On the Boundaries of the Academy
A few weeks ago I was able explore quite a bit of Atlanta as I walked from apppointment to appointment. Part of my travels took me alongside the northern-most edge of Georgia Tech University.
College and university campuses have a hold on me. They are one of the few things, along with ships, airplanes, beaches and baseball fields that I will walk out of my way to see. The campus at Georgia Tech offered all I sought: same tree-lined, park-like vistas. The stroll was satisfying and particularly thought-provoking.
My adult life has been lived in just such an environment and my foray through Tech prompted thinking about how my life might have been different had I attended or taught there. Such speculation has a tint of melancholy these days because I have made a decision to leave teaching directly after the next academic year, 2006 - 2007. I am NOT retiring, just moving into a phase of my life when I can pursue my consulting fulltime.
As you can imagine the decision to leave academia after 36 years of teaching is not made lightly. When September, 2007 rolls around it will be the first time in my life since I was five that my autumn has not started in some sort of school. New students, new books, even the smell and feel of new clothes are just as associated with the end of summer as the sound of kicked footballs, geese headed south and falling leaves.
There is no doubt that I made the right choice to follow a career in teaching and I am just as confident that it is time for me to put down the chalk (actually marker pens... enamel whiteboards long ago replaced the black slate ones). I was given the wonderful opportunity to explore ideas, work with brilliant creative minds, make a difference in the lives of a few students. There is nothing to compare with that moment in a classroom when you know you've made a connection, helped a student see something new about their world, provided them a technique or strategy to work through their challenges and to achieve their goals.
It is a bully pulpit and teaching at a place like the Evergreen State College allowed me to pursue almost every curiosity I had, from naval history to classical ballet. I've had the exhilirating experience of reading Isreali poetry in Hebrew and dissecting the melodies of a Duke Ellington song. I've been able to demonstrate how organized crime got rich on the numbers game and criticize the historical distortions in Oliver Stone's films. I once analyzed each line of Dr. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream Speech and I've explained how to use statistics to make better choices in the stock market.
Teaching, especially teaching in a liberal arts college, allows these intellectual flights of fancy. And at the end there are always the students, eager, anxious, adoring, combative; each engaging the things I had to present in such a way that it became theirs... uniquely a part of their understanding of the world.
Initially, all I wanted to do was to be a teacher, to provide a better "sense of" whatever I was trying to teach. Later I upped the ante, I wanted to get students to engage the material and take risks with it... to go, Karl Wallenda-style, "out on the wire." I think I succeeded pretty much. I know, in some small way, I changed a lot of lives. And because I chose increasingly unpopular topics, I know I helped many students overcome their fear of numbers to do meaningful statistical analysis, to look past their cynicism to see the potential for their effectiveness in shaping public policy, to set aside skepticism about the theoretical social sciences to find models and concepts that helped them describe, explain and predict their world better.
But I am tired of teaching. I probably would have left teaching years ago if I hadn't discovered the fun and challenges of working with adults, many women of color, returning to finish college later in their lives. Evergreen's Tacoma program, its talented faculty and it appreciative students kept me going.
I can, howver, feel my need to be in front of a classroom fading and I've lost all interest in reading and correctring student papers. For the first time I am more interested in my commentary than I am in listening to what students have to say. This self preoccupation at the end of a teaching career is, I think, normal and probably explains why writing this blog or my newsletter has become so appealing to me over the last few years.
For the first time, I have something to say. I'm not just conveying or translating the thoughts of others. My experiences as a father, son, husband, consultant and citizen have left me with a sense that I have learned something that others may find amusing, interesting or useful.
My departure from academia has been hastened, however, by an increasing uneasiness about what I see happening to the foundation of all teaching, scholarship. The end of the 20th century saw the rise of two contrary ways of looking at the world, Deconstructivism, and Positivism. Both taken to their extreme, muddle thinking and obscure reality.
Another oddly contradictory trend also frets: a peculiar tendency to turn away from the practical necessities of building a community or state by withdrawinng from that community (into the ivory tower) or only engaging that community by turning knowledge into a commodity, selling out to the large corporate and governmental grantors and contractors who increasingly to set the research agenda.
Quaint ivy-covering buildings, bustling student unions, parklike settings aside, colleges are not what they were when I first stepped onto campus of the University of Redlands in 1963. Yes, this sounds like to mutterings of an old prof who has read one too many bluebook. Could be, God knows I've shed plenty of red ink on student papers and exams. I think, however, that my concerns are real and portend serious deficiencies for higher education until some of these trends are reversed.
Until grant and graduate-student obsessed research universities see how disconnected they are from the curiosity and needs of their students and until elitist liberal arts colleges realize the need to enthusiastically engage people of all social backgrounds, academia will fall short of its potential to help students better understand their world and the physical, biological and social forces, including the arts, that shape their lives.
Teaching is my calling. Whatever success I've gained as a consultant stems from the years I spent in classrooms or faculty lounges. Georgia Tech could have been my home because the beauty and wonder of all these colleges lies in the possibility that we can start anew every fall. All it takes is a new notebook, pen and some new clothes.
