People (myself included) who favor the radical overhaul of educators' training are wont to suggest that ed schools should become more like journalism schools: optional institutions that you attend if you think they add value but that you're not obliged to attend before entering this profession, so long as somebody wants to hire you and give you a chance. (Business schools are another frequent analogue.) We tend to suggest this as alternative and antidote to the conventional wisdom in the education field that prefers to compare itself with medicine or law, professions where - thanks to their own cartels' influence over public policy - attendance at designated and accredited university graduate programs is now a prerequisite for getting a license to practice.
But what if, instead, journalism schools were to become more like ed schools? That's the direction they are pointed by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger, who recently issued a "statement on the future of journalism education" that was brilliantly dissected and rebutted by Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson. [Bollinger's manifesto can be found at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/03/04/lcb_j_task_force.html.]
Bollinger presides over one of America's more prominent journalism schools but he isn't happy with it - and, not long ago, interrupted its search for a new dean to try to reshape the institution along new lines. He also ended up plucking Nicholas Lemann from The New Yorker to become dean. Lemann's credentials include authoring The Big Test, a fine history of the S.A.T. He's a highly accomplished journalist/scholar. He did not, however, attend journalism school. He began his career in this field by editing the Harvard Crimson as an undergraduate and then went on from job to job. (Imagine installing someone at the helm of an "ed school" who possesses only an undergraduate degree!)
Yet the reforms that Bollinger espouses for journalism education could have come from the world of ed schools, perhaps from Columbia's very own Teachers College or maybe the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. After numerous pieties about the role of journalism in a free society, he urges that the basic master's degree program in that field be lengthened from one to two years - the heck with the cost to all concerned - and that its "educational goal" should be "to develop a base of knowledge...that is crafted specifically for what leading journalists need to know;" that it include practice time "outside the classroom," such as "clerkships with outstanding practitioners;" and that the program should "integrate thought and action." He cautions against paying excessive attention to "basic skills training," never mind that journalism students crave it "because they are eager to become professionals...and think basic skills will enhance their immediate employment prospects." Shame on them for not appreciating what they really need to know, which is something far loftier: "a mastery of journalistic inquiry and expression at their highest, most sophisticated, level," according to Bollinger. "This implies an educational environment where clear expression interacts with complex understanding." And on and on.
Bob Samuelson is one of America's keenest, most astute journalists, but he never went to journalism school either. Instead, he, like Lemann, learned his craft "on the job," also beginning at the Harvard Crimson as an undergraduate. And last week he shot a volley across Bollinger's bow that should be required reading for educators (and those who would prepare or make policy for them) as well as people in journalism. Most of his points apply directly to teaching (and school leadership) as well. Excerpts follow:
"Bollinger's vision amounts to snob journalism: journalism by an elite for an elite.... [His] manifesto brims with platitudes....No media enterprise has a captive audience. In a thriving democracy, people have more choices. The trouble for the news media is that they're not choosing news. His proposals wouldn't improve matters. Journalism is best learned by doing it. Mostly, an aspiring reporter needs a job, preferably for an exacting editor. You try to be accurate, clear, quick, perceptive and engaging. These are not abstract skills learned in a classroom. At best, journalism schools are necessary evils. They provide basic training - usually through mock newsrooms - that most papers and broadcast stations won't....But keep it brief.....The intellectual leavening that many journalists want is best acquired through midcareer sabbaticals and university programs (there are already many). Even now, journalists' self-importance stirs public resentment. Bollinger would make it worse by insisting we're a 'profession.' Journalism is a job, a craft and often a passion. What's wrong with his word is that our audiences aren't mainly doctors, lawyers and accountants - aren't 'professionals' - and the new label adds an extra air of superiority. Bollinger says the label is needed to create 'strong standards and values'....How condescending. Most good journalists already believe in accuracy, independence and fairness....The main villains are personal ambition, deadline pressure, media competition and unconscious bias. A new label won't eliminate those....Here is a larger issue that should preoccupy Bollinger and other college presidents. As a society, we're sending more and more young people to college. Presumably, one task of college is to engage students in the big ideas and events of their time. On the evidence, that's not happening. Why - and what should colleges do about it?"
Samuelson is right. Journalism schools may be a necessary evil for those who cannot get good training elsewhere. That's also a perceptive way to think about ed schools. Let them be an option. Let people attend them if they add value or supply needed skills. But the government should stop forcing people into them.
Fortunately for us all, government cannot force people into journalism schools. As Lee Bollinger notes, America "will never have an official system of licensing of journalists, given our First Amendment, so that the possibility of becoming a journalist without having a degree in journalism will continue." This leads him to argue that journalism school programs need to be developed that are "so compelling that the most promising future leaders in journalism decide that a professional education is critical to a successful career and life." In other words, let these institutions prove themselves in the market. How about embracing that as education policy, too? How about a constitutional amendment saying that government shall make no laws restricting freedom of education?
"Snob journalism," by Robert Samuelson, The Washington Post, April 23, 2003
