To the Editor:
Dan Knecht hit the nail on the head with his recent op-ed discussing the void of healthy intellectual discord in Dartmouth's classrooms today ("The Monolith on the Hill," Jan. 26). Having spent four years at Dartmouth before being released to the wild, there is no doubt in my mind that this trend more so than any other endangers the future ability of our institution to remain relevant in the world.
The problem, as I see it, is not that there are too few "conservative" professors in the system. To approach the problem from this perspective serves only to create an academic environment of segregated bias and segregated allegiances.
By and far, the most fruitful and later-beneficial learning experiences I had as an undergraduate came from those professors whose political/ideological leanings I was never able to put my finger on. They had no hesitation in presenting and criticizing poor reasoning used by authors who shared the same end conclusion as themselves. I can count on one hand the number of professors who represented all sides equally.
These professors approached their job not to present the world through their eyes, but rather to prepare students with the analytical tools to identify merits, break down arguments and find their own conclusions. Knowing the merits of your own side alone will not get you far in life or career. They encouraged me to read authors with whom I disagreed so as to better solidify why I disagreed and prepare myself to acknowledge where the strengths of opposing viewpoints exist -- and they do always exist.
These professors reserved their personal opinions and leanings for discussions over coffee or during office hours. By not introducing bias to the classroom, they made clear that bias would not be rewarded in written work. It was with only these few professors that I was unable to place myself at a grading advantage from the outset simply by approaching an essay question or paper assignment from a specific angle.
It is true that today the ideological message being sent in our classrooms is like listening to a one-sided version of "Crossfire," where the mission is to win an argument even if it means never acknowledging weaknesses of the party line or merits of the dissenting opinion. The solution is not to install more pundits in our classrooms that will provide for a more balanced fight. Rather, shouldn't the solution be to put a premium on professors who value the learning process over the cause and trust the intellects of our students to reach the right conclusions?
