What if we assume that there is nothing fundamnetally wrong with what we're teaching nor even, particularly, how we're teaching it. After all, in real life you have to get through boring things. Even the most interesting jobs are 90% grunt work. If students are bored by the majority of their classes that *may* mean the teacher is bad but it also *may mean* that the student doesn't like the material. In any case, it's not *realistic* to expect all your courses and all your books to be top notch, just as *it's not realistic*, if you go to one or two movies a week like I do, to expect them all to be at the level of the Grand Illusion or Touch of Evil. The truth of the matter is if you get through a university education and have 5 or 6 courses that were pretty damn good, you're doing pretty well.
Moreover, it is not just a question of defining away the problem. The *problem* is certainly of a systemic nature and any structural changes will be slow going. But as debate on this list shows, even concerned people can't quite "figure out" why what is theoretically a liberating experience--the only time in many people's lives when they are asked to formualte opinions on Shakespeare or Darwin--should be so tedious to so many.
But there is in all of this a practical issue which gets lost. And that is this: How do the discouraged teachers maintain their morale? For I think that the issue of maintaining morale is an important and neglected. The Spartans got annihilated at Thermopylae but there's no doubt that they had great morale as they were overwhelmed by moronic Persians. So you don't have to be in a "winning situation" to have good morale. Indeed, the Persians were being shuffled along by a tyrant, were dying like flies from disease, didn't want to be there, and undoubtedly had lousy morale even as they "won." We may feel overwhelmed by systemic considerations and odds that are stacked against us but I do think that the legitimate issue is the purely selfish one of how to maintain good morale. And, ironically, I think that would make us more effective in our professional endeavors of any stripe.
So rather than solving systemic problems, or worrying whether it's "this generation" which is "bad" or whether in fact (as I think) it has always been "bad": what about the question of maintaing morale?
-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222
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