Tyranny of the syllabus

 I can't remember what I've written here and what I've just thought so if this is a repeat that's why.

Main point is that I feel like I'm finally (after more than 25 years teaching) feeling like I've cracked the nut of at least one of my classes -- sadly, I don't think what I've learned is terribly transferable.

This semester I'm teaching our entry level ethics course for something like the 50th time.  This is a course I've just about every semester for my entire career and each time I've taught it I've tweaked it, sometimes significantly and other times just slightly.  I've usually returned, in all these experiments, to focusing on historical texts -- Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Mill and then rights theorists.  For each, I've also included a contemporary author (selecting for people who are not white men).  But, there was a spate of years where a good chunk of the course was a role playing game and other semesters when I just used an anthology.  

This semester I couldn't make up my mind.  Every time I went to make a decision and map out a semester, I just couldn't.  I realized that when I map out semester's I tend to really visualize the semester, the ebbs and flows and what makes sense to follow what articles.  And I was just stuck this time around.  It was feeling like I was trying to predict something that was, fundamentally, unpredictable.  At the same time, I spend a decent amount of time writing up cases for my ethics classes.  Frequently inspired by tv shows or the news, I write up paragraphs with situations that should mess with people's minds (ethically speaking).

So, I decided this semester to simply focus on cases and to assign the readings that made the most sense given what we'd discussed.  I uploaded to the class site on the LMS all the articles I could imagine using (and have now thought of more that I need to upload) and then, pretty much, let them know at the end of one class what we'll be discussing for the next class.

This has been revelatory for me.

The result has been multifold.  First and foremost, I'm going more slowly through the material. Instead of being focused on making sure we get through the syllabus (because the syllabus is a contract), I've been focused on making sure the students are ready to move on to something else with the result that I'm going far more slowly.  And, of course, the second piece is this in listening to the students I'm both giving them agency in the class and, I hope, communicating that what's important is their learning, not simply getting through the material.

Now, I'd have said for the last 25+ years that, of course, it's more important to focus on student learning than to get through the syllabus.  But, simply the presence of a syllabus and a schedule of readings gives it power and so it was always a question of whether it made sense to alter the syllabus -- so 'sticking to the syllabus' (and what I was thinking prior to the semester beginning) becomes the default and I need to find a 'good' reason to justify any alteration.  

Now, the reason I can do this in this class (or, rather, the reason I feel comfortable doing this in this class) is that I know this material inside and out which means that, whatever a particular conversation seems to be leading to, I can, without any effort, identify an article that will be helpful for the next class discussion.  In my other classes, where we're reading more contemporary discussions (my AI Ethics course and my course on higher education), my knowledge is less comprehensive and so I don't think I'd be able to be this freewheeling -- though I can certainly slow down in those classes and not give in to the tyranny of the syllabus.  Well, that's something to at least work on. I find I'm better able to do this in my higher education class (because I am really familiar with what we're discussing) than in the AI Ethics class because there's so much being written and so much I don't know and my knowledge is. focused on books not articles (hmm, this is a good observation to have made and a reason to start focusing on articles).

Whoops, off to a meeting!