Academic Knowledge
In his essay Academic Virtue, ( Laphams Quarterly Fall 2008) Stanley Fish proposes a regimen "to make the educational experience everything in general and nothing in particular." His main concern is with ideology entering the academy and feels it is doing the job it is paid to do if "neither the university as a collective nor the faculty as individuals... advocate personal, political, moral or any other kind of views except academic views. Isn't the university primarily a place for the unfettered expression of ideas? The answer is no."
We can sense here a sincere defense of pedagogy, but based on a romantic and nebulous notion of academic virtue exemplified by being "conscientious in the pursuit of truth". This is well and good in the rarefied atmosphere of theory but a university is also a community and his prescribed ban on "engaging your students in discussions designed to produce action" is at once condescending and telling. It reinforces the notion that students are simple receptacles, both naively susceptible and without their own ideology. If this is true it is the fault of education and a demand for change, not a reason for perpetuation of the same "ideal". Seen in another way, discussions designed to NOT produce action are another subtle form of reinforcing and reproducing the status quo. I believe most students at the university level can smell such a "design" a mile away and can are capable of choosing to act or not.
It may sound like the height of rationality to restrict the university to a narrow task, "to produce and disseminate (through teaching and publication) academic knowledge and to train those who will take up that task in the future", but it is asking us to take at face value the notion that "academic knowledge" is a standardized, normative, apolitical body agreed upon universally. This is patently false. Claiming a total lack of bias in ones choices ( "I can assign whatever readings I judge to be relevent to the course's topic. Those are pedagological choices") is to engage in the self-deceptive idea that "relevant" is not in itself a term loaded with ideological implication.
Tell me your politics and teach me what you want. Invite challenge and let learning happen. The world outside of academia is filled with hucksters claiming to be non-ideological and apolitical. A student should be prepared to deal with them.
posted by troutsky @ 4:15 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
Nicely done Trout! I too have written about the notion of neutrality in education today. Take a look.
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Here is the abstract from an article titled Marxism, Neutrality and Education. It can be found in the Journal of Philosophy of Education: "Argues that Marxist extremists should not be allowed to teach in public institutions. The internal contradictions in the behavior of contemporary Marxist educational activists who receive all of the benefits of their membership in the educational elite while demanding the overthrow of capitalist societies is examined."
I don't know that I get any benefits from "membership in the educational elite," and I am pretty viciously targeted everyday for my political questioning. My gay colleague said being a gay teacher has not been as threatening to his career through the years as his political radicalism. Being gay or Marxist or anarchist should be welcomed to classrooms in a pluralistic democracy.
In our department, we have a good ol' boy, Marine-loving, Mormon Spanish teacher with posters of Ronald Reagan (easily Latin America's least favorite U.S. president) who can barely speak the language and who can certainly not teach the subject and he is our department chair! At the same time, we have a gay, radical who is undisputedly our best language teacher; a former hippy-turned-yuppy space-cadet teacher who speaks fair inferior Spanish to the department chair; and myself. The two least likely candidates of harassment from the administration are the two least qualified teachers! Irony or intentional?
I welcome each and everyone of my colleagues' presence in our school. I believe the irrefutable truth that neutrality is impossible in the classroom is evident in each classroom. Please walk into anyone of our rooms and everywhere you will see evidence of ideology, values, beliefs, politics, economics, culture, etc. Look at the clothes a teacher wears and we are bound to determine aspects of that teacher's politics.
I say forget the bullshit belief that neutrality is possible, encourage a deconstruction of oneself and one's positions before one's students and false pretenses can be avoided and critical education can begin.
Our goal is not to teach students what to think, but how to think. How to appreciate logic. How to reveal assumptions, ideology, etc. We are to dialogue with students and also assume we are unfinished and that we are there to learn too. We can declare our positions and attempt to demonstrate how we intend to accomplish them. We should take care to offer critiques of our own positions and direct students towards common opposition to our proposed solutions.
I always wanted to go after ex-Ramparts Magazine editor David Horowitz. Not with shouting him down, because that is what he wants to be done. He makes living harassing academics.
It's probably easiest for Marxists to get teaching jobs in pure science as physics.
See The Minerva Initiative.
Che Bob, The interesting question is who gets to decide who is a "Marxist extremist"? Always that element of power over classification, like "enemy combatants".
Ren, The "social sciences" is a very protean sort of field, half in the service of empire yet also feigning a critical role. (sort of like education!)Of course you have to follow the funding, just like some friends of mine who do contract data work for the DOD. A tentacle around the neck.
The problem with non neutrality is that students are out matched by instructors in both the practice of reasoning as well as the power relationship.
The power relationship is proper because the student presumably is in a quest for what the instructor is teaching and the instructor wants to impart knowledge the student does not possess. However, when the instructor uses the power relationship to intimidate the student through the mechanism of ideology, that's when indoctrination as opposed to learning may tend to occur with the unprepared.
Imagine, for example, a class I might teach in American economic history compared to a Marxist teaching the same course. We might both competently impart the body of knowledge the course requires but how differently will my students view property rights and philosophers like Locke, Montesquieu and Harrington. The Marxist might emphasize Gramsci's and even Oskar Lange's critiques.
Ironically, though, this is where I agree with all of you. Ideology is less important than teaching students how to think, which is the highest calling of the academy, in my opinion and what's most fun about the engagement. As a classical liberal, If I can competently argue a Marxist view in the social sciences (it would presumably not be relevant in math or science) then what better testament is there to my education? A facile mind would not be enough ( although it would clearly help).
So, the pretense of non ideology is just that and not helpful unless you're simply imparting rote knowledge. Provided that the instructor can evaluate students in a non biased fashion and there is no attempt to suppress the beliefs of instructors or no attempt by instructors to hide their ideology, then I don't see a problem.
There is consensus then that power relations exist and that transparency combined with certain methodologies aimed at developing critical faculties make the ideal classroom. It occurs to me that the power aspect is fluid and changes with the level (grade school as opposed to university) but in my experience curiosity and scepticism both come naturally to most kids. That is our hope. Maybe we should send people to university when they are in their mid-twenties?
but how differently will my students view property rights and philosophers like Locke, Montesquieu and Harrington.
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cb, I can't believe you would be teaching Michael Harrington.
troutsky, why not just admit that higher education in America is a business.
But you never know where you may find a radical consciousness. Art history is often a fertile department.
Sorry Ducky, James Harington of Oceana fame.
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