No laptops, no phones.

by Harry on December 22, 2022

In one of the end-of-term reflections I just read a first-year (freshman) student says “It struck me that there was a no technology rule, something my classmates and I were unfamiliar with… when you disconnect from your online presence, you can fully dive into the discussion”. I have a no-laptop, no phone policy in all my classes, and have yet to hear good reasons to give that up. Maybe you can give me some.

In the background: I believe her that most of the students who went to public schools would be unfamiliar with a no technology policy. The local schools rely on laptops entirely for access to textbooks, and until this year the school district has not permitted schools to have a no-phone policy. I think you can imagine that in high school preventing teachers from telling students to put their phones away and sanctioning them if they don’t comply is a total disaster, and is perceived as such by the teachers and, in fact, many of the students (“If other kids are on their phones the teacher can’t teach so there’s no point in paying attention, so I might as well be on my phone”). I vividly remember the first course in which phones were a problem for me: not until 2014, when 4 girls were just routinely on their phones in a small class in which I could see what they were doing, and I didn’t really know what to do. After that I adopted the policy I have now.

I teach philosophy, which is hard. And I trust that my students can read, so if I have a lot to tell them I write it down and get them to read it. That’s not to say that I don’t go over it sometimes in class. But the point of having class is to do learning that won’t (or possibly can’t) be done outside of class. That is, mainly, problem solving: thinking and talking together about the arguments and ideas that I want them to understand, and practicing the skills of analysis and reflection that philosophy is particularly good at developing, and which are essential to doing philosophy. So they don’t really need the laptops for note-taking.

Not that most students who use laptops use them for note-taking. I spend a fair amount of time observing other people’s classes, usually from the back. Few of the teachers are bad, and many are pretty good. In classes which allow laptops anything from 1/3 to 2/3 of the students have them in front of them, and at any given time almost all the screens I can see are email, shopping sites, gaming sites, and television/movies. I’ve sat in numerous classrooms in which fewer than half of the students are paying any attention to what is happening in class.

I don’t exactly blame them: once inattention is the norm, the instructor often defaults to lecture and its not uncommon for the lecture to be more or less word for word repetition of what is on very text-heavy slides.[1] But when they are not paying attention they are not learning, and it is exceedingly difficult to generate high quality engagement in a room in which half or more of the students are otherwise engaged.

Occasionally I rather foolishly talk about this topic with people on twitter and facebook. Here are the three main arguments I hear against having a no laptop, no phone policy.

  1. The students are adults. It’s up to them whether they want to learn, and we should not infantilize them by specifying what they can do in class.

This argument strikes me as odd. First, many of the people who give this argument also say (elsewhere) that education is a public good. But if it is a public good then third parties (the public) have an interest in the students learning, whether the students want to or not. It’s only if the students are the sole intended beneficiaries of their education that it is ok for us to let them fritter it away. Second, though, I do treat my students as adults. They have plenty of choices: they can choose not to go to college if they want to, and not take advantage of the substantial public subsidy we offer to students who attend college and not to those who don’t. Even once they have come to college they have the option not to take my class: the technology policy is written on the syllabus, upfront, and they can switch to another class if they want. If they don’t want to learn, they can just not take my class. I don’t see how giving them the option to take a class in which everyone will be fully present in the room treats them paternalistically.

  1. Students with learning-related difficulties need to use laptops for note taking, and my policy either prevents that, or outs them as having a learning disability.

It’s difficult to take notes systematically in my classes, and I worry that students who try to do that throughout the class period will miss out on the actual learning.[2] Still: on my campus, at least, I get information before the semester begins about exactly what accommodations each student needs. If a student needs a laptop I explain to the class that our Accommodations Center has a policy of hiring students to take notes on a laptop for students with relevant disabilities (which it does) and that anybody using a laptop is doing so for a student who needs typed notes. What I say is true, and in some cases a student is taking their own notes, and in others they really are doing it for someone else.

  1. If you have to tell them not to use their phones and laptops its because you are a boring teacher, and you need to become a better teacher.

