AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Something Alan Jacobs said the other day started my brain itching until I realised what was bothering me. He was responding to Ted Gioia’s panegyric on Oxford’s teaching (and examining) as a remedy for AIism; Ted said, ‘For a start, professors in the US would refuse to spend so much time face-to-face with students’, to which Alan replied ‘I know many professors who would strongly prefer to spend more face-to-face time with their students — if they could be delivered from the responsibilities of regular publishing’.

So as an American emigré to Great Britain, I not only see both sides, I have been both sides. Here are some things neither Alan nor Ted mentions.

(a) British publish-or-perish culture is every bit as intense as in the US; indeed, it’s publish-or-you-don’t-get-a-job-in-the-first-place. And with no US-style tenure, it’s keep on publishing. Of course, some professors leverage the urgency of their publishing to spend less time face-to-face with students (lectures rather than tutorials, for instance) though that sets them up for a heavy load of committee work and grant-seeking. Trust me, although I would have accepted a professorial post, it would not have been an Empyrean privilege. (If nothing else, those pay better.)

(b) Because we no longer have academic tenure (thank you, Margaret Thatcher), the pressure to publish never stops.

(c) I don’t know very many teachers in the humanities who want not to see students face to face. Now, I do know many whose spirits flag because of the particular students they do see face to face, but they flag because my colleagues can imagine working with more exciting, inspiring students, and would like to. I’m sure there are faculty for whom student-dodging is a way of life, but I suspect such figures get more attention than their numbers warrant simply because they make such easy targets for japery. Here at Oxford, most of the staff I know (including many professors) spend a lot of face time with students (albeit for some, that’s a lot more time to PG students than undergrads). Me, I can’t envision what my life will be like without students in it.

(d) To the extent that professors and other postholders can and do dodge students at Oxford, the students are covered at least as much by a cadre of part or full-time contingent staff who could easily be (many have been) full-time staff at another uni, as by allegedly under-qualified PG students. A lot depends on which college, what discipline, and whether an academic dean or senior tutor cares much about the topic (shock! horror! not all Oxford colleges give… much attention to who tutors theological topics for them, if they employ any theologians at all). Further: Oxford DPhil candidates are rarely so ‘under-qualified’ as that discourse implies, and especially not where a college cares about its theologians.

(e) Oxford’s system (and, I gather, Cambridge’s is similar) has grown in a particular way in particular circumstances, such that it would be extremely difficult to reproduce in an academic start-up. As Alan points out, the staffing model differs from other typical institutions, but (as neither mentions) the curriculum model is very different. Oxford undergraduates typically sit eight papers in their three years, and often have the same tutor for several of their papers; I took thirty-two classes over four years for my undergraduate degree, from many different faculty. I don’t have the time to work out comparisons, but the complexity of the errand by itself suggests the impossibility of generating such a moddel out of thin air. Probably the best chance would be at an internal ‘honours college’ such as the one where Alan teaches, or a theological college on the border of financial security, that might reconfigure its curriculum toward a pattern of lectures, essays, exams, and [internal] qualifications.

(f) Oh, by the way, sitting written exams is a straightforward a way of defeating illicit use of LLMs. Go, us! I recognise, Oxford recognises, that some people are disadvantaged by written exams, and we offer accommodations intended to attenuate those disadvantages. On the other hand, if somebody knows a mode of evaluation that disadvantages no one, please let me know. At the moment we are considering ways of extracting students from the trap of relying on LLMs instead of writing; written exams (and formative essays) provides a road-tested way of conducting assessment that renders LLMs useless.

I hadn’t expected today to be a good morning run, but once I limbered up (about a half mile in), I kept a good, steady pace and even ratcheted it up slightly as the run went on. I have no explanation for this.

Coffee, fruit, off to Morning Prayer and to check the message machine (yes, St Helen’s has an answering machine, one that you actually have to check in person; this is something I desperately want to change before I leave). Home to work on sermons, then in to Oxford for the NT seminar.

