Anecdotal evidence of irresponsible or doctrinaire teaching is frequently criticized for being just that--anecdotal. The argument there is, as one Unapologetically Tenured commenter at InsideHigherEd is fond of remarking, that "the plural of anecdote still isn't data." Maybe not. But stories based on students' experiences are often the only information we have about what happens inside classrooms. And anecdotes do add up to reveal patterns, and patterns become, over time, their own form of data.

Bob Dionne is a businessman and former radio talk show host in Providence, Rhode Island. He recently had occasion to compare two professors--both teaching history, and using similar textbooks--at the local community college. This is what he has to say:

I tell this tale not out of malice, petulance or retribution but, rather, out of an abiding ethical obligation to Rhode Island taxpayers, a respect for scholarship, and a commitment to students who have a passionate love of learning.

Like millions of snowflakes in flight from the sky, it is quite obvious that no two professors are exactly alike. From my experience with two professors at the Community College of Rhode Island's Lincoln campus, both teaching U.S. history and using textbooks by the same authors, I was unnerved and intellectually jolted by the wide disparity in the quality of teaching and curriculum content between the two educators.

They exemplify the best and worst of education in the American classroom today. At semester's end, I came away with two dramatically different experiences: One was enriching and rewarding, the other unfulfilling, frustrating, and tedious to exasperation.

To witness such an insult to learning and say nothing is to be a silent accomplice. This is my tale of two professors. Let me begin with the better.

He's Dennis Najarian, a professor of social sciences. Clockwork predictable, Professor Najarian enters his classroom 25 minutes early, at 6:35 p.m. sharp. After a quick nod of welcome to the early birds, he erases the blackboard, his face showing annoyance with the preceding instructor for not having done so. His pre-class ritual includes a variety of activities, such as outlining the night's lecture on the board and engaging students in conversation about the previous lecture or assigned readings.

It is during these pre-class "rap" sessions that students learn that the professor is a PawSox loyalist and a die-hard Celtics fan, still reliving the Larry Bird years. It is only after some further prodding into his background that we learn that Professor Najarian holds a doctorate in history from Harvard.

Precisely at 7 p.m. he begins his lecture with the utterance "Let's get on with it."

With certainty and purpose, Professor Najarian artfully transforms a remarkable story of early America into a colorful and powerful narrative. He revivifies the important issues and personalities of American history, taking his students on a majestic and informative journey through time, from the first settlements in the wilderness to Reconstruction.

Professor Najarian paints the canvas of the mind with ideas and knowledge without becoming pedantic. With professional objectivity, he takes fuzzy events and makes them clear. He accomplishes this by inviting the exchange of ideas and encouraging students to arrive at their own conclusions. This lively exchange is the core of teaching excellence.

In his first lecture, he announced what I call his "Declaration of Expectation," in which he informed his students that they could get an A if they attended class, took good notes, read the assigned text, and studied hard. I don't know if I share Professor Najarian's optimistic expectations. I do know, however, that if his regimen is earnestly adopted, each student will achieve an informed grasp of the social, political and economic evolution of the United States.

Then we have somebody I will call "Professor Z":

After he formally introduces himself to the class, he instantly exhorts his students to "just call me Jack." (I have changed that name, too.) Jack proceeds to boast to the CCRI class that they are better students than those at Salve Regina University, his alternate teaching home.

Jack is addicted to an attentive ear and needs the classroom more than the classroom needs him. The class is his private stage, from which he presents what I call "Jack's Monologues," a selection of colorful stories that describe the best and worst of times in his life. His is a captive audience, fresh out of high school, for whom it is much easier to listen to his anecdotes than to learn about 19th Century social Darwinism. Even sensitive family disputes and credit-card extravagances are not excluded from the "Monologues."

In a good-deed story, Jack recalls a time when he received an A in a humanities class, despite non-attendance for the entire semester. Jack indicates that special circumstances--specifically, his caring for a handicapped teenager--influenced his professor's decision to give him the A.

