Reading a book is an ‘action’. Then, it initiates a series of emotional ‘reactions’ in a reader. Reading is a unique activity of human beings. You cannot read a book unless you know the language written and actively engage the texts to understand what is written. Watching TV can easily become a simple ‘reaction. Eating something served can be a ‘reaction’ but choosing what to eat can be categorized as an ‘action’. In our everyday lives, our behaviour is conducted through flawless switchings between ‘action’ and ‘reaction’. This is all done without conscious thought. I realized this when I became depressed. After I survived the first several months of emotional storms caused by depression, I learned that there were some tasks I was incapable of doing and others I was capable of. There was a clear separation between the two. I did not want to do anything, but I could keep watching TV. I could not make any decisions, even insignificant ones like what to eat. When I tried to make a decision, I would start palpitating and feel tightness around an inch back of my temples. I could not read books nor articles. I could recognize individual words, but the context and connections failed to make any sense in my brain. My mind was always trapped in a deep fog.
What I was capable of doing, besides watching the TV, was teaching in a classroom. This came as a shocking realization to me. I noticed that teaching, a traditional lecture style teaching, was not driven by ‘action’ but rather by ‘reaction’ -at least for me. I had all the materials ready to present and just had to say what I was supposed to say. No decisions, no selections, and no choices to be made. I simply had to keep talking about matters related to the slide presented. It was a simple ‘reaction’. If I had wanted to convey complicated concepts, however, this would have been a different story. Yet, teaching what I had already prepared did not require any ‘action’ from me. Depression compromised my ability to initiate any ‘action’ but did not limit my ‘reaction’.
How about the students’ side? Is attending a lecture ‘action’ or ‘reaction’? If you are a motivated student interested in the topic, it will be both an ‘action’ and a ‘reaction’, similar to reading a book. However, for most students who are just sitting and listening, attending a lecture will be a ‘reaction’. Is the knowledge obtained through passive listening in a class usable as active knowledge? Probably not. Therefore, most students actively study the subjects before an exam- which is an ‘action’. They use textbooks and course materials for that. Then, they suddenly realize that the level of understanding from passive listening is very shallow or even none. What a waste of time it is! Why can’t we flip this process? Do homework before arriving in class and use the time with the professor and peers for questions, discussions, and conversation.
During this COVID pandemic, university education was forced to be delivered remotely. This created an interesting situation. Our lectures needed to compete with entertaining scientific material available in the internet. Some of the videos on YouTube were lectures recorded by famous professors in the top universities of the world, while others were presented by a professional narrator with cool 3D computational graphics and BGMs. How could we possibly compete?? It’s impossible! Professors have never been trained to speak to a camera. We have no resources for sophisticated edits or special effects. We have no studio- the best we can muster is a bedroom or a kitchen with small kids running around. This means that if a student wants to learn passively by simply watching videos, better materials are available on the internet compared to what the universities have to offer.
Then, what is the clear limitation of passive education provided through the internet? You cannot ask questions and are not able to have a conversation with a presenter. Is this any different from sitting quietly in a classroom? I am not sure. Without actively engaging – taking ‘action’, all the information absorbed yields almost nothing. Why do university students pay expensive tuitions? I view the expensive tuition as a way to access professors who are a ‘resource’ of knowledge. What separates university professors from high school teachers is that we have never been trained to teach students in a classroom. The skills required to teach in a classroom are more like performing arts than scientific experiments. After all, university professors are scientists not teachers. We, scientists, are good at thinking about our own scientific interests. We know what is known or unknown in our own respected fields as the current limit of knowledge. We also know how each current piece of knowledge was proposed and validated. What’s important to consider is that we only have this power within our own respected fields. Sadly, only a couple of students use us as ‘resources’ and many simply recognize us as ‘bad teachers’. They expect to be fed new knowledge in the form of well-digestible information in order to obtain good marks in their exams, but rarely do they try to grab or seek something more. Of course, I recognize that attending lectures is not the only value in coming to university. Another important reason is to meet excellent other students from all over the world. For students, this is sometimes more important for their future careers than attending lectures. However, COVID has also stolen these opportunities.
Conversation is an interesting human activity implicating both ‘action’ and ‘reaction’. Usually, it goes back and forth between two individuals with a flawless switching of their roles. If the relationship is hierarchical, however, their roles tend to be fixed. It becomes unidirectional, like commands. If our educational environment is non-intentionally forcing this type of communication, it would be unfortunate and problematic. Performing an ‘action’ requires more energy, motivation, and curiosity from the person. I have been thinking of ways to implement a new structure in the classroom to facilitate engagement and more ‘action’ from the students. My conclusion is to engage in more conversations. However, this is often not easily done because the students are so used to the traditional unidirectional teacher-student relationship. Luckily, I found that when two professors had a conversation in front of the students with a bit of discrepancy, this embarked their ‘action’. Like good and bad cops. This setting also allows one of us to take on the role of devil’s advocate. Then, let the students speak, without necessarily forcing them to do so. The key ingredient of success is to gently force the students into studying the topics in advance. I know some students do not think about anything in a class- or rather, they do not know how to think at all but only know how to memorize. Even for those students, once one of their classmates begins to speak, they will actively listen. Interestingly, many classic philosophical works such as those of Socrates and Plato, Confucius, or even the Bible began as a conversation. Conversation is probably the best way to guide our thoughts towards deep, unknown territories.
Acknowledgement: I thank Vera Lynn for English editing.
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