This morning my body was gently but firmly unwilling to run more than a few paces. I was tired (despite a solid seven hours’ sleep), muscles just a little sore but mostly stiff, joints stiff, etc.) and the pollen in the air was irritating my eyes and breathing. Thus I opted to walk my miles this morning, and registered a more pleasant stroll than the miserable slog I would have made if I tried to run. Coffee, fruit, quick check on tonight’s Ascension Day liturgy, and I’ll preside at St Michael’s midweek Ascenion Mass as well. Plus, I need to remember that i’m preaching Sunday…

I will be on retreat next week, and the week after we leave to spend some time with our descendants at Pippa’s and Dyer’s new digs in Sullivan. A change is as good a rest, but a resting change is better still.

I took an easy morning run today, slow and self-indulgent, as my legs were stiff and slow. Then home for coffee and hot breakfast, and — as I sat down to eat breakfast — I check for messages and email. And what a morning it was!

Last week, Lucy Bellwood’s Tumblr page led me to a corner of the internet got excited about ‘driving a car’ along roads by manipulating Google Maps, and had a particular frisson of interest about the radio station WBOR, such that the drivers decided to head to the station at Coles Tower, Bowdoin College. Now, almost fifty years ago I had a radio show on WBOR when it was little more than a room with a record library and a studio on the first floor (US: second floor) of the Moulton Union, and when I was a child (even longer ago) my family lived in a house on 9 South Street, which lot is now a car park. I’d have left a comment to that effect if Tumblr were that sort of operation, but since it’s not I sent a wee email to Lucy Bellwood to note the way this whimsical Net event intersected with my own past life. Well, this morning I opened my email and saw an answer from her with kind words about my persistent running and blogging (Hi, Lucy!).

After I received my email, I glanced at my messaging apps, and there my undergrad roommate Matt was asking about a colourful excursion we and some friends had undertaken back in the olden days. Every now and then Matt and I check in with one another about music, since he was a tremendous influence on my taste during that period in one’s life where enthusiasms and dislikes, once formed, easily become lifelong allegiances. Splendid to hear from Matt this morning, when Lucy and I corresponded about Bowdoin’s radio station.

And finally, I heard from our friend John, a lawyer who (bless him!) helped me out with the legal fallout of a moving violation (it was twilight, it had rained, the road rose and curved, and I didn’t see a crosswalk in which pedestrians had started to walk). He reminded me of the details I needed to know, and caught me up on recent developments with his wife and son. We miss them lots, and Margaret and I were thrilled to hear how they’re doing.

Amaing morning. The internet — it’s not all bad.

Good run yesterday, and very good run today. Yesterday I had public office hours at R&R in the morning, wrote a couple of recommendations, finished a lectionary help on Philemon, constructed a fresh outline of my overdue article on Anglican Hermeneutics, and Margaret and I had a lovely dinner out with Fr Paul (our house isn’t easily wheel-accessible).

This morning my run was, as I said very good: steady pace, with a little push to it. Coffee and fruit, shower and then I’ll catch a bus in to Oxford to attend Wil Gafney’s last two Bampton Lectures (I’ll say Morning Prayer on the bus).

The Orioles have won three in a row, four out of six. Look, I wish Cionel Pérez all the best; I hope another team can fix what no longer works for him and he can regain his form as a reliable middle-innings reliever. But through the past year he’s been too unreliable, and I’m glad that someone else gets his roster spot. It’s good that Charlie Morton gave a quality start last night, too, but he’s still on thin ice for me.

My morning run went s-l-o-w-l-y, but it went. Coffee, fruit, toast, shower, dressed, church, home, work (emails, homily for evening service, etc.), groceries, evening Healing and Wholeness service, home for dinner. The Orioles won one game yesterday, the DFA’ed Cionel Pérez, and they’re ahead right now. Time to do the washing-up and turn in.

Every now and then, someone online reminds me that Metafilter still exists, and I sigh and give a little thanksgiving that not everything from the good old days has been strangled by monopsonists or smothered in AI slop. This afternoon I bumped into a reference to a MeFi thread on reading skills, which thread (and the paper that occasioned it) occupied an hour or so of reading and pondering.

As somebody who has taught reading and writing skills for nigh on to thirty-five years, my experience both confirms and diverges from both the initial paper and the consequent discourse. (When I say ‘taught reading skills’ I refer to the close reading of biblical texts, and when I say ‘[taught] writing skills’ I mean ‘marked papers and tried to help students improve them’.)

