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E-PrinceThe preceptorial system has long been a hallmark of the Princeton education. Precepts are supposed to encourage in-depth exploration and discussion of previously taught materials to ensure that students have a fuller understanding of the course material. However, there are ...
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At Harvard and Yale, it's not that teaching is optional for people who are passionate about teaching. They have a two tiered system, where people who can get external funding don't teach, while people who can't find other sources of funding do teach. In other words, it's based on financial need, and the 'best' graduate students (the ones who have enough credentials to secure outside funding) are much less likely to teach.
If you have a problem with your precept, talk to your professor. Typically, faculty don't know when there are problems with a precept. If you tell your professor, they can do something about it.
In the humanities, at least, all graduate students at Harvard and Yale are required to teach. In fact, the teaching requirements for graduate students at those institutions are generally more demanding than those at Princeton.
"First, despite ranking their choices, there are graduate students who are assigned to classes that are outside of their field."
I had a British grad student in the English department as a preceptor for American politics. I didn't mind though, because her accent was cute.
Ok, undergrads, let's be real. While it's true that too many preceptors aren't stellar at leading discussion, part of the problem is also that students never do the reading! I've sat in many precepts (humanities, social science) where the TA is doing his/her best to spur conversation, but it's impossible because nobody has done reading. I think the dynamic of a lot of these precepts would be totally different if there was some basis for having a conversation. Sometimes its even hard to get people to regurgitate what the professor said at lecture. The responsibility for precepts does not lie 100% (or maybe not even 51%) with the preceptor...
just sat through a whole term in a precept that, thanks to the grad student, was totally below princeton standards
"Graduate students should be required to plan when they complete their teaching requirement so that departments are able to place them in courses where they have the necessary knowledge to effectively teach."
If only things were so simple. This isn't a workable solution because
1) The number of precepts for a given course is not necessarily predictable, because course enrollment numbers are not.
2) The actual classes being offered are not decided far enough in advance.
3) Grad students often can't predict so far in advance whether they'll be available to teach (especially for those who have to do extensive research away from campus).
Grad students will usually want to teach as close to their fields of expertise as possible. The fact that there are some who end up having to teach outside their field is not due to some easily-fixable defect in the system but a simple consequence of the fact that the available precept to teach are never going to match the specific fields of the pool of grad students. Grads will often put a large amount of effort into preparing for precepts outside their areas of specialization. It's an imperfect world but it's not clear that this article offes any workable ways in which it could substantially be improved. Believe me, we wish we all had our perfect precepts to teach as much, if not more, than you do.
Where exactly do you think Professor's learn to teach and hone their skills? Do you think the best ones just accepted the job at Princeton and automatically knew how to teach well? We all have to do beginning teaching at some point and we learn from our triumphs and from our mistakes. Precepts are an excellent chance for a graduate student to explore their teaching styles. It helps to have students willing to meet you halfway. Plus, students should feel free to provide feedback and tell the professor if a precept is really not worth the time (because of the grad student/preceptor; not because you aren't putting in the effort.)
I think the Princeton precept has strayed from its original model. Wilson instituted precepts so that students had scheduled time to interact with professors. He did this in part because of his observation of the utility of the Oxbridge tutorial method of teaching. It's unfortunate that teaching precepts has now been delegated to graduate students, many of whom are not particularly well-trained or well-suited for teaching. This problem comes into focus when one notices an accomplished professor teaches a 60 student lecture during a term and teaches one of 4-5 precepts. Frankly, its shameful that Princeton does not require its professors to put in a few extra hours of precepting each week. The admissions office continues to sell Princeton based on its commitment to undergraduates, embodied by the fact that "at Harvard or Yale you'll be taught by grad students -- at Princeton you're always taught by professors. Too bad that's complete bs.