Of course, this is a ‘gotcha’ because nobody can claim to be a good teacher. I don’t. Here are the problems, though. First, of course, Messers Apple, Google et. al. have spent massive fortunes developing a technology that is excellent at commanding the attention of even quite committed students. I’m not particularly embarrassed that I can’t retain the attention of all the students in the face of that competition. Second, though: except in the very smallest classes, for any given student there will be periods of play which are not particularly important for them. If they drift off to the phone, and it absorbs their attention (which it does), then they don’t catch the moment which really does matter for them, the moment at which they would get re-hooked into the conversation when if they were paying full attention.

Of course, sometimes the phone or laptop is a tool for some purpose. I ask them to bring them out for the endowment exercise, for example. Sometimes facts which none of us know are relevant, so I ask someone to look them up. Sometimes I want someone creating a google doc, or taking notes for a small group discussion, so that we can all see the results. So it is not exactly a ‘no laptop, no phone’ policy; just that the default position is for latops and phones to be stowed away.

[1] One time, when it was so brutally cold that I didn’t want to walk anywhere, I worked outside the lecture room I had just finished in, overhearing the next instructor. Unnervingly his words were extremely familiar — I had read almost exactly what he was saying the previous evening. He was the author of my daughter’s AP Gov textbook that I’d been reading, which was also the textbook for the class he was teaching; the students had been assigned to read the same chapter I had read the night before, which he repeated to them in lecture.

[2] I sometimes specifically say, “I do not want you to take notes right now, because I want you to think about what is being said, not about whether you are writing it down accurately”.

{ 52 comments }

1

NomadUK 12.22.22 at 6:13 pm

I don’t comment often here, but I just want to say — having witnessed first-hand the utter disaster that is technology in the classroom (as opposed to, say, a lab setting) — your policy is spot on, and keep up the good work.

2

engels 12.22.22 at 6:42 pm

the students had been assigned to read the same chapter I had read the night before, which he repeated to them in lecture

This was an old A-level teacher’s favourite pedagogical approach. Sadly he didn’t write the textbooks.

Agree about the phone ban, which I don’t think at all paternalistic because as (eg) in theatres phone use affects others, and which probably helps in developing healthier online habits generally.

3

J, not that one 12.22.22 at 7:01 pm

As the parent of a middle school student, I hate the shift of nearly all their work onto the computer since 2020. They often don’t have hardcopies of their reading assignments. They can’t do their homework in the car. They get even less pen and pencil practice than they used to. No work comes home — at most “Mr. Brighouse has assigned problems five through 12 and your child got 90% on last night’s homework,” and there’s no allowance in the system for even their final projects to be made available to parents. And the natural “no devices until you’ve done your homework” is impossible. I understand some of this, especially communications about graded assignments, had started before the pandemic – but the imposition of computer-centric security and privacy standards onto schools is threatening to silently cut parents out of the process. There doesn’t seem to be any chance of turning this back. The use of e-texts saves money, for one thing. And the belief that Google has actually replaced old-fashioned search tools seems to be widely held. The sense seems to be that kids who have self-discipline will do okay, and the others will be incentivized to develop some.

The teachers have found it ALMOST impossible to keep the kids from using their phones in class.

4

digamma 12.22.22 at 7:06 pm

I am Extremely Online but I know my limits so I impose a No Devices rule on myself when I am in any kind of lecture or meeting to which I want to pay attention.

I sort of resent No Devices rules imposed by others, because I went to school without devices and I was an absolute CHAMPION of inattention. You’re not making me pay attention. You’re just making me more bored.

5

nobody in particular 12.22.22 at 7:59 pm

I really appreciate this piece and agree with your advice. two small points:

the claim that asking for accommodations “outs” students as having a learning disability (which, to be clear, you do not seem to agree with) is one of the most bizarre ones we experience these days. The entire edifice of the ADA depends on accommodations, and has been explicitly designed to de-stigmatize disability. When people who claim to be (and may actually be) disability advocates argue against the ADA on the grounds of stigma, but on behalf of the use of commercial devices designed to prevent people from attending to the physical world in front of them, the world really does seem to have turned upside-down. One could almost imagine these “advocates” to have been paid by industry.

