StickWithANose

One point that I often make to other academic types I know is that all of the horrific policies now being pushed on K-12 schooling are being cued up for the tertiary sector, and the political actors involved are drawing from a familiar play-book.

The method by which today’s intrepid reformers establish the need for “reform” is to construct an identifiable group as being the entrenched enemy serving their own narrow interests to the detriment of the majority. In a paper I co-authored with my former mentor [due out in November], I trace the construction of teachers and teacher’s unions as the entrenched enemy of public schooling by combing through reams of white papers and policy analyses produced by think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation and Brookings Institution, since the late 1970’s and the speeches given and policies pursued by the administrations of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama. The pattern that emerged from my research is clear. From the rise of the modern conservative movement to the bi-partisan consensus that emerged from the Clinton years, the construct of teachers and teachers’ unions as being the villain in the grand political narrative of education reform has become the modus operandi of reformers of all stripes.

As Cargala so eloquently describe, this method is called message framing. The idea is to render all political policy down to a simple narrative of a sympathetic protagonist [intrepid reformers] and an un-sympathetic antagonist [teachers and their unions]. Even a cursory reading of media reports on education reform quickly demonstrates the effectiveness of this method as it is almost always framed by the reporter as government official/think tank troll says this while teachers’ unions say this… You know, that tried and true method of reporting that renders all nuance and relevant facts down to a he said / she said narrative that exudes truthiness. It is a method that speaks to the gut of “real Americans” and plays on their often justifiable fears and frustrations to foster enough anger to create a political space for “reform.”

The characteristics of the un-sympathetic antagonist are familiar to us. Teachers are lazy, ineffective, over-paid, and protected from being held accountable by an archaic practice known as tenure. [If you doubt this characterization read here or here] Now, it is becoming increasingly clear that these characteristics are being mapped on to the new enemy.

At a time when nearly one in 10 American workers is unemployed, here’s a crew (the complaint goes) who are guaranteed jobs for life, teach only a few hours a week, routinely get entire years off, dump grading duties onto graduate students and produce “research” on subjects like “Rednecks, Queers and Country Music” or “The Whatness of Books.” Or maybe they stop doing research altogether (who’s going to stop them?), dropping their workweek to a manageable dozen hours or so, all while making $100,000 or more a year. Ready to grab that pitchfork yet? [...]

The labor system, for one thing, is clearly unjust. Tenured and tenure-track professors earn most of the money and benefits, but they’re a minority at the top of a pyramid. Nearly two-thirds of all college teachers are non-tenure-track adjuncts like Matt Williams, who told Hacker and Dreifus he had taught a dozen courses at two colleges in the Akron area the previous year, earning the equivalent of about $8.50 an hour by his reckoning. It is foolish that graduate programs are pumping new Ph.D.’s into a world without decent jobs for them. If some programs were phased out, teaching loads might be raised for some on the tenure track, to the benefit of undergraduate education…

But Hacker and Dreifus go much further, all but calling for an end to the role of universities in the production of knowledge. Spin off the med schools and research institutes, they say. University presidents “should be musing about education, not angling for another center on antiterrorist technologies.” As for the humanities, let professors do research after-hours, on top of much heavier teaching schedules. “In other occupations, when people feel there is something they want to write, they do it on their own time and at their own expense,” the authors declare. But it seems doubtful that, say, “Battle Cry of Freedom,” the acclaimed Civil War history by Princeton’s James McPherson, could have been written on the weekends, or without the advance spadework of countless obscure monographs. If it is false that research invariably leads to better teaching, it is equally false to say that it never does.

At the very least, it is impressive that the author offered at least some skepticism, but I’d like to tackle each one of these claims… Let’s start with lazy. While professors at Tier 1 research institutions may teach only two courses a term, those courses are quite likely to be graduate courses that require a great deal of outside work to stay up-to-date on the broader field beyond ones specialization, mentoring of students in the development of their own research projects, and substantial amounts of grading. For professors at the state universities down to community colleges, the teaching loads are far higher and are geared toward the undergraduate level.  When you include all of the university service expected of professors at ALL levels then the idea that academics are sitting on their behinds quickly dissipates.

As for ineffective, ie. “Redneck, Queers and Country Music”, it is certainly true that there is a good deal of “off the wall” research taking place in every discipline, but that is the point. There is a reason that almost every modern technological advance [or at least the technical and theoretical foundation for advances] has emerged from universities. Every new idea is viewed as being crazy at first. If it is our desire to generate innovation and knowledge creation then it is necessary to create a social space for that to take place… to create an incentive structure that encourages risk-taking. In a process known as mimetic isomorphism [definition here -  example here], the private sector’s ability to engage in risk-taking is institutionally constrained [especially for publicly traded companies] unless it finds itself in an un-competitive environment, such as Google. Universities are places specifically designed to create a space for knowledge generation and out-of-the-box thinking, and they do a fairly good job.

Turning to the over-paid argument, this chart depicts the average pay scale for professors. The refrain that professors are making $100,000 + is true if you are only counting the small minority atop the university academy as being the norm. For the vast majority [ie. associate professors], the pay scale reflects what one would expect of highly trained professionals working in a capitalist society. When you include research and publishing to the previously mentioned duties, the work load of an university professor is equivalent to other professions, such as medicine and law.

And, finally, the bug bear of them all: tenure. I won’t spill a bunch of digital ink on this one as it is a tired narrative. Let’s just say that, as with innovation and mimetic isomorphism, tenure creates a necessary space for thinkers and researchers to develop un-popular ideas and drive human knowledge. It also offers protection from political persecution and is just as relevant for K-12 educators as it is for professors. [I know highly rated teachers who were forced out of positions here in the beautiful South because local churches didn't like the idea of DFH teaching their God-fearing children biology.] Part of creating an institutional space for risk-taking requires protecting risk-takers from political machinations. That is the job of tenure.

My point here is to not critique the new up-and-coming narrative. The point is that this line of argument is tried and true, and it now being applied to the tertiary sector. This is a dangerous path we’re traveling, and it leads down hill…