These statements are an attempt to show how my lectures are affected by the methodological use of a critical perspective. Essentially this approach entails the transformation of the teacher into a "benign disrupter" [note: For a discussion of "benign disruption" as a means who for creating classroom conditions conducive to learning critical thinking skills, see Goldsmid and Wilson 1980, pp. 78-97, 297-298.] who challenges preconceptions and stereotypes. Such a teacher does not have a "line" that students must follow, but encourages them to develop their own viewpoint as long as it is well argued sociologically. [note: I explain to students that although it is important to discuss their feelings and beliefs in class, it is also important that they develop the ability to think sociologically about the course content.] Theoretically, my way of teaching should create "cognitive dissonance," generate debates, and enhance learning. In practice, however, this is not the case: students remain mostly silent, busily taking notes and trying to get every word on paper as if that process somehow would help them learn. Examination results generally are disappointing; with few exceptions, answers that do not reiterate stereotypes and ideological views (one-sided, empirically indefensible) tend to reflect memorization, not thinking and learning.

THE SILENT CLASSROOM

I often have asked myself why the majority of students behave like those in the Doonesbury cartoon. In every class a few students participate more than the rest, although class participation and dialogue, welcome as they are, remain within limited bounds and focus at best on conceptual clarification. A few students tell me outside the classroom that they enjoy the class and appreciate the challenges and new ideas; others, too shy perhaps to tell me personally how they feel about the class, write short messages on the last page of their final examinations. No matter how few they might be, they make it all worthwhile, but I always wonder and worry about the "silent majority" in the classroom and the reasons for their silence.

Because I teach in a state university where most of the students are affluent and white, the students' apathy may reflect their class background. This is not to say that students are conservative in their political outlook, but that their relatively secure position in the world makes their sense of self and reality impervious to the challenges implicit in teaching from a critical perspective. Other important structural determinants of student apathy, however, are rooted in the educational system itself, and in some characteristics of American society.

In the state university system, an important structural determinant of the "silent classroom" in sociology classes is an administrative policy that regards sociology as a service discipline useful for bolstering undergraduate enrollments by servicing preprofessional programs. Economic and political changes during the 1970s and 1980s led to declining enrollments in sociology (and in other social sciences as well), while enrollments in preprofessional and professional programs soared. In a time of shrinking funds for education, these developments have placed sociology in jeopardy. Administrative cuts or the threat of cuts can pressure sociology departments to develop survival strategies designed to market their discipline, tailoring course offerings to the needs of other university programs and to the job market. In those conditions, course requirements become counterproductive because they curtail enrollments, and the curriculum as a whole grows weak. These developments eventually undermine the quality of the department's course offerings and the academic credibility of the program; thus new administrative threats are generated (for a discussion of these issues, see Stark 1984, p. 11).

These departmental conditions (together with the "market" approach to undergraduate education) have a profound effect on teaching, particularly the teaching of upper-division courses: only a minority of students are likely to be sociology majors, and even they might not have the solid background in sociology which is conducive to greater class participation. As a result, I invariably must dedicate a few classes to presenting the basics and to explaining what the sociological perspective is all about. Lack of class participation might result in part from nonmajors' instrumental attitude to the course and from majors' lack of integrated knowledge of basic sociology and sociological perspectives.

A second important structural determinant, which establishes the conditions for the first, is the organization of undergraduate education itself. Education at this level operates like a marketplace, where most students shop around each semester and emerge with a schedule that often reflects their preferred use of time rather than well-considered choices. Even when students are fulfilling their requirements conscientiously, the ultimate result may be disappointing; the whole may be less than the sum of its parts.

Third, the conditions under which students must study are as inappropriate as the conditions for teaching. The university system makes enormous time demands on students; because they must complete successfully several courses per semester, they never have time to reflect, to conduct research on their own, to develop a self-directed style of study, or to acquire an independent orientation to the discipline or to a particular topic. In this situation, teachers like myself meet at cross-purposes with their students. From the students' standpoint, such teachers are too demanding: they require too much reading and too much writing.

