Right Wing Nation

Jargon is the coinage and usage of terminology in a specific field. Jargon is a shorthand by defining terms for concepts that come up frequently in a field, and defining terms for highly-specific concepts in that field. Jargon also has sociolinguistic functions (e.g., it differentiates outsiders from insiders), but they aren’t relevant here.

Buzzwords are not jargon. While jargon refers to concepts, buzzwords are meaningless. The ultimate test for whether something is jargon or a buzzword is this: Ask the person who used it for a definition. If he can define the term in basic English, it’s jargon. If he cannot, it’s a buzzword. (Buzzwords must be differentiated from academic nonsense, such as contrastive rhetoric, since academic nonsense at least represents an idea.)

For all academic fields, there is an inverse correlation between the number of buzzwords used and the amount of substantial content.

Along with the humanities, education is among the richest in buzzwords and weakest in content. There is very little jargon in education (I’m only saying “very little” to hedge, since I cannot think of even one example of true jargon in education), because there is very little content. To mask the dearth of content, education flings out perhaps more buzzwords than any other academic field. In order for a buzzword to mask a lack of content, it must appear to be jargon–that is, anyone hearing or reading it must form an opinion about what it means. Those using buzzwords must avoid at all costs the possibility that somebody will ask for a definition.

Any popular term or phrase in education is a buzzword, but the one I want to discuss is “student-centered,” as in “student-centered classroom,” or “student-centered campus,” or “student-centered curriculum.”

This is actually an excellent example of a buzzword. I’m quite sure as soon as you see “student-centered,” you form an immediate impression of what it means. Even its critics believe that it means something–yet, it doesn’t mean anything.

A word can have more than one meaning (we call that ambiguity), but a word can’t mean anything you want it to mean (we call that Lewis Carroll). “Student-centered” can mean anything the speaker wants it to mean. Over the years, I have seen all of the following given as examples of “student-centered learning” or a “student-centered classroom”:

• sitting in a circle on the floor “being balloons”
• doing interpretive dances in class
• allowing students to read whatever they want
• playing a CD of current music in the lecture hall before the start of an otherwise traditional lecture class
• allowing students to “grade” other students’ work, then grading it traditionally, and assigning the traditional grade
• going to class drunk in inappropriate clothing, talking about how good sex was the night before, and then giving an otherwise traditional lecture (well, for a drunk person, anyway)
• having “read-arounds” and “write-arounds,” where students write an answer to some question, drop it in a hat, everybody takes one, and reads them around the room

Exactly how is sitting around on the floor “being balloons” or doing interpretive dances in class “student-centered”? What is “student-centered” about playing a CD before the lecture begins? Is having students write an answer to a question, then read them around the room “student-centered” in some way I don’t grasp? Or how about presenting yourself as a drunken whore to your students, how does that place them in the “center” of the class?

As long as we assume that “student” and “centered” are the English words “student” and “centered,” nothing about any of these can be called “student-centered,” yet I have not only seen people present these things as examples, but whole rooms full of academics nod their heads sagely when the examples are given, licensing them as examples of “student-centered learning,” or a “student-centered campus.”

Look in the back of the Chronicle, or at higheredjobs.com, and you’ll see ads looking for “student-centered” teachers, or “proponents of student-centered learning,” and even requests for statements about how the applicant would implement “student-centered learning” in his classroom. So even though it doesn’t mean anything, it’s been elevated in many cases to a job requirement.

That person I know who plays a CD before his otherwise traditional lecture calls it “student-centered” because that’s what the university wants to hear. He’s not stupid. I’m quite sure if I got him behind closed doors that he would admit that there’s nothing “student-centered” about it. He, then, stands in contrast to the “true believers,” such as the woman who does interpretive dance in her class (though it’s unclear what, exactly, she thinks she’s acccomplishing). In between the two falls what I call the “believer skeptic,” such as the woman who has students trade papers and “grade” them, then takes them home, grades them, and reports her grades, and not the students’. She kneels to the altar of “student-centered learning,” but isn’t quite convinced that students are the best judges of writing.

I’m quite sure you could go to an ed conference and present a strictly traditional format class as “student-centered” and it would be accepted as such by the audience. After all, students take the exams. Student-centered. Students do the assignments. Student-centered. Students do the assigned readings. Student-centered.

It’s a meaningless buzzword. Stop it in its tracks. The next time you hear somebody say “student-centered,” stop the speaker and tell him that it’s a meaningless word, or it will become an even more popular fad.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2007 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Education.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.