The first full-length history of college teaching in the United States
from the nineteenth century to the present, this book sheds new light on
the ongoing tension between the modern scholarly ideal--scientific,
objective, and dispassionate--and the inevitably subjective nature of
day-to-day instruction.
American college teaching is in crisis, or so we are told. But we've
heard that complaint for the past 150 years, as critics have denounced
the poor quality of instruction in undergraduate classrooms. Students
daydream in gigantic lecture halls while a professor drones on, or they
meet with a teaching assistant for an hour of aimless discussion. The
modern university does not reward teaching, so faculty members at every
level neglect it in favor of research and publication.
In the first book-length history of American college teaching, Jonathan
Zimmerman confirms but also contradicts these perennial complaints.
Drawing upon a wide range of previously unexamined sources, The Amateur
Hour shows how generations of undergraduates indicted the weak
instruction they received. But Zimmerman also chronicles institutional
efforts to improve it, especially by making teaching more "personal." As
higher education grew into a gigantic industry, he writes, American
colleges and universities introduced small-group activities and other
reforms designed to counter the anonymity of mass instruction. They also
experimented with new technologies like television and computers, which
promised to "personalize" teaching by tailoring it to the individual
interests and abilities of each student.
But, Zimmerman reveals, the emphasis on the personal inhibited the
professionalization of college teaching, which remains, ultimately, an
amateur enterprise. The more that Americans treated teaching as a highly
personal endeavor, dependent on the idiosyncrasies of the instructor,
the less they could develop shared standards for it. Nor have they
rigorously documented college instruction, a highly public activity
which has taken place mostly in private. Pushing open the classroom
door, The Amateur Hour illuminates American college teaching and
frames a fresh case for restoring intimate learning communities,
especially for America's least privileged students. Anyone who wants to
change college teaching will have to start here.
