Just in case no undergrad student of yours has yet,
apparently unprovoked, let fly a personal testimony
that's also the founding document of a new generation,
leaving you with jaw agape and the lesson utterly forgotten,
the cover story of this week's Shepherd Express - Milwaukee's
beacon of unsubsidized truth - has been released into the ether.
www.shepherd-express.com/shepherd/20/07/headlines/cover_story.html
before it's too late.
A perhaps more relevant freebe cover story, "Slaves of Academia,"
is found in the other, smaller, local beacon, The Metro, which
has thus far shunned such frills as a Website.
I have mailed Robert McGuire a request for the file, but for
now I'll just laboriously reproduce his first few paragraphs.
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I'm a good teacher, I think. I have a sense of responsibility
to my writing students at Marquette University and Carroll College,
and I know my stuff. I know how to get students to keep their
paragraphs focused on a main point and to make the thesis into
something significant and interesting to read.
But I wouldn't necessarily recommend my classes, because I don't
believe I serve the students as well as I should.
My little sister is beginning her college search now and what
I've been advising her is that what matters most in college,
what most affects the quality of your learning, is the relationship
you have with your teachers. The thing is, my students and I don't
have any relationship. I don't have the time for it.
I am the temp worker of the academic world. I teach on a course-
by-course basis at two schools and keep my ear to the ground about
openings at other schools for when my temporary assignments run out.
Because the pay is so low, I must overload my plate with work (some
of it as a free-lance writer) and can't invest the time that a teacher
should into a college writing class.
I have no time to get involved in campus and departmental life.
I don't see my students at drama department productions. They don't
bump into me in the student union. My office hours are minimal.
I am in my classroom for my students, but otherwise I am largely absent.
This is very different from the kind of teachers I had for freshman
composition or introduction to philosophy a decade ago. They were on
campus five days a week, in their offices every afternoon and were
valued counselors I got to know over a period of years and still visit.
But my sister is more likely to have a temp worker like myself for most
lower-level courses. Because of an explosion in the use of temporary
faculty in recent years, students are less likely to develop any
relationship with their teachers. This is bad news for the quality of
education.
Some readers may chuckle at this idealistic vision of teacher/student
relationships. We all know about professors who don't make themselves
available and who are never in their offices during the posted hours.
But the rise in temp instructors is making that the rule rather than
the exception. And it used to be that choosing a less affordable,
teaching-oriented liberal arts college over a research-oriented public
university was a protection against the anonymous campus. It no longer is.
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The rest of the article has numbers, instances, quotes and other meat.
Hopefully the author will come through with the file.
valis