A fourth determinant concerns the effects of American high school education, which is shaped by educational theories based on the notion that "learning should be problem centered rather than . . . concept centered" (Aronowitz and Giroux 1985, p. 50). Most students seem to reach the university lacking basic knowledge and skills: they are unable to express their thoughts orally or in writing in a clear, articulate way, and they experience enormous difficulties in dealing with abstractions. They manifest "a tendency towards literalness . . . (they) seem enslaved to the concrete"; thus "students exemplify an extreme form of empiricist epistemology" (Aronowitz and Giroux 1985, p. 49). The widespread use of simple multiple-choice questions (encouraged by textbooks that give teachers hundreds of ready-made questions for examinations) fosters the development of pattern recognition skills, while the ability to analyze, to synthesize, to develop inferences from data or from given premises, and to think independently and critically remain relatively undeveloped. My assessment of this problem is shared by colleagues. One professor of psychology at Boulder wrote recently:

[M]y own classroom experience suggests that there are profound deficiencies in the ability of many undergraduates to think logically and to employ analogical reasoning. This condition is closely associated with a disinclination and/or lack of ability to engage in critical thinking. Text is accepted without reflection, and authoritative status is granted without reservation. The provisional nature of opinion and of truth claims is not understood. If it is written down or presented by authority figure there is little disposition to entertain doubt (Gollin 1987, p. 3; emphasis in the text).

What goes on in schools, on the other hand, reflects what takes place in the social and cultural context. Mass culture, particularly television, has " . . . colonized the social space available to the ordinary person for reading, discussions, and critical thought" (Aronowitz and Giroux 1985, p. 51). The privatization of American life and the transformation of most people into passive consumers of entertainment have undermined their ability to think critically about themselves, their country, and world affairs; few students grow up in households where adults, relying on their own sense of lived history, engage in critical discourse as an ordinary activity.

A fifth structural determinant, obvious but crucial, is the fact that education-whatever lofty ideals administrators, politicians, and the mass media may express from time to time-is simply a means for employment. Young people come to the university (with some exceptions, no doubt) to obtain the credentials that will give them an edge in the job market. Understandably, they do their best to maximize their chances, and they approach their studies with market demands in mind. Therefore they have little time or desire for intellectual exploration for its own sake.

Last but not least is the possibility that my classroom experience may reflect my reliance on lectures. Research suggests that lectures are effective for transmitting information but "not as effective as discussion or other active-learning methods in promoting thought and developing higher order intellectual skills" (Goldsmid and Wilson 1980, p. 277; emphasis in text). On the other hand, lectures can be made effective; they do not have to be dominated by the instructor or made into boring exercises of exposition. There are ways of structuring form and content which (theoretically) can be as productive as other methods (see, for example, Goldsmid and Wilson 1980, p. 201-218).

As shown by my earlier statement about the goals of my lectures, I do not indulge in simple exposition. Ideally, my lectures should be effective; colleagues who invite me to be a guest speaker in their classes or who visit my classroom have given me positive feedback. Most students, however, seem unimpressed; some find lectures useful, while others complain that I am not covering the readings. I make it clear from the very beginning, however, that I take for granted their ability to read; although I will answer their questions and will explain concepts and theories, the lectures are designed to supplement and go beyond the readings.

Furthermore, students tend to find reading and writing requirements excessive, and consider both readings and examination questions "too hard." It seems that the empiricist epistemology which students bring to the classroom stands in the way of their ability to grasp abstractions and relationships between aspects of social life which have not been reified already into recognizable patterns. This situation would explain, for example, why students easily understand Davis and Moore's (1966) meritocratic theory of stratification but find Tumin's (1966) critique difficult and unconvincing.

Under the conditions described above, the "silent classroom" is to be expected. I still believe that any challenge to people's commonly held values and to their sense of self, place in society, and the nature of social reality is likely to generate controversy and debate, as long as the challenge is understood. It may be that lectures, whatever their structure and their intended methodological goals, are insufficient to challenge students' epistemological limitations. In turn, these limitations probably are reinforced in other classes and certainly are strengthened by the culture and the mass media.

