Contemplating precept

Class begins. There is some uncomfortable shuffling as the preceptor launches into a summary of the goals for the hour. “We will review reading number one, and then reading number two, and then we’ll discuss how the two are related and pertain to this week’s topic in lecture.” You sigh and begin to work out a rehearsed statement about each of the readings: complex enough that the preceptor will believe that you read all of it, somewhat down-to-earth to avoid the label of toolishness and vague enough to apply to whatever the class is talking about at any given time. You rattle off your comments in quick succession; often they are only loosely connected to the remark before them. “Yeah I agree with that, but also ...” or my personal favorite, “I found it interesting that ...” This behavior gives you leeway to point out any specific part of the reading, hoping that your vacuous commentary on one passage will imply that you had read much more.

All the while, Mr. Preceptor jots down notes. The rate at which he does so is conspicuously correlated to how many times students cite specific parts of the reading. When someone begins to speak, she first faces her peers, but her eyes are always darting between the class, the preceptor and the preceptor’s furiously scribbling pen. She wonders: “What are the key words that Mr. Preceptor is looking for? Specific quotations, or should I come up with generalizations? Should I focus on what is written on or between the lines?” There are no right answers to these questions. While some preceptors will urge the class to “dig deeper” into the text, others will accuse students of irresponsibly extrapolating and infecting the reading with their own erroneous conjectures. How do we decide which path to follow? We guess, using the frequency of Mr. Preceptor’s pen scribbles as feedback on our participation success.

Sometimes a vicious cycle develops. When preceptors allow laptops, students duck behind their silver or black facades and pretend that the emails they write are actually precept notes. The more boring the class, the more people shop online, the less they participate and the more boring class becomes. When laptops are banned, the energy of the class rises, but so does the density of eloquent improvisation floating around the room. After all, whether or not students are paying attention has little impact on whether they did the reading. Banning laptops simply produces a thicker cloud of verbal bullshit through which Mr. Preceptor must plod. Mr. Preceptor is rather disappointed, as he had not done all the reading himself and was hoping to learn something from today’s class.

This is the typical Princeton humanities precept. Naturally there are exceptions; there are precepts in which everyone is engaged and legitimately interested — but these are not the norm. The burden of blame for the norm does not fall on the students, who are clearly high academic achievers. Nor does it fall on the preceptors, who are usually only tangentially interested in teaching undergraduates. It falls on the system, which is enforced by authorities who have little stake in the quality of precepts.

I have said it before: Precept, like most lectures, should be optional. I expressed this view in a column around this time last year, and now that I am a half-dozen precepts older, I feel even more strongly about it. Grading students on class participation is absurd, if not because it engenders meaningless banter then because it undermines students’ desire to actually dig deeper into the material (i.e., by scanning the readings for important key terms rather than reflecting on the topics at hand and even, god forbid, doing their own research). If we must add evaluative criteria to our courses so that exams are not the only grades we get, then weekly responses or other short assignments should suffice. Precept presentations are also a great way of evaluating student effort. There is absolutely no need for class participation points, and forcing unwilling students to attend precept hurts everyone.

David Mendelsohn is a psychology major from Rockville Centre, N.Y. He can be reached at dmendels@princeton.edu.