Petra Janney '10 Op-ed Sparks Debate on Campus

The Huffington Post opinion page was inundated with comments from Exonian alums, parents, and current students when "Prep School: Talking Trash" by Petra Janney, ‘10, hit the cyber scene on May 3rd.

Read the 135th Exonian Board's response to Janney's article here: "In Response to P. Janney"

In the op-ed, Janney wrote about her experience with Exeter and Harkness pedagogy. She asserted that the system and the way the students were involved in the classroom were responsible for killing her love of mathematics, and converted her from an introvert to a student who was "loud, thoughtless, and concerned only with receiving the perfect grade that would always elude me if I tried to stop and think."

"Open debate, the conceptual basis for the [Harkness] method, allows informed people to enhance and modify their opinions, but it’s an ideal unattainable for a group of ambitious teenagers whose grades rely heavily on the amount of airtime they get," Janney writes in the article. "At Exeter, I learned that what you said was more important than what you knew. I learned that the louder you are, the better you are. I learned that there’s only one way to learn anything, and that’s to talk in circles until someone takes notice."

Janney wrote the article to offer a different view to the typical observations about Harkness pedagogy.

"I wanted to share my perspective in order to start a discourse about what I see as a fundamental problem built into Harkness that reflects a broader trend - the fact that if you're quiet, people assume something is wrong with you," Janney said. "The Harkness method serves as a gold standard in education. I wanted to challenge that."

"My article was not meant to disparage Exeter as an institution, only to challenge the Harkness method as a flawless ideal," she continued. "I’m endlessly grateful that I had the rare opportunity to attend Exeter, and now Harvard; but I want the next generation of Exonians to have a better experience than I did."

The article sparked much debate amongst students and faculty on campus about the drawbacks and advantages of Harkness. "I do agree that Harkness is not for everyone," Director of Studies and Clerk of the Trustees Laura Marshall said. "I think that students should think carefully when coming to Exeter whether Harkness is a good learning environment for them. I think Harkness empowers students. I think it helps students become critical thinkers and problem solvers and that Harkness teaches students how to be true learners and not just receivers of information."

"We’re always collecting feedback from our alums about our classes and Harkness," Marshall added. "Each year the college counseling office surveys graduates. We’re regularly getting information from not just one student who is writing an article, but from many, many students about their experiences here. I think that is more valuable because we’re collecting it from many people."

Tatiana Waterman, science instructor, thought that Petra did not see the benefits of Harkness, or perhaps did not utilize the system properly."Done properly, discussion doesn’t reward speech, but it rewards thinking, cooperation in thinking, admitting that the sum is smarter than the units, and realizing that some students are better than others," Waterman said. "If the student, Petra in this case, thinks that it is vacuous speech that is rewarded, then the teacher did not do the job well, or the student isn’t smart enough to see the benefits at the moment. As is usually the case, some alums realize the benefits much later, after college."

"It is sad to see Petra's pain still lingering, thus her attempt to blame Harkness. How sad that she has come to belittle others in order to make herself feel better," she continued. "If we have gone wrong somewhere, it is how no one saw her struggle at Exeter and that we failed to make her see her happiness comes from within, not from external rewards or grades."

Waterman is planning on discussing the article in her classes, to analyze Janney’s perspective and hear student’s opinions, which are plentiful.

Religion instructor Peter Vorkink came across the article in his Religion 490 class, which was, at the time, focusing on Exeter.

"The Religion 490 class—the so-called senior book club--was doing a unit on Exeter, and in the middle of it, Petra’s piece appeared, so we all read it and discussed its accuracy in class," he said. "Then another blogpost appeared the next day which I think was written by a student who graduated last year, so the students thought, and that was exactly opposite Petra’s piece, so we discussed that too."

Vorkink added that one of the fundamental benefits of Harkness learning is its ability to train students to think constructively and critically about things. He said, "I think all his conversation about the Academy is helpful and constructive; not everyone who goes here has the same experience, so it is important to compare various viewpoints and make up your own mind; that’s Harkness."

Although senior Giulia Olsson did not relate to the experiences and views Janney explored in the op-ed, she was understanding and open to her expressing these opinions. "Petra's Harkness reality at Exeter is very different from mine," she said. "The claims Petra made do not ring true to me, but that’s not to say that I haven’t encountered some people that do agree with aspects of it, because I have. "

"Personally, I've found Harkness to be an asset to my life. I love listening to what my classmates and teachers have to say, and I find that we feed off of each other, " she continued. "Harkness is all about content, and I think that's what most students think. Not many students in my classes that have just talked to hear the sound of their own voice. I think it's quite the opposite. We all know that to participate, we have to do our assignments and really focus in on homework, so we can contribute positively to discussion."

Senior Patrick Ahern did not support with the immediate negative reaction that many Exonians had to the op-ed.

"While I don't agree with her dismissal of harkness, it seemed pretty clear to me that she had every right as an alum to criticize the academy and its methods. For people to get angry (when, first of all, she was in no way insulting us personally) and to imply that she was being ungrateful seemed ridiculous to me. She obviously got into Harvard on her own merits. Moreover, I was particularly frustrated with people dismissing her opinion because she was an athlete, as if that made her experience somehow less valid."

"That said, I still think that harkness is incredibly valuable, even if it can lead us to value style over substance, and perhaps we make it more of a cult than it deserves," Ahern continued. "I do, frankly, see shyness as a curable disease, and I think it is necessary and valuable to encourage vocal participation from all students."

Janney recognized that her opinion represented the minority of Exonians, but wanted to publish the article for that reason.

"It’s interesting that most of the positive feedback I’ve gotten from peers has been in the form of private correspondence, not posted on public forums or the Facebook statuses I’ve seen," she said. "But just because my opinion is a minority view does not make it worthless – in fact, I wrote it specifically because I felt my perspective was underrepresented."

"In my post, I used what Exeter taught me – that you have to speak pretty loudly if you want anyone to pay attention – in order to expose what I see as an embedded disadvantage to the introverts both in Exeter’s classrooms and around the world," she said.

"Did I go over the top? Maybe. Would anyone have read it otherwise? Like I learned at Exeter, probably not," she said.