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Denis Rancourt and the disease of post-secondary education
Evil Multifarious
Registered User regular
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Denis Rancourt is a physics professor at my university, the University of Ottawa. You may have heard about him. He is an anarchist, an activist, a shit-disturber, a radical; he is also adamantly anti-Israel, and doesn't believe global warming is a crisis (and he does have credentials in environmental science, I believe).
Put plainly, Denis Rancourt is a bit nuts.
There has been a widely publicized, long-term, dragged-out conflict between Rancourt and the University's administration. A general outline of Rancourt and his little crusade can be found on his Wiki page.
It has neglected to mention that, when Rancourt took control of a physics course and turned it into a cross-disciplinary socially-aware class, and the Dean of Science barged in and shut the class down, the official arbitrator who investigated the incident ruled in favour of Rancourt and his pass-fail, no-grades evaluation system, and his broad content; it was ruled that Rancourt was completely within his rights to academic freedom.
If you want the theoretical, political underpinnings of his beliefs, take a look at one of his blog posts here. It's your standard sort of Marxist/anarchist-education-is-programming-us-to-be-servants-of-the-man kind of thing.
Basically, Rancourt thinks
Regardless, Rancourt has been punished for his actions - he has been reprimanded several times, barred from the campus, arrested for trespassing and inciting conflict, and recently flat-out fired from his position. Currently there is a major investigation into the conflict between him and the university, one that might take two years.
So, what do you think of Denis Rancourt and his crusade? Do you agree with his stance? Do you agree with his actions? Do you think academic freedom includes his efforts, or has he overstepped his bounds? Should those bounds be changed?
I have to say, I agree very strongly with his stance on education. It's diseased and corrupted and monetized, and as someone working with students I am seeing the results of the system's failure in elementary school, high school, and university. But his actions here at the university won't change that; if the U of O abandons letter grades, it will produce degrees that will have no value outside the university, because the rest of the world is still about credentials, jobs, and education for the work force.
But then again, this conflict has gotten international attention. There is a major investigation; there is a dialogue, a debate, a discussion. Is that not positive? Hasn't he gotten what he wants - a spotlight on the university's pedagogical methods, and on the pedagogy of post-secondary education in general? As a radica left-wing activist who is also a certified expert, deeply embedded in the system he criticizes, he has a strange sort of dual authority that makes him more sympathetic to even a conservative listener, in some ways.
And when the police arrest Rancourt for giving a speech about the corruption of the University of Ottawa's administration, how can you not start to think about the police as a tool of the wealthy, the elite, the corrupt? How can you not see something wrong with the use of physical power to shut down discussion and criticism, rather than an active engagement of it?
I think that, regardless of your stance on Rancourt, the university's response has been very poor, both for its own image and for the possibilities such a dialogue could produce.
But to what extent can this kind of activism engender any positive change in a nation and society that is entirely shot through with the exact kind of problems that he sees in the university? Systemic change, on a sweeping scale, would be necessary to address these problems - massive, radical educational reform. Is that even possible? Should it be done?
Put plainly, Denis Rancourt is a bit nuts.
There has been a widely publicized, long-term, dragged-out conflict between Rancourt and the University's administration. A general outline of Rancourt and his little crusade can be found on his Wiki page.
It has neglected to mention that, when Rancourt took control of a physics course and turned it into a cross-disciplinary socially-aware class, and the Dean of Science barged in and shut the class down, the official arbitrator who investigated the incident ruled in favour of Rancourt and his pass-fail, no-grades evaluation system, and his broad content; it was ruled that Rancourt was completely within his rights to academic freedom.
If you want the theoretical, political underpinnings of his beliefs, take a look at one of his blog posts here. It's your standard sort of Marxist/anarchist-education-is-programming-us-to-be-servants-of-the-man kind of thing.
Basically, Rancourt thinks
- grades are evil. They restrict creativity, they force students to cleave to assignment instructions and professorial preferences, they inhibit spontaneity and ingenuity, they are psychologically oppressive and damaging, and they train students to work for praise and reward rather than self-fulfillment or knowledge for its own sake.
