michael yates
Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> > Nathan, professors were supposedly granted sinecures to give them
> > the freedom to find and express the truth regardless of the consequences.
> Of
> > course, a good number of progressives have been fired, often supposedly
> for some
> > other cause, but sometimes the authorities have admitted that politics
> was the issue.
> > You can give us more classes, and some might quit, but you know
> > that teaching is such that you can just reduce the time that you put into
> each
> > class. To get rid of the deadwood, you must have teachers who feel a real
> committment to
> > education.
>
> First, what I said does not apply to CSUs where teaching loads are often
> pretty high to begin with on most campuses I know.
>
> But the broader point is to increase the emphasis on the value of teaching
> and decrease the emphasis on research. If teaching is valued, you will get
> more good teachers. You will no doubt lose a few good teachers also looking
> for time to do research, but you will probably lose even more deadwood that
> don't enjoy teaching and often don't do particularly great research either.
>
> In the ideal world, I would support union organizing by faculty to raise
> wages and standards for adjuncts and lecturers, expand the number of tenured
> positions, and demand that teaching be a respected part of tenure decisions.
> But given the fact that so many tenured profs, even lefty ones like my old
> Sociology Dept at Berkeley, don't lift a hand for such causes,
> pragmatically, raising the teaching load seems like the only way to force
> change in the system presently developing.
>
> To be honest, I might encourage progressives to raise the demand for higher
> teaching loads specifically to force faculty off their asses. Again, back
> in the budget crisis in California, it was only when undergrad activists
> began publicly discussing teaching loads as one part of the solution that
> faculty began panicking and you saw some start trekking up to Sacramento to
> lobby against the budget cuts.
>
> I'm sorry; when I saw supposedly leftwing faculty discussing why they should
> kick all non-sociology majors out of their classes as a budget-cutting move,
> then add that they should allow business school majors in to keep alumni
> money support in the future, my respect for the ivory tower as an
> intellectual refuge dimmed considerably.
>
> --Nathan