Monday, June 9, 2014

The Cadaver Synod: Or, a Slightly Optimistic Pre-Mortem Autopsy of University Teaching Practices

By Clinton Thomas Bland

(This is the first of a two-part post.)



Two years ago I made a decision that many graduate students, still holding out hope for a view from the penthouse in the Ivory Tower would find unthinkable: I dropped out of my PhD program in religious studies with about a year left. This decision was easy for me. I now teach seventh grade English. Many factors played into this decision. I was generally unhappy with my geography; I was poor; and, as luck would have it, I was a good teacher and a bad researcher. An audience of nine is not a publishing outcome that interested me, but I did like hanging out with kids and talking about books and movies. I like my current job very much and the money I make as a public servant is about on par with what many newly-minted assistant professors can expect to be offered, significantly more in some cases. This is a nice situation for me, especially because I was, in spite of my intelligence, never going to be an assistant professor. I’m not cut out for it. Now I have the pleasure of working with a group of about fifty highly-gifted twelve year-olds, of seeing them grow up, learn to think a little more for themselves, and, if it works out, of seeing them start to appreciate the fact that Kurt Vonnegut did it first, better, and briefer when he wrote Harrison Bergeron, a forerunner to all the dystopian clutter that is today’s young adult lit landscape.

When they leave the middle school at which I teach, I believe that they are passing into good hands across the street at the high school. The teachers there are just as dedicated as I am. More so perhaps, because the dramas they deal with on a daily basis are more profound, more life-and-death. In my classroom I do not see much in the way of drug use, pregnancy, violence (admittedly, I teach in a fairly wealthy suburb of Dallas with a progressive administration). Twelve year-olds are not that worldly… their beliefs about the above subjects tend to align with categorical errors they learned from television. The high school is filled with caring adults, experts in their craft and in their subject matter. These adults want to see their students attend college. But when their students are admitted to institutions of higher learning, a deep disconnect is exposed—kids who got good grades, mastered skills, passed AP tests, and performed serviceably on the SAT, are suddenly deemed not college ready. They struggled, they are shunted into remedial classes for which they pay (often with borrowed money) but do not receive credit. They fall through the cracks. It is not the university’s fault. They are simply not “college material” after all. 

I am writing under the assumption that it is not the kids who are not college ready, but the colleges that are not kid ready. Every potential college student ought to ask themselves a simple set of questions: why would I go into debt to pay for an education that will not meet my needs and then blame me for its failure to do so? Is an education that, for at least the first two years, consists of online courses (now proven disasters—thank you MOOCS!), classes taught by underpaid graduate students or adjuncts (some of whom will not speak very good English or may even be homeless) with maybe a week’s worth of teacher training, huge lectures (and I do mean lectures) worth the thousands of dollars I will spend on it? Is it worth it to go into debt only to enter the smoking ruins of the job market four years later with little more than a piece of paper, a receipt for services not rendered? Shouldn’t I, the student, the one who makes the idea of the university possible, who finances much of its activity, be able to demand better? For public school teachers, like me, these are easy to answer. For those in academia, especially those who value their autonomy, and sabbaticals, and light teaching loads, they will be read as an affront. Well, they are meant to be. I work in the only sphere that is now more beleaguered than the Tower. Teachers older than me have changed their thinking and their practice to meet the needs of each new class. It is time that those tasked with teaching them after they leave my territory do the same.  

My failure to show deference is meant to be shocking. Those in academia need the shock. Your careers will eventually depend on it, and frankly, you owe it to your students. I know I’m not failing my kids; but politicians and corporatists want to insist the opposite. Public school teachers are an easy target. The next head scheduled for the wall is the professor’s, so pay attention. The students you reach, really reach, with your teaching will be your best advocates in the future, so they need to feel like they got their money’s worth in your class. If we’re going to save the university and teaching, we need to make sure that are students leave us with fond memories and clear path to economic stability. Adapt or die. Fight smarter, etc. Everybody here likes metaphors…
 
What follows is not a prescription for the entire system. I am not going to reform the university any more than I am going to be an assistant professor of religion. I can’t solve bloated administration costs (I’m looking at you, vice associate dean of assistant dean recruitment and retention), the NCAA, the money grubbing folks at The College Board, Arne Duncan, or the brain drain of the PhD glut of the Battle of the Blackwater. Sorry. Nor am I indicting those university teaching faculty and staff who do regularly reflect on their classroom practices with an eye toward improving how they meet student needs. Much of what I’m going to expound on is simply a list of my own early sins. I use the second person largely because I am talking to the younger, dumber me. This is a cheat sheet, a list of learning characteristics your current and future students have, and that you need to integrate into your teaching to better your outcomes if they need bettering. Feel free to excoriate me in the comments. Once you’ve been yelled at by a helicopter parent whom you are legally obligated to not yell back at, or had your head cut-and-pasted onto something satanic (One Direction), you gain some perspective. Onward…

(Part two will be posted on Thursday)

No comments:

Post a Comment