- education, even (or perhaps especially) post-secondary education, is currently a tool for those in power to program specialists who wear blinders and ignore knowledge beyond their field; it is a factory to produce experts who work to further classism, wage-slavery, etc. Students do not learn to think critically, to value knowledge, to broaden their horizons and be creative, innovative, excited about learning, etc. Instead, they learn to colour maps, do multiple choice tests, cram for tests, follow instructions, do busy work, and complete inane "group projects."
- education should be about those positive things; students should receive a "full" and "round" education that teaches hard science, mathematics, arts and humanities, social sciences, philosophy, practical skills, social issues and ethics/morality, etc. Current education simply does not provide this, and it doesn't make students into moral, intellectual, knowledgeable, complete citizens.
- "academic squatting", that is, taking a standardized university class and turning it into something of his own, with his own grading scheme, content, pedagogical style, etc. The university did not approve of this and shut it down, although a ruling by an arbitrator has determined that academic squatting is completely within the mandate of academic freedom. Students loved it. One student complained about it, and that's all, which is interesting.
- establishing an "activism course" called "science in society," that examined the manner in which activism can be applied in a social context for positive effects. I get the impression that the class was not really a science course, and that it ended up having very little to do with science at all; personally I think the course was simply a way for him to attempt to implement a "rounded" education, and a vehicle for his views on social justice and activism.
- filing numerous grievances against the university any time they step on his academic freedom or attempt to block his actions in any way, including supporting other radical objections to the university's pedagogical or administrative structure.
- raising hell and disturbing shit in general, in any way, including hassling (generally politely) the administration through email at any opportunity, giving talks on the corruption of the administration, etc etc.
Regardless, Rancourt has been punished for his actions - he has been reprimanded several times, barred from the campus, arrested for trespassing and inciting conflict, and recently flat-out fired from his position. Currently there is a major investigation into the conflict between him and the university, one that might take two years.
So, what do you think of Denis Rancourt and his crusade? Do you agree with his stance? Do you agree with his actions? Do you think academic freedom includes his efforts, or has he overstepped his bounds? Should those bounds be changed?
I have to say, I agree very strongly with his stance on education. It's diseased and corrupted and monetized, and as someone working with students I am seeing the results of the system's failure in elementary school, high school, and university. But his actions here at the university won't change that; if the U of O abandons letter grades, it will produce degrees that will have no value outside the university, because the rest of the world is still about credentials, jobs, and education for the work force.
But then again, this conflict has gotten international attention. There is a major investigation; there is a dialogue, a debate, a discussion. Is that not positive? Hasn't he gotten what he wants - a spotlight on the university's pedagogical methods, and on the pedagogy of post-secondary education in general? As a radica left-wing activist who is also a certified expert, deeply embedded in the system he criticizes, he has a strange sort of dual authority that makes him more sympathetic to even a conservative listener, in some ways.
And when the police arrest Rancourt for giving a speech about the corruption of the University of Ottawa's administration, how can you not start to think about the police as a tool of the wealthy, the elite, the corrupt? How can you not see something wrong with the use of physical power to shut down discussion and criticism, rather than an active engagement of it?
I think that, regardless of your stance on Rancourt, the university's response has been very poor, both for its own image and for the possibilities such a dialogue could produce.
But to what extent can this kind of activism engender any positive change in a nation and society that is entirely shot through with the exact kind of problems that he sees in the university? Systemic change, on a sweeping scale, would be necessary to address these problems - massive, radical educational reform. Is that even possible? Should it be done?
Evil Multifarious on
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As for academic squatting, that's against University policy of having to stick to course descriptions.
There are already courses in activism and public policy, and not in the "ineffective screamer" way this guy does it.
This guy sounds nuts and kinda out of touch with reality
It would be interesting to see a trend with higher learning facilities coming about that did not provide certification of any kind, but acted merely as a tool for education. You take the courses you are interested in, you participate because you want to learn. When you leave, all you can tell future employers is that you studied there.
Fuck no.
Everybody with the personal ability and the willingness to pursue knowledge on broad topics is free to do it without the need to mandate it. With the current complexity of science fields, this has not been the purpose of higher education for about a century.
