Jonathan Zimmerman: It's time to give teaching more weight

Why did Larry Summers get forced out of the Harvard presidency? There were many reasons, starting with Mr. Summers's impolitic remarks about women's ability in the sciences. He also annoyed the faculty by suggesting that they teach more introductory-level classes, not just narrow courses about their research specialities.

But as Mr. Summers must have known, mere exhortation will never change university teaching. Although we all give lip service to classroom instruction, there's simply no reward in it. Teaching doesn't advance your career....

How did we arrive at this strange state of affairs? The story begins about a century ago, with the creation of the modern American research university. Modeled largely after German universities, where many leading American educators had studied, these new institutions privileged original scholarship over teaching."It is to the discoverers, in far greater measure than the transmitters, that the world is under obligation," declared a professor of Latin at the University of Chicago in 1902.

Some proponents stressed the social utility of new knowledge, which would help the United States improve health, housing, transportation, and more. Others celebrated scholarship for its own sake, not for any practical application."Remember the research ideal, to keep it holy!" intoned another Chicago professor, echoing the sacred Jewish injunction about the Sabbath.

But to attract students - and to pay the bills - scholars were still required to teach. Some professors happily accepted this duty; more often than not, however, they downplayed or ignored it. Asked what he would do with the undergraduates who had gathered in his laboratory for instruction, one Johns Hopkins University professor quipped,"I shall neglect them."

He was joking, of course, but only in part. And the joke will continue until we devise new ways to evaluate and reward teaching. As my New York University colleague Ken Bain has written, all professors should have to" construct an argument" for their teaching - just as they do for their scholarship. This argument would explain the objectives of their courses, the classroom strategies they use, the ways they measure student learning, and so on. Like any good argument, it would draw from evidence gathered during the course: syllabi, tests, and student comments.

Second, tenure committees need to make such evaluations matter. In my 15 years as a professor, I've met many good teachers who were denied tenure for lack of scholarship. But I've never encountered a good scholar who didn't get tenure because he or she couldn't teach....