"Do not waste your time trying to reform these schools. They can not be reformed. It may be possible for a few of you, in a few places, to make a place called school which will be a humane and useful doing (as distinct from educating) place for the young. If so, by all means do it. In most places, not even this will be possible...." -- John Holt, Instead of Education, 1976
"Both the assembling and distribution of knowledge in the world at present are extremely ineffective... We are beginning to realize that the most hopeful line for the development of our ... [collective] intelligence lies rather in the direction of creating a new world organ for the collection, indexing, summarizing and release of knowledge than in any further tinkering with the highly conservative and resistant university system." -- H.G. Wells, 1937
28. On Teaching Journalism
To begin with, every time you step up to a university podium, there is a moment in which you are conscious of a great privilege. The occasion demands far more than just a view of transmitting information or imparting skills. You realize the context of your work – that we are in the initial stages of a major communications revolution. You also realize how absolutely vital it is to convey the best traditions of western democracies -- including freedom of thought, religion, speech and press – across ever-growing chasms of intolerance, dogma and tyranny.
Your own experience as a student has, of course, shaped your views of teaching and the kind of teacher you try to become. You try to avoid the “Professor Dryasdust” model. You know exactly what Pink Floyd means when the group sings about the “dark sarcasm” in the classroom. You had teachers just like that. And you dislike the idea of separating the “sheep” from the “goats.” In fact, what you really want is not to separate but to encourage an ethical approach to sharing knowledge. Advanced students should not be separated – they have a responsibility to the ones coming along behind them. Just as you have. And how do you teach that?
Educational theorists describe three basic structural approaches to classroom management: 1) behaviorism, in which we have clear rewards and disincentives; 2) cognitive approaches, in which we match previous knowledge to the new knowledge to be gained; and 3) constructivism, in which the “sage on the stage” becomes the “guide on the side” and students make their own choices about how to progress. Another approach advocated by reformers like John Holt involves “learning clubs” that bring everyone along, giving advanced students the opportunity to teach if they are called upon and giving everyone the opportunity to be taught. Experienced teachers will employ a blend of all of these approaches and modify them as circumstances indicate, and a good department will create a climate where there is strong overlap between the classroom and extracurricular learning clubs like student publications and journalism reviews.
Teaching journalism has its own particular ideosyncracies. To learn to write about public affairs, students are initially presented with behavioristic hurdles and must submit to the discipline of formula writing under deadline. Later this formulaic approach opens into the creativity of insightful reporting or literary approaches to non-fiction public affairs writing. There are often questions about this -- students seem to want the creativity without the discipline, and the job of a good teacher is to convince them that you can’t usually have one without the other.
Developing the social skills of a good reporter is also difficult. Students have to understand interviewing as information sharing rather than begging on the one hand or confrontation on the other. Teaching this often involves direct guided experience in student newsrooms and student publications with experienced students helping to teach beginners. Again, this is the “learning club” atmosphere. Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, as a great teacher once said – it is the only means.
Journalism educators have asked for many years whether we should emphasize professional values or critical theories of the mass media. We called it the green eyeshades versus chi square debate. In recent years this has become a three-way debate, with technology as a third element competing for emphasis and attention in the classroom and the curriculum. The technology of the digital communications revolution involves so many complex new skills that it may overwhelm the valuable traditions of journalism. Students need to understand what is right with journalism and what improvements might be envisioned to elevate the media and enhance public service and community-building.
For much of the 20th century, the common idea about the relationship between people and technology was simply: “Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms.” Today we know that this is dangerously backward thinking. We cannot conform to autonomous mechanization. Science without humanity is destructive. In fact, as is often recognized in civilized society, the dichotomy between scientific capabilities and human needs is a major cause of suffering and crisis, and this need not be the case if there is intelligence in the world.
New media technologies have the capacity to help build what Walter Lippmann called the fourth historical stage of the media -- organized intelligence. (The previous stages were state control, the partisan press and the commercial press). We must envision and build an independent public-interest system of organized intelligence that is grounded in the best traditions of journalism.
The alternative is to take the route proposed by some ideologues (such as David Horowitz) who have been horrified to find liberals (liberals!) in charge of the liberal arts curriculum. They would have universities impose a political balance across ideologies. But this of course dooms the idea of truth seeking to perpetual partisanship, as if it were inherently impossible to find an independent or public interest perspective. There is also the danger that the public interest might be permanently consigned to one camp and permanently set against a libertarian-corporate concept (which, you might note, is of remarkably recent vintage). And there is the even graver danger that deepening the ideological rifts in the media may facilitate encapsulated information environments that would reinforce the separation of media bubbles rather than, as has been somewhat the case, present competing faces to a public attracted by the conflict of ideas.
You can be fearless about the communications revolution if you teach journalism students to be strong writers and to understand the nuts and bolts of technology, while, at the same time, keeping theory well in sight and deeply integrated into the curriculum.
You can encourage truth-seeking in the public interest, not false balances, because the need for technique to be informed by traditions of social responsibility has never been greater.
And you can continue the process of improving your teaching if you bear in mind that the privilege you have been given is most effectively used in modeling behavior rather than controlling it, sharing rather than imposing knowledge, and igniting curiosity rather than filling in the blanks.
None of these points addresses, of course, the overarching problem of working within an antiquated system. In the quotes above, Hold and Wells seem ready to abandon educational institutions. I understand the impulse, but I do not understand the alternative. Further tinkering will have to be the present course.