Since we all have so many academic and extra-curricular commitments, it is not infrequent that students do not finish assigned readings, particularly in social science or humanities courses. Maybe the students that I talk to are being fallaciously humble, but my perception is that completing all of the readings required for a particular course is the exception, not the norm.
Consequently, most of us select the readings that we will complete despite the fact that we have little knowledge of the subject matter. Wouldn't it make much more sense for our professors — leaders in the academy who have a far greater knowledge of the literature and subjects they teach than we do — to simply be more selective in the readings they assign? I posed this question to politics professor Gary Bass, whose course POL 388: Causes of War has received very good reviews in the Student Course Guide even though it requires a lot of reading. Here's his response:
"Well, I disagree with your premise: that professors' reading assignments are often too large and therefore will not be completed. That strikes me as, first, a little condescending to your classmates, and second, empirically false. First, it's a sign of respect for Princeton students that we don't just assign simple or short readings. Complicated ideas sometimes take a couple pages to lay out. If the faculty set high standards, then the vast majority of students will rise to the occasion. Second, my reading loads are roughly equal to, or some weeks less than, what I was assigned when I was an undergrad at, uh, a rival institution to Princeton. Out of 110 student course evaluations last year, maybe one or two complained about specific readings, but the overwhelming majority said they thought the readings were excellent. And they also almost uniformly said they learned a lot, which is the real point.
"My basic principle is that I assign great stuff to read: classics like Thucydides, Lenin, Clausewitz; the best new political science ideas; and the most compelling real-world accounts of crisis and war. This is an upper-level class at a good school on a very big and very important topic. Most topics that we cover in a week (e.g., nuclear strategy, World War II, ex-Yugoslavia) deserve a whole course to themselves. For the rest of your lives, you guys are going to be treated as if you got an extraordinary education — including being offered many privileges because of that. We're trying to make sure that you really do get that kind of education."
I don't expect simple or short readings. But I expect that I will be presented with the most important literature on a particular topic and nothing more. I am curious and I want to learn, but I have three other courses, all of which have demanding syllabi. Completing reading assignments for one course often means that another course gets the shaft. If readings cannot be scaled down to a reasonable level at which they will actually be completed, then I firmly believe that the topic is so broad that no professor can possibly present the material in a coherent, understandable fashion.
Professor Bass couldn't be more correct when he claims that it is the learning that counts. The chair of the Politics Department, professor Jeffrey Herbst, was recently quoted in an Atlantic Monthly article as saying that Princeton undergraduates are "professional students." The corollary to this, however, is the analysis that a student provided: "Sometimes we feel like we're just tools for processing information." Are we really "learning" when processing 1200 pages of reading per week is all that we think about?
One of the points that President Shapiro stressed in his Opening Ceremonies remarks to my class was that conversations are paramount to education. The interactions that we have with other people are one of the most educational parts of our experience at Princeton. How are we expected to capitalize on the fantastic minds that surround us, though, when we are forced to have our nose in a book all day long?
Furthermore, the faculty is endlessly complaining that the atmosphere is not intellectual enough — that after we get out of classes we never have any substantive discussions. Well maybe that's because once we finally get out of the library, our conversations are often an escape from intellectual pursuits and discourses.
I do nearly all of my reading, and I wouldn't be insulted if I were assigned less. I expect to be challenged, and if I weren't I'd be disappointed. Nevertheless, when scheduling time supercedes the challenge of actively engaging myself in them, then there is a fundamental imbalance that needs to be repaired.
(Ryan Salvatore is a Wilson School major from Stamford, CT. He can be reached at salvatre@princeton.edu)
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