On the whole, the extent of the Discourse that concerned whether Bleak House was a good or bad instance of writing missed the point. Some people will read the beginning of Bleak House well, and others won’t. It’s not some absolute indicator of anything, but one may as well use Bleak House as most any other literary sample. I can see some value to choosing another source as a comparison — let’s say, The Magnificent Ambersons, whose first paragraph reads:

Major Amberson had “made a fortune” in 1873, when other people were losing fortunes, and the magnificence of the Ambersons began then. Magnificence, like the size of a fortune, is always comparative, as even Magnificent Lorenzo may now perceive, if he has happened to haunt New York in 1916; and the Ambersons were magnificent in their day and place. Their splendour lasted throughout all the years that saw their Midland town spread and darken into a city, but reached its topmost during the period when every prosperous family with children kept a Newfoundland dog.

But let it be Bleak House, and without letting ourselves be drawn into ‘Who is a competent reader?’ or ‘Is that appropriate research methodology?’ ask, ‘What do we learn from the results of the experiment?’

The researchers note that some readers adopted the unfavourable tactic of ‘oversimplifying’: ‘The most common was oversimplifying — that is, reducing the details of a complex sentence to a generic statement.’ May we mark this as a notable characteristic, the weakness of which one can understand by seeing it as a transition from specific (and often ‘vivid’) to generic? I’ve seen this in decades of some students’ essays on biblical passages. Rather than focusing on the specifics and explaining what effects the details bring about, they remove detail and specificity and substitute generality. In the example from Bleak House, students abstract the general phenomenon of ‘muddiness’ from the descriptions and metaphors that convey the extremity of the mud’s accumulation. How does the paragraph work? By giving several different accounts of the amount of mud, how it got where it is, and to what one might compare it. Or just say, ‘Well, it’s really muddy.’

‘The second most commonly used tactic by problematic readers was guessing.’ Some students in biblical interpretation do this as well — if I ask, ‘What do you mean when you say X?’ or ‘Can you tell me what this term you used means?’ I encounter awkward silences. Not all of this amounts to guessing per se; sometimes it’s just assuming that everyone knows what the term means (so they can use it whether they know it or not) or that they didn’t really understand their claim, but they put it forward in the hope that it would pass unnoticed. Sometimes it’s deliberate bluffing, but much of the time I suspect that it’s inadvertent bluffing, assuming that one’s guess has substance and going forward on that basis, only to discover that their tutor expects them to be able to articulate the grounds for their assumption (or guess). One can easily avoid this by looking up unfamiliar phrases or by testing claims that one finds in a source against other related sources, but that’s time-consuming, it may not have been rewarded at earlier levels of study, and it runs counter to some students’ lack of interest in owning their claims to knowledge.

The authors identify the third problematic gesture that the paper cites as ‘giving personal reactions to the text instead of trying to interpret it.’ I encounter this less often than the ‘specific > abstract’ trajectory and the ‘guess/assumption’, but it too appears in the pages of biblical students’ essays. They change direction from interpreting the text to connecting it to the text’s implications for their doctrinal or spiritual or social or logical concerns. Close reading doesn’t dispense with these concerns, but it puts a higher value on developing a rich appreciation of what the text does and how it does it.

Does all this mean, in the terms of the authors of the paper, that some of my students ‘can’t read’? I wouldn’t say so; rather, I would say that they read to a level of complexity that matches the expectations their settings put on them. If no one has ever asked that they look up unfamiliar terms before they use them (or ‘when they first read them’) in order to attain a sturdier grasp on the ideas in play, very few will extend themselves off their own bat. They inhabit demanding environments in which the extra effort to look up unfamiliar terms has not enhanced their satisfaction in life very much. Especially if they encounter this criterion for the first time in undergraduate life, they have years of their own academic experience that has inculcated the sense that knowing a degree more about their topic than they had to in the past doesn’t bring any particular advantage. Why bother?

So, sure those students can read. They do it all the time. They may not enjoy reading in depth, they may not yet have acquired the skills or inclination to read in depth, they may not (in some cases) have the capacity to read in depth. They may not read very well, and the first paragraphs of Bleak House may put them off (such that they perform less well than they might with another text), and they may not realise just what their examiners expect of them.

