When my academic career at U of T began, I was astounded to find myself in classes with more students than there are people in my hometown. People around the university often say that it is easy to get lost in the crowd here, but I revelled in large lectures. I found that, as my professors were speaking to crowds of several hundred students, they worked hard to deliver dazzling lectures. Many of my classes were held in theatres and I often felt as if I were watching a thoughtful, well-rehearsed one-person show, rather than a dry academic talk.
Now that I am in my fourth year, however, nearly all of my classes are seminars, with somewhere between 15 and 50 people. Initially, I was excited to hear my professors talk about their most beloved subjects, and to engage with them and my classmates in a more intimate setting. Alas, my seminar experience has revealed a darker truth instead: my professors are lazy.
An ideal seminar should combine the best of both lectures and tutorials: professors should share their expert interpretation of the subject matter, and students should feel comfortable asking questions and discussing concepts with the class. Rather, I have found that seminar professors tend to abandon the idea of a cohesive lecture in favour of activities that seem to focus on students, but really only save the professor time and effort.
For instance, one of my literature professors starts every lecture by surveying the class for their thoughts on that week’s book. The entirety of the two-hour class stems from students’ responses, with little to no mediation from the professor.
My grievance is not that my peers are incapable of contributing meaningfully to class discussion, but that they could not possibly approach the nuanced perspectives of professors who have devoted their academic lives to the subject matter.
Undergraduates have much to learn from their professors, even in upper-year courses. We should not be robbed of their insights in seminars under the guise of student-centered learning. Without a professor’s interpretation of course material and their conscious mediation of discussion, a literature class is no more than a glorified book club.
What is worse, some professors devise time-wasting activities that relieve them from having to actually teach, or even staying in the room for that matter. In three of my courses, we watched full films during valuable class time. None of them are film studies courses.
Sadly, the laziness I’ve observed in my professors doesn’t stop in the classroom. One of my professors refuses to accept emails. Another is regularly absent from his office hours. Yet another grades essays without providing any comments. Several of my professors refuse to use Blackboard, making it incredibly difficult to keep up with changing syllabus and assignment instructions, which often arrive weeks after they were promised. Where is the quality control in our classrooms? It seems that professors are under no obligation to be good educators.
When teachers don’t teach, students are cheated — yet there seem to be no consequences for lazy teachers. We get so few contact hours with our professors that there are no excuses not to make the most of them. To be sure that professors are teaching and not wasting students’ time, the university ought to implement more frequent course evaluations and take their results into consideration through professional performance evaluations.
Student should be able to comment on, and hopefully affect, the quality of their professors’ teaching while the course is still in session. We should have the right to be taught by professors who work hard for our education so that we may do our best work for them and for ourselves.
Anita Penn* is a fourth-year student at Victoria College studying English.
*Name changed at the author’s request.
