coldhearted scientist وداد

I do not have time to fiddle with Blogger so as to be able to comment on Shedding Khawatir‘s post, so I have to post about it. I am not interested in language teaching the way she is, but I have had the same problems about it. Shedding Khawatir complains of the professors and lecturers teaching irresponsibly, but where I spent most of my language time it was the lecturers and TAs who did the things she abhors.

The worst of it was, the lecturers were the ones who supervised the professors and were considered  the “better teachers” because they did not require second year students to actually finish the year prepared for the third year.

Eventually, I became really ashamed of wanting to teach the way Shedding Khawatir is convinced she is right to do and has the right to do; that is one more reason why I do not like being a professor. In the end, she simply disobeyed her colleague, but professors do not have the right to do such things — especially not if the colleague is an M.A. level lecturer who is already angry that there are Ph.Ds present.

I actually had a department chair say to me and the rest of the research faculty in my subfield: “You have had the chance to do a Ph.D and to publish, but they have not. You and I have to make that up to them by having you teach the freshman courses under their supervision and by allowing them to teach instead the third and part of the fourth year.”

I know it is in fashion to support the poor, exploited instructors and adjuncts, but I certainly do not if they are going to be the functional equivalent of the prototypical out of date, “deadwood” Full.

Axé.