There is no rather. A university is both. Sure a balance is needed, but going too strong in either direction could be equally bad for education.
About the guy, this is the first time I hear of him, he seems a bit out of touch and I'm not sure his actions actually help him make his arguments.
Edit: Also, you don't educate intellect. Sorry.
There are a lot of schools that allow you to do something like this. The Grad School I'm going to be attending has a whole separate degree/system setup for 'certificates of special study' so you can go back and retool your specialty, or just learn some stuff you couldn't squeeze in/didn't realize you liked before graduating and getting a job.
Personally I haven't found college to be all that stifling or whatever. I may not have actually learned as much as I may have potentially otherwise in gen ed courses I didn't give two shits about, but I doubt it seeing as I didn't give two shits about it. Meanwhile the history, political science, and philosophy gen eds I took have stuck with me because I enjoy history, political science, and philosophy so I actually tried to absorb the lessons.
That's the thing - even a university that wants to provide knowledge for knowledge's sake is handcuffed by the fact that it's also expect to provide career-oriented training. In Canada, a university that fails to do so will not receive tuition money because students will not be interested in attending, and it's also possible that they will receive more limited public funds.
The very idea of certification in the form of a degree is often bullshit, though. For a very large proportion of people who have degrees, the degrees mean nothing; they simply indicate that the student could cram, pull all-nighters, plagiarize, etc, enough to graduate.
Many degrees are almost entirely composed of multiple choice tests and similar evaluatory mechanisms that are utterly meaningless and require no real learning, even in terms of simply becoming knowledgeable about one's field in a technical sense.
There are so many students, so very many, who graduate with a degree that means nothing. Even in something like engineering, these students come out with a degree that suggests they've learned far more than they actually have. Engineers are particularly notorious for doing their individual assignments in groups, due to volume of workload and difficulty of material; answer-copying and other forms of plagiarism run rampant in the technical departments at this university and several others, at least.
Outright turning a science course into a social studies course? Not within reason. At some point the class stops being what the students paid for.
An establishment can not provide only "knowledge for knowledge's sake" to people just after high school with society filling the bill, because the expected return would be hugely negative.
There is a reason that post grads are the ones who get funding.(although the management of said funding is a worldwide scam)
I just don't understand what kind of an establishment are you arguing about and what are the benefits of its existence?
Anecdote incoming... I attended a school beyond my means so that I could try and achieve greater prosperity in the future. Because of this (my own fault of course), I was far more interested in ensuring that my grades were high instead of improving myself. I had to justify the bill I was going to be paying off for years to come was worth it. I have often complained that the new department that I studied under for my degree was too academic and didn't adequately prepare me with the tools that would make me attractive to employers. I don't think I'm a unique snowflake; I believe our culture fosters these kinds of choices and many people end up making the same decisions I did. I would like to see a non-certification style education culture given a fair chance to either succeed or fail.
McMaster has run it's Arts & Sciences program for nearly thirty years. It gives a broad education and it's extremely popular.
http://www.mcmaster.ca/artsci/
took out her barrettes and her hair spilled out like rootbeer
I'm not suggesting legislative action to remove grading or certification from public education. I think that would be entirely too radical for an unproven concept. I'm merely suggesting that it could be a useful endeavor for private education, and something I would like to see our culture embrace.
Yeah, the point of college is not to produce polymaths. That the system as setup fails to create new Renaissance Men by the thousand is not really evidence of a failure on its part. If you want to become a polymath then more power to you, but I know I'm no DaVinci and have accepted that fact. I do want to learn stuff that I'm interested in, will retain, and find relevant to my studies/person. Requiring gen ed courses on shit that doesn't meet those requirements in order to 'round out' my education is just a waste of time, effort, and money regardless of the method professors employ.
That's pretty cool.
Rancourt's argument, and the argument of many pedagogical and social critics, is that education should produce polymaths, and that specialization and expertise are inherently harmful and limiting tools for social control.
Have you read any John Ralston Saul? He talks a lot about how "expertise" is produced and fetishized by our educational and political institutions, and as a result people are losing the ability to look at the wide picture or think critically about information that is provided by experts, because they have no idea what is being discussed and because you're just supposed to trust the experts - after all, they're experts.