In another monologue, Jack laments his non-union status as an adjunct professor at CCRI, and the refusal of union professors to dine with him. The class is duly sympathetic.

This informality is not without its consequences. In one instance, Jack's informality bit him nastily when he described his wife's birthday celebration at an upscale restaurant, only to have a student inquire whether Jack had consummated the festive evening at a motel.

There is a segment of the class allocated to the teaching of history. A summa cum laude graduate of the "dumbing-down" school of education, Jack is seldom prepared, and turns to the kindness of the class for study-outline direction. Without notes, his lectures are fashioned to prepare his students for a final take-home essay exam--to be composed between The Sopranos and American Idol?

The classroom is Jack's sanctuary for promoting his left-wing agenda. Reinforced by an un-American textbook, he delights in glorifying all that is bad with America. The good is a lonely stranger. Jack really doesn't teach history but, rather, his own opinions. Prone to outrageous hyperbole (and occasional sexual innuendo), he once actually said, "Everyone in class knows more history than President Bush."

I guess they do know much more history than the president, because they can miss almost as many classes as they attend, and leave early to play softball, go to a job, or perform good deeds. CCRI should award 3 credits for merely enrolling in Jack's course and not taking it.

History is better not taught than ill-taught.

Banned from his classroom for offering an unsolicited critique of his teaching, a week before semester's end, I guess I will never know the answer to the question that will forever haunt me. I'd like to know if the professor who gave Jack an A in his humanities course, despite Jack's non-attendance, also taught history.

Thanks to Michael McKeown for the link.

UPDATE: A reader writes,

Don't call them "anecdotes." Call them "case studies." Then it's all scientific. ;)

Or to put it another way, data in social sciences is never universal. It's for a particular time, a particular place, under a particular set of laws. Case studies can be narrow but deep in terms of dynamics and detail. Broader data is more generalizable, but also more shallow. It's just silly to have a canonical preference for one over the other.

I think this shows the precise problem with anecdotal evidence. I believe anecdotes can make fine evidence, but only when the anecdotes are precisely observed and represented. A good travel writer, or even a great anthropologist, uses anecdotal evidence.

But let's look at Dionne's "evidence." Here's good professor Najarian: "With certainty and purpose, Professor Najarian artfully transforms a remarkable story of early America into a colorful and powerful narrative. He revivifies the important issues and personalities of American history, taking his students on a majestic and informative journey through time, from the first settlements in the wilderness to Reconstruction."

OK, class, riddle me this: what is Professor Najarian's pedagogical method? Is he lecturing or engaging in Socratic dialogue with the class? Has he turned the class into groups? Do the class members give presentations, either as groups or individuals? Can't really say, huh? Dionne's anecdote reads like a blurb: a lot of hollow adjectives that don't add up to much. Dionne refers to the lesson as a "lecture," but then we get this passage: "With professional objectivity, he takes fuzzy events and makes them clear. He accomplishes this by inviting the exchange of ideas and encouraging students to arrive at their own conclusions. This lively exchange is the core of teaching excellence." How does the professor negotiate lecture and exchange? We don't know.

From what we can gather, the good professor dramatically narrates the textbook material. Sounds redundant to me, and it also sounds like such drama itself turns the classroom into a stage. The history teachers I've had didn't retell or act out the historical narratives we just read in the text, but rather pointed out sites of ambiguity, places where historical interpretation could go in multiple directions. They presented primary documentary evidence and had the class analyze it together. It was less "In the Actor's Studio" and more the hard work of historical research. But Dionne makes Najarian sound like Eugen Weber on PBS.

This isn't to say that Dionne misrepresents Professor Jack. But note that he gives far more specifics in his Jack anecdote than his Najarian tales.

I think the anecdotes were specific enough. Najarian talked about history and Jack talked about Jack.

This is something we commenters have brought up more than once. It's doubly wrong for teachers to take up class time pushing their political views; wrong because if it's a required class they are abusing their captive audience, and wrong because the students paid tuition to learn whatever the catalog said they were going to learn and they're being cheated.