It always takes me longer than I plan when I do anything with my books. I look for one book and see another I haven’t looked at for a while. I look for something in a book and find something else of interest. Case in point: I’m unpacking my books after a recent move, and Don Finkel’s Teaching with Your Mouth Shut (2000) emerges.
I’ve underlined a lot in the book, but here’s something I should have marked: “‘Why do I need to learn this?’ Most students don’t voice the question but many wish they could, and every student has the right to wonder: ‘Why should I devote my precious time to learning your subject?’” (p. 51). It’s such a basic question that we respond with platitudes about our content’s importance, inherent value, and necessity to future endeavors (p. 52). Finkel’s assessment of our responses is blunt: “‘Pie in the sky, by and by’ will not do the trick.” Most of us know that our answers do not regularly motivate students to learn content they fail to see as necessary or relevant.
What does get students making efforts to learn? “If a student is interested in what she is learning, she will never question why she should learn it” (p. 52). Interest, Finkel observes, is tightly linked to need. The student must have a need to know and a need to know now, “not in some remote, abstract future” (p. 52).
If that need to know bumps against some obstacle—say, if you’ve lost your keys (Finkel’s example)—you’re disturbed, upset, frustrated, and terribly motivated to find them. “What applies to searching for keys with our hands also applies to search for ideas with our mind. We can be just as stymied by a mental obstacle as a physical one” (p. 53). Intellectual interests may not be as desperate as lost keys, but the need to find an answer can keep a scholar interested and occupied for a lifetime.
When there’s interest or a need to know, the “why do I need to learn this” question disappears. It asks something to which there’s an obvious answer. That part’s easy, but the organization of what we teach makes the question harder to answer. Course content belongs to academic disciplines—math, history, political science, chemistry, business, and so on. “Most students are not interested in abstract entities as ‘math’ or ‘history’; their interests grow out of obstacles, perplexities, and blind spots that emerge from their own present, lived circumstances” (p. 54). But teachers are obligated to “cover” chunks of content, to move through material ending at a certain place and by a specified date. Finkel thinks that puts teachers in a “straitjacket” (p. 55).
Finkel proposes inquiry-based courses—courses that investigate a problem or question and do so without being bound by disciplinary borders or the need to “cover” a predetermined amount of content. In the 1990s, there was interest in these usually interdisciplinary courses often taught by faculty from different fields. Some are still taught, sometimes as part of a first-year seminar program. But inquiry-based courses cost more to deliver, and they don’t easily fit into traditional curricular models.
What’s valuable here is the “why do I need to learn this” question. It is what students want to know, and there are implications even if we aren’t teaching inquiry-based or face-to-face courses. A lot of what we teach does have immediate relevance to students. We may need to do a better job of connecting content to current happenings, needs, and interests. Too often we see those connections and think they’re obvious. It’s good to remember that students don’t have our perspective on the content.
If interests and needs jump-start learning, that works when teachers have a clear vision of student interests and needs. That knowledge can be obtained by asking and listening, using whatever media is available. As the years between us and those we teach expand, the quest for that knowledge grows harder at the same time as it becomes more urgent.
Finally, the learning becomes seamless when it’s the students who discover the interest or need. That’s why Finkel’s book is still a good read. Teaching with Your Mouth Shut—I love the audacity of that title. I hope it’s sold many copies, but here’s the idea that makes the book worth a lot: Recall two or three of your most significant learning experiences. Was a teacher present? Was the teacher delivering a brilliant lecture?
Reference
Finkel, D. C. (2000). Teaching with your mouth shut. Boynton/Cook Publishers.
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Every academic discipline was invented to answer a group of compelling questions. If those questions are made compelling for this generation of students and answered in satisfying ways through an appeal to powerful ideas (not stale un-prioritized content), the desire to learn will typify students in the course.
So often we answer the question “Why do I need to learn this?” based on wishful thinking, or with answers that convince us as experts in the discipline. But our answers are unconvincing to our students. Knowing the life narratives of our students, and having them discuss possible ways in which their narratives might connect with the content, will inevitably change our approach to the subject.
In my course syllabus I do not begin with the Learning Outcomes (which are generally the outcomes I as instructor desire), but with a “Purpose Statement” – why this course may be important for the students in their life and/or work. This statement is generally constructed in close dialogue with the students themselves. When I do this well, student engagement is notably higher.