who dares to question the mighty oz?
I saw an exchange between academics on Friday that I can't get out of my head. Eric Foner was speaking at UCLA on the idea of freedom in America, pre- and post-Sept. 11. Foner is an extraordinarily gifted and important historian whose view of contemporary politics struck me as reflexive and predictable, but never mind that: the really remarkable discussion centered around a topic that was closer to home.Another grad student in the room asked Foner about the state of academic freedom after Sept. 11, and Foner said that it was generally good; at his own university, Columbia, professors are well-protected against some occasionally virulent political attacks. Foner added that he speaks at high schools all over the country, however, and has heard from teachers in that environment that parents sometimes call school administrators to express concerns about what their children are being taught. Some of these parents, he added (in what should be understood as an ominous reference), are known to watch Fox News. Phone calls from parents, Foner fretted, may have a "chilling effect" in the classroom.
Later, another academic in the room (who I didn't recognize, but who I think was a professor) raised her hand to take issue with Foner. Academic freedom in the universities is threatened, she argued, as (for example) professors in many Middle Eastern Studies programs are coming under political attack in the post-Sept. 11 environment. Some people, she noted, are even creating websites to criticize professors who teach Middle Eastern Studies. General nodding and agreement around the room.
This baffles me, to put it kind of mildly. When people outside academia criticize academics, that criticism constitutes a diminution of freedom?
Fall silent, peasant! Do you attack freedom by speaking of me in a critical fashion? How fascist! Shut up! (My god, and you even have a website expressing your disagreement? An assault on free speech!)
Your silence equals our freedom, oh ye vast unwashed.
Academic freedom is necessary and important; professors should clearly have protection against formal institutional retaliation, including firing or suspension, for expressing unpopular (or dumb, or wrong, or downright evil) ideas. But somewhere, somehow, the idea of academic freedom has been bent into something altogether different; we somehow now have a right to not be criticized by outsiders. Parents who ask questions about what their own children are being taught are somehow waging an assault on freedom, creating a morally questionable "chilling effect."
I'm a teaching assistant in a 20th-century history class, and recently asked a roomful of new first-year college students what they knew about Populism. Blank faces all around the room. So I asked: how many of you have taken a history class before this one? They had all taken high school history. So what went wrong? One of my students explained:
"I took history last year, but my teacher mostly talked about, like, how Bush is a fascist and stuff."
If my (hypothetical) teenager came home and told me that his or her history teacher was talking about Bush all year long, I wouldn't have bothered with a phone call. I would have created a profound chilling effect in person. And I would not have been likely to regard it as an assault on academic freedom.
When did we become immune to questions and criticism? When did the classroom become our own little zero-accountability fiefdom? When did we become hothouse flowers, afraid of withering away if some tawdry little...little...little uneducated person dared to speak in our direction with something less than awe and praise?
Who do we think we are?
posted by Chris Bray @ 5:57 PM
4 Comments:
Excellent post. There does seem to be some resurgence of actual censorship and a decrease in academic freedom in recent years, but some use it as a universal excuse to avoid dealing with criticism. I think many confuse their fear that they will be censored (as a result of what they see as unjustified criticism) with actual censorship.
(BTW, I'd be a little suspicious of a student's unsupported claim that it was all his teacher's fault that he didn't learn anything.)
I think it's a pretty complicated issue. I read Foner's "chilling affect" to mean that the teacher feels pressure from parents or perhaps the administration of the school to not teach on a certain subject. It's fine to criticize a teacher or voice opinions, but does it inhibit academic freedom to complain to a teacher's superior, thus putting the teacher's job at stake? Of course if the teacher is simply a bad teacher, then that sort of action is warranted--but should a parent have a say, for instance, on whether or not their child should learn about Islam or evolution, for that matter?
Several things to say, here.
My mother is an elementary school teacher (currently teaching first grade, but she has taught at several grade levels), and she has had parents come in at the start of the school year to review the planned reading list. Several parents have objected over the years to halloween reading and to fairy tales that appear to suggest metaphysical action (ghost stories, fairy godmothers), on the grounds that, yes, they don't want their children reading or hearing satanic literature.
No, really.
Those parents ask that their children be sent from the room when literature they regard as questionable is read or discussed, and that's exactly what happens. I think that's the right solution to an amazingly stupid problem. Long story short, people have the right to be batshit lunatics. People have the right to inflict their crazy cosmology on their own children. (And those children, thank god, have the right to grow up, realize that their parents are lunatics, and flee the fold.)
The point is that mom -- hi, mom! -- welcomes parents to her classroom, listens respectfully to their position, and makes her own decisions about what to teach. Family objections are honored, and the teacher's autonomy is respected. No chilling effect.
Any principal or superintendent worth his or her salary would adopt a similar strategy: we welcome your inquiries, respect your views, and will teach to our (ideally rigorous and well-considered) plan, thank you.
In my own discussion sections, I tell students that all views are respected (my syllabus says "unfailingly respected"), and there's no party line in the classroom. But you must make a factual, well-supported argument for whatever position you take. "I just feel that way" is not an answer.
I'll hear anything anyone wants to say, and I welcome disagreement. Students have told me they think I'm wrong, and we've had great discussions around those disagreements.
So my view is that disagreement provides teaching moments; it feeds learning. It's the opposite of a problem -- it's the point. I love hearing a student tell me he or she disagrees with me, or with the professor, or with something we read in class. It's a chance for all of us to learn something.
The funny thing I've noticed about the handful of self-consciously radical or left-proselytizing professors I've seen in action (I'm thinking of specific examples, but let's go ahead and not name names) is that they tend to be pedagogical conservatives: I have the PhD, I have the knowledge and wisdom, and your job is to listen. Everyone can be wrong; everyone should be ready to listen to criticism. Contention and challenge work.
I certainly agree. I think it's great that you challenge your students and they challenge you--I do strongly believe that that is what college is all about. Academic censorship is when you're being kept from having those discussions in the first place, which can and does happen. I guess two different things are on the plate here, and the question is, from the perspective of the teacher, or maybe, from the perspective of the parent, how do you draw the line between them? The fact that you are exchanging ideas in the classroom automatically makes that the kind of criticism that is not censorship, but the other kind does exist--and I think maybe what makes it different is that in many cases it isn't academically motivated--i.e. the accuser doesn't necessarily have a well-substantiated argument against whatever--but it's politically or emotionally motivated, and the issue the critic has is with the topic itself, not the discussion surrounding it. For instance, parents who think fairy-tales are Satanic just don't want their kids exposed to them. They aren't rooting for an even-keeled discussion of the subject matter. There reaches a point though, when taking the kid out of the classroom isn't considered an option by the parent (or the critic), but it becomes taking the subject-matter, or the teacher, out of the classroom instead.
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