I should read MeFi more often.

I missed yesterday, yet again, but (a) my run was not especially distinguished in any way; (b) we had a very favourable report on Flora’s recovery from abdominal surgery, so good news for the ladies; (c) pleasant, relaxing lunch and afternoon; (d) made my way in to Oxford, did a couple of errands and met Nick for dinner at Mission Burrito; (e) went to the Waterboys gig at the New Theatre, where Margaret met us and all had a splendid rocking time; (f) home at a reasonable hour on the X3 with Martin and Catherine from the parish.

The show: Fantastic set — they’re just a powerhouse live act, yet they interacted ably in sync with the videos/image projections during the ‘Life, Death, and Dennis Hopper’ portion. They obviously love playing live, and you can tell they’re seasoned professionals. I’m embarrassed to admit I never noticed, from recordings, that Mike Scott is a terrific guitarist. Songwriting and arranging, sure (‘Genius, hurrah!‘), but I was taken aback to see him tearing into the performance and shaking every ounce out of each song. Brother Paul & James Hallawell duelled brilliantly on keys, and Aongus Ralston & Eamon Ferris kept the rhythm tight + hot. Margaret, Nick, and I unanimously felt it was a top night all around.
(Sugarfoot opened and I’m eager to give a careful listen to their studio work, and they and Barny Fletcher contributed backing vox throughout. Memorable night, wish I’d lingered for merch…)

Yesterday didn’t quite go to plan. The funeral was as desired, and I rode to the crem in the hearse, all well. The Committal at the crem was duly brief, and all were stricken; and the hearse brought me back to St Helen’s. The catch, though, is that the church had been locked up while we were at the crem, with my jacket and keys therein.
Well all right, I walked home and I figured that I’d come in for Morning Prayer tomorrow and wait for the caretaker to open the church and the vestry. Margaret (refining the last stages of her Ethics seminar paper for today at Christ Church) had pizza and caught up on Doctor Who.
Got a good night’s sleep, had my morning run walk (my muscles and joints were stiff — every stride sent jolts up to my spine), coffee and fruit, showered and dressed, went to Morning Prayer but no one with a key came to church or office, home for coffee and toast, off to a home communion, sending an email to the parish office en route (thinking I might borrow a key to liberate my jacket on my way home, got an email saying they were leaving early, I assured it was okay, they offered to pick up my jacket and take it to me at the care home! Then home to shoo Margaret away for her seminar.

Sarah was a life (or at least ‘jacket and keys’) saver — thanks!

I didn’t run this morning, since we had much-needed steady, gentle rain. Morning Prayer, hot breakfast, then Staff Meeting, then a funeral and committal at the crematorium; possibly a round at the wake; then home to close my eyes and let stress ebb from my sinews.

Yesterday’s run went pretty well, a good steady pace. I had coffee and fruit, showered and dressed, came home for coffee and toast, and read and wrote and marked (not just marking, but the soul-deadening process of registering tutorials and marks online) and caught up on email and worked on a funeral homily. I finished up at dinnertime, then rushed off for a DCC meeting, which ended at 9:30 in the evening. The Devil’s workshop didn’t get a look-in.

This morning’s run was adequate, though my joints were stiff and legs were heavy. Then coffee and fruit, shower and dress, coffee and toast, listening to Prof. Wil Gafney give her first two Bampton Lectures at the University Church (my plan to attend went off the rails; I’m determined to catch her second two lectures). Working while I listen.

I’ve been busy (not surprisingly). Yesterday began with an almost-good run, then I did some reading, answered emails, had an afternoon Marriage Consultation (initial paperwork), then Brendan and Rosie (and most importantly, Edie) pinged us to ask whether we’d like to join them for an afternoon chat, since they were in Abingdon checking out the house where they’ll be living next year. Then back home, Margaret working intently on her paper for the Ethics Seminar this week, then dinner and Eurovision while she continued pre-seminar-ing and I caught up on marking and rested from my labours.

This morning I alternated walking and running, as my legs simply balked at giving a full run, or even ‘jog’. Then off to St Nic’s for the 8:00 service, then on to St Helen’s for the 10:30 service, and now I`’m home and tying down loose threads from the past few weeks.