I am having three colleagues come in this week to lecture on “truth” in their disciplines. The original idea was that they would be covering my English class while I was away at a math meeting. Happily, as it turns out, I was too sick to go. “Happily,” because now I get to hear their talks. When I do this again, though, I’ll space them out so that there is time to discuss each talk afterwards.
Yesterday, I suggested to one of the speakers that he give his talk, or at least part of it, at the beginning of his courses every year. He replied that he had done a version of it before but that students were often too fixated on that first day with the syllabus, with when quizzes would be and how much they would count.
Here was my reply:
Well, as you point out, there might be a better time to give this talk. But I never give out syllabi and such the first day because that’s what so many teachers do and the kids get bored with hearing variations on the same theme in every class. So, I always just start the course on the first day, and we do procedural things as the need approaches. If you find they’re not attentive to this very important meta-analysis, however, just put it on the first quiz–or have a quiz the next day. If the scores are bad, you don’t have to count them, but you will nonetheless have made your point. To the extent (regrettably high, I sometimes fear) that kids only value what we grade, we must make sure to grade what we value.