Some teachers rely on unusual techniques to enhance learning and to make students more interested and involved. A temporary though superficial "success" might result from teaching games, techniques based on ethnomethodological practices designed to shake students' "normal" expectations in the classroom, or therapeutic techniques designed to help students "feel good" about the class and about themselves. Students might become angry or worshipful, depending on the technique, and might respond positively to the teacher's efforts, but the "silent classroom" has roots beyond the reach of teaching techniques, no matter how innovative they may be. (For an excellent critique of the "therapeutic classroom" see Elshtain 1978, pp. 291-313). Some of those techniques, particularly those which cater to the individualistic and psychologistic outlook that students bring to the classroom, actually might increase students' difficulty in dealing with structural and macro-level social science analysis.

Nevertheless, perhaps I should consider adopting some techniques that others have found successful, such as asking students to write autobiographies (Aronowitz and Giroux 1985, p. 54), to keep diaries (as is common in women's studies courses), or to design utopias which engage students in "consciousness raising around methodology and ideology" (Shor 1978, pp. 176-195). I might also increase my effectiveness as a teacher by reducing my reliance on lectures and by using other ways to generate discussions such as organizing a debate, dividing the class into small groups which then report to the class as a whole, or asking students to teach their peers.

I acknowledge research findings that give credence to the effectiveness of these and other active-learning methods, but one question remains unanswered to my satisfaction: Are they appropriate for university-level teaching? Aren't these techniques more appropriate in high school? Shouldn't students come to the university already in possession of considerable cognitive and writing skills so that the gap between teachers and students is narrower than at the present? This gap creates a situation conducive to the failure of students' and teachers' efforts. Teachers must choose either to fail as teachers for some of their undergraduate students while attempting to challenge them intellectually by treating them as learning peers, or to obtain good teaching evaluations at the price of simplifying and avoiding complexity and ambiguity. In Gill's (1986) words, "The system tends to reward those faculty who can produce the greatest discontinuity between the cognitive demands in research and those required from students" (Gill 1986, p. 16).

CONCLUSION

I have, it should be clear, no research evidence to support this analysis. It is based on my teaching experience alone, although colleagues here and in other universities agree with much of what I have said. The articles by professors Gollin (1986) and Gill (1986), from this university, also show that a great deal of similarity exists between their experiences and mine. On the other hand, experiences and forms of consciousness are not uniquely our own but are the product of multiple historical determinations. Thus, even though these statements are unsupported by hard data, they are likely to be echoed by many others who struggle under the same conditions.

The silent classroom is the outcome of many structural and ideological factors that subvert the potential for learning and for generating classroom debate; such potential is inherent in teaching from a critical perspective or any other viewpoint that seeks to increase students' knowledge and intellectual abilities. Stark (1984, pp. 11-12), facing similar problems in the course of teaching critical sociology, suggests that teachers should focus their energies on creating the required "preconditions"; specifically, teaching the thinking and writing skills that students should have learned in high school. After all, university-level teaching requires students with university-level skills.

Many teachers, including myself, recognize this elementary need and try to help students reach that level. This practice seems laudable in itself but has disturbing, though not unexpected, implications about the nature of higher education in the United States. It indicates more clearly than any amount of writing on the topic that what passes as university education at the undergraduate level is increasingly taking over the tasks of high school education. Meanwhile the latter consolidates and keeps primarily its sorting functions: placing young people into "tracks," directing them toward different kinds of job training and educational institutions (which sometimes are hard to differentiate, especially at the level of two-year colleges), or pushing them directly into the labor force.

