Professor, Learn Thyself

I've read several responses to "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower," in the current Atlantic by Professor X (no, not that one). He's an adjunct at "a college of last resort." His argument is that although we pretend that everyone is capable, they are not, and it falls to the lowly instructors of English 101 and English 102 to "lower the hammer." I will skip over his self-pitying tone, and his snobbish attitude toward popular culture, to make three points.

One: I suspect this article has many fellow instructors nodding their heads in agreement. "Yes," they may say to themselves. "It would be nice if everyone could read and write well, but they just can't." These people need to stop blaming the system and the students, and consider their own practices. The particularly rich bit, for me, was Dr. X's explanation of the assignment to Ms. L, who was obviously having trouble grasping what was called for in the "historical controversy" assignment. This might have been because such a piece of writing has no authentic audience or purpose in the (or at least her) "real world." For people who haven't been in a classroom for a very long time, pointless writing is confusing. This might help explain why she wanted to turn toward issues like gun control or abortion. Those sound like topics that (a) might've been in a research paper the last time she'd written one, in high school, and (b) a plausible audience might actually care about. Rather than help her brainstorm a topic geared toward what she's studying (which he seems not the least bit curious about), he apparently lets her thrash around in the wilderness trying to read his mind.

Two: This is not a problem of Dr. X's making. Colleges tend to value not teaching, but research. If the good Professor's teaching experience is limited to what Dan Lortie called the "apprenticeship of observation." We take for granted, particularly in post-secondary education, that having seen as many teachers in action over the years as we have by the time we get to have "Dr." before our names, we must be able to do the job by now. Many, many college instructors, whether adjuncts, visiting instructors, or tenure-track professors, have little idea of good pedagogy. Professor X does not represent himself well in this regard. Brainstorming ideas for essays; teaching grammar and usage in context; using writer's workshop techniques as students go along so that they've had feedback before the instructor gets to sneer, as X does, "at least, I think that was the subject." These are not difficult concepts. If we want college instructors to teach well, we must teach them how.

Three: Ah, but then we have to decide how we'll keep them accountable for good teaching. K-12 readers will feel like they've seen this movie, and it doesn't end well.

What do we want the purpose of college to be? Enlightenment? Vocational training? Complex, higher-order thinking? I suspect we don't all want the same things out of it, but we assume we do, which makes the problems he cites worse. Nor do we agree on, or talk about, what we want the purpose of public education to be, either. That should be the focus of our debate about higher ed. In the absence of such a conversation, it's easy to see how lack of confidence in our students, our teachers, and thus our degrees, could allow No Child Left Behind-style "accountability" to take hold on our public colleges and universities.

It's not surprising that instructors like Professor X come to these conclusions about their students, but the answer isn't to shut Ms. L. out, nor is it to fail her. It's to change the nature of teaching and learning in higher ed, without making the problem worse by instituting policies dreamed up by people who don't know a thing about pedagogy.