I have been targeted and harassed by these “advocates” numerous times for even suggesting that teachers should have the discretion to decide whether devices are appropriate for their classrooms, a policy which (see below) I myself am unable to put in place. They use all the typical trolling tactics to evade answering the simple question of whether they oppose the ADA advice on accommodations only when it comes to digital devices (and if so, what the grounds are for that exception), or in general.

the main reason I can’t do as you suggest is that in my field, the primary educational material is generally written. Most of the students prefer to access this material electronically, and though I encourage them to use paper, few of them do. Yet I am fully aware that the vast majority of students, under the pretense of looking at the reading for the day, are doing anything else. It is remarkable that we live in an age when the fact that students should bring their “books” to class means that they also get to bring devices designed to distract them from class.

the problem has gotten so bad in recent years that I am reconsidering my policy and may well consider a ban in the near future, at least in some cases, in part thanks to this piece.

6

Tim Worstall 12.22.22 at 8:15 pm

An evil little thought:

“In classes which allow laptops anything from 1/3 to 2/3 of the students have them in front of them, and at any given time almost all the screens I can see are email, shopping sites, gaming sites, and television/movies. I’ve sat in numerous classrooms in which fewer than half of the students are paying any attention to what is happening in class.”

Yet these folk pass, gain their degrees. So, to a large extent college is mere certification that one has been to college. Not a public good at all in fact. A tax, a rent, charged by the college teaching class before one can enter the middle classes.

Not that that’s an original point, it’s just that the example given seems to support it.

“But the point of having class is to do learning that won’t (or possibly can’t) be done outside of class. That is, mainly, problem solving: thinking and talking together about the arguments and ideas that I want them to understand, and practicing the skills of analysis and reflection that philosophy is particularly good at developing, and which are essential to doing philosophy.”

As Brad Delong has been known to point out (and this bit speaks directly to it “He was the author of my daughter’s AP Gov textbook that I’d been reading, which was also the textbook for the class he was teaching; the students had been assigned to read the same chapter I had read the night before, which he repeated to them in lecture.”) some part of the university teaching style is based, still, on the medieval idea that books are really, really, expensive and so there will only be one for many students. Thus the lecture. Now that books are cheap this should have changed. It hasn’t. Now, “class”, where the things that can’t be done via print do get done, that is indeed different.

But then all of that is just me being evil of course.

7

Robert Bradford 12.22.22 at 8:21 pm

As a student, I always used my phone to regulate my attention and would have almost certainly dropped a class with some sort of no phones rule.

8

CarlD 12.22.22 at 8:28 pm

I get focus and attention and deliberation, but would we say no books in class? I have hundreds of books on my phone. Those devices’ memories can store all of the text produced by humans before we started tweeting. Through the internet they instantly offer nearly the entire current and historical store of knowledge and culture, updated in real time. This is a freaking miracle, a golden age of mass access, the library of Alexandria in every pocket.

And there’s porn, and kitty videos, and Ye’s latest antics. Wouldn’t it be better if Ye knew how to use the resource more responsibly. Turn that noise off is short sighted. The project is to turn the distraction into an asset.

9

MisterMr 12.22.22 at 9:32 pm

@Tim Worstall 6

When I got my degree, I didn’t have the requisite of presence, and it was assumed that one could pass most of the exams by just studying the books at home (although following the lessons was still advantageous so I followed most lessons).

Theoretically there are exams to check wheter one has learned or not.

10

Just An Australian 12.22.22 at 10:43 pm

You don’t say what ‘no phones’ means, but increasingly having access to a phone is a safety issue for some students, particularly those with dependents. (the safety of their dependents, that is)

11

RobinM 12.23.22 at 12:13 am

Re Tim Worstall’s comment (no. 6), I seem to recall that Adam Smith is recorded as noting to one of his students that he would, of course, have his father’s notes from the same course, and he then proceeded to repeat them almost verbatim. Old (academic) habits die hard?

