Class or gender learning differences are not to blame for educational difficulties. AP Photo/David McFadden
By Colleen Fahy
Debates have recently surfaced throughout the United States regarding whether college courses are structured in favor of certain social groups over others. In a country that boasts over 4,000 colleges and universities and stresses the incredible value of a higher education, its prospective students have become very critical of how this education system is run.
One hot topic that has surfaced recently is the argument that lecture-style classes taught in colleges and universities are catered toward upper-middle class, white male students who will, as a result, obtain better grades than African-American minority students or lower-class female students.
Those who support this view claim that racial minorities and certain socioeconomic groups may immediately feel behind in the material because of a worse opportunity to attend a prestigious high school or academy.
Another argument made is that, by nature, certain racial minorities could feel outnumbered by white students in the classroom and therefore feel intimidated to speak up for fear of social isolation. These were some points outlined in an opinion article by Annie Murphy Paul published online by The New York Times on Sept. 12, 2015. The article, “Are College Lectures Unfair?” discusses the disadvantages of lecture-style courses and instead offers advantages toward minority groups of smaller, “active-learning” classes. But can personal grades and academic achievement be based on something as arbitrary as race or gender?
Personally, I do not like lecture-style courses. In my case, while studying at Fordham, the word “lecture” has always implied walking into a class that I did not choose or desire. Rather, I chose the class as a way to fulfill parts of Fordham’s core requirement (think Intro to Astronomy and Foundations of Biology for a very unscientific, foreign-language loving Communications major like myself). I agree that many times the classes are impersonal, and I am spoken at rather than encouraged to speak with my professor. I feel almost lost in a big group of people, but at the same time, I do not quite see what they could be considered “unfair” or “biased” toward one group or another.
Many would believe that I fall under the criteria of the upper middle class, the “privileged” white majority group toward which certain courses are catered. The one criterion I do not meet for this favored student is that I am a woman. This sets me in the middle of the issue and allows me to speak honestly on various classroom formats from personal experience.
Paul’s article argues that grades improved considerably among women, minorities, low-income and first-generation students while in “active-learning” courses where students are given low-stakes, frequent assignments in class and are encouraged to engage in the conversation in a more intimate setting.
One of the possible reasons for this improvement was the lack of “a high-pressure atmosphere that may discourage them from volunteering to answer questions, or impair their performance if they are called on” that is fostered in a lecture-style course. One thing I can say for certain is that I relate to this feeling of being too intimidated to offer up new ideas in class because of the “high-pressure atmosphere” created by a need to fit in and win group approval.
I am very self-conscious in this way, as are many other students, and prefer to stick to contemplative note taking for the one hour and fifteen minutes that I am in class.
However, I have never felt that this obstacle stems from the fact that I am a woman (one of the outlier groups discussed in this debate). This is just who I am. I will never be the girl who sits in the first seat of the first row in class and shoots her hand up the second the teacher asks a question, but I still realize I need to make the most of my classes in whatever way I can. My class preference has less to do with the way it is taught and more to do with what is taught.
It is all a matter of how much effort you put into a class, whether it be a moderate-structure course which entails “ungraded guided-reading questions and in-class active-learning exercises in addition to the graded online assignments,” as Paul writes about in her article, or the low structure, lecture-style format which many college courses follow today. Paul suggests that smaller assignments, such as questions to accompany nightly reading, allow for better retention of information. This may be the case for some, perhaps those who learn best by repetition and the action of physically writing down information to get it to stick in their minds.
But what about those who consider themselves more visual learners: those who feel most comfortable looking at diagrams, charts and lists on a PowerPoint presentation while they are read back by the professor? Or the auditory learners who benefit most from hearing information said out loud in a lecture setting?
Learning is a very individualized process. We all learn in our own ways, but I do not think we can put the blame for our failings or our successes on something like economic standing or gender.
Colleen Fahy, FCRH ’17, is a communication and media studies major from Newtown, Connecticut.
