not then, as there is today, a special course in ‘Science for Theologians’. But, until that long-awaited day when I am offered a chair in my alma mater, I will not be in a position to make Oxford more like FSU-Panama.

     In my current situation, it is more productive to ask whether FSU-Panama has anything to learn from Oxford. This whole flight of self-indulgent nostalgia was prompted by a couple of questions raised at a meeting for the Pananole News contributors: should class attendance be compulsory, and should students be penalised for arriving late? If classes here were treated the same way as lectures in Oxford, then the answer to each question would be ‘No’: poor attendance would be taken not as a sign of lazy students, but of bad teaching.

     However, any of my students who are reading this must not start celebrating yet. The requirement that absences be penalised comes from Tallahassee, so I am not in a position to abolish it overnight. Even if I were, it would not make sense to make this change without making other more fundamental changes. Classes at FSU-Panama are not equivalent to lectures in Oxford: they are more like lectures, tutorials and final examinations all rolled into one.

     The most fundamental difference between FSU-Panama and Oxford is that here, the role of teacher and examiner is combined, whereas in Oxford, they were strictly separated. In many cases, the same person was the teacher and the examiner, but there were procedures and rituals to ensure that the two roles were never confused. For example, when I was a graduate student, I was fortunate to study Mediaeval Philosophical Theology with Richard Cross, who also took the opportunity to introduce me to gin and tonic. It also happened that he chaired the board of examiners who dealt with my master’s thesis. But I did not give him a copy of the thesis. I took several copies to the Examination Schools, where a uniformed clerk (wearing, as I recall, a bowler hat), took the copies and gave me a receipt. If there had been a viva voce examination (that is, a defence of my dissertation, as is compulsory for a doctorate), we all would have been wearing formal academic dress. Formal dress is, of course, one way society has of depersonalising situations, transforming individuals into officials.

     Well, it happens that I was very disappointed with grade I received, not only was it a personal disappointment, but I knew that it would not be good enough to obtain a full scholarship to obtain a doctorate. However, I had no procedural grounds for complaint, and it would simply not have occurred to me to plead with Dr. Cross to reconsider the grade. That would have been the most appalling breach of etiquette. Richard Cross the teacher and Richard Cross the examiner were two distinct individuals. I was unhappy with my grade, but who am I to say it was unfair? The system is ruthless, and that is as it should be. The role of the teacher is to encourage, to inspire and to sympathise in time of difficulty. The role of the examiner is to test the finished product and to eliminate those who fail. The teacher is a friend, a Mentor. The examiner is a Medusa.

     In the American system, the roles of teacher and examiner are not separated. The effect on grading is obvious, and well known. Students have plenty of chances to complain about grades—and that is not all bad. Mistakes are made, and they should be corrected. Faculty, myself included, are sometimes too harsh. But, as well as the legitimate appeals, there are, inevitably, attempts at emotional blackmail. Or the temptation to give a student a good grade because if you don’t they will only complain anyway.

     Of course, faculty members know we should not give in to such temptations, and the administrators here at FSU-Panama are very serious about maintaining standards. What is missing in the system is any equivalent of an external examiner. There is plenty of scope for a student to complain when a grade is too low. There is nobody to look over my shoulder every time I grade a paper and say ‘Was that really worth an A? Aren’t you being a little soft?’ The only external examiner is the inner voice of conscience.

     There are, of course, checks and balances in the system. Final papers must be kept on file. Syllabi must be sent to Tallahassee. Accreditation agencies may inspect. One way that we protect ourselves from accusations of slipping standards is by bureaucracy: I set my own procedures and standards, but I have to record clearly what those procedures and standards are, so that I can show I am following them if challenged. The result is bureaucracy—and I do not use that word in a derogatory sense. Bureaucracy can be a good way of keeping things fair—it is inflexible, but that’s a good way of preventing, for example, rampant favouritism.

     But what connection is there between the conflation of the roles of teacher and examiner, and policies on attendance and tardiness? Partly, it is a matter of the means available to motivate students. When the teacher is not the examiner, teacher and student are partners in a joint enterprise—preparing the student for battle against the examiner. The teacher motivates the student by saying ‘If you do this, you will be prepared for the examination, if you don’t, you won’t be ready.’ Most of the papers I wrote as an undergraduate had no effect on my final grade, but I knew perfectly well that if I didn’t co-operate with the learning process, I would be found out in the end.

