on academibashing
Music: Peeping Tom soundtrack (1960)
Yesterday I was joking on The Blogora about the predictability of essays that attack academics: they have a pattern that reduces to (a) a confessional; and (b) an accusation. "I used to be an academic, and I can tell you, my colleagues were bloated, money grubbing lazies . . . ." It's starting to become more comical than disheartening because one seems to appear, almost every other day, with almost the same passive-aggressive cadence. Nevertheless, at the moment the "professor doesn't work" essay in the popular press remains demoralizing for many of us.
My friend and colleague Randy Lewis (American Studies) penned a nice response to the Academibash essay over on the Inside Higher Ed website. It's a nice read, and expresses how I often feel when I read these attack essays. It's also a little astonishing how quickly the "comments" section after Randy's essay got nasty. Of course, it's always difficult to gauge tone, whether or not someone is earnest, and so forth in many online contexts. Still, the "haters gonna hate" comments give one some sense of why folks like me (and many of you) can get a little blue about what we've chosen to do.
And let's face it: even the most steely of the professoriate can be worn down after she's told, time and time again, that she does not work hard enough. The mantra against "bad teachers" in public schools has all but destroyed primary and secondary education in the Great Republic of Texas. I have dated a number of schoolteachers (well, most of the ex-schoolteachers), and a retired principal lives two doors down. The stories they tell of the amount of work they are asked to do, not to mention the ever-increasing size of their courses and the behavioral problems they have to manage, are disheartening and demoralizing. Why? Because in addition to a demanding workload, they also have to contend with school board politics! I'm not sure about the numbers today, but studies from the 2006/2007 academic year show that attrition at charter schools was a whopping 43%, and roughly 16-19% at public schools. Of course, hundreds of those who didn't want to quit were laid off a couple of months ago because of the recession . . . .
The so-called crisis of the academy is a crisis of teaching, and it's not about money (although it is, in the end). Well, the cause is about the money, but the crisis is about valuation. What's really happening is that there is a budget shortfall, and education needs to be slashed, and it's easier to argue for cuts by retreating to a metric that can show how something's falling short. But the crisis is really one of morale: we are asked to do less with more, and we do. In addition to doing less with more, however, we're told we're bad teachers and don't work hard enough. Now, that's a double-whammy, and if it continues in any sustained way you're going to have a teacher shortage in the university just like you have in the public school system.
[sigh] And even in the same breath, I have to admit I like what I do and am privileged to do what I do. I appreciate the freedoms the life of the mind (if we can call it that any more) affords, such as studying what I think is important instead of studying what my supervisor thinks is important. I appreciate being able to teach course that I think are important for young people to have. Like my friend Randy, I just get bummed out hearing, for example, that my colleagues and I teach "fluff" (overheard and administrator said this of my department) by someone who has never sat in my class or read anything I've written.