Ari Kohen on the value of “edutainment“:
Finally, and most importantly, is the central claim that the test of education is whether or not it’s entertaining. Wales asks, “why wouldn’t you have the most entertaining professor, the one with the proven track record of getting knowledge into people’s heads?” Is there evidence that the most entertaining lecture is the one that gets “knowledge into people’s heads”? Again, I’m not suggesting that a boring lecture is going to do the trick, but I’m arguing that entertaining students doesn’t necessarily equate with teaching them something. When I lecture on Kant, I don’t think I’m really entertaining my students. In my opinion, Kant’s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals doesn’t lend itself to entertainment; it’s a dense text that needs some serious explication. Now, I don’t speak in a monotone and I try to find relevant examples to help them make sense of the material, but I’m not standing in front of the class hoping that they’ll all have a great time; I’m standing there with the express purpose of teaching them about Kant.
As far as I am aware, we lack strong evidence to suggest a positive relationship between how much students enjoy a class and how much they actually learn. Yet the rise of the “corporate model” in higher education creates strong pressures toward the “edutainment” model.
It isn’t inevitable that the students-as-consumer model should translate into an understanding of “customer satisfaction” as “having a good time,” but it’s pretty hard to avoid that trap, especially when dealing with (1) outcomes that can’t easily be assessed at the end of a semester; (2) evaluations that focus on the personal characteristics of an instructor; (3) cultural ideals of educators as sources of personal inspiration, and (4) the blending of entertainment and educational media.
Throw in techno-evangelism surrounding MOOCS and recorded lectures? The ultimate model for classroom education becomes TED. Now that’s a frightening thought.
Perhaps one factor often overlooked is the “purpose” of university education for the students and the parents who pay for the tuition.
If the purpose is some kind of “life experience”, then students/parents do not care much about rigorous learning and students are free to demand/choose entertaining professors. This is the case even in courses where the amount of learning is easily quantifiable – e.g. stats for political science.
In contrast, when the purpose of school is to acquire skills that students will need in professional life (as in vocational or medical school), then students care more about education and less about entertainment.
I am a foreigner and I’ve been a TA in two private universities in the US (R1 and R2). My impression is that most people in the US see the university as a life experience and that is why students and their parents do not demand better (more rigorous?) education while paying 40,000$ a year.
Albeit a very narrow kind of rigor that comes with university-as-vocational-training that is also inappropriate to higher education as many of us envision in the U.S.
Dan, as usual great, thought provoking post.