One of my freshman-composition students plopped noisily in a seat next to my desk. “I failed my art appreciation paper. I don’t understand this. How can I fail an art paper?” I scanned the essay and asked him what grade I might have assigned the paper.
He looked over it for a bit: “I guess you would have failed it too. I see several misspellings and some incomplete sentences. But it’s an art paper, not an English paper! It’s not the same thing.”
I smiled at his naïve comment, even as I disabused him of its false premise. I see teaching writing as foundational for other subjects, as I employ my professional training to eradicate weaknesses in student work. I build this foundation carefully through well-thought-out assignments and one-on-one conferences. Even students who enter the university with strong skills have poor habits that I can address. When they move onto their other subjects, they need to carry with them the skills that I have imparted and they have refined. I mention this because of a burgeoning development in general education: the replacement of disciplinary courses with student-learning outcomes embedded in a wide variety of courses. In the latter view, professors in almost any course can document student achievements in areas as diverse as public speaking, computation, research, basic science, and, of course, writing.
Certainly we need to embed these skills throughout the curriculum, but the problem that arises is what has been called “Polymath Syndrome,” the belief held by many professors that they can teach almost any subject or skill. In such a configuration, a biology professor, for example, requires an oral presentation in a freshman-level course and submits a formal evaluation of the skill to a central records-keeping office to document the learning outcome. That professor might very well be able to recognize good skills or poor skills, but that professor is not likely equipped to remediate deficiencies. As I have heard some professors in the department that specializes in the skill lament, “That professor in [another discipline] is telling me that he knows how to do what I do, including all of the trouble-shooting that I have learned in six years of graduate school and a dozen years of teaching. I’m sorry, but that’s more than a little insulting.”
The turf issues attached to such models are massive: If English, communication arts, math, and other departments no longer hold exclusive courses in general education but are reduced to trouble-shooting roles, their positions will disappear, replaced by yeomen remediators who work in academic labs and not classrooms. It’s a significant challenge.
Are such laments regarding Polymath Syndrome legitimate or are they just blustering over shrinking influence related to general-education courses?
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7 Responses to Sure, I Can Teach That …
drj50 - October 19, 2009 at 4:47 pm
There two issues here — the “polymath syndrome” among faculty and the assessment of general education learning outcomes in a variety of courses. I work in assessment. When schools seek to gather information about general education skills (writing, information literacy, oral communication, etc.) from a wide variety of courses, they are only gathering information. If the school wants good information, it needs to ensure that the faculty evaluating these skills understand what is expected (a little bit of rater training). But the school is not (should not be) asking that faculty in economics or biology teach the basics of writing or oral communication (except perhaps for what is distinctive about professional writing or presentations in the disciplines). That is what foundational courses, writing centers, tutorial services, etc. are for. Faculty who try to do others’ jobs are liable to burn out.Dealing with faculty who think they can do everything is a different challenge — and one beyond my pay grade.
thais - October 19, 2009 at 5:14 pm
As a professor of Speech Communication I often cringe at those who try to teach public speaking, small group dynamics and interpersonal communication on a fundamental level. It is dangerous for others to try it. I often tell the story of my wife who was told by a professor (from another discipline) in an intro level course that she had a “speech impediment” and would need special training to overcome it. There was absolutely nothing wrong with voice and for years she would not speak in public as a result. Today with no more than a little confidence building she now speaks regularly to audiences of 1500 with excellent results. Had we not met she would have gone through life thinking that she had problems. It takes years of training and experience to deal with the fears and skill of teaching communication. After some 30 odd years or so at teaching these course I am still learning to teach a skill that requires reasoning along with the basic vocal and physical skill to do the job well.
