The Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules have made their way around the blogosphere a bit recently. They’re a great set of rules that, while targed at art students. One of my favorites, however, is this:

General Duties of a Student: Pull everything out of your teacher. Pull everything out of your fellow students.

What I like most about this is the expectation that students demand more of their teachers, and of their fellow students. According to this rule, it is the duty of each student to get everything they can out of their interactions with those in class, instructors and fellow students. I really like this idea. I like the notion that students are duty-bound to learn from other students, and to get them to learn more themselves. Instead of a model where the instructor hands pristine knowledge off to students in a unilateral way, this rule fosters a model where the instructor isn’t the only source for learning or motivation to learn.

This is something I’ll probably start putting on my class syllabi. I mean, when was the last time one of your instructors told you in class that you should feel obligated to get the most out of your fellow students? We don’t encourage this enough, I don’t think, and we should.