12

M Caswell 12.23.22 at 1:23 am

All my classes are discussion classes, and neither phones nor laptops have shown up (unless to run figures on a calculator, or maybe to look up a hard word on TLG).

13

Matt 12.23.22 at 2:24 am

When I was a law school student (many years ago now) I used a laptop to take notes for the first time. It was, in some ways, better for me, and in some ways worse. (The clearest way it was worse: I found it harder to physically situate things on the page in the way I would with hand written notes – arrows, spacial relations, etc. in a quick way. The most important way it was better: for law school exams, students often prepared “outlines” – these were summaries of one’s notes. For obvious reasons it’s a lot easier to do this with typed notes than with hand written ones.) I haven’t done a lot of note taking, except when attending professinal talks or conferences, since then.

But this last year I worked as part of a team teaching Australian administrative law for the first time (first time for me, that is.) I’d never taken Australian administrative law, since I did my legal education in the US, and so I attended all of the lectures. They were lectures in a normal sense, but were really good. (I strongly disagree with the idea that more or less normal lectures can’t be a very good way to teach certain sorts of material.) I decided that I would take notes by hand for the lecture – and, it really helped me. I didn’t get distracted by other things, the act of writing stuff down helped me remember it better than if I’d just heard it (I think of this in relation to Ingrid’s post on audio books recently), and organizing it on the page helped me think about it better. Of course, that won’t be so for everyone, but I think it’s likely to be so for more people than would expect it to be so.

Just an Australian – I’ve had “no phones” policies a number of times, and what I mean is that people are not to have their phones out and using them during the class. I tell them that if they are expecting a call or message, to let me know before hand, and that of course sometimes there are emergencies, and we make allowances for that. I don’t collect phones in a basket or search anyone. But, they are not to have their phones out during the class. I suspect that Harry means something similar.

14

oldster 12.23.22 at 2:51 am

@Robert Bradford
“As a student, I always used my phone to regulate my attention and would have almost certainly dropped a class with some sort of no phones rule.”
And because Professor Brighouse respects your autonomy and wishes to treat you as an adult, he will allow you to drop the class! Even better — since you are an adult, you do not have to sign up for it to begin with!

Ubiquitous devices were creeping in before I retired, and to my regret I never learned how to deal with them. I wish I had followed my first instincts, and banned them from the room.

15

Alan White 12.23.22 at 6:52 am

A modest proposal. Start the syllabus with this statement: ” Students who use phones or laptops in class without administrative clearance to do so will be subject to causing the class to halt until such observed activity ceases.” And then follow up with some astute observation. I never used that statement formally, but I practiced it many times announcing much the same, and even without signaling who I was targeting. It worked pretty well.

16

Tim Worstall 12.23.22 at 7:35 am

“Theoretically there are exams to check wheter one has learned or not.”

As far as I’m aware that depends upon which uni system one is in. Oxbridge-style, where all depends upon finals, yes, not necessarily everywhere though.

17

Bob Michaelson 12.23.22 at 1:29 pm

Regarding “the students had been assigned to read the same chapter I had read the night before, which he repeated to them in lecture” and comments 2 and 6 –
Dirac famously read aloud from his book The Principles of Quantum Mechanics for his lectures on QM at Cambridge. When asked why he did that, he replied that he had very carefully written the best possible description of the principles of quantum mechanics, and so there was no reason to change any of it.
It is in fact a wonderful book, and still richly rewards reading today, apart perhaps from the last chapter, on “Quantum Electrodynamics” – Dirac refused to go along the Feynman/Schwinger/Tomonaga renormalization approach (which even Feynman referred to as sweeping a problem under the carpet.)

18

Matt McKeon 12.23.22 at 2:31 pm

Before covid, I’d collect the phones in a plastic tub at the start of class. The entire program did. Since coming back I haven’t bothered, but ask the students to put their phones away and anyone who can’t loses part of their grade. They mostly respect the need to be in class and not on their phone.

There is no reason for the students to have access to their phones during class.