I mean, have you noticed (anecdotally, obviously) how arts students are more likely to believe in ghosts and psychics, and science students are more likley to disbelieve in racism, sexism, classism, etc? Many of them have broader interests and read further and expand their knowledge, but it's really beneficial to expose people to alternate views of reality and society as part of a curriculum, so that they must confront their own assumptions.
Then they are idealists without a touch of reality believing that equal intellectual interests & abilities could be "educated".
You're not supposed to "trust" an expert. You're supposed to consider his opinion with higher validity than yours until a point where you're able to verify it.
Having a "broad" education would not help in that aspect even a bit, as an expert would still more often than not surpass your knowledge in his relative field.
A single course on critical thinking would do it though.
Also, people aren't losing that "ability". Unfortunately, we're not born with it.
This is totally a valid objection that several others have made, and it's the main criticism of actions like Rancourt's.
But knowledge for knowledge's sake is positive in itself, and it has powerful positive consequences. Is there a way to have both? Is there currently enough of an imbalance that it should be addressed? I think there is a massive imbalance towards career-based education, at least at my university and several others; it is a fixation.
On top of that, there is just no real analytical, critical training going on, but I'm not sure how to address that either.
http://www.reed.edu/
I'm not sure that this unbalance doesn't reflect the current population's interests.
Why would "drive people to seek pure knowledge" be a more valid point than "allow driven people to seek pure knowledge"?
Or are you actually saying that current social status quo does not allow for such individuals to follow their interest?
Personally, I'd hate to have some dude preaching at me instead of learning physics, but what the hell - his students can make up their own minds. As long as he isn't springing this stuff before the add/drop period is over, it's really on them.
The students have to look after their own interests. If I found him interesting I'd drop the course but still audit his lectures. Surely he isn't opposed to teaching for free.
Really? Do you think it's a good thing that someone can go through their higher education with absolutely no exposure to even the fundamentals of philosophy, literature, art, culture, etc? Or with no exposure to the fundamentals of the scientific method, biology, physics, etc? Or with no exposure to the principles of critical thinking, analysis, etc? With no challenge to their assumptions about reality and people and society?
It's not about making everyone really good at everything. It's about giving people the basics of understanding as much as they can have it. To some extent, this is high school's job as well, but many of these courses are optional in high school. Not everyone can do the math associated with physics, but everyone should be exposed to the basic ideas that form our current understanding of the universe - quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, evolution and genetics, etc, as well as challenges to their assumptions about identity, gender, race, economy and classism, political ideology, and so on.
They're "supposed" to "consider" his opinion, but they don't. The interpretation and opinion of experts all too often has the weight of fact. You're right; critical thinking is, well, critical to a more effective treatment of this problem. But it's hard to think critically about a subject of which you are completely ignorant. We're not born with it, and maybe thinking it's "gone" is nostalgic; maybe we never had it. But we should try to have it.
You're also right that sometimes people just aren't interested, and they won't absorb the knowledge being presented to them even if it's right there. But there are plenty of people who will, and I think the people who would benefit from a wider exposure to contemporary knowledge and contemporary questions and problems is vastly greater than the number who would pursue that knowledge completely independently.
Then they're unrealistic. Attempting to create polymaths via classes is just going to result in a lot of jack of all trades, master of none graduates who don't really know enough about anything to be useful in it outside of a handyman sort of way. And handymen generally do more harm than good.
Knowing 1/10th of what they do about a field thanks to a 'rounded out' education isn't going to diminish their expertise or prompt you to question their suppositions any more than being a women's studies major is. Nor will it suddenly eliminate the trend for conventional wisdom amid groups. All of which is ignoring the fact that a lot of professions have a great deal of debate going on within themselves and whatever relevant publications exist already, so experts are being questioned by other experts who would be able to offer a lot more relevant arguments.
Correlation =! causation? Perhaps people who are more likely to believe in ghosts tend to also be rather artistic. Though I haven't found any of those things to actually be the case.
This is anecdotal of course but it felt like a good balance at my university. There was a pretty good variety of classes to choose from and requirements outside of your major were vague enough that you had a lot of choice. I was a computer science major but I took classes in environmental science, old english literature, East Asian cultures, things all over the place.
