SYLLABUS

An inspiring exhortation to make the standard college syllabus work harder and better.

Germano and Nicholls, who teach at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York, argue that the syllabus, “that almost invisible bureaucratic document,” must become something more than the purposes it normally serves: as something of a contract between teacher and student (if you do X and Y, you will get an A) and as a repository of university policies on such things as unexcused absences, plagiarism, and accommodation for special needs that the teacher almost certainly did not write. Both those functions are necessary, but the syllabus can be more useful. The authors encourage teachers to keep a “secret syllabus” that is a teaching diary, reflecting on successes and failures in presenting material and eliciting students’ responses. Moreover, the authors hit hard and repeatedly on the thought that the best teaching turns on notions of “student-centered pedagogy,” which relies on collaborative projects. “So when we craft a syllabus,” they write, “let’s choose to think actively about the plan we’re making for students to know together and how to know together.” Over the course of this short book, the subject subtly transforms from the Rousseauvian pedagogical contract to the act of teaching itself, with some useful pointers toward unwonted practices, such as the teacher’s holding discourse back and insisting that the students talk, as well as promoting the thought that if the course contains readings, students must be actively committed to that work. “Because we sometimes fail to fully imagine our students in that act of reading,” write the authors, “our syllabi sometimes fail to create the right conditions for students to read well.” Overburdened teachers will cheer the authors’ suggestion that they mark only categorical errors on written work—but perhaps will groan at the thought of reading “a fully corrected redraft.”

A thoughtful, provocative collection of well-tested teaching strategies and philosophies that work across the curriculum.