The Sounds of Silence

2010

   I begin with an experiment: thirty students in an upper division history class were assigned a book and asked to find something in the text. This was a good class; the students had worked hard all semester and were rightly proud of what they had accomplished, so they felt ready to tackle this final assignment.

   But none of them considered the possibility that what they were looking for would not be there.  As I returned their papers and asked them to justify their findings, under scrutiny each abandoned the positions they had taken. Eventually, one of the students finally said: "I couldn't find it, but I thought I must be wrong, because otherwise why would you have given us this assignment."  Not a single student in that class trusted their own judgment. Was this because they lacked intellectual self- confidence? Perhaps- but possibly there is another explanation- one that reveals a more pernicious process.

    Successful students learn key strategies when they take courses in the humanities.   Faced with a discipline that offers few formulas or the comfortable certainty of  calculations, sometimes they struggle. Many expect college to be like high school, so initially they are confused. They come to us knowing how to memorize and regurgitate facts: the Thirty Years War began in 1618; Henry VIII had six wives; and Phillip II married Mary Tudor. They are familiar with the world of bullet points, study guides and outlines and are reluctant to abandon the successful strategies that had served them well. So they implore, "Just tell me what I need to know for the test.”  When faced with an essay question that asks their opinion, they often struggle. So after the first exam they invariably plead with me for a study guide, a copy of my notes, even old exams. "Just tell me what's going to be on the test," they beg; "Tell me which facts I need to know." I always resist, confident that my refusal will help foster their intellectual development by forcing them to draw their own conclusions. They push back and inform me that they are only here to punch their ticket and passing the test is necessary for graduation; what they actually think caused the French Revolution is immaterial to that process. Nevertheless, I stand firm.

    Eventually many adapt to this environment and develop new strategies. They catch on that college level history is often about interpretation: was the English Civil War about religion or money? They may not really care. The causes of this conflict only matter if I ask a question about it on a test. So the only opinion that concerns them is mine because I control the grade book - and this is where the pernicious part comes in. They adapt their "memorize and regurgitate" strategy to interpretation. Successful students learn to read their instructors well. On exams and papers they throw back at us our own narratives and interpretations and flatter us by presenting them as their own. Good grades are often more the product of successful imitation rather than education.  

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      We would like to believe that this is not so. We try to teach them to think critically so they can draw their own conclusions. We encourage class discussion, have them read differing interpretations, and attempt to treat all ideas with respect. However, despite our best efforts, the students do not believe we will really accept any opinion other than our own. So, too often they give us what they think we want, rather than what they truly believe. They are certain that the only interpretation that matters is the one that governs the grading of the test. That is why our narratives always win out- and not necessarily because we are persuasive or armed with the best argument. Our interpretation dominates the classroom discourse because we have the power of the grade. So they give us what they think we want; they send our words back to us in blue book valentines and we never know whether our view prevailed because it deserved to or because of the power dynamic in the classroom. The dirty little secret of higher education is that the students know that no tickets will be punched without our imprimatur and so they act accordingly.

    Herein lies the conundrum- we think (and hope) that we are opening their eyes; to see  the American Revolution as it really was or to look critically at the narratives they have been told about the Protestant Reformation or why the English executed their king. However, in essence we are simply substituting one dominant discourse for another. As Hayden White has argued, all narratives are filled with ontological and epistemic choices that are connected to distinct ideologies and specific political perspectives. Our narratives of the French Revolution or the English Civil War are not neutral discursive forms that present real events. They do not describe these conflicts any more accurately than the high school history textbook. They are simply one more representation that attempts to endow real events with an illusory coherence, while adhering to our own myths and ideologies. White reminds us that dominant social groups (for example, instructors in the classroom) control what passes for the authoritative myths.

   The essay test or paper become the fullest manifestation of this intellectual hegemony. We require them in order to assess what the student's have learned, but what really finds its way onto the pages of the blue books is a re-iterated version of what we said, although we often flatter ourselves that this is not so. The students, on the other hand, are well aware of the difference. As the comments found on RateMyProfessor  reveal, they feel the full force of the power of the grade book on their ability to express their own opinions.  So they warn the other students that if you take a course from a particular professor do not disagree with her views; just re-iterate what she says in class.

     The students in my class would recognize that this dynamic is not unique to their world. It would remind them of another age in which education was also believed to unlock the door to success: the sixteenth century. They know the stories of men such as Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell who by virtue of their industry, ambition and intelligence rose from modest beginnings to gain a seat at the table of the great. The story of these men illustrates just the kind of self-fashioning for which the Renaissance was  famous. However, the students also know there is an alternative narrative, one that explains why More and Cromwell lost their heads. Stephen Greenblatt argues that men in the Renaissance were not so much self-fashioning as they were fashioned by the dominant discourse of their age. In their world the Church, the Court, and the State created webs of social and ideological control not unlike those that exist in our culture. Step too far away from the dominant discourse in the Tudor England and one could lose one’s position if not one’s head. The belief that man had control of his destiny was simply an illusion. Greenblatt describes this world as a place in which outward compliance often masked inward silence; where the point was not that anyone was deceived by the charade, but that everyone was forced either to participate in it or watch it silently. Unfortunately, this description too often fits the academy- and not just for our students.  

    Faculty are not immune to the impact of the dominant discourse of academia. We, too, have learned that silence is often prudent. Witness the articles in the Careers section of the Chronicle of Higher Education written with pseudonyms. For us tenure, promotion, and professional reputation replace grades, and the pressure to conform to the dominant discourse is no less a part of our lives as we move up the academic food chain. And once we have tenure, intellectual control within the academy is maintained in large part by the intense communal pressures of honor and blame, for we all know what happened to Larry Summers at Harvard. And this pressure to conform to the dominant discourse does not always come from the faculty lounge. I am not speaking here of the forces outside the university, for when faculty are attacked by those outside of academia for things they have said, as long as they have not challenged the dominant discourse of the academy, the wagons are circled and new jobs are found, as they were for Melissa Click and Steven Salaita. What I am referring to is the angry masked mob who invaded John Yoo's Constitutional Law class at Berkeley in 2005, the screaming students on the quad at Yale, and Northwestern University's investigation of Laura Kipnis. Self censorship is prudent on many levels within the academy. So even faculty have to keep their heads down, issue trigger warnings, and say their classroom will be a safe space on the campus. The end result is a deafening silence.

    In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn wrote about the impact of dominant discourses in the world of science. He argued that scientific paradigms are always challenged by men at the margins. Only someone new to a field is insufficiently invested in the dominant discourse to be able to challenge it in ways that create change. Kuhn points out that these challenges are always met with fierce resistance from those with power within the discipline. His arguments have applicability beyond the world of science and certainly for the academy. The power behind any dominant discourse protects it and in a way weakens it, for it no longer has to stand on the value of its own merits. When my students censor their thoughts and tell me only what they think I believe we both lose. And when I self -censor in order to make some students feel safe, keep my Dean happy, or make tenure I have also undermined the education we all claim to value. So all of us are responsible for the silence that fills our hallowed halls.

Hayden White, The Content of Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore:  

     Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).

Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (University of Chicago

    Press, 2005).

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. (University of Chicago Press, 1966)

This  essay is a revision of the original which first appeared as “The Sounds of Silence: Student Self-Censorship in Higher Education,” Faculty Voices, V (2006-2007).