Now the university I went to is a pretty successful private university so they easily have the money to be able to offer these choices, could a large part of the lack of choice stem from lack of funding at a school to support choices?
I don't consider it to be a horrible blight that must be stricken from all universities.
www.hampshire.edu doesn't have majors or grades either.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I don't think the intent is to make someone equally good at everything, although the term "polymath" implies something like that. There's nothing wrong with having a focus or a specialty; there is something wrong with lacking any grounding in other areas. An expert with nothing but his expertise is incomplete.
A science student can go through their entire university degree without once having their assumptions questioned. A literature major can go through their entire education without once being taught what evolution is, or how science currently envisions the physical universe, even in a broad general sense. Adding that wouldn't mean reducing their knowledge of their specialty. It certainly wouldn't mean making them less good at what they do.
Entirely possible, it's true. I am just frustrated by the sheer volume of ignorance of other fields that exists in specialists of any given field, in the students I deal with and the people I interact with, and I think this could be addressed to some degree by a more complete education.
I don't think it's a lack of funding. At least, not for the public uni that I went to as it had tons of classes being taught regardless. It seems more like a restriction placed upon the school by politicians, perhaps due to opinions from experts, that students should receive a classical education to round them out which entails courses on X, Y, Z, and β in order to graduate and so require gen ed courses along those lines/disciplines.
So you agree that it's a problem, but not that it is a severe problem?
I think that this kind of exposure has significant effects on a person's development, in terms of their morals, their actions, their happiness, their ability to contribute to society and make informed decisions, etc.
Maybe things are different in the Great White North, but in the US one is generally required to take general education courses that require one to learn more than just your major. In fact, we had a thread last month in which people were complaining that these requirements were too onerous on those who had to specialize (engineering especially). It doesn't make a lit major a functional scientist or an engineer an expert on Picasso but it is a reasonable attempt at producing well rounded students.
Sometimes crazy people appear crazy because they are crazy.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Are there no liberal arts colleges in Canada?
EM is making it sound like there is no alternative to career oriented education.
If there is an alternative, the question is really more along the lines of "why should this guy get paid by taxpayers and students to teach something other than what was advertized?"
There isn't. It's called interest. I'd say there is more wrong with trying to force one's interest. Your whole presumption that 20 year old humans can not decide for themselves if they wish to pursue broader topics or specialize is irritating.
And those situations are perfectly fine as long as both refrain from being aggressively opinionated. I'd think, being adults, either could easily "expose" himself to any subject that gains his attention.
You know what? Maybe it's just that I go to a shitty university.
The general education requirements for students at this university are beyond minimal.
Electrical engineers, for example, are required to take a SINGLE history or philosophy course, and that course addresses only the historical or ethical context of engineering. They are also permitted two elective courses in grand total, which can be pretty much anything.
Arts students are not required to learn any kind of scientific knowledge whatsoever. The option is available, I believe, just as it is in high school, but nobody takes it and the course is often struck from the curriculum.
I have no problem with what Rancourt did, as long as he made his intentions clear as soon as the course started. If students didn't like it, they could switch to a different course. From the sound of things, though, most of them did, so what's the problem?
He also doesn't exist outside of hypotheticals. They may not know anything about the philosophical underpinnings that undergird Paine or Locke, but a damn good structural engineer may also know all their is to know about ancient egyptian architecture, say. Or the batting averages of every Chicago Cub. No one exists who only knows one thing and one thing well. You may not consider their secondary pools of information or hobbies to be worthwhile, but that doesn't matter.
Nor does it mean actually making them more knowledgeable about what evolution is, how science currently envisions the universe, &c. How does what your advocating not promote people learning just enough x to be dangerous?
I don't think it's perfectly fine for someone to go through higher education without having exposure to important ideas.
In fact, I would say that the very purpose of higher education is exposure to and exploration of important ideas.
The source of disagreement seems to come from the idea of the university as vocational training, which is important, but at least at this university it has overwhelmed any other form of learning in many curricula.
Go to a liberal arts college then?