6.1648, Sum: Prestige of Teaching

[The Linguist List]

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-6-1648. Wed Nov 22 1995. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines:  292
 
Subject: 6.1648, Sum: Prestige of Teaching
 
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---------------------------------Directory-----------------------------------
1)
Date:  Wed, 22 Nov 1995 00:37:33 CST
From:  fcosws at prairienet.org (Steven Schaufele)
Subject:  Sum: prestige of teaching
 
---------------------------------Messages------------------------------------
1)
Date:  Wed, 22 Nov 1995 00:37:33 CST
From:  fcosws at prairienet.org (Steven Schaufele)
Subject:  Sum: prestige of teaching
 
A couple of months ago, in LINGUIST 6-1322, i posted an invitation for
discussion, either private or public, on the question of whether
teaching were an honourable/prestigious occupation for a serious
scholar, particu- larly a linguistic researcher, or not, and how this
issue is perceived by various classes of academics.
 
A few people posted comments on the List.  Many more got in touch with
me privately.  And of these, several had things to say that were very
pri- vate indeed, and which therefore will not be included in this
summary except in highly generalized form.  For the same reason, i am
not going to provide a list of the people who got in touch with me
personally; you know who you are, and i thank you all.  I shall not,
however, scruple to cite by name and e-mail address those scholars
whose comments were publicly posted in LINGUIST.
 
My original posting was prompted by several things, including two
remarks that i had recently come across, one in LINGUIST and the other
elsewhere.  The one was a comment by Roman Jakobson about a student of
Saussure's named Winteler whose views, while brilliant, were too far
in advance of his time, with the result that he `lived out his days as
a mere school- teacher'.
 
Several people pointed out that what was at issue in Jakobson's story
was not so much that Winteler was teaching as opposed to doing
research but that he was teaching in a Gymnasium (i.e. a secondary
school) rather than a university.  While this clarification is
relevant and suggests that my query was prompted in part by a
not-entirely-appropriate stimulus, it is to some extent tangential.  I
suspected, when i first read the Jakobson quote, that *part* of what
was being lamented was Winteler's being stuck with a secondary-school
position rather than a university position, but i was not confident
that that was the *whole* of it.
 
For one thing, it happened that right about the same time i came
across this story i also came across a quote from a curator at one of
the musea in the Smithsonian Institution, commenting that one of the
nice things about his job was not having to teach.  As though this
were a desirable thing.  Whether Winteler in particular was to be
pitied because he had to make his living as a teacher or as a
schoolteacher, it's obvious that there are scholars out there who hate
and despise teaching and either wish they never had to do it or are
very grateful they don't.
 
For another thing, i think (1) a good elementary- or secondary-school
teacher can have a much more pervasive (although indirect) influence
on society than almost any university professor and (2) responsible
linguis- tic scholarship needs to enter the curriculum at a much
earlier stage than it does (i recently had occasion to amend slightly
what my 12-year- old son was being taught about pidgins and creoles).
Indeed, i have occa- sionally toyed with the idea of getting a
secondary-school teacher's cer- tificate so as to contribute in this
area myself, university jobs being so hard to come by.
 
Leo Connolly <connolly at msuvx1.memphis.edu> said in LINGUIST 6-1328
`who could disagree that it was a waste to have [Winteler] teaching a
bunch of obstreporous Quartaner instead of serious university
students?'  Perhaps it's different in Europe (i was very pleased with
the quality of the undergraduates i taught in Budapest), but my
experience here in the States has been that the frequency of
obstreporous undergraduates can be almost as high as that of
obstreporous high-school students (some of my private respondents
confirmed this, either expressing for themselves or reporting as
characteristic of others an attitude towards undergraduates that some
of us might feel was more appropriate toward secondary-school
students).  And on the other hand, in either case mixed in with those
students who would rather be doing anything else there are almost
always some who are ready and willing to absorb knowledge and
scholarship like a sponge and who exhibit a real wonder and delight at
what they are of- fered.  And it is such students who are the
teacher's greatest reward.
 
