Letter To The Editor: Mao and MOOCs

To the editor:

The Crimson ran an editorial about Tsinghua University's "Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought" course on edX. This article asked edX to clarify its conflict of interest policy. EdX’s policy is simple and based on academic freedom. I am writing to express my personal belief about why this is important in the context of this specific course.

My undergraduate education began with a student-run school tour which mixed exaggerations with pure myth. From the school’s mythology, we developed a strong understanding of our school’s identity and culture. Later, in Medieval History, we were inundated with birth and death records (where a large fraction were Mary/no last name, making it impossible to correlate the two), and with documents containing incorrect and contradictory information. Perhaps at this point, the astute reader might understand the goal of this letter. Diverse opinions and incorrect information are integral—not in opposition—to the learning process. Teaching is not the pouring of knowledge into the empty vessel of student brains, where if the wrong knowledge is poured in, the vessel is forever polluted. Rather, learning is a complex, experiential process with complex goals, including:

- Working with primary and secondary sources

- Managing contradicting and incorrect information

- Developing critical thinking skills

- Developing cross-cultural skills

- Understanding points of view contradicting our own

As a student, I immersed myself in Indian, Chinese, and Nigerian cultures, which gave precisely such opportunities. Those led to insights about global education which ultimately led to my role in creating the Open edX (then MITx) platform. We would like to provide similar opportunities to less privileged students. "Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought" is precisely such an opportunity—a course taken by every Chinese undergraduate which gives a unique perspective on one of the most important cultures in the world. That experience involves understanding (rather than agreeing with) the material in the course. I trust our students. People who choose to take edX courses are a driven, self-motivated, inquisitive bunch. In contrast to the authors of the staff editorial, I remain skeptical that many of our students will blindly accept everything in a course titled "Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought" from a Chinese government university and come out as Maoists.

I hope that we will see similar courses from other institutions outside of our own political and cultural spectrum. I am delighted to see growth of MOOCs from a range of cultures, from the Christian right on proprietary platforms such as Luxvera, to Islamic instutions on platforms such as zadi.net (enabled by Open edX). I am not threatened by their ideas. Rather, I am confident that such exchange will help us understand each other, making the world a better, more peaceful, and more thoughtful place.

Piotr Mitros is the Chief Scientist of edX.