Now that I have achieved this understanding of the structural context of higher education, it is time to engage in selfcriticism. I relied a great deal on lectures: regardless of my intended goals, that technique seems to be less suitable for attaining those goals, particularly when students focus on content rather than on structure. Furthermore, I disregarded the context in which teaching takes place; I used a method that gave me excellent results elsewhere (Dartmouth College and the University of Kent in England) without coming to terms, in practice, with the realities of mass education in a state university. In part, the silent classroom is a situation of my own making.

This point opens up a new line of inquiry which cannot be pursued in this essay: the relationship between successful teaching and job satisfaction among college teachers, and their awareness of the real, nonuniversity nature of the institutions where they teach. For example, the trend toward making universities accountable for what they do through "outcome assessment" processes which entail the definition of measurable educational goals is likely to narrow the gap between high school and university-level teaching, particularly at the undergraduate level. This practice is being established at the University of Colorado. University and college teachers might become more effective insofar as they recognize the realities behind the role of university professor and the degree to which universities are not exactly what they claim to be. The fact that many teachers already recognize this situation (consciously or unconsciously) is evident to me in the kinds of teaching techniques and games devised to entice undergraduate students to learn.

An analysis of the possible determinants of the silent classroom does not point to quick solutions which would improve teaching without lowering standards almost to high school levels. Having acknowledged my share of the responsibility, I intend to reexamine my teaching strategies. I plan to adopt several of the techniques described in Goldsmid and Wilson (1980) and in the Compendium of Good Ideas, circulated at the University of Colorado by the Faculty Teaching Excellence Program. Even so, I think that the structure of undergraduate education needs to be changed along the following or similar lines:

1. Each department would prepare different paths for the attainment of a B.A. degree and would have a commitment to offer those courses regularly, regardless of the number of students enrolled. This arrangement would enable students to plan and pace their education from beginning to end.
2. Students would enroll in as many courses as they think they can attend productively; courses would be taught as a combination of small seminars and lectures. Lecture attendance would be optional, but seminar attendance and participation would be required.
3. This form of organizing teaching would

   require many more faculty members. Smaller classes and a narrower gap between their research interests and the students' would be conducive to greater job satisfaction among teachers and better learning opportunities for students.

4. Examinations would be offered at regularly

   set times, perhaps three times a year, independently from the teaching. Students would have the option of taking as many examinations as they felt ready to take. Within this system, and depending on their personal talents and resources, some students would finish in two or three years while others would take a longer time.

Unavoidably these suggestions are brief and incomplete, but they illustrate what I mean by university-level teaching and studying. The aim of this kind of arrangement is clear: to establish the conditions for self-directed study and rewarding teaching, and to do away with some of the organizational constraints that presently create frustration for both students and teachers. I do not think, however, that if changes of this sort were implemented, most students would have the cognitive skills to take advantage of them.

In view of universities' and colleges' concern with cost-effectiveness and with measurement of teaching outcomes, it is not likely in the near future that we will witness organizational changes designed to create a better learning environment, where students are treated as adults and receive more responsibility, and where teachers encounter motivated and capable students. Also I am aware that the structural limitations to individuals' efforts to improve their teaching are overwhelming. It may be that "real" university education in the average state university which is relatively homogeneous in race, ethnicity, and social class-must begin at the graduate level. To acknowledge that fact, unwelcome as it is, might be a prerequisite for better undergraduate teaching. Individual changes leave structures unchanged: without qualitative changes in the conditions that shape education at all levels today, including a rethinking of "university-level" teaching and learning itself, and of the differences between high school and university education, the "silent classroom" is here to stay.

REFERENCES

     Aronowitz, Stanley and Henry A. Giroux. 1985.
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     Davis, Kingsley, and W.E. Moore. 1966.  "Some
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     Goldsmid, Charles A., and E.K.Wilson. 1980.  Passing
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     Gollin, Eugene S. 1987.  "Curriculum Reform Can Offset
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     Shot, Ira. 1980.  Critical Teaching and Everyday, Life,
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Martha E. Gimenez is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is the author of numerous articles in the fields of population theory, Marxist theory, and feminist theory. Address correspondence to Martha E. Gimenez, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309.