Swarthmore's fortes

interesteddad
Thu, 23 Mar 2006 04:19:50 +0000

Size, yes. Swarthmore is small even by LAC standards. 34% of the classes have 9 or fewer students. It’s hard to hide when it is a professor and eight other students. Another 42% of the classes have 10-19 students, including the freshmen seminars that are usually capped at 12.

Beyond that, it’s just the Swarthmore style of learning that features a lot of interaction. I think it goes back to the Honors System put in place in the 1920s. The whole concept was that honors students took small ungraded seminars with two or three students and a professor. After teaching that way for fifty years, elements of that approach naturally extended to all of the classes at Swarthmore.

One piece of advice a senior on my daughter’s hall freshman year gave her was to set a goal of contributing to class discussion at least once in every class. In many cases, class discussion is an explicitly stated part of the grade. But, from a pragmatic standpoint, if you go to class, contribute on a regular basis, turn in the papers, and generally come across as actively engaged in the course, you’ll probably get at least a B most of the time in humanities and social science courses. So, it’s just a sound approach. Obviously, it’s easier to contribute something worthwhile if you’ve read the assigned book and maybe even thought about it a little bit on the way to class! I know it seems obvious that you would read the assignments, but that’s not universally true in college.

Basically, the goal is not just to get you to learn stuff, but to think about the stuff you are learning. Thus, responding to the material, positively, negatively, or even with headscratching bewilderment is a key part of the process and the better professors intentionally teach to evoke a response. For example, Tim Burke has blogged about syllibi for his courses from time to time, saying that he often assigns a book with a flawed premise on purpose, because it will generate more heated response than a book with an airtight argument. I think that this is what James Michener meant when he said the stuff he learned at Swarthmore wasn’t that important, but the way he learned at Swarthmore was.

Here’s an example that I thought was pretty cool. In an intro political science course my daughter took, there was just one question on the take-home final exam. The question was about the role of the Supreme Court in the American political system. The question was simple: “What good is judicial review…really?” There is no right or wrong answer to that question. But, it forces you to think about the American political system and take (or at least argue) a position. You can’t answer the question without having learned “stuff”, but spouting all the “stuff” in the world won’t do the job without deciding what you think.

That’s why Swarthmore is “hard”, but it’s also what both students and professors like about it.