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I have been teaching for longer than I care to say, and always offer a course for entering freshmen. And I've discovered something quite elemental: all young people have knowledge-thirsty minds that can be awakened and encouraged to examine the world they inhabit in.(1)____
So why do we hear so many professors describe their pupils so hostile to learning?(2)____ I'll stipulate the obvious: colleges want good students. Because by that, they generally mean highly SATs and GPAs.(3)____(4)____ Sadly, this expectation continues at college where, as Harvard's Harvey Mansfield states, professors believe "that what they’re doing the research on is exactly what students need to know.(5)____
How best to get more students into college and get them thinking? A start would be to abandon the constrictions of academic fields. I know of a class that a professor invites the students to ponder human nature.(6)____ They cites Alexander Hamilton, who wrote that human beings are "ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious."(7)____ And then Thomas Jefferson, who held that "morality, compassion, and generosity are innate elements in the human constitution." This is a discussion worth of a college course, in which every one of us can bring information and insights to the analysis.(8)____ This can also happen in the sciences. Thus there's a geology course that starts the professor saying, "After this semester, you'll never look at a rock in the same way again."(9)____ Of course, the students are expecting to put in a lot of hard work. But teachers like that make them willing to do it.(10)____
