When I was an undergraduate English major at Flyover College, I invented my own understanding of English as a discipline. I saw most of my professors as delightful eccentrics who loved literature. Some of them taught well, some wretchedly; some published books, others only book reviews; but they all cared about the success of their students. In their classes, I studied works that explored a fabulous variety of human experiences and points of view. Somehow I morphed that undergraduate experience into a belief that reading literature improved people morally, and that studying it seriously made people even better.
Today I wince at my naïveté. Studying literature doesn't guarantee moral improvement any more than studying chemistry, economics, or plumbing does. I should have accepted that in my first year of graduate work at Elite National University, because the evidence was all around me, but I clung to my childish belief in the power of literature. In my second year, when my fellow teaching assistants elected me their representative to the first-year-composition committee, I even had a notion that I could help change the program for the better.
Indeed, improvement seemed inevitable, since the imperious Dr. Dreedle, director of the first-year-composition program, had stepped down, although he still served on the committee. Dr. Dreedle's former assistant, Dr. Cathcart, ran the program and chaired the committee, which met around a large table in a conference room.
One of the first issues on the agenda involved improving the writing center, which did a poor job of helping students. Dr. Shapiro, the head of the writing center, didn't sit on the committee, but when we met to discuss this topic, I assumed that he would be invited to share his views. To my surprise, he made no appearance. The members of the committee simply discussed what we wished a writing center could accomplish. Toward the end, during a discussion of dyslexia, Dr. Cathcart said, "In Dr. Shapiro's opinion—"
"Shapiro is just guessing," Dr. Dreedle snapped. "He doesn't know anything."
With that, the committee dropped the topic. As far as I know, no one followed up on improving the writing center.
Another issue facing the committee concerned replacing the required textbook for the composition course. Dr. Cathcart distributed half a dozen texts and told us to circulate them among ourselves. She gave us no guidelines for preferring one over the others. She simply told us to review them and choose the one we liked best.
Review the books I did, one by one, shaking my head and sighing over each. Some talked down to students, while others assumed that readers already had considerable skill. The text I liked least was one that I'll call Writing Uplifts Everyone. As an undergraduate, I'd used it in an advanced-composition course. The book gushed about brainstorming and sudden insight but left students on their own when it came to creating actual documents. Because my own students needed clear directions for setting up even simple papers, I couldn't endorse the book.
When the committee discussed the texts, we went around the big table and everyone promoted his or her favorite. I noticed that people asked one another questions that revealed their ignorance concerning the texts they hadn't chosen. I began to suspect that I was the only one who'd actually opened all of the books, but I kept that to myself.
When my turn came I said, "I don't like any of them, but I don't have a lot of teaching experience to base a judgment on."
Dr. Minder, a professor new to Elite National U., took his turn. He held up Writing Uplifts Everyone and said, "Students will love this."
I wish that I had understood my place on the committee and kept quiet, but I viewed Dr. Minder's approval of that book as an opportunity to prove my worth to the committee. So I spoke up: "I used that book in an advanced-composition class as an undergrad. It didn't work well." I explained the problems with the book's setup.
Dr. Minder looked as though I'd slapped him. The committee failed to reach a consensus, and as people left the room, I heard Dr. Dreedle conferring with Dr. Cathcart on yet another text (call it Everyone Must Write).
Thinking that I should bring more information to the committee, and that as the TA representative, I should find out what the other teaching assistants needed to teach the first-year course, I drew up a memo that described the committee's mission and asked my fellow graduate students for feedback. I placed the memo in the TA mailboxes.
The next morning Dr. Cathcart stopped me in the hall and declared, "No one gave you permission to distribute a memo."
"But as the TA rep I thought I should—"
"You'll do what I tell you to," she said.
The military assumptions behind Dr. Cathcart's statement startled me. Before I could respond, she added, "Dr. Minder thinks you undermined our committee."
"Undermined the committee?"
"A committee's deliberations ought not to be revealed to the world without the committee's consent."
I apologized to Dr. Cathcart and went on my way.
Puzzled that my simple attempt to gather information had caused distress, I stopped at Dr. Minder's office. "Dr. Cathcart said you're upset with me."
"Well," he replied slowly, "Yes ... yes."
"I didn't think that what the committee did was secret," I said. "I just thought I should tell the other grad students about the committee's work and get feedback from them, since they teach the majority of sections."
"I see ... yes."
"I apologize for offending you," I said.
