Paul Brandon wrote:
> He does have a common interest in teaching, and much of what he says
> about teaching is representative of an approach that has a certain
> prevalence in higher education and which we have to face and deal
> with from our colleagues and administrators.
I would like to hear how you characterize that 'approach'. Frankly, I
think you're being overly generous here.
In both private and public exchanges with Louis, it has become clear to
me that he goes out of his way to misinterpret dissent from his posts as
though it signalled indifference or malice towards students. As has been
pointed out many times (most recently Herb Coleman's excellent responses) in
those dissenting responses, the driving force behind those objections is
disdain for the content/style/integrity of Louis' posts (which essentially
amount to "other teachers are awful, I am good, students love me and can't
stand anyone else, I save all of their lives, they would have been lost were
it not for me, you people are all heartless"), NOT for the notion that
faculty should care about students.
Here in the U.S. we have a parallel argument form going on with respect
to the "Did Bush lie about weapons of mass destruction?" question. Bush and
his supporters have adopted a tactic of responding to challenges to Bush's
honesty as though they were challenges to the claim that Hussein was a
brutal dictator. Of course it's a lot easier to defend THAT claim than it is
to defend a claim that Bush was honest about the WMD evidence, and if
they're lucky, some poor soul will be suckered into believing that he or she
actually made the claim that the Bush folks are belittling. But it remains a
tactic used to avoid arguing for something you don't think you can defend.
Could we have a discussion about the extent to which faculty
can/do/should care about the individual lives of their students? Of course.
We'd probably find a range of opinions (though I'm quite confident that none
would represent the idiotic extreme anti-student position that Louis' posts
attribute to everyone except for himself). We'd probably come to consensus
on some questions, and not on others, and have a productive discussion. Do
Louis' posts spark such a discussion? Not in my memory, and I can't imagine
why anyone would expect them to. If that is their purpose, they're
incredibly poorly written.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
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