"Student-Centered" and Human-Centered

You may have noticed that a lot of recent academic job posts ask for "student-centered" teachers/teaching. But like other frequently-used terms (e.g., Socratic teaching), I think this term can be overused. What does it really mean? It certainly doesn't mean always pleasing the students, though I try to do that when it doesn't interfere with actual learning or higher obligations.

One danger, I think, is that the phrase "student-centered" presupposes--without defining--a concept of "student." And that word's significance differs from person to person. Ask nine teachers to define student, you'll get nine answers--and ten if one went to Harvard.

So what does "student" mean to me, to you, to us, especially to teachers?

The most important aspect, IMHO, is that students are, like us, human. Student-centered teaching should first of all be human-centered teaching.

Aristotle says that all humans desire to know. From this, one would expect that our students would show up in class Monday through Friday bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready to sponge up our pearls of wisdom. No?

If they fail to do so--if humans fail to react as we should expect humans to--then perhaps it is because we have, in some partial measure and inadvertently, failed to treat them as human?

When I first set out to hold students' attention, I committed a common teacher error: I put on a show. I had a teacher-centered classroom. Student-centered teaching aims to correct this error, and rightfully. I learned my lesson--but not, at first, the solution.

My next attempt was to use flashy but organized teaching aids: PowerPoint, multimedia, etc. And in the proper hands, these tools work wonders. But the proper hands must first be properly educated. Aristotle's aphorism is useful here: students don't want to be entertained--or merely entertained, at least in the classroom--they want to learn. All glitz and no learning is like all frosting and no food. Monday through Friday. Year after year.

For me, the breakthrough--the one which ensured that I enjoyed my classes simply because my students actually enjoyed my classes--came in realizing that students care about the ultimate questions. Perhaps they don't know it. Yet the desire to know who one is, what being human means, what truly matters, and similar questions wait to be sparked in them as much as in us. Perhaps more than in us--or else why do so many of us teachers fail to connect our subjects to these larger issues? (I am speaking from my own experience: though some of my teachers framed the course content in larger contexts, most did not. Your experience may differ.)

A first-class class, therefore, reveals to the student with crystal clarity why what they are supposed to learn matters. Not today, not tomorrow, but forever. And also why the student matters--today, tomorrow, and forever. To light that proverbial spark of learning, we must expose the student to the eternal flame, the deep thirst within that makes drinking the dew of knowledge worthwhile.

Happy teaching!