Speaking for myself, i would like to have the opportunity someday to
teach graduate students, to supervise doctoral research, etc.  But if
i had to choose between teaching only graduate students and only
under- graduates, i would unhesitatingly choose the latter.  For one
thing, by explaining the fundamentals of my trade to bright,
inquisitive, but `un- initiated' students i will inevitably refine not
only my presentation of such material but my understanding thereof; in
my opinion, a scholar who resents having to make such explanation is
close to condemning hannself to intellectual stultification.
Furthermore, it is a bright undergradu- ate who is most likely to
challenge the most basic tacit assumptions and, ultimately, to point
out that the Emperor has no clothes.  And since my own primary
scholarly interests are in the direction of such fundamental
criticism, i am convinced that interaction with a few bright
undergradu- ates would be of great value to my research.
 
A common theme in many responses, both public and private, was the
rela- tionship between teaching and research.  One respondent noted an
event at a certain university, in which a number of very talented
people left the linguistics department to organize a linguistics
research center which could concentrate on research with a significant
reduction in teaching, and that only on a voluntary basis.  According
to my respondent, the general consensus in the university was
sympathetic: you couldn't expect such high-level researchers to waste
their time teaching.  As a sometime affiliate of the Linguistics
Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, i was struck
by the apparent difference between this situa- tion and the one
obtaining in Budapest.  The Institute in Hungary was, historically,
made up of scholars who as a result of their progressive views (e.g.,
generativity) which it was feared might `infect' their stu- dents were
denied the right to teach back around 1960.  When the Commu- nist
government fell, the Institute explicitly petitioned (successfully) to
have its teaching rights restored.  Obviously, the high-powered lin-
guistic researchers in Budapest were not satisfied just doing
research.
 
One of my private respondents in particular pointed out that teaching
and research are logically different skills: `some brilliant
researchers are terrible teachers, and some brilliant teachers are
terrible researchers.  But in the US, a university teaching position
is about the only way to be paid to do research in many fields'.
There are some fortunate individu- als who are good at both, and some
of these are even lucky enough to get academic jobs.  But in a great
number of cases universities, partly out of necessity, hire someone
who's good at one and then compel hann to do the other, with the
result that you end up getting teachers who hate re- search and
researchers who despise teaching.  (Another respondent noted `more and
more academics seem to end up teaching courses which do not interest
them, or which are outside their competence, because institu- tions
are obliged to offer these courses but will not hire more teaching
staff.'  Of course, there is also the problem that often enough these
days the institutions in question can't afford to hire more teaching
staff.  My concern is partly about those that, judging from the ads
they post, can afford to hire more staff but may prefer to hire
researchers instead of teachers.)
 
Marie Gam <teacher at amanda.dorsai.org> -- note the pride in her
vocation exhibited in her e-mail login -- in LINGUIST 6-1328 spoke of
the old clich'e, `Those who can, do, and those who can't, teach':
 
	`There was a time, when I was much younger, and long
	before I had taught my first class, when I thought this
	sounded quite fine and correct. ... Once I was forced
	into a classroom situation, I found that I truly loved
	teaching, that I found it very envigorating and enjoy-
	able ... I also found that I could learn from my expe-
	riences with my students, in ways that I might not out-
	side the classsroom.  I also discovered to my great
	amazement that I *was* a teacher. ... I have taught
	alongside folks who found it to be the most miserable
	chore.  They were often not very good at it.  From those
	experiences, I have formulated my own take on the issue:
	"Some people are teachers and some people have to teach".
	Those who have to teach are probably the ones who down
	the profession of teaching.  Those who are teachers are
	probably having too much fun to worry about it.'
 
This is all very well, as far as it goes, and i couldn't agree more.
Except that Ms. Gam has left out one significant category: those who
are teachers by vocation but have little or no opportunity to actually
teach.  Talk about misery ...
 
One of my private respondents raised an interesting problem: being
`pegged' or `pigeonholed' as a `teacher' (as opposed to a
`researcher') merely because one has expressed a concern about
teaching quality.  Having done so, one finds oneself permanently
shunted away from any serious research activity.  What if one is
equally concerned about both?  Or even, perish forbid, equally good at
both?
 
