Principles of Teaching and Learning in my Classes

Principles of Teaching and Learning in my Classes

This note is a reconstruction of a similar one titled “The underlying guides and principles of teaching in my classes” Circulated two years ago. The central message in that piece of note is that my teaching is guided by liberal principles of scholarship. That is to say we see every idea as not final and hence we accommodate diverse opinions.

It is around this principle am building further that in an ideal university environment both teachers and students are learners. Long time a go philosophers of education said that for the purpose of development of knowledge, in a university setting “every one is to think with each other”. There is no question of self-sufficiency or “I know better in knowledge”.

In political science as in other social sciences knowledge is built and developed by social enquiring and or by continuous reformulations of existing knowledge. In reality knowledge is daily being under rethink. It has no finality and there is no absolute truth. This is to say knowledge is science and it is a common principle of science that it is alien to certainty.

For both students and teachers, learning is confrontation with body of ideas that are contradictory and so for each idea you come across you search and or develop its contradictory version and so on. Adorno observed that absolute idea is a great lie.

From whatever angle you see a university system today, there s confusion and decline. By the side of students, they only attend lectures, take note and return the same to their teachers. They resist to read and become exposed to other ideas. They do not like to debate ideas. Those who do, disrespect the ethics of debate. When they are doing social investigation, especially of a survey type, they concoct data and claimed are collected, etc.

Neo-liberal reform is not reforming for academic excellence. It is a reform by international financial institutions and foundations whose documents had many years ago shown contempt of university education in Africa. So, they are only emphasizing reform of the administrative system, allowing the educational standard to continue to decline. Or are we still on transition to a better future?

I think however that those good things of the past are still beautiful to make the present better. In a similar discourse about the past and the present by Joao Paulo Borges Coelho in the centre of African studies, University of Mapotu, Mozambique, he observed that the past is important in order to operate as scholars in the present. Joao stressed that “this moment in the past, thirty years old, could be useful for our present and that it should therefore not be forgotten. At least …to consider to what extent the social sciences of thirty years ago, …can illuminate the social sciences of today, born f a totally different context”?

In University of Moputu as in other Universities in Africa Joao stressed three of the many principles of scholarship of the past which could raise the present, even among my students.

The first is the principle of diversity in teaching, learning and research. This is to say that students and teachers should embrace the logic of diverse academic perspectives in an effort to understand any social problem. An unchallenged idea whose contradictions are not searched and debated is monotonous. It makes classrooms not lively. Makes the teacher as the master of everything, who comes to impart knowledge. Instead of to make students to acquire knowledge.

In a healthy and civilized academic environment/classroom, acceptance of diverse ideas may generate battle and confrontation of perspectives between young students, which will continuously provoke learning, cooperation, and team work among students as was the case in my class of POL 4301 2007/2008 Academic Session.

The second principle of great value to learning and scholarship in the past which is needed to be brought back today is what Joao called “Hospitality”. He used the word Hospitality in the sense applied by Emmanuel Levinas as “a gesture of welcome, or a predisposition to receive the other, to receive he who is different from us in our midst”. Even if there are no visiting scholars to show hospitality to, we can give hospitality and respect to each other to create conducive condition for learning and growth of learning. This is fundamental to spread of ideas as somebody will bring an idea or perspective which you do not know.

One dangerous dimension to learning today is that young boys and girls who come to university carry along with them destructive competition. There is no accommodation and so no exchange of ideas. Only to try to outsmart a friend to pass examination better. These undermined quality of learning, create attitude of self-sufficiency in knowledge, the mania of feeling that, one is clever, etc. which are all indices of lack of hospitality among students.

The third principle is what Joao called “Trust”. This has to do with the relationships between society, politics and academia. In those olden days in Nigerian Universities there were both students and teachers whose purpose was to search, read and debate theories which will help to transform human suffering and improve quality of life. In contrast, there is very little of this past remaining. For students there is no personal search of theoretical perspectives to critically assess government policies. Politics is no longer their business. It is only to pass examinations by every means possible. For teachers there are few remaining whose purpose and values is not scholarship to earn money and to produce volumes of useless texts for the dominant authorities. The reversal of this will return scholarship as a social responsibility and excellence.

In addition to these I believe that it is our duty – both students and teachers – to work hard. I cannot shy away from Karl Marx, who said that the royal road to science/knowledge is hard work. Yes! Knowledge grows through hard work. By hard work one can explore his/her potentiality and can understand the University environment and the larger society better. The past of the University culture in Nigeria is distinguished by hard work. Each student was working hard to acquire knowledge.

This is sharply different from the present when students want pass examination but do not want work. When students abuse their teachers who give them books to read. When students are happy when their teachers missed their lecture periods. When students jubilate, when they heard their teacher who gives them work to do is going to be away from teaching service. When students cry on being attached to a research supervisor who will tell them to go and make corrections.

These are students of the present. Who do not know the value of hard work. The past is beautiful. Whatever changes will occur only the characteristics of the past will bring back the excellence. Or are we to give up to the information technology to do everything for us? In anyway IT itself has to be operated.

This past of scholarship in African Universities, I stress is glorious. All the good values of it are relevant to reconstructing of the present. If we allow them to come back by practicing them. Thus, we would be doing a good service by pulling this legacy here, again.

Meanwhile the structure of teaching and learning in my classes contain these legacy. The outcome depends on the students. Those who graduated in 2005/2006 and 2007/2008 Academic sessions have contributed a great deal towards bringing back these principles.

M. M. Yusif
Department of Political Science
Bayero University, Kano-Nigeria
January, 2009