19

tempa 12.23.22 at 3:37 pm

The High School my children attended had a no phones in the classroom policy, for the best educational reasons – until there was a mass shooting event there. (neither of my children were hurt physically, though three students died; 1,200 students and an entire community were broken psychologically, and the scars are still visible a decade later to those who care to look for them.

My children didn’t have cell phones at the time. I was awakened that morning when my cell went off with a call from an unknown number; it was my daughter whispering, “I’m hiding under my desk – there is a shooter in the school – I love you, dad”.

No one had the heart to implement technical restrictions after that event, and of course while the educational environment has suffered for it, here in the US we have worse hazards to learning to contend with.

20

oldster 12.23.22 at 5:20 pm

@tempa —

That’s a plausible argument for allowing students to have phones on their persons, not for allowing them to have them out of their pockets or book-bags.

21

Adam 12.24.22 at 3:50 am

Perhaps it is due to growing up with a computer, but I learn better when taking notes on a computer than when writing by hand. Laptops were effectively mandatory when I was in law school, part time, from ‘03-‘09. Everyone took notes on a laptop. Indeed, by the time I was graduating all in class exams required a laptop. And contrary to the OP’s experience from the back, what I saw time after time was the vast majority of students dutifully taking notes and only a handful goofing off. (Mind you these were large law school lectures.)

When I went on to graduate school in history I rarely used a computer in class but that’s mostly because I didn’t need to take notes and anyway most of the classes involved more discussion than listening and absorbing. However, all of my reading and research notes for writing history were done on a computer. That way all the notes for everything I’ve ever read are all searchable and cross referenced to each other.

22

SusanC 12.24.22 at 12:10 pm

I sympathize with baiing laptops, but on the other hand it can be useful.

So, there I am talking to a group of students about their groups project, and mention a reference they should look at … one that is slightly surprising isn’t a joke. So I continue talking, a student continues listening to me while also looking up the reference on their laptop. Two minutes later … “oh my god, that wasn’t a joke”.

23

Harry 12.24.22 at 3:03 pm

Yeah, no phones means “no phones used” not none actually in the room. These days almost all students have their phones silenced. But if one goes off during class I stop whatever I am doing, and tell the class a story about a meeting I once had with David Blunkett and my dad (and plenty of other people) which makes them all, including the person whose phone went off, laugh, and after that nobody’s phone goes off for the rest of the semester.
The story, obviously, involves a phone going off during that meeting!

24

Harry 12.24.22 at 3:50 pm

Tim W — I’d say you’re being mischievous, not evil, but that’s because I like you.

Brad’s comment just seems exactly right to me.

I find it depressing how much college teaching seems to involve telling students things that they could have read, expecting them to memorize them, and then assessing that memorization with inexpertly devised multiple choice and short answer exams. To the extent that it’s that your characterization isn’t quite right: true, no value is being added, but, worse, students are being sorted according to prior achievement (which sorts them among colleges) and according to their (poorly assessed) ability to do something that is, sure, valuable, but captures a small dimension of what the economy or society needs from graduates. I suppose the lecture can be defended as providing an alternative way of accessing what is to be memorized, but many students who learn from lecture instead of reading are, thereby, not learning how to read to learn, which is a valuable skill.

Of course, there’s a lot of great learning too in lots of classrooms. But students report a lot of what I’ve described, especially in their general education and, ironically, liberal arts breadth courses. I suppose I think that your mischievous comment should haunt universities, and university instructors — my job is to try to make sure that your comment is not true of me.

25

J, not that one 12.24.22 at 5:45 pm

While I’m sure grasping information from the spoken word isn’t the be-all and end-all of education, I do occasionally find it concerning that often “listening to lectures derives from the Middle Ages and shouldn’t be the focus of education” translates, in practice, to “it’s fine if kids don’t ever practice listening to the spoken word (or reading texts longer than 500 words, etc.) unto they’re in their late teens at the earliest.” The plasticity of the human brain means such things should ostensibly be practiced at a young age, not put off indefinitely, often until kids get to a weeding-out point. I’m sure if Brad DeLong lists all the occasions when he used that skill during a typical week, the time involved would be far from non-zero.