     Here, at FSU-Panama, the expectation is that any piece of good work will be rewarded in the final grade. If you want student to do it, make sure you give them credit or, and this is what leads to attendance policies, make sure they lose credit if they don’t do it. The effect of bureaucracy is to make these policies rigid. Of course, there are some students I know are late for a good reason, and others I know are late because they are lazy. But try turning that into a policy that would stand up to examination by committee when the lazy student complains of discrimination. If you manage it, let me know I’d like to hear.

     This is only a part of the answer however; we also need to consider why it is important to reward class attendance and punctuality. This leads to another important difference between Oxford and FSU-Panama.

     Oxford is a university with a strong research tradition, and this is the source of much of its prestige. Terrible teaching and lackadaisical administration is no bar to promotion if you are capable of producing good research. This has a drawback: it’s easy for the senior members of the university to forget that there is more to life than research. Only a minority of Oxford undergraduates will go on to do research, but all of them are being trained primarily in the skills and habits that make for good research.

     FSU-Panama is a teaching institution. We do not award higher degrees, and faculty members are not expected to be active in research. Our job revolves around teaching and administration, and we think of our students as future professionals, not, primarily, as future researchers.

     Most professions—journalism, law, politics, business and so on, require people to meet deadlines. You can’t ask for the election to be postponed so that you have a final chance to rewrite your campaign speech, or tell the judge that you’ve been busy working on another case for another judge, and could she please grant you an extension? Punctuality and meeting deadlines are important skills in most professions. But this is not so in research.

     Research is a creative activity, and creative activities set their own timetables. Right now it is nearly 2am, and tomorrow I’m going to be tired. Still, I go on writing this article, because I know that now is the time to write it. When I was a graduate student, my life was built around research. I would frequently work until 7am, and then spend the next day in bed. I would work continuously on a chapter of my thesis for days at a time, and then, while my supervisor was reading it, I was free to walk around the countryside. Furthermore, good researchers care about quality, not about deadlines. I hate to admit this in front of my students, but my doctoral thesis, the most important document of my career so far, was submitted a couple of days late. The deadline fell during the summer vacation, and my supervisor’s advice before he left me to tidy up the final draft was ‘Quality is what matters most. If it’s a couple of days late in the summer vacation, no one will really mind.’ The thesis was late not because it was unimportant, but because it was very important to me. I wanted to get it right. With lesser documents, like minutes of faculty meetings, I’m usually quite prompt.

     Setting deadlines, keeping attendance and all those other little things are, in part, preparation for the kind of careers that many of you will take: your degree proves to future employers that you can be in the right place at the right time. They are also part and parcel of the whole bureaucratic system that insures fairness above all else, even though we all know it’s sometimes stupid.

     There is, however, one other purpose. This must not be denied. These regulations ensure that we have students in the class to teach, and that makes us look respectable, so we get paid. Yes it is, in part, about money. Right now, a lot of the pressure to keep close track of attendance is coming from federal funding agencies that don’t like to pay money for students who miss classes. If I were an Oxford I’d be paid for my research, and if the research were good, nobody would mind if my lectures were unattended. But here, we get money to teach, and that means we need students in the classroom, visibly learning from us, or pretending to learn. Classroom time may not be the most effective way of teaching, but it’s the most effective way teachers have of showing that we are working. It means that we, like the other professions I mentioned, are required to be punctual, to meet deadlines, to get a good night’s sleep, and so we too are worthy to receive our pay-cheques twice a month.

     What would be the alternative? If class attendance were optional for students, we teachers would probably spend less time in class as well. We’d have a few students regularly show up, and the rest would just try out the work on their own, coming to us as they needed help. Many students would squander the time and produce bad work, but in that way they would also learn a valuable lesson. Sometimes, it really is better if we teachers minimize our presence for a while, and leave the students alone in the hall. Yes, some will get drunk, some will steal the wine and some might even, oh horror, dance on the tables, but the priceless works of art will be undamaged in the morning, probably. Some of them may even suggest lighting cigarettes from the candles, as if they were the first to think of that. To be honest, I can tolerate people recycling old ideas, as long as they do it with elegance.