Learning for more than a grade

To the irascible old fogey who growls, "You know, when I went to college, we actually had to work ...," I can only reply: "Sir, we are working, and we're probably working a lot harder than you did."

Is it because Penn students are immersed in a rich environment of learning at a world class university? Or do they work hard only to get the best jobs or get into the best graduate schools? In an ideal world, the former would lead to the latter. In reality, at the very least Penn students are eminently aware of the next step as they proceed through their undergraduate years.

Is this a problem for undergraduate education as an institution? It's easy to say that Penn students are ambitious, they know where they want to go and they work hard to get there, and then ask, "So what's wrong with that?"

But there is another side.

Save maybe economics, no degree in the College is practical. Anyone student who has been to their grandmother's cocktail party and been asked "what are you going to do with a philosophy major?" knows that reality. A classical liberal arts education -- sociology, anthropology, history, art history, etc. -- is designed to teach people to think. Once they know how to think, they can learn anything.

"One of my wishes is to get people to think abstractly. 'What does it all mean?' Ideally, people will become wise," Sociology professor Elijah Anderson said.

History professor Jonathan Steinberg, a man with more than 30 years at Penn and Cambridge, laments that students just aren't engaged like they used to be.

"Relatively few Penn undergraduates seem interested in ideas for their own sake. [To them], learning generally is always a means to an end, i.e. to do the work and get the right grade .... The absence of curiosity among really good students shocked me.

He added that modern students attitudes are "terribly ... dutiful."

Unfortunately, others outside the University confirm Steinberg's concerns.

Attorney Robert Tintner, a graduate of Penn's undergraduate and law programs, notices an "untapped reservoir" of critical thinking abilities.

"It's not that the younger lawyers aren't bright. My criticism is that some of them are intellectually lazy .... I don't see a willingness to challenge" themselves.

It's important that students be deeply engaged in their own education.

"This is a society which has a lot of big problems, and students are not equipped to think critically about them," Steinberg said. "You can't get a good argument going. Students are afraid to say what they think. [They] used to criticize their professors."

We don't live in a black and white world. Problems are complex, and it takes creative thinkers to solve those problems.

How Penn students deal with their work indicates how they balance their desire to learn with their need to achieve. And when it comes to class work, Penn students do what they have to do first and what they enjoy doing second.

Initially, College junior Julia Serbulov was not so pessimistic.

"It's not just about the grade. I'm majoring in my majors because I like them." But she did add that "the priority is 'What homework do I have to do this week that is somehow going to be checked?' If I have time left then it's 'What else can I do?'"

Even as they honestly show interest in their subjects, students work as much from fear as from love.

Students fear their grades.

Grades make grade point averages, and GPAs are a huge factor in the post-undergraduate experience. College junior Matt Koizim put it well: "You can't tell someone when you're applying for a job, 'Oh, no matter that I got a C; I really did learn a lot.'"

That ever-present desire for a high GPA is coming between undergraduates and their education.

"If I didn't have to worry about being evaluated based on a number -- my GPA -- then I'd have a lot more fun at school," Koizim said. "There are other ingredients to life beyond a GPA."

There is a problem in undergraduate education, and that problem is a partial to total abandonment of what Anderson calls learning to "become wise." The College is becoming a trade school like Wharton, and this is indeed depressing.

Alex Weinstein is a junior history major from Bridgeport, W.V. Straight to Hell appears on Thursdays.

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