"Well, ... no harm done." He nodded. "Let's forget about it."
At the committee's next meeting, Dr. Minder gave a report on a teaching handout for the first-year-composition program that had routinely been given to all TA's when they arrived on the campus. Dr. Minder, in suggesting revisions to the guidelines, expressed dismay that the original document included a warning not to expect much change in a student's writing in one semester. He dismissed the warning as "too negative" and recommended more-optimistic phrasing to encourage new instructors. Freshmen, he said, really could accomplish much in a semester.
The original document's pessimistic view matched my own experiences with students, so I waited in that meeting for Dr. Minder to cite some study or quote some expert to support his assertions. He did nothing of the sort. He simply gave his opinion. If one of my students had handed in a paper like Dr. Minder's report, I would have sent the person to the library to do some research. After my earlier misunderstanding with Dr. Minder, however, I thought I would let someone else question him. No one did.
When he finished, Dr. Minder distributed copies of his report and said, "I added a note at the bottom about the graduate-student representative betraying the trust of the committee with his memo. I ask the committee to add that statement to the minutes of today's meeting."
Indeed, at the bottom of the sheet sat his accusation. Dr. Minder had cast me as the enemy of first-year composition and himself as the savior of the program. The professors didn't even discuss the issue. Dr. Cathcart said, "All those in favor of including Dr. Minder's note in the minutes, say "'Aye.'"
"Aye," said every professor.
Dr. Cathcart looked at me. "Opposed?"
I wanted to denounce Dr. Minder as a hypocrite and ask the others what I'd done wrong, but at that moment I finally grasped the dynamics of the committee, perhaps of the entire graduate English program. When the other professors looked at Dr. Minder, they saw someone who would be their colleague for decades. They would serve with him on other committees, want his support for their projects, and socialize with him and his wife. When those professors looked at me, they didn't see the elected representative of the group who taught the majority of composition sections. Elite National U. didn't hire its own Ph.D.'s, so they never imagined me as a potential colleague, either. They saw just another disposable nobody who would join the ranks of adjuncts begging for work. Of course they sided with Dr. Minder.
So when Dr. Cathcart asked if anyone opposed adding a condemnation of the TA representative to the committee's record, I abstained.
I should add that at the end of the year, there appeared in the TA mailboxes a memo naming the textbook for the following fall. It was Everyone Must Write, the title that Dr. Dreedle mentioned to Dr. Cathcart after the committee had discussed her choices for textbooks. If the committee actually discussed and voted on Everyone Must Write, no one invited the TA representative to the meeting.
(Editor's Note: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of this series are online.)
Comments
1. reader237 - February 25, 2010 at 08:10 am
I have been fighting this sort of thing for 30 years, with little progress. Having worked in and watched industry, government, military and academia operate I would say this story is very true. Only single leadership at the very top of organizations seem to make rational decisions. All other decisions are always more political than based on facts. It makes one wonder why we attempt to instill logic and critical thinking into our students. Maybe so if they get to the top they will know what to do.
2. tuxthepenguin - February 25, 2010 at 08:55 am
I can only wish we had the other side of this story. It appears that the author, new to the university, and fresh out of his undergraduate studies, came in and tried to tell the experienced professors that only he knew how to teach their students.
A graduate student has no right to put a bunch of details from a committee meeting into a memo, in an attempt to persuade the other graduate students to revolt. I'm guessing the memo was not a dry list of facts from the meeting.
Statements like this, "I began to suspect that I was the only one who'd actually opened all of the books, but I kept that to myself." make me deeply suspicious. I'd sure hate to hire Henry Adams as a faculty member in my department.
3. 12058808 - February 25, 2010 at 09:55 am
I'm suspicious of this article. At any "Elete National University" the textbook fight would be whether to select the composition text published by the department chair and his sidekick or choose the one written by the ambitious young lion.
4. jason1971 - February 25, 2010 at 10:09 am
What's the matter, tuxthepenguin? Does the truth hurt? Is it so unreasonable for someone to expect "evidence"? And if everything in the committee was occurring honestly, what would be the harm in getting feedback from the proles who actually do the work?
Honestly, I am ashamed that any professor would act this way. Certainly we do not have both sides of the story, but as perception is reality for the author, his perceptions are as valid as the opinions of the professors that he challenged. Drs. Minder and Cathcart acted like spoiled little children who took their ball and went home when they didn't get their way.
