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Who could have predicted that, following
Vietnam and Watergate, a new age of suspicion would envelope
America, complete with a new credo? No institution shall go
unchallenged and no offense unimagined.
Since then, attacking the academy has turned into a cottage
industry. These attacks assume that research and teaching are
in direct competition with each other and result in deteriorating
classroom performances by faculty and less accessibility to
their programs by students. Challengers also assume that faculty
are cheating the taxpayers and students, as illustrated by one
popular book entitled "Profscam." And they claim,
as another critic did, that professors are "spoiled, devious
and venal."
The latest flap over academic research hit close to home last
fall, when James Carlin, chairman of the Massachusetts Board
of Higher Education, proposed a sweeping reform on the state's
public campuses that would end tenure, scale back research projects,
and introduce a two-track system dividing all faculty into either
researchers or teachers.
Not only did Mr. Carlin's proposal raise blood pressure, voices
and hackles in faculty lounges all over the Commonwealth, but
his rhetoric seemed to bait academics everywhere. He called
tenure "an absolute scam" and claimed that "At
least 50 percent of all non-hard-science research on American
campuses is a lot of foolishness. It's either professors getting
paid for having fun with their hobbies, or doing research that
has no value to anyone...."
Predictably, academics have been rising to snap at this rhetorical
lure. At UMass a letter to Mr. Carlin by English professor Margo
Culley was signed by nearly 80 winners of Distinguished Teaching
Awards or College Outstanding Teacher Awards. The letter said
that Carlin's proposal would create a "caste system"
among faculty and summarized why teachers must not only do research
but bring it into their classrooms.
"Students...understand that knowledge is not a static,
fossilized treasure passed from generation to generation,"
said the letter, "but rather a network of vibrant and changing
constructs with implications for their lives and in which they
have a stake."
Other faculty were less tactful than Culley. "I'm not paid
to punch a clock," said Julius Lester. "I am paid
for the quality of my thinking, my ability to communicate these
ideas, and my skill in bringing out the best in my students."
Fred Byron, Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies,
still remembers the day he successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis
at Columbia University. Afterwards, his advisor slapped him
on the back and said, "Now you're ready to start learning
some physics."
The implication was obvious. Now he was ready to begin the real
process of learning that every academic understands from doing
it: The shared pilgrimage of research and teaching.
"Teaching is like being judged every time you go in the
classroom," says Lester. "So if you become known as
a teacher who uses old material, the word gets around very quickly
that you're not a very good teacher. The hedge against that
sort of reputation is we're out there doing research, out there
publishing and having professional peers tell us whether our
ideas are legitimate or full of bull."
The interaction between Lester's research and teaching is more
porous than a permeable membrane. For example, Lester's course
in Biblical Tales and Legends inspired him to write a soon-to-be-published
book entitled "When God Created the World," re-telling
in his poetic style stories from the "Book of Genesis."
In turn, his research for that publication constantly makes
its way into his classes. One example is the Hebrew word tehom,
which has traditionally been translated into English as "the
deep." To wit, "Their God hovered over the deep."
While doing the background translations for his book, Lester
discovered that tehom also appears in Greek legends as a goddess
figure and relates to a Babylonian myth about the creation of
the world. Now he can make all those new connections in his
class. "Almost anything I'm working on in terms of research
or creative work ends up being reflected in the classroom,"
says Lester.
And vice versa. Teaching often triggers Lester's research. During
the past few years he has noticed that today's students, having
been brought up with so many visual media, learn differently
than those of a decade ago. This observation caused him to begin
reorganizing his whole course on Social Change in the 1960s
around films, a revamp requiring an enormous block of research.
"One of the most difficult things about teaching,"
he says, "is student generations change. I get older, while
they stay the same age."
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