Alex Monaghan <alex at compapp.dcu.ie> in LINGUIST 6-1350 raised the
impor- tant further question: never mind what we think of each other,
what do the university administrators who are in his words `empowered
to hire, fire and overtire us' think of our activities? (This category
was, in fact, included in my original posting.)  His perception, based
on hiring and promotion decisions in various universities of the
British Isles, is that these administrators don't care about teaching
at all:
 
(1)	[The promotion procedure] gives more research opportunities
	to those who may already have the most.  It is assumed that
	we all wish to do research, and that the reward for a good
	academic is more research time.  It further assumes that re-
	search performance is the best index of academic [quality].
	The logical conclusion is that the good guys do research and
	the bad guys teach.  Is that what our masters really think?
 
(2)	The fact that the majority of a university's income comes
	from teaching does not seem to matter.  In the UK, the push
	for more publications before a government assessment is enor-
	mous, but there is no similar push for better teaching mate-
	rials or more contact hours.  Granted, teaching is harder to
	measure objectively and publication counts are easy, but which
	tells us more about the university's output?
 
(3)	It is rare indeed for academics to be given training in how
	to teach, and even rarer for them to have a pedagogic quali-
	fication.  Why is the PhD so valued, but the teaching certi-
	ficate not?
 
In indirect response to this last issue, another of my respondents
ques- tioned the assumption that all one needs to qualify as a
`teacher' (at the university level) is to `know the material'.  This
is, of course, patently inadequate; anyone who's ever been to a
scholarly conference knows there are some lecturers who are better
than others.  And a good teacher does a lot more than lecture.
 
That things can be as bad in the United States as anywhere else was noted
by one respondent who rather pithily remarked, `All you need to do is
look at the U.S. university system that rewards talented researchers with
tenure and talented teachers with a nice recommendation for their next
job search.'  However, another respondent told me of a recent incident at
one American university in which several faculty members failed their
tenure reviews `on account of their teaching' (judging from context, i
presume this means `on account of the poor quality of their teaching').
So there may be hope yet.
 
My own take on the roles of teaching and research in a university
setting is as follows: The university has basically three interrelated
roles to serve within society: it is responsible for the *storage*,
for the *desemination*, and for the *increase* of knowledge and
wisdom.  The storage function is, of course, served primarily by
university libraries, etc.  The desimination function means that
storage by itself isn't enough, the university must also actively make
the knowledge and wisdom it stores available to the society it serves.
This function is served partly by the libraries as well, but mostly
through teaching and various similar activities.  And the increase of
the store of knowledge and wis- dom is, of course, primarily the goal
of the university's research activ- ities.  These three functions are
indissolubly interconnected; i agree that, at the university level,
teaching and research must go hand-in-hand and each must contribute to
the other.  One of my respondents raised the question of whether this
connection is as vital in 2- and 4-year colleges, which don't grant
advanced/research degrees.  I don't know about *vital*, but as it
happens i got my bachelor's degree from such an institution, in which
several of my professors were actively involved in research as well as
teaching, and i am strongly of the opinion that my education profited
thereby.  Of course, i was already at the time contemplating an
academic career, which may colour my perceptions in this area.
 
I also got a lot of messages from fellow linguists asserting that they
individually (and in some cases collectively) would do just about any-
thing for a chance to do some teaching, including doing it for free.
To all these i can only say, I know how you feel.  And i don't believe
a word of the excuses their respective institutions are brushing them
off with, i've heard it all myself.  At present i have a strong
suspicion that there is a lot of very good linguistics teaching not
being done through lack of opportunity and blindness to such cases,
and not only our field but our society are going to suffer for it
someday.
 
That's the summary of the responses to my original question about the
prevalence among scholars and administrators of `the notion that
teaching is an onerous task whose practitioners would prefer to shun
it, and that gifted scholar/researchers are wasted on classes.'  I'm
rather hoping that posting this summary will spur some further
discussion of this issue.
 
Best,
Steven
 ---------------------
Dr. Steven Schaufele
712 West Washington
Urbana, IL  61801
217-344-8240
fcosws at prairienet.org
 
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