As the size of humanities departments diminishes, graduate programs need to reconsider how narrowly new PhDs should specialize. From the Ivy League to state universities to traditional colleges, liberal arts departments have shrunk, even as the discipline continues to find new methods and questions.
To keep up with the expanding subjects, departments need to train students to become more flexible, capable of teaching and writing in more than one field. If a history department has just one French scholar, it is not enough for that professor to focus only on the newest specialty. Somehow it is necessary to teach it all, to cover seventeenth-century Absolutism along with the colonization of Algeria—a tricky move if there is only one French history professor.
Yet increasingly we are confronted with the reality that if we don’t teach a subject, no one else will.
Lots of professors are less than eager to teach beyond their specialty. How is teaching a distant subject matter going to foster your publication record? If the Cold War is your domain, how is teaching the eighteenth century going to help you finish your book on the Berlin Wall?
Ultimately, we have to move in both fields, the ones in which we teach, and the ones in which we publish. The result may be less narrowly defined publications and less historicist courses. Classes may ask bluntly what does the French Revolution have to do with the Cuban missile crisis or the Iraq war? Essays may more inclined to explore the longue durée.
Either way, we will have to think more broadly.
Showing posts with label Education Policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education Policy. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Popular Professors
The debate over whether universities are run along the calculus of the market place reappeared again in the latest Stanley Fish blog posting in the NYTimes, where he argues that professors do not have an obligation to educate a politically engaged population.
Fish focuses the argument against the long-standing assumption held by some professors that they need to teach their students to think critically, which in many cases means question the government or the way society treats the oppressed. For Fish and the politically engaged professors he criticizes, the debate centers very much on what is said in the classroom.
But the real issues concerns how universities are managed. Market forces influence what teachers say in the class only indirectly from behind the scenes. The most important economic concern for a professor is that every seat in his class is filled. He or she can say what they want, so long as the class has high enrollment.
From an administrative perspective, class need to address student interest. A department needs draw students, regardless of what it teaches. More important than whether a professor is conservative or liberal is that he or she be popular.
This obligation to fill seats guides the curriculum far more than any ideological debate. It discourages faculty from teaching difficult subjects; it spurs grade inflation.
Why teach a complex topic where students will score badly when you can teach a fun course where everyone earns a high grade? The demand to be cool, exciting, on the cutting edge of market popularity shapes classroom discussions far more subtly than any conscious decision to align the syllabus with a social agenda.
The obligation to fill seats also drives professors address the students more directly. It forces him to keep up with popular culture and new media. It even cajoles the old professor to writing a blog.
Fish focuses the argument against the long-standing assumption held by some professors that they need to teach their students to think critically, which in many cases means question the government or the way society treats the oppressed. For Fish and the politically engaged professors he criticizes, the debate centers very much on what is said in the classroom.
But the real issues concerns how universities are managed. Market forces influence what teachers say in the class only indirectly from behind the scenes. The most important economic concern for a professor is that every seat in his class is filled. He or she can say what they want, so long as the class has high enrollment.
From an administrative perspective, class need to address student interest. A department needs draw students, regardless of what it teaches. More important than whether a professor is conservative or liberal is that he or she be popular.
This obligation to fill seats guides the curriculum far more than any ideological debate. It discourages faculty from teaching difficult subjects; it spurs grade inflation.
Why teach a complex topic where students will score badly when you can teach a fun course where everyone earns a high grade? The demand to be cool, exciting, on the cutting edge of market popularity shapes classroom discussions far more subtly than any conscious decision to align the syllabus with a social agenda.
The obligation to fill seats also drives professors address the students more directly. It forces him to keep up with popular culture and new media. It even cajoles the old professor to writing a blog.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Teaching for the middle
One of the basic strategies that educators, political advisors, radio programmers and movie producers use is to aim their message for the middle of their target audience, if you are a school teacher, you focus on the lower half of your class, with the assumption that the top quartile will take care of itself.
Once upon a time, the mantra was for excellence and gifted programs, but now the safer strategy is to formulate a message that will easily appeal to the largest subgroup.
For decades, Hollywood films have been marketed towards young men with the assumption that women will also buy a ticket if their guys want to see the show.
In radio that means endless classic rock, because in large markets you only need a small percentage of listeners onboard in order to make advertising profit. Three percent of the market and you are doing well, so all you need is some mix of old tunes to get the necessary audience.
Nevermind the forty percent of listeners who are completely ignored by the station programmers. It takes too much effort to develop a play list for them, maybe because they have a diverse range of interests, maybe because their tastes don’t boil down to a simple profile.
In my small academic town, the public schools seem to assume that professors' kids will do just fine, so the curriculum is aimed at kids who do not have PhD parents. This then reinforces the ancient divide between geeks and jocks, town and gown. If you can get the football fans interested, then the chess players will figure it out for themselves.
Similarly, the end game of any political campaign follows much the same logic: the endless pursuit of the undecided voter, those handful of people who after months of campaigning have not yet figured out where they stand. In the last months before an election, political discourse, ads, speeches, television commentary, etc, are all aimed at the lowest possible common denominator with occasional glances at everyone else to see if they are still onboard.
In the end, the best you get is the song, movie, class, or policy that you can tolerate, and the hopeless hope that the next one will be more to your liking, in other words the basic principle of early MTV.
Once upon a time, the mantra was for excellence and gifted programs, but now the safer strategy is to formulate a message that will easily appeal to the largest subgroup.
For decades, Hollywood films have been marketed towards young men with the assumption that women will also buy a ticket if their guys want to see the show.
In radio that means endless classic rock, because in large markets you only need a small percentage of listeners onboard in order to make advertising profit. Three percent of the market and you are doing well, so all you need is some mix of old tunes to get the necessary audience.
Nevermind the forty percent of listeners who are completely ignored by the station programmers. It takes too much effort to develop a play list for them, maybe because they have a diverse range of interests, maybe because their tastes don’t boil down to a simple profile.
In my small academic town, the public schools seem to assume that professors' kids will do just fine, so the curriculum is aimed at kids who do not have PhD parents. This then reinforces the ancient divide between geeks and jocks, town and gown. If you can get the football fans interested, then the chess players will figure it out for themselves.
Similarly, the end game of any political campaign follows much the same logic: the endless pursuit of the undecided voter, those handful of people who after months of campaigning have not yet figured out where they stand. In the last months before an election, political discourse, ads, speeches, television commentary, etc, are all aimed at the lowest possible common denominator with occasional glances at everyone else to see if they are still onboard.
In the end, the best you get is the song, movie, class, or policy that you can tolerate, and the hopeless hope that the next one will be more to your liking, in other words the basic principle of early MTV.
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