Ms. Mentor

Can Just Anyone Teach?

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Question: I want to teach writing at a community college, but my M.A.'s not in English. I'm currently doing adjunct teaching in developmental writing and composition, but I'm told I have to get at least an M.A. in English, and maybe a Ph.D., to get a secure position. As someone who quit the business world to move into teaching, this scrambling to get degrees makes me angry. The decision to hire should be based on what kind of teacher the person is, just as in the real world. There are people with degrees who can't stand in front of a classroom and teach. They just read the book at you. I've seen them all.

But getting a Ph.D. would take 10 years. I don't have 10 years of my life to devote to something that, once I get it, will pit me against every other person with the same degree. I am 35 and getting older fast, and I'm bitter about all this baloney. What should I do?

Answer: Well ... some might say that you do certainly have one healthy ego. Lesser mortals need to take courses in the subjects they teach -- but you don't. Other weaklings may need to follow the rules and learn professional norms and methods -- but not you.

Ms. Mentor, more tactful and more gentle, will point out that there are reasons for degree requirements: to make sure that the individual knows the subject, knows the research, uses the most current teaching methods, understands the theoretical jargon, and can share the rules of the field with students. (Would you trust a mentor who had never been an academic?)

Certainly there are inept teachers, alas. Ineptitude knows no bounds. And like all curmudgeons, Ms. Mentor is sure that ineptitude is far more widespread now than it was in her golden youth, sometime before the Spanish-American War.

But you do not make any case for your own eptitude. Nowhere in your letter do you mention any talents, skills, or achievements that should induce employers to ignore your lack of credentials. Especially at Ivy League universities, people without traditional degrees often do teach -- but they are usually Nobel Prize winners, or novelists with 15 books, or film makers or artists with distinguished records.

What, Ms. Mentor asks you to ask yourself, have you done lately?

She suggests that you calm down, and consider this: Would you hire someone with a lot of drive, but no traditional degrees, to be your neurosurgeon? (Remember that doctor in Florida who amputated the wrong foot?) Or -- if you think that classwork and training are not needed for teaching writing -- then perhaps you have a low opinion of the field in which you hope to work?

Why would you want to be in a profession that had no standards for the people joining the club?

And then there's the matter of collegiality. As Ms. Mentor has stated in many a column,, teachers' lives are NOT characterized by "independence." Every teacher is evaluated repeatedly (even chronically) by peers and students; courses have descriptions to follow; and faculty members who wish to stay must be "collegial" -- meaning they must work and play well with others. Hotheads get axed.

Finally, Ms. Mentor exhorts you not to think of 35 as old. For one thing, a survey a few years ago discovered that the average graduate student in English was 38. The average person changes careers five times in a lifetime, and the average American lives to be 75. Courtney Love, still called a bad girl, just turned 36. Mick Jagger, still a bad boy, turns 57 this month.

Ms. Mentor has been accused of being relentlessly bourgeois, but traditional middle-class values will serve you well here. Study the field, follow the rules, amass the grades and credits, and work hard to achieve your goals.

And if Ms. Mentor were not the soul of tact that she is, she might also pose another question: If you think that one shouldn't fritter away one's time on practice and learning the ropes ... and that only desire should matter ... then why not go for a really well-paying, glamorous job?

Consider the fact that Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones recently checked into an alcohol-rehab clinic, and may have trouble making the Stones' next world tour.

Perhaps they'll have a job opening for you?

Question: I got my Ph.D. some five years ago, from a top-ranked school, and have a very good teaching record and some publications. But I haven't been able to get a tenure-track job, and that may be because I have a physical disability which requires some accommodations. If I don't want to give up on academia (a wrenching loss), should I consider going into the new field of Disability Studies, where I'll have a unique niche that might be particularly attractive to potential employers?

Answer: Yes.

She must, however, scold those readers who ask her questions that have already been answered in her column, or by other learned worthies on this site. Likewise, she is not a search engine or librarian, ferreting out the minute details you need to know to get into an exchange program in Austria. Such laziness does not bode well for the research careers of those readers, she mutters darkly.

And furthermore -- Ms. Mentor, who rarely answers letters personally -- will not be rushed into responding to a particular epistle within a certain time frame. Ms. Mentor cannot be cudgeled, shepherded along, bribed, or cajoled. She is her own woman.

Ms. Mentor's forte is the knowledge that no one else has. She stores up gossip and oral history, and she reveals dirty little professional secrets. (Do you know, for instance, why dissertation-defense committees always burst into loud laughter once the candidate leaves the room?)

In future columns Ms. Mentor will discuss backstabbers and whistle blowers, whiners, knaves, thieves, temptresses, and an angel or two. Anonymity is always guaranteed. Scurrilous speculations are always welcome.

In her continuing efforts to be a role model, Ms. Mentor points out that it is vital to self-promote. And so she is proud to announce that she has been named one of the Net's "Hottest Columnists," and that her tome, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia, has just gone into its third printing.