5. cwinton - February 25, 2010 at 10:20 am
I've never worked in an institution where committee work was any kind of secret, excepting those dealing with personnel matters such as P&T. Unlike tuxthepenguin, I did not see the author's rather naive attempt to get feedback from other TAs as promoting a graduate student revolt. In fact, isn't getting feedback what a representative should be doing? It is not unusual for a text adoption committee to be contentious, but adding a note castigating a committee member, and a student member at that, is totally beyond the pale. That action alone puts the eponymous Cathcart and Minder in the class of overweening faculty so insecure as to feel compelled to trample anyone presumed to be their inferior. tuxthepenguin should look in the mirror.
6. skaking - February 25, 2010 at 10:43 am
tuxthepenguin sounds like s/he could easily be Dr Minder or Cathcart. i like how s/he sees the graduate student henry adams as someone looking to foment revolt. like children, graduate students should be seen and not heard. henry adams would be screwed as junior prof if he had tuxthepenguin on his P&T committee.
7. jnicotra - February 25, 2010 at 11:12 am
I've read all these columns, and it seems like the only thing being exposed here about the culture of academe is the author's seething ressentiment.
8. ots1927 - February 25, 2010 at 11:22 am
Interesting tale, but of course it presents just one side of the story from the perspective of the injured party, so to speak. I cannot judge the accuracy of the account, but I read it with interest and an appropriate dose of skepticism. I can say, however, that nothing of this sort has ever been my experience, neither in graduate school, nor as an adjunct, nor as an assistant and now associate professor. Sure, I've witnessed a few (usually petty) power plays and I've served on a few mildly disfunctional committees, but nothing that would lead me to the cynical views expressed by this author of the "Academic Bait & Switch" series of articles. Perhaps he's a little paranoid, or perhaps I've just been lucky enough to work in healthy departments throughout my academic career.
9. tuxthepenguin - February 25, 2010 at 11:38 am
@jason1971
"What's the matter, tuxthepenguin? Does the truth hurt? Is it so unreasonable for someone to expect "evidence"? And if everything in the committee was occurring honestly, what would be the harm in getting feedback from the proles who actually do the work?"
That's kind of my point. The author has not presented any evidence, just his point of view. I can only say that you have not served on very many committees if you don't see anything wrong with sending out a memo (and we don't even know what it said) to "get feedback". I'm guessing that the 'facts' in that memo were no less one-sided than the facts in this article. No single member of a committee has a right to speak for the committee without explicit permission to do so.
10. bigfruitbasket - February 25, 2010 at 02:12 pm
This article is exactly why I never went for the PhD in English. The faculty fought over nonsense like this. Some even couldn't stand to be in the same room with each other. The grad students were on their own to figure all this out. While a Master's in English did open some doors in the real world, the most you can do now with a PhD in English is wait tables in a local restaurant. It's time we become honest with our profession and students who work to earn those degrees. I tell future English majors to find some other major and career field.
11. smowers - February 25, 2010 at 02:14 pm
tuxthepenguin . . . Dr. Dreedle? Is that really you??
12. nordicexpat - February 25, 2010 at 03:16 pm
I'm a bit confused about the narrative of this saga. At the end of Act I, our hero was delegated to remedial writing for his second year of graduate school because, as he himself admitted, he was a lousy composition teacher. Now, at the beginning of Act VI, our hero has been nominated to be the graduate student representative (in that same second year of graduate study) for the first-year composition program (which by his own admission he was lousy at) and even has ideas about how to improve it (before he was able to successfully teach his own class). Did I miss something?
I really don't know why Henty Adams is obsessed with rewriting The Paper Chase with himself cast as hero. It may be one thing to fantasize about revenge you will have on your profs when when you are a student, but, c'mon, Adams is himself faculty right now. I agree with jnicotra: there's not much that is constructive in this pieces, and seems designed simply to make a profession he has comes to despise look as badly as possible. Is he doing anything at his current institution to improve the myriad of wrongs he experienced as a graduate student? Did he retreat to a small liberal arts college somewhere to sulk about the evils of the profession? (Maybe I shouldn't ask: I know when that piece comes in Act XXX, it's going to be equally self-righteous and vindicative).
13. vdruskat - February 25, 2010 at 03:21 pm
Henry Adams,
Thanks for a great article. Your story sounds familiar to me. I've seen this very kind of thing happen over and over in academia. The only way to survive is to (1) publish, and (2)do your best to surround yourself with folks who support you. Don't let the psychos in academia get you down.
