Students bring talent to the university.
A common misconception presented by higher education is that the college experience will transform students into intelligent, talented, high performing individuals. The notion is that by interacting with faculty, students will become "more" as a consequence of the process. The theme seems to be that intelligence, talent, and high performance are contagions held by the academic elite which can infect the "lesser". Of course, this is utter nonsense.
While every person has their gifts and challenges, if higher education was simply a contagion passed from faculty to students, then the prestigious universities could accept students at random with the assurance that the intellectual contagion would be efficiently passed to all students no matter what their inherent gifts. However, we know this is not the case. The top universities are in a death match to recruit the top students. They know, but don't advertise, that higher education is a garbage in, garbage out, enterprise. The dirty little secrete is that students make a university great, and faculty simply expose and cultivate preexisting student talent.
My observations as an instructor at second and third tier colleges (i.e. non-selective) suggest that students know this, but faculty are to impressed with themselves to accept that they are not the primary source of student success. Students in my human anatomy and physiology labs seemed to self-aggregate by abilities. Those with the gifts, preparation and ambition required for medical school tended to group together -- literally, the 3-5 would sit as a pack typically on the right side of the classroom. Those with a high probability of success in health professions (nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, etc.) would often aggregate in the center of the classroom, and the poorly prepared tended to flock to the left side of the class. For years, I could not understand how each group found each other. Now that I've been away from teaching for a while, I understand that the students knew something that I did not know. The students knew their abilities and training, but I did not. Put simply, the students were self-sorting into groups that maximized their individual potential.
Faculty, on the other hand, are miserable at identifying student talent, but they are pathologically efficient at taking credit for student success. The emphasis faculty place on grades and GPA to rank students underscores this point. I've never heard any faculty member state, "That student's grades are average, but since they take care of their younger siblings and hold two part-time jobs, I think they are exceptional." One of the faculty behaviors that consistently left a sour taste in my mouth were statements like, "I got that student into medical school." Really? My observation has consistently been that those with the intelligence, talent, drive and ambition to get into medical school would get into medical school no matter their interactions with me as an instructor. My job with the top 5-10% of students was to provide adequate training while not screwing them up, and I tended to prefer interacting with the "lesser" students to cultivate unrealized talent. Many of my colleagues were eager to take credit for students that succeeded brilliantly, while simultaneously washing their hands of any failures. Other than a profound conative bias of only seeing that which supported their self-view as excellent teachers, I have not been able to really grasp this behavior by the preponderance of faculty. That is, unless I accept my student's failures, it does not make sense to accept their successes. For me, the student's success is placed squarely on the student, and I'm simply privileged to have played a small role in their path to the future.
So why does this matter? There is a reluctance to address important realities in teaching and learning. The mythology of teaching is that one can teach anything to anyone, if the teacher is "good enough". This is clearly wrong. I enjoy using hyperbole to make a point, so here I go. Every week, a nice gentleman delivers junk mail to my doorstep. The mail consists of a pack of advertisements. He is unable to do this job independently due to substantial conative impairment, and a hired social worker directs his work by handing him the packets and pointing to the next doorstep. I've said, "Hi" to this person, and received a simple hello in response. The guy is polite, benefits from the work, gets a small salary and derives a measure of dignity and independence that gainful employment can provide. However, my efforts at the university will never be of any use to someone with his conative ability. No matter how dedicated I am, or how much effort I put into my craft, this person will not be able to understand human physiology in a meaningful way. If you use this exaggeration to explain teaching and learning in a more middle of the curve situation, some tenets of the example persist. A student can enter college with high academic gifts, but little preparation, and overcome the obstacle. A student with below average gifts, but an admirable work ethic, can overcome the obstacle. These are good things, but there is a minimum innate gifts threshold that makes achievement in higher education at best unlikely, and at worst impossible. In fact, I view higher education as the test for this line. It tends to be obvious that the top 1% of students have the gifts (hell, they will succeed even if they drop out of college and start a tech company), but for the remaining students college is a viable filter for demonstrating that you do or do not have the goods for success in substantially technical fields. Having the ambition, work ethic, and persistence to complete a degree program speaks highly of your abilities and of you as an individual.
There is a definite taboo about even acknowledging a student's intrinsic gifts and limitations as even a minor aspects of learning and success in the academic realm. I think that we mistake being intelligent (smart) with self-worth and importance as a person. If the arrogance of the intellect goes too far, we can mistake superior academic achievement for moral superiority. Intelligence channeled through a reasonable education is a powerful tool for success in life, but we must be careful how we measure life's successes.
July 8, 2023
The Most Persistent Myth, This will Revolutionize Education, Veritasium Youtube video
"If you don't buy [into] IQ research, you might as well throw away all the rest of Psychology." Jordan Peterson - Controversial Facts about IQ
"And I went to see the doctor of philosophy, With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee, He never did marry or see a B-grade movie, He graded my performance, He said he could see through me, I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, Got my paper and I was free" Indigo Girls - Closer to Fine (Official Video)