The Adjunct

Are academics different? This is the question Distinguished University Professor Stanley Fish asks in his latest New York Times Op-Ed blog. Professor Fish, as you might recall, recently wrote about adjuncts such as myself were the reason most universities were fast transforming into University of Phoenix clones. Professor Fish wasn’t done sharing his enlightened criticism of those instructors unfortunate enough not to be him, and so he decided to go after another non-issue, the professorial indulgences of academic freedom.

Fish:

Last week’s column about Denis Rancourt, a University of Ottawa professor who is facing dismissal for awarding A-plus grades to his students on the first day of class and for turning the physics course he had been assigned into a course on political activism, drew mostly negative comments.

The criticism most often voiced was that by holding Rancourt up as an example of the excesses indulged in by those who invoke academic freedom, I had committed the fallacy of generalizing from a single outlier case to the behavior of an entire class “Is the Rancourt case one of a thousand such findings this year, or it the most outlandish in 10 years?” (Jack, No. 88).

For those of you unaware of what a fallacy is, allow me to explain. A fallacy is an argument which may convince others but is not logically sound. It is essentially a defect in an argument which then causes the argument to be invalid.

Most people get introduced to fallacies in high school, and most colleges require all students to take at least one logic class which teaches not just how to identify logical fallacies, but why they are not a valid method of argument. It is too bad that, during his superior college education which Fish went on and on about receiving, Fish never had to take a class on fallacies. Or, I suppose, maybe he did have to take the class but just didn’t pay very close attention, because here in his article for the New York Times our Distinguished Professor begins by stating a fallacy of hasty generalization.

Now, as any freshman college class can tell you (did you spot the fallacy I just committed?), a hasty generalization involves basing a broad conclusion upon the statistics of a survey of a small group that fails to sufficiently represent the whole population.

E.g., “Wow! Did you see that teenager run that red light? Teenage drivers are really pathetic.”
This is otherwise known as Leaping to A Conclusion. Or, to paraphrase Professor Fish, “Wow! Did you read about that professor who just gave everyone an A on the first day of class? Professors have too much academic freedom!”

As Fish himself admits, he got hundreds of letters pointing out the flaw in his logic. Naturally, he disregarded these letters and instead insisted, “No, really guys, it’s totally what professors are like!” Or as he put it:

It may be outlandish because it is so theatrical, but one could argue, as one reader seemed to, that Rancourt carries out to its logical extreme a form of behavior many display in less dramatic ways. “How about a look at the class of professors who … duck their responsibilities ranging from the simple courtesies (arrival on time, prepared for meetings … ) to the essentials (“lack of rigor in teaching and standards … )” (h.c.. ecco, No. 142). What links Rancourt and these milder versions of academic acting-out is a conviction that academic freedom confers on professors the right to order (or disorder) the workplace in any way they see fit, irrespective of the requirements of the university that employs them.

Whoa! Slow down there, Professor. How exactly do you make the leap from your anecdotal fallacy of professors not arriving to class on time, or not being prepared for meetings (a guy on the internet posted about how he sees professors do this all the time, therefore it must be true!) to professors reordering the workplace in whatever way they see fit. As he slips down his slope, Fish desperately wants to start quoting Ghostbusters: “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!”

College professors get a lot of freedom when it comes to running their classes. We can dress as we want, and be addressed as we prefer. We usually can choose what textbooks we teach from, and almost always can decide for ourselves if we want to lecture or do group work. We can shift the emphasis of our lessons to what we feel that emphasis should be upon. Most significant of all, we don’t have a boss looking over our back, and this is at the root of what is bothering Professor Fish.

You see, with great power comes great responsibility. If a teacher wanted to, then they could probably get away with cutting corners, such as ending class early (or starting it late), handing back essays without detailed comments, canceling lessons on core concepts, or just showing a lot of movies. I met enough teachers who do these things, some out of laziness, others out of disgruntled apathy, and even a few who don’t realize what it is they are doing (or not doing, as the case were).

But there are advantages to our freedom as well. I can choose the textbook that I feel is the most effective for my class. This may seem like a small matter, but I believe that if I was forced to use a different textbook for, say, my grammar class, then the quality of that class would decrease sharply due to my lack of familiarity and lack of ease with the book. Having the ability to judge for myself which book is best for my class is advantageous for all my students. I am a college professor, and I have been hired to profess, to convey a set of skills and base of information that requires my presence. I am not a customer service agent, I do not simply need basic training and a script to follow. My role in the classroom is the most important, so much so that my ability and will to succeed can effect whether a student succeeds. It is, in my opinion, one of the most important and sacred jobs there is. It does not mean I am sacred or holy, as Professor Fish sneering states some teachers think of themselves, but it means that I take my duty with the utmost gravity.

Fish:

It would be hard to imagine another field of endeavor in which employees believe that being attentive to their employer’s goals and wishes is tantamount to a moral crime But this is what many (not all) academics believe, and if pressed they will support their belief by invoking a form of academic exceptionalism, the idea that while colleges and universities may bear some of the marks of places of employment — work-days, promotions, salaries, vacations, meetings, etc. — they are really places in which something much more rarefied than a mere job goes on.

I disagree that my goals and my employer’s goals are different, because my employer is the university and I am the university. The Vice Chancellor of Planning, the campus security guards, the Human Resources office, these things are all in place because of one thing: the classroom. The school exists for the students, and by the teachers.

I do not believe that I could do my job effectively if I was micromanaged in the way Fish wants. At best, he is looking at academia from a very high position: the frustrated Dean who can’t get those miserable adjuncts to show up on time or stick to a lesson plan. He’d probably love The Adjunct Professor’s Guide To Success.

At our department meetings, angry letters from people no one has ever met come flooding in. They are letters from people like Fish, complaining about our productivity, something they have somehow managed to quantify into numerical form. They would like us to become proactive in getting up student enrollment. They would like to inform us that there is no money left to put paper in the copier, or buy us dry-erase markers. There is money to hire another 10 Vice Presidents, and they would like us to mentally congratulate these folks, whom we shall never meet, on their superior positions and salaries. They would like full-timers to crowd three to an office, and the adjuncts to continue going without any office at all. Fish would also like us to not think so highly of ourselves. We need to know our place, I suppose.

He concludes by saying:

Those who would defend academic freedom would do well to remove the halo it often wears.

I take great offense to that statement.

I am never late to class, in fact, I am always at least fifteen minutes early.

I have never once used my position to further my own political or personal agenda. I feel that to do so is a violation of my role as teacher. I do not tell them what I believe about any subject other than the subject of the lesson. In my advanced English classes, I teach them critical thought and analysis. After they have learned how to approach an issue with these skills, then they can make their own determinations.