College and university campuses have a hold on me. They are one of the few things, along with ships, airplanes, beaches and baseball fields that I will walk out of my way to see. The campus at Georgia Tech offered all I sought: same tree-lined, park-like vistas. The stroll was satisfying and particularly thought-provoking.
My adult life has been lived in just such an environment and my foray through Tech prompted thinking about how my life might have been different had I attended or taught there. Such speculation has a tint of melancholy these days because I have made a decision to leave teaching directly after the next academic year, 2006 - 2007. I am NOT retiring, just moving into a phase of my life when I can pursue my consulting fulltime.
As you can imagine the decision to leave academia after 36 years of teaching is not made lightly. When September, 2007 rolls around it will be the first time in my life since I was five that my autumn has not started in some sort of school. New students, new books, even the smell and feel of new clothes are just as associated with the end of summer as the sound of kicked footballs, geese headed south and falling leaves.
There is no doubt that I made the right choice to follow a career in teaching and I am just as confident that it is time for me to put down the chalk (actually marker pens... enamel whiteboards long ago replaced the black slate ones). I was given the wonderful opportunity to explore ideas, work with brilliant creative minds, make a difference in the lives of a few students. There is nothing to compare with that moment in a classroom when you know you've made a connection, helped a student see something new about their world, provided them a technique or strategy to work through their challenges and to achieve their goals.
It is a bully pulpit and teaching at a place like the Evergreen State College allowed me to pursue almost every curiosity I had, from naval history to classical ballet. I've had the exhilirating experience of reading Isreali poetry in Hebrew and dissecting the melodies of a Duke Ellington song. I've been able to demonstrate how organized crime got rich on the numbers game and criticize the historical distortions in Oliver Stone's films. I once analyzed each line of Dr. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream Speech and I've explained how to use statistics to make better choices in the stock market.
Teaching, especially teaching in a liberal arts college, allows these intellectual flights of fancy. And at the end there are always the students, eager, anxious, adoring, combative; each engaging the things I had to present in such a way that it became theirs... uniquely a part of their understanding of the world.
Initially, all I wanted to do was to be a teacher, to provide a better "sense of" whatever I was trying to teach. Later I upped the ante, I wanted to get students to engage the material and take risks with it... to go, Karl Wallenda-style, "out on the wire." I think I succeeded pretty much. I know, in some small way, I changed a lot of lives. And because I chose increasingly unpopular topics, I know I helped many students overcome their fear of numbers to do meaningful statistical analysis, to look past their cynicism to see the potential for their effectiveness in shaping public policy, to set aside skepticism about the theoretical social sciences to find models and concepts that helped them describe, explain and predict their world better.
But I am tired of teaching. I probably would have left teaching years ago if I hadn't discovered the fun and challenges of working with adults, many women of color, returning to finish college later in their lives. Evergreen's Tacoma program, its talented faculty and it appreciative students kept me going.
I can, howver, feel my need to be in front of a classroom fading and I've lost all interest in reading and correctring student papers. For the first time I am more interested in my commentary than I am in listening to what students have to say. This self preoccupation at the end of a teaching career is, I think, normal and probably explains why writing this blog or my newsletter has become so appealing to me over the last few years.
For the first time, I have something to say. I'm not just conveying or translating the thoughts of others. My experiences as a father, son, husband, consultant and citizen have left me with a sense that I have learned something that others may find amusing, interesting or useful.
My departure from academia has been hastened, however, by an increasing uneasiness about what I see happening to the foundation of all teaching, scholarship. The end of the 20th century saw the rise of two contrary ways of looking at the world, Deconstructivism, and Positivism. Both taken to their extreme, muddle thinking and obscure reality.
Another oddly contradictory trend also frets: a peculiar tendency to turn away from the practical necessities of building a community or state by withdrawinng from that community (into the ivory tower) or only engaging that community by turning knowledge into a commodity, selling out to the large corporate and governmental grantors and contractors who increasingly to set the research agenda.
Quaint ivy-covering buildings, bustling student unions, parklike settings aside, colleges are not what they were when I first stepped onto campus of the University of Redlands in 1963. Yes, this sounds like to mutterings of an old prof who has read one too many bluebook. Could be, God knows I've shed plenty of red ink on student papers and exams. I think, however, that my concerns are real and portend serious deficiencies for higher education until some of these trends are reversed.
Until grant and graduate-student obsessed research universities see how disconnected they are from the curiosity and needs of their students and until elitist liberal arts colleges realize the need to enthusiastically engage people of all social backgrounds, academia will fall short of its potential to help students better understand their world and the physical, biological and social forces, including the arts, that shape their lives.
Teaching is my calling. Whatever success I've gained as a consultant stems from the years I spent in classrooms or faculty lounges. Georgia Tech could have been my home because the beauty and wonder of all these colleges lies in the possibility that we can start anew every fall. All it takes is a new notebook, pen and some new clothes.
posted by Duke at 5:06 PM
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