26

Tim Worstall 12.24.22 at 5:54 pm

“I suppose I think that your mischievous comment should haunt universities”

There’s also the possibility that they’d take it as a sign of success. Imagine that the starting question is “How do we capture a substantial portion, years’ worth, of lifetime earnings from 50% of the population?” The current set up manages that very well. If we include the opportunity costs (10% of lifetime working years in the US, perhaps 15% including a Masters) then that bite is larger than what the capitalists take. After all, corporate profit share of GDP is rarely higher than 10%.

But then that probably is mischievous.

27

SusanC 12.24.22 at 7:40 pm

Re. the Dirac story (there are many stories told about Dirac, some probably apocryphal) …

I have heard it said that in mathematics, specifically, the problem is the demand for rigour in published (printed) work. So what you get in a oral (not printed) presentation is an explanation of the proof that is comprehensible, but not rigorous. The spoken leacture as an essential introduction to reading what is printed.

28

SusanC 12.24.22 at 7:43 pm

I have never, ever had a problem with my students being distracted by devices in tutorials. But, should the occasion arise, a modest proposal: the student who was looking at their phone gets given the board marker and told to do the question we were just discussing on the whiteboard.

29

engels 12.24.22 at 10:35 pm

in mathematics, specifically, the problem is the demand for rigour in published (printed) work. So what you get in a oral (not printed) presentation is an explanation of the proof that is comprehensible, but not rigorous

If only there were some cutting edge technology that enabled a mathematics lecturer to write a proof down whilst speaking in front of an audience…

30

jseliger 12.24.22 at 11:54 pm

31

AnthonyB 12.25.22 at 10:15 pm

Mathematicians speak but also write extensively on the chalkboard:

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691199221/do-not-erase

That said, I suspect few of the chalkboards pictured in the book stem from undergraduate lecture classes.

32

Alan White 12.25.22 at 11:55 pm

AB @31: Indeed. Even though I taught philosophy and logic and not math, most days my boards were completely full of my points. Speaking allied with written presentation of what’s said was one central part of my pedagogy.

33

John Q 12.27.22 at 4:35 am

Tim W. If you are right, there is a huge amount of money lying on the table for any employer willing to hire high school graduates for four years, and give them a credible assessment at the end of that time. That money is available in every developed country in the world, across a wide range of labor markets and educational systems. And the amount has increased greatly over time, as the number of years spent in formal education has increased.

The only reasonable conclusion is that labor markets don’t work at all as suggested by theory, and that governments should legislate equal wages for everybody.

34

Tim Worstall 12.27.22 at 9:53 am

“Tim W. If you are right, there is a huge amount of money lying on the table for any employer willing to hire high school graduates for four years, and give them a credible assessment at the end of that time. That money is available in every developed country in the world, across a wide range of labor markets and educational systems.”

We are indeed seeing people doing exactly that. Not many and not much but experiments are continuing, as they say. Why, it’s almost exactly like an apprenticeship which is something that does still happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger_University

35

SusanC 12.27.22 at 4:58 pm

@John Q: In the computer industry: interns.

Employer hires an intern on a contract for a fixed, short term, at the end of which they get a credible assessment in the form job reference for applying for jobs elsewhere.

Interns usual have degrees. The underlying idea seems to be: just degree — not convincing to an employer, but they might take a chance on you as an intern; degree+reference from intern job — now you’re talking

I think you probably could land an intern position without a degree, but with some relevant experience. Being a significant contributor to an open source project would probably cut it.

36

SusanC 12.27.22 at 5:02 pm

On the blackboards thing…

I scribble stuff on blackboards when teaching, too.

I think the contention is that the socially acceptable standard of rigor for verbal explanation + scribble on blackboard is substantially lower than for book/journal publication, allowing for a more comprehensible explanation.

But I wont defend this point to strongly, merely that I have heard it (as an argument for having math lectures) from prominent mathematicians.

