Chodorow lays out goal of undergrad education at Penn

There's a significant difference between preaching and teaching, Provost Stanley Chodorow emphasized in a lecture on undergraduate education Monday. In his address, "The Purpose of Undergraduate Education at Penn," Chodorow spoke about the need to teach Penn students civic duties -- but added that this is not the role of classroom professors. "One of the problems I think we have is we [combine] academic and moral tutorship in the academic office," Chodorow said. "We don't create a separate space where the other kind of tutorship, moral, can take place." Chodorow shared his views with about 40 students and professors in Houston Hall's Bodek Lounge. When one audience member asked how he would respond to someone with an opposing viewpoint, Chodorow retorted, "I'd kick his ass." He added that the planned conversion of the University's residences into college houses will help eliminate the need to teach civic duties in academic courses. "One of the things we are trying to do with the college houses is to embed a type of [moral] education [that should not be] presented in the classroom," he said. Chodorow noted that because of the way universities were set up centuries ago, professors teach civic responsibility in their courses in addition to academic material -- a combination that belongs in the new college houses. Raising several concerns about civic teaching in the classroom, Chodorow said professors' power to grade can easily increase the influence they have on students. "No one can take the power away from the professor to make that judgement [of a grade]," he said, adding that students may feel compelled to adopt their professors' moral views. Although Chodorow said he opposes moral preaching, he cautioned that this does not mean faculty members cannot discuss controversial issues in their classes. But they should approach these issues as part of an analytical, "rational discourse" without bringing their own opinions into the discussion. Despite his wish for increasing the separation between academics and civic teaching, Chodorow said he noticed a trend in American universities towards integrating the two teaching duties. "The fastest growing part of universities in the last 25 years is student services," he said. "The university is absorbing more and more [aspects of] the life of undergraduate students." A question-and-answer period followed Chodorow's speech. One student challenged Chodorow's initial assertion that all professors are "dictators." Hearing this, Chodorow conceded that he "should have used the word 'constitutional monarch'." Rinaldo Jose, a fourth-year Engineering graduate student, said he appreciated hearing the thoughts of a scholar from a different academic discipline. Chodorow specializes in medieval history. "I thought it was very interesting to see what the provost thought about certain things," Jose said. Chodorow's speech, the first "Teaching Talk" of the year, was sponsored by the Graduate Student Teaching Resource Network, the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education and the Writing Program.

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