14. rightwingprofessor - February 25, 2010 at 03:30 pm
<Comment removed by moderator>
15. afprj - February 25, 2010 at 03:58 pm
If he included far too many memorable details then doesn't that mean the story was accurate?
16. anonscribe - February 25, 2010 at 06:20 pm
Studying literature, up to a point, does help a person improve morally. It's a not a hierarchy, like the person with a ph.d. in lit somehow has moral credentials than the person who read a lot of Dickens doesn't have. I suppose the problem here would be to find a counterfactual. Everyone, by the time they hit the end of college--perhaps even the end of high school--has already read lots of novels and poetry. People in chemistry are just as moral as people who study lit as a profession, but to say lit therefore has no moral value is to read "in chemistry" as "having never had meaningful exposure to literature." Of course, I think education in the sciences has moral value also (and the same ubiquity of science education applies).
17. william500 - February 26, 2010 at 07:04 am
This narrative again showcases the power plays of senior faculty versus graduate students and the unequal status that truly exists among them. TA's are disposable while Senior faculty possess the real power to make those decisions on committees even if an outstanding TA is appointed representive of his/her fellow graduate students. Academe does the same with underrepresented groups, playing their petty power games of up-one-man-ship and arbitrary decision making. You would think Senior faculty would show more professional courtesy toward their fledgling student colleagues but in this case study, such is not the case. One is apparent is that the student in question opinion's are silenced and therefore the committee he served on is robbed of the richness of the diversity of thought and opinion that are the hallmarks of 'openess' in community rather than in a department where power politics reign supreme. This is typical of many graduate school students as sthey interact with senior faculty within their respective departments and calls into question the 'humanity' dimension of relationships among the two groups, the sharing of work load, the mutality of respect that should be there and is not and of course the obvious show casing of going along with perceived power brokers to advance one's career. Is this Academic postitution? I for one think it is and such occurs all the time under the guise of collegiality at all costs. Dr. MacLean 1704 Checola Street,Nampa Idaho, 83686 1/208/466/3229 or 1/208/965/7104 which are my home and cell numbers and my email address is wmaclean@cableone.net.
18. william500 - February 26, 2010 at 07:23 am
Edits to my comments.
sthey should be 'they'
One thing that seems apparent, according to this narrative is...that the student in question opinions...
This is typical of many graduate school students' experiences as they interact within the uneven political terrain of the Academy and with the Senior faculty within their respective departments. Such calls into question the issue of the 'humanity'dimension of relationships among the two disparate groups, the sharing of the the committee's workload, the lack of mutuality of respect between the faculty and this one particular graduate student and apparently even among his own peers over the decision of what book to use in a writing class and the obviou showcasing of accommodating the perceived power brokers to assuage their egos so one's fledgling career is not endangered but rather advanced. Is this a narrative about Academic and Professional prostitution?
19. amnirov - February 26, 2010 at 08:00 am
I hope this series is over. All this guy does is whine and complain about problems that he more or less went out of his way to create, or situations that as far as I can tell were entirely in his head. It's like he sees slights in stray or absent gestures, plots in the way people's fingers entwine around their coffee mugs, cabals in random trips to the departmental restroom. I am so glad I don't work with him.
20. bankstreetcenter - February 26, 2010 at 05:36 pm
What Professor "Adams" describes is part of the entrenched bureaucracy that will ultimately kill the American university as it now stands. As the price of private undergraduate education soars past the average annual family income in the U.S., parents (the ultimate customers) will start to say NO.
A recent news article shows that American's now distrust universities. There are imposters in the temple, ladies and gentlemen, and their banality will be the undoing the the current higher ed paradigm. In some ways, good riddance.
21. kerr7920 - February 26, 2010 at 10:34 pm
Just an absolutely fantastic series. Dr. Adams experience arriving at ENU from Flyover College mirrors my experience precisely. Small, non-elite liberal arts colleges are not without their flaws. But undergraduates at the ENU's of the world are paying extraordinarily high tuition and receiving very little in return.
22. tolerantly - February 27, 2010 at 06:21 pm
<Comment removed by moderator>
23. gadget - February 28, 2010 at 12:35 pm
I earned a master's degree in English, and I do not plan to continue for a doctorate in English, although I was encouraged to by the program faculty. English departments are the worst: the smaller the issue, the greater the battle. Other departments have conflicts, but there is a difference. Everyone in a typical department is busy with their own research and specialized classes, and their minds are fully occupied before any added on administrative task like selecting a textbook for a class they do not even teach. But in English, everything revolves around a canon, everyone has read the same content, and everyone feels they are an expert on what everyone else does. There is no respectful distance between professors, a respect based on "I am no expert on what you do, only on what I do, so I will refrain from comment or interference in your business."