37

SusanC 12.27.22 at 5:05 pm

Now, in the computer industry interns are paid pretty well, but not as much as full-time staff.

so to continue the Tim W thought, it appears that employers have indeed captured some of the value of the credential, in that they have a continual fraction of their staff (but with rolling membership) of people who are willing to work for less to get a job reference.

38

Tm 12.27.22 at 5:16 pm

Worstall: „Yet these folk pass, gain their degrees“

Do they? If I’m not mistaken, I recall that a rather large fraction of University students do not graduate. I cannot comment on the reasons for their not graduating and whether it may be related to the degree of class attention but I think it’s worth pointing out that Worstall’s claim is not quite accurate.

39

Phil H 12.28.22 at 2:54 am

“ I find it depressing how much college teaching seems to involve telling students things that they could have read…”
I think this formulation overstates the problem, because it seems to underestimate the value of getting information more than once, in different contexts and modalities. I’ve had plenty of lectures that covered the same material as the textbook, and generally appreciated them: it’s an opportunity to pick up the points I missed on the first pass, to test out my initial understanding and see if it’s confirmed by the second telling, and maybe psychologically to start to enjoy the material. (Of course, I don’t think I’ve ever had a lecturer who just read out the book verbatim!)
I agree with your policy and like discussion classes. I just think that with difficult material, doubling up on delivery of difficult information is no bad thing for students.
A more important argument against “lecturing the textbook” may be that it’s a waste of the senior academic’s time. Junior instructors could handle the straight lecturing, while the professor adds depth and richness in a discussion.

40

Tim Worstall 12.28.22 at 10:17 am

Further on degrees being required.

The UK still has articles systems for both accountants and solicitors which lead to full qualification without a degree. Sandhurst (and Dartmouth, Cranwell) could be viewed as on the job training for the military even though a degree is usually gained first these days. Much of the City and Guilds system still exists even if they’re termed NVQs and the like these days (most readers here will be most familiar with this system from the Wilt novels by Tom Sharpe. “Meat One” and “Gas Two” are the lads from those City and Guilds apprenticeships doing their day or two a week of academia).

John Q’s point might have more force if there was in fact an absence of such systems.

41

Victor Caston 12.28.22 at 6:09 pm

I wholeheartedly agree — I’ve had a no electronics policy in place for about 5 years (with allowances for accommodation) and noticed an instant change, for the better, in terms of attention and in class discussion.

I also make available the Cog Sci experiments on why note-taking on a computer is worse for comprehension and retention than by hand — the inefficiency of handwriting requires you to think first about what to write down, since you have to be selective, and that requires you to think about what you’re hearing. Most of us are so good at typing that we transcribe almost verbatim, without digesting (even when instructed to do the later, as in some of the experimental variations). Mueller and Oppenheimer, Psychological Science 2014, Vol. 25(6) 1159–1168; popular summary by C. May in Scientific American, June 3, 2014.

ONE PROBLEM has been the textbook issue. I ask my students to buy physical books which I ask them to bring to class. (I teach history of philosophy and so a concern of mine is to help them develop close reading skills, and I think building tactile and as well as visual memory helps, rather than searching and scrolling.) But some students buy the electronic version, which is sometimes cheaper, and don’t want to have to print out (for cost and sometimes environmental reasons). I don’t think this is a major problem, but some students find it frustrating.

42

John Q 12.28.22 at 7:00 pm

Tim, you’re making my point for me.

McDonalds employs legions of teenagers whose ability they can observe directly, and, it seems, they don’t find the graduates of the mainstream university system suitable to their needs for more senior jobs. They would be ideally placed to offer an internal career path based entirely on on-the-job learning. Instead, they set up their own system of classroom instructions.

As regards lawyers and accountants, the operative word is “still”. In these and many other professions, on-the-job training systems existed for many years, but were displaced by university degrees. If the old system is still an option in the UK, why is (almost) no-one using it?

Susan C points to internships as examples showing that employer certification works, but that employers prefer to hire people after they’ve completed university, rather than giving them a chance straight out of high school. Any employer willing to do this would have the pick of the smartest interns before they wasted four years at uni.

