coldhearted scientist وداد

I wrote my original post on the teaching meme without realizing that a discussion of, or at least some remarks on academic freedom as it relates to my teaching was part of the question. Therefore I now offer some simple thoughts on this matter.

1. Academic freedom permits me to teach at the college / university level, as opposed to the trade school level. No, it is what permits me to teach at all. Without academic freedom there cannot be intellectual inquiry. Intellectual inquiry was emphasized in my first grade class, for example, and we knew the teacher had a point of view.

2. Academic freedom permits me to bring my expertise to class. If I bring only the “information” available on the Faux News, students may consider me objective and feel “affirmed” and “safe,” but they will not pass the Foreign Service Examination. If I permit them to reduce complex literary works to clichés, they will not learn to write publishable papers, or gain the analytical skills they need for the LSAT. Only those with private tutors will. That, you must realize, is undemocratic.

3. Academic freedom permits me to meet the actual needs of my students. If I must teach in a rote way from a canned curriculum, I will only be able to train them to pass a certain kind of test. I will not be able to meet them where they actually are, or allow them to work with the material itself.

4. Without academic freedom, we have to check reality at the door when we walk into class. At that point the university really does becomes the ivory tower, alienated from the rest of the world, that it is so commonly stereotyped as being.

5. The greatest threat to academic freedom now is not David Horowitz or the Religious Right, but the replacement of regular faculty with instructors, part-timers, and adjuncts, and the reliance, for curriculum creation, on commercial textbook companies which accompanies this. I discussed this problem at length last fall.

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Just so you know, Dr. Crazy, the originator of all of this discussion, now also has a post up on why she enjoys teaching. Everyone is invited to continue, although I think I will just endorse her post and leave things there. Or perhaps I will just say a thing or two off the cuff. My main reasons for enjoying teaching are very hedonistic. I like to read interesting books and discuss interesting topics with other people. Students are fun for this because they tend to be less jaded than some and to bring a fresher point of view, or a different one, than my friends and colleagues might. They also tell me interesting things about the current culture that I do not know and would not find out about from anyone else. They know which cool out of print films can now be seen on the torrent. They convinced me I should hold onto my nostalgia for Kucinich, Gravel and Edwards, but still look ahead and vote Obama.

Axé.