On Truth and Bias in the Classroom

In our annual book review issue, staffers at The Review read and review recently published books written by Dartmouth professors and alumni. This issue also occasionally contains reviews of other books relevant to higher education. However, we put a strong emphasis on reading the books of Dartmouth faculty, even going so far as to hand-deliver copies of the issue to the professors whose books we cover.

It is always interesting reading books written by your professors, but its undertaking — I would argue — is relatively rare among Dartmouth students. In my anecdotal experience, it is unusual for professors to assign his or her own writing in a class that they are teaching. It is even more unusual for students to seek them out independently; it’s rare enough that the entire class does all of the required reading, so hopes that a plurality of students will do supplemental reading are quite futile.

As per the former explanation, I don’t believe the primary reason professors avoid assigning their own work is due to great moral compunction about forcing students to read their writing. In most cases, any given professor’s publications are too esoteric for an introductory or survey course taught to undergraduates.

For example, in a course I took on medieval Christianity, our professor — despite being quite an expert on the topic — did not assign his own writing on the monastic life of the Carthusians in the 14th century. Such a niche subject would consume too much time in a course which is already heavily compressed to fit Dartmouth’s ten-week term.

Of course, there are exceptions. At Dartmouth, we are fortunate to have professors who have more or less written the book on an area of study significant enough to merit individual attention within a course, or perhaps an entire course itself. There are a handful of professors on campus who have not just written the book on a certain subject, but the entire canon. In these instances, the purposeful exclusion of certain books simply because it was the professor’s own work would have been conspicuous and a detriment to the course as a whole. For this reason, I am never disheartened when a professor assigns his or her own work provided that it appears to be in line with the topics of the course.

Nevertheless, I’ve heard classmates complain bitterly about a professor assigning his own books. Frequently the chief accusation revolves around the financial gain associated with a professor requiring his class to purchase his own book (as if twelve students purchasing a 13.99 paperback is really going to make such a large difference). Moreover, in all of the instances when a professor of mine has required me to read his own articles or books, those materials have always been made available to the students for free, either by emailing us their manuscript, scanning the book into a PDF, or, in one case, providing every member of the class with a free (and signed) copy.

Financial matters aside, there is a more pernicious problem created when professors assign their own work: explicit academic bias. Last term, I had a course with a professor I admire very much for, among other things, his commitment to freedom of thought in academia. On the last day of class he opened the floor to questions on any topic. One of my peers asked what he thought of professors assigning their own work in class. Having been soft-spoken and generally noncommittal about any particular viewpoint or argument throughout the class, I was quite taken aback when he immediately responded that such a requirement was “wrong and even hateful.” He went on to qualify his answer, excluding certain scenarios, but his central thesis remained that: if professors assign their own writing to the class, students will feel compelled to mirror their professor’s opinions in the coursework and class contributions—both in an attempt to curry favor with the professor and out of fear that disagreeing with him would result in a poor grade. My professor feared that this scenario would happen regardless of whether or not it was the professor’s intention to mold their students’ beliefs and, for that reason, he had resolved not only to never assign his own writings but also to refrain from expressing almost any opinion at all on the subject matter of the course.

Having now taken three classes with this professor I can confirm that he is remarkably adept in this effort to present himself as entirely impartial to his students, which is part of the reason this professor is so remarkable. A high degree of impartiality is extremely difficult to execute and is only achieved by very few professors. Nonetheless, many if not most professors claim to be impartial. This often-innocent lie, is in my opinion, where the true problem lies. As is consistently discussed with regards to the media, if a professor claims to be entirely impartial but is not it presents an even greater problem than if he had just been forthright in expressing his opinions in the first place. The result is slightly-moderated opinion-based teaching wherein students are even more compelled to adhere to their professor’s point of view because that perspective is presented to them as the unvarnished truth.

With this in mind I would prefer, and indeed believe, that it would be healthy for our academic ecosystem for professors to provide their written work for their students to read. To qualify, this would require an exercise of humility by our professors to be able to express to their students that they accept that they are fallible and are open to changing their opinions or, at the bare minimum, receiving differing opinions when presented with sufficient evidence. They should encourage students to disagree with them and reward strength of argument over conclusion. Acknowledging that true impartiality is so rare in teaching, I would prefer a professor who is candid with his opinions but encouraging of disagreement over a nominally impartial professor. Moreover, reading our professors’ books, though sometimes dry, is an excellent first step to this end.