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John Q 12.28.22 at 7:05 pm

I never learned to take notes, and have never regretted it. Paying attention to the lecture, and doing the assigned reading worked better for me.

Note-taking seems pretty much specific to undergraduate education – I rarely see any of my colleagues taking notes in seminars, for example.

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Victor Caston 12.28.22 at 7:19 pm

John Q — my colleague, Peter Railton, always takes notes at colloquia. The few times I’ve made the effort, I found it improved my ability to follow a read paper and ask questions. (Not as good as Peter’s, to be sure, but better than my usual.)

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Tim Worstall 12.28.22 at 7:45 pm

“They would be ideally placed to offer an internal career path based entirely on on-the-job learning. Instead, they set up their own system of classroom instructions.”

John, I’m not arguing against education. I’m arguing, or at least being impish about, the value of current universities at doing that task. That they’re setting up their own classrooms is a useful enough guide. They don’t get to dump the costs on the taxpayers – or the students – and actually have to carry it themselves to gain what they desire. This is, to put it very mildly, not evidence that the universities are providing what they want.

It’s the form, not the thing, which is being questioned.

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Moz in Oz 12.28.22 at 8:55 pm

John Q: I regularly take notes in public lectures, and used to do so at all sorts of academic presentations. Generally very short ones, usually on paper. As noted above the abbreviated gibberish I handwrite takes thought to compress and more to uncompress, it’s effectively a memory aid. But it does mean I record names which I would otherwise forget. And ask concise questions quickly. It’s also handy for finding referenced books or papers.

Often what I write down are the side points and digressions because it’s very easy to forget those. Possibly from being exposed early on to a somewhat famous academic with a second fame for his digressions? I read an economics blog and end up researching voting laws in pre-federation Australia…

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Philip Kremer 12.28.22 at 11:15 pm

Here is a thought, that would deal with the problem of some students who need to take notes on a laptop rather than by hand.

Rule: No note-taking during class, at all. Not by pen and paper, not by laptop.

This rule would be accompanied by the class being recorded, and available for viewing, so that those who wish to take notes can take notes — but not during the actual session.

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Nate Sheff 12.30.22 at 5:09 pm

Here’s an argument for a no-tech rule:

If we’re engaged in a cooperative activity, then disengaging by staring at your phone or shopping on Amazon while your partner is trying to engage is rude and counterproductive.
Students are engaged in a cooperative activity with their instructors.
So tech-mediated disengagement is rude and counterproductive.
Classroom norms are meant to keep things productive and discourage counterproductive activity.
So a classroom norm against tech is par for the course.

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Tim Worstall 01.01.23 at 7:35 am

Fascinating stuff:

“Middle-class teenagers are ditching degrees for apprenticeships because they want better value for money, the head of one of the UK’s biggest graduate employers has said.

Kevin Ellis, chairman of PwC, said it was a trend “we’ve been seeing for a while” and he expects school leavers who don’t have financial support from parents to increasingly shun university degrees amid the cost of living crisis.

The firm is responding by changing its recruitment process. It hires around 2,000 graduates and apprentices every year, of which around a third are school leavers joining its apprenticeship programmes. However, Mr Ellis expects that proportion “will grow”. ”

Perhaps the market is speaking?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/31/middle-class-students-ditching-degrees-apprenticeships-says/

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John Q 01.01.23 at 9:35 am

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engels 01.03.23 at 4:24 pm

“Middle-class teenagers are ditching degrees for apprenticeships because they want better value for money… Kevin Ellis, chairman of PwC, said it was a trend “we’ve been seeing for a while”

This PwC?

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Tim Worstall 01.05.23 at 9:59 am

This PwC?

Indeed so. That they’re naughty boys isn’t that much of a commentary upon their hiring habits tho’. Unless we’re really going to go out on a limb and insist that those who have been through a university education in “the skills of analysis and reflection that philosophy is particularly good at developing,” won’t be naughty boys in the future.

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