The funny thing is that in an English department, no one realizes how isolated the field is from what is happening in the rest of the world. They just wonder why they feel so marginalized in academia: no one else apprciates how important they are. Graduate students are the least respected and must be hazed into the system.
24. eric9584 - March 01, 2010 at 01:33 pm
One thing really struck me in this piece:
"Dr. Minder gave a report on a teaching handout for the first-year-composition program that had routinely been given to all TA's when they arrived on the campus...."
I wondered if that handout was supported by any mentoring or actual face-to-face discussion of teaching. I suspect not. While the academy has changed a great deal in the past few decades, in response to social pressures to be more inclusive and in response to economic pressures to retain students by being more student-centered, I know that many institutions still operate on the medieval-era assumption that expertise in your subject matter is all the qualification that is needed to be a teacher of that subject. You can get a Ph.D. without ever having thought for 5 minutes about what learning is, or how best to encourage and facilitate it. Certainly expertise is important, but it turns out that there are techniques of good teaching that are, well, teachable.
The way is open for an innnovative institution to train its graduate students in pedagogy--training that would improve the exprience (and "outcomes") of undergraduates working with them, and that would also give its graduate students an edge in a competitive job market.
25. survivalist - March 03, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Reading these comments actualy provides a very instructive sketch of the sorts of rhetorical predilections of the sorts of academics that Henry describes in this piece. Everyone (especially aspiring graduate students) should pay special attention to the folks here who speculate about Henry's insidious motives, complain about a "lack of evidence" in his essays (as though this was an anrticle for a pharmacology journal or something) or berate him more generally for having a "negative attitude."
These are the _exactly_ the noises that will be made by the cyinics, saboteurs and do-nothings in YOUR discipline, people, whenever you exert any kind of effort to improve things. You will find that 70-90% of them will be senior academics who were born during the baby boom, and consider themselves to be crusaders for the great American counter-culture.
26. dmaratto - March 03, 2010 at 09:46 pm
I swear I had this guy as an undergrad and skipped his class ...
27. timewaster123 - March 17, 2010 at 10:10 pm
I like both the article and the comments about it. I can see two sides to this incident, and what I suspect is that our author could have made changes in a much more realistic way by going around and chatting with the various committee members, as opposed to putting them on the spot. His motives are good, but his execution is poor, and I know a reasonable amount about this type of problem as it is a fallacy that I have been guilty of myself many a time. You know 'open mouth. insert foot. suffer consequences.'
The longer I'm in the academy, the more I think we should treat most interactions like this as a political process that should be carefully and sensitively negotiated. Yeah woo, we can all make waves at the next faculty meeting, but if you really care about end results, why not go around and have these informal chats, have a beer with some of these guys, and then slip in the suggestions once the ruffled feathers have been smoothed? Sure, chatting up annoying, ego driven bloviators might actually be harder than raising the activist flag, but the question is whether you care more about the results or more about being right... (Not that I can always practice what I preach, but at least I aspire to being this diplomatic...)
28. futureprofessor - March 25, 2010 at 10:21 am
Insightful series, just read them all through, and I recognize the characters. Ah, the playing of the politics, that is the real thorny side of this bureaucracy masquerading as a fountain of knowledge, that creates high drama from thin air. Perhaps I am more cynical than most and I see through a Hobbesian lense also, and see that Professors may very well be politically and morally challenged.
Show any talent or try to spark change and well, just brace yourself for the heated attacks. It seems most organizations are in this comfort zone of rubbing elbows and maintaining the status quo, and any threat to this is met with aggression.
Now I'm going to watch Glengarry Glenross so I can see what the lesser of two evils really is... heheheh
Maybe Universities are imperiled by Google Scholar/ Google books and iTunes lectures from the Ivies anyway. And maybe that's for the greater good.
Well Henry Adams, sir, thanks for a truthful series that illustrates the all-too-human side of department politics.
We should push for a massive Education bill, in addition to the neutered version that was recently voted through...one that would redirect more corporate fat into the future brain trust. Yes another Sputnik moment has passed while we were busy watching Brittany's twat.