12075459 - October 19, 2009 at 10:06 pm
The problem isn’t that professors think that they are polymaths. It is the opposite: professors in certain subjects who think that they are the exclusive guardians of knowledge in that area. If a history professor grades a written essay, is she supposed to ignore spelling errors? Is a physics professor supposed to ignore mathematical errors? Is an English professor supposed to ignore basic logic errors?I would think not. The problem isn’t so much that professors in various disciplines think that they are experts in other areas but they do know enough to be able to correct some of the problems that they see.At the same time, I would agree that professors should also know the limits of their knowledge. The fact is that while a professor of management can tell a student that there are certain things lacking in an essay that has been submitted, that same professor is unlikely to be able to tell the student exactly WHY the errors are errors or how to stop making the errors. In such cases, the proper recourse is to send the student to the writing lab operated by the English Department. Similarly, a professor of political science might ask for an oral presentation and can grade the student on such a presentation but if the student has serious deficiencies (and most do), that student should be immediately dispatched to the Speech Department.The fact is that a competent English professor can (and will) find fault in the writing of most college professors in other departments, just as I can find fault in the usage of my subject matter in other departments. Still, if there is a claim that there is a complete lack of competency to recognize errors in composition in other departments, then I guess that I should excuse the horrific examples of composition errors that cross my desk every day.
lydacher - October 21, 2009 at 11:42 am
I’m probably not the only teacher who has been told, “If you can teach, you can teach anything.” This statement usually comes from an administrator who a) has never taught, b) actually believes this crap, and c) is trying to save money by not hiring a qualified professional.
insulatornurse - October 22, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Hi, I am a nursing instructor who has taught just about every nursing subject at the undergraduate level. My training thus far includes having been a medical/surgical nurse, a family nurse practitioner and an RN, MSN degrees as well as ABD for a PhD in post secondary education. I am qualified to teach all subjects because of my background. In addition, I teach young children how to swim, I teach 4th grade religious education and community CPR and First Aid.I do not agree that if you can teach you can teach anything. I do believe that teaching is a gift that some are very good at and that by teaching what we know we are giving our gifts. If the professor/instructor/teacher is comfortable with teaching the subject, then I feel they should be given a chance. I feel that the professor/instructor/teacher should be able to prove competency in that area by providing the documentation of experience and the certification or CEU to qualify to teach that area. When I give a written assignment, I would place writing, grammar and APA format on the grading rubric and learners will get points off for not being correct in these areas. A typical assignment will be 10% deduction for grammatical errors.
vlghess - October 22, 2009 at 2:26 pm
I’ve seen it go both ways. In particular, I’ve heard faculty members with doctorates resist Writing Across the Curriculum initiatives because “I’m not competent to teach writing;” a similar rationale (or rationalization) would expect the English dept. to provide writing courses for all the content areas that need them (and who doesn’t?) I agree with the statement above: let the basics be taught and the remediation be handled by experts, but let’s all take ownership of the need to expect students across our institutions to write clearly, articulately, and correctly and to write appropriately for our own disciplines. I suspect a similar exhortation applies to speaking, group work, etc.
stevenkass - October 24, 2009 at 12:29 am
Is this a joke?Gene C. Fant Jr., writes about “the problem that arises is what has been called ‘Polymath Syndrome,’ the belief held by many professors that they can teach almost any subject or skill.”A Yahoo! search for “Polymath Syndrome” returns four hits, truly a minuscule number. One of the four is Fant’s article; another is an online pharmacy. The remaining two describe other concepts than Fant’s.Notwithstanding the puzzle of how a “syndrome” can be a “belief,” only for values of “many” approaching zero can it be that “many professors” hold the belief that somehow is this syndrome.Fant concludes by asking whether “such laments regarding Polymath Syndrome” are legitimate. What laments?For the record, I’m a mathematician, and I give weekly writing assignments to my introductory statistics students. I’m not qualified to teach composition, but I am, thanks to hard work, workshops on writing, and support from colleagues who teach composition, “equipped to remediate” my students’ “deficiencies,” when it comes to writing mathematics and statistics. I’mthrilled that our general education requirements now follow general composition with writing in disciplines, and I’m happy to see more and more faculty learn to teach their students appropriate computational and quantitative tools for applications to their disciplines.