tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post6074134064933315927..comments2024-02-28T18:29:41.120-08:00Comments on Not of General Interest: NY Times: Let me throw stones at you from my castle of privilegeundinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05589384016564587214noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post-70728729318192455562015-05-11T12:26:07.883-07:002015-05-11T12:26:07.883-07:00Contingent Cassandra--I'm not sure that Mark B...Contingent Cassandra--I'm not sure that Mark Bauerlein counts anything but the model he describes as giving students a "real" education; he thus doesn't acknowledge that other models exist. It's handy for an attack op-ed but as you say, it doesn't square much with the real world. undinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05589384016564587214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post-29906933915452433092015-05-10T21:12:10.582-07:002015-05-10T21:12:10.582-07:00It raised my hackles, too (and, if my facebook fee...It raised my hackles, too (and, if my facebook feed is any measure, the hackles of a good many other folks as well). I'm not sure I have enough energy left over from the ongoing process of Trying to Grade All the Things (combined with the ongoing process of Trying to Get Students to Turn in All of the Things So They Can Be Graded) to parse all the reasons why, but we could start with his self-congratulatory description of scheduling biweekly conferences with all his comp students, and his implication that professors who don't do the same are preoccupied by their research. I once followed that model -- when I was a grad student and then an adjunct at an Ivy League school, with a total load of <30 students spread over two sections. It's a great model, but there's no way I can follow it with the 80 students I'd have if my 4-course load were all English 101, or the c. 90 students I have when I'm teaching 4 sections of upper-level Writing In the Disciplines. Not to mention that my students' work/family/other responsibility schedules preclude their coming to conferences every other week (unless I can somehow fit half the class in during scheduled class hours -- but then when do we have class?). I'm happy to see someone championing the value of teaching in a research-oriented institution, but until the majority of people teaching the gen ed level classes have loads that allow them to spend that amount of time per student -- and until the students have good enough funding to allow them to spend that much time per class -- the problems he describes (to the extent they exist) aren't going away. <br /><br />tl;dr: the issues are structural, and no amount of dedication to teaching from professors (tenured or not, overwhelmed or not) is going to solve them.Contingent Cassandrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08161652083031423415noreply@blogger.com