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Don’t Yank the Sage From His Stage. Postmodern teaching fads are compromising student learning.
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | August 8, 2025 | David C. Phillips

Posted on 08/08/2025 11:44:28 AM PDT by karpov

“In most college classrooms,” wrote Alison King in a seminal 1993 article, “the professor lectures and the students listen and take notes. The professor is the central figure, the ‘sage on the stage,’ the one who has the knowledge and transmits that knowledge to the students. […] In this view of teaching and learning,” King argued, “students are passive learners rather than active ones.” And, she continued, “such a view is outdated and will not be effective for the twenty-first century.”

Instead of the transmittal theory described above, King championed a constructivist theory of learning according to which “knowledge [is] constructed—or reconstructed—by each individual knower through the process of trying to make sense of new information in terms of what that individual already knows”—a process called “active learning.” What students need, according to this view, is not a “sage on the stage” but a “guide on the side.” “Essentially,” King explained, “the professor’s role [as a ‘guide on the side’] is to facilitate students’ interaction with the material and with each other in their knowledge-producing endeavor.”

King’s article is a somewhat more modest proposal than contemporary readers familiar with the terminology might expect. But reformation efforts often trigger more revolutionary impulses in others. By 2014, Charles D. Morrison of Wilfred Laurier University was not only referring to “the now-clichéd shift from ‘sage on the stage’ to ‘guide on the side’” but was also declaring that it was only “a good start.” Four years later, Ted Dintersmith even approvingly described a school that “has no teachers, just a few adult ‘guides’ who aren’t expected to be subject-matter experts or allowed to answer questions.”

(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...


TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: college
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To: Dr. Franklin

Kids are just the grist for Deep State’s diploma mills.


21 posted on 08/08/2025 12:52:13 PM PDT by mewzilla (Swing away, Mr. President, swing away!)
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To: dfwgator

I sure hope so. I know a lot of students get seduced into majoring in Gender Studies, Puppetry (yep, Univ of Connecticut), DEI Studies, and other major that destine them to live in the parents’ basement for the next twenty years, but I hope there are still some students who want to be sages.


22 posted on 08/08/2025 12:52:26 PM PDT by econjack
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To: TexasGator
King championed a constructivist theory of learning according to which “knowledge [is] constructed—or reconstructed—by each individual knower through the process of trying to make sense of new information in terms of what that individual already knows”—a process called “active learning.” What students need, according to this view, is not a “sage on the stage” but a “guide on the side.” “Essentially,” King explained, “the professor’s role [as a ‘guide on the side’] is to facilitate students’ interaction with the material and with each other in their knowledge-producing endeavor.”

I was agreeing with the author and arguing against King's position.

23 posted on 08/08/2025 12:55:21 PM PDT by econjack
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To: econjack

“I know a lot of students get seduced into majoring in...”

When I was young I was told it didn’t matter that much what you majored in, the people doing the hiring wanted to see that there was a college degree on your resume. This was a replacement for wanting to see a high school degree because high schools were just pushing people through and giving out unearned degrees. The requirement for a degree was to lighten the workload of hiring so they wouldn’t have to go to the bother of determining true qualifications.

Things got out of control.


24 posted on 08/08/2025 1:07:34 PM PDT by KrisKrinkle (c)
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To: GingisK
There are a few kids who can learn that way.

Most can not.

So this is a good way to crush the many, to make them not only feel stupid but ruin any chance they may have of learning on their own.

25 posted on 08/08/2025 1:27:28 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear ( Not my circus. Not my monkeys. But I can pick out the clowns at 100 yards.)
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To: KrisKrinkle

I’ve told this story before, but it’s fitting. A comedian had just finished his show on a college campus and was at a Q&A afterwards. A student asked: “Have you always wanted to do standup comedy?” He answered: “No. I went to college like you and majored in History. After I graduated, I was shocked to learn that all the History factories had closed, so I fell back on standup comedy.” I think a lot of current students are going to discover that the factories in their major are closed, if they were ever open in the first place.


26 posted on 08/08/2025 1:34:13 PM PDT by econjack
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To: KrisKrinkle

“When I was young I was told it didn’t matter that much what you majored in, the people doing the hiring wanted to see that there was a college degree on your resume.”

I am 78. You must be quite younger.

All the guys I knew that went to college went into STEM, economics or education.

Except for the rich dudes that majored in pre-law or pre-med.

Economics led to MBA or CPA. Education provided easy loans that were forgivable.


27 posted on 08/08/2025 2:26:03 PM PDT by TexasGator (1AI Overview The singular "they" has a history stretching back to the 14th ceThe 750 hp Florida Gnat)
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To: econjack

“This is a crock of crap.”

Your take is precisely what the guy wrote. What is the antecedent of “This” that is a crock of crap.


28 posted on 08/08/2025 2:36:16 PM PDT by odawg
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To: karpov

A lot of people get away with writing articles to justify the fact that they don’t really know anything.


29 posted on 08/08/2025 5:45:40 PM PDT by Chengdu54 (This is a time for which the 2nd Amendment was intended. )
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To: FreedomPoster

Good point.

I would also note that not only do you need super brilliant sages like Feynman, but you need students not to be distracted. And in the age of social media attention spans, that would be difficult


30 posted on 08/10/2025 1:45:27 AM PDT by Cronos
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