A memoir of an adjunct English professor, this is also a critique of higher education and the contemporary expectation that every American is entitled to a college education. The book does begin to ramble a bit at the end, and some sections are repetitive, with the author continually hammering at a few favorite points. Still, for those who may be oblivious to the current state of affairs in the academic realm, or who want a glimpse into what is really happening in remedial and general education classes, this will be sometimes shocking and hopefully, a thought-provoking read.
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resoundingjoy | 13 andere besprekingen | Jan 1, 2021 |

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: The Truth About… door Professor X

Not exactly what I was expecting. Interesting to view community college from the point of view of an adjunct professor teaching evening classes of introductory English 101 and 102 as a way to supplement the family income. Yes, the author (who has deliberately chosen to write under a pseudonym) raises some good points (and provides some rather alarming statistics), but he could have probably hit all the interesting high and low points in half the page count. A fair bit of the book is the author's musings of a writer trying to create writers - out of individuals who typically do not even consider reading an enjoyable past-time - in a short 15 week course offering. Most of the students - okay, pretty much all of his students - are characterized as falling into the
"forced to take the course" variety as a requirement they must overcome in their quest for that magic piece of paper that will hopefully result in careers with better pay. Kind of has "Doomed to Fail" written all over it, doesn't it? The author sums the situation up nicely:

"My students and I are of a piece. I could not be haughty, even if I wanted to be. Our presence in these evening classes is evidence that something in our lives has gone awry. In one way or another, we have all screwed up. I'm working a second job; they're trying desperately to get to a place where they don't have to work a second job. All any of us want is a free evening. We are all saddles with children or mortgages or sputtering careers, sometimes all three. I often think, at the beginning of the class, that a five-minute snooze, a sanctioned nap period, would do us all good."

Yes, this story is for the most part depressing as the author dashes the reader with cold water and tries to remove the rose-coloured glasses that higher education really is for everyone and with this rosy glow, we are in fact failing a large segment of the population that needs a hand up the most.

Overall, interesting although it did start to drag at time when the author slides into full navel gazing mode.… (meer)

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lkernagh | 13 andere besprekingen | Oct 2, 2018 |

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of… door Professor X

This book both surprised and profoundly disappointed me. As an extended discussion of the writer's experiences surrounding a decade long adjunct teaching career, it effectively details a lot of the problems of academia. I strongly agree that the current university system merits heavy critique, but I also feel that the problems in the university system are symptoms of several larger social problems. The reliance on adjuncts is unethical and exploitative. Much like the growing gap between the working class and wealthy (the disappearance of the middle class, if you will), the chasm between adjunct work and tenured professors (who often teach the SAME COURSES) grows.

I also feel that our K-12 system succeeds at indoctrinating students, but fails to provide opportunities to actually learn. The writer of this book observes that employers look for some college in employees for jobs that don't actually require college experience, it is just a way to winnow through applicants. American culture also fails to value the kinds of work that don't require a university education, and that is reprehensible. It isn't so much that college isn't for everyone as it is that we have confused what one is "supposed" to get out of college. Universities rely on adjuncts to function as social gatekeepers and pay them a pittance with no benefits, no health insurance and no job security to do so. That is exploitation.

However.

The writer seems to miss the ways that ideologies he seeks to critique inform many of the perspectives he champions. His reliance and verbose support of out dated and ineffective pedagogy models is insistent (one wonders if he is aware of their inefficacy which leads him to protest so much) and offensive at times. In chapter 4 he actually discusses comments his original article to the Atlantic Monthly garnered from cutting edge professionals in the field of composition. The writer uses the book here as space for a personal tirade on how insipid he finds the suggestions of Mike Rose and Alex Reid that his students' work is not "garbage" or "trash" or "illiterate" (all of which he uses to describe his students' writing), but that academic writing has particular expectations and is one context among many for which people write.

Additionally, research suggests that students are able to transfer very little of the "skills" they "learn" in first year composition courses to other places. The field is currently looking for ways to address this problem, which this Professor X (and please, do we really think this is not a self indulgent reference to the X-men hero?) has no interest in engaging.

Amidst many invectives about how awful his students' writing is, and discussions of how ethereal and transcendent "good" writing is, and how there is only "good" and "bad" writing and nothing in between, our author completely fails to communicate what criteria constitute these categories. Resisting the insight of people who are also concerned with the academic system and its many injustices (which include cultural homogenization) is both short sighted and ineffective.

The writer is also blatantly sexist. He says outright that he doesn't think a female home inspector can do the job. In describing his fellow adjuncts, we get information about an older, seasoned adjunct who seems experienced at teaching his accounting course. But about the instructor's female colleague, we get a critique of her clothing choices (mustard colored tights that are piling) and that she wears no ring on her left hand. What exactly is it that we are supposed to infer from this? That she is unmarried with no prospects and forced to wear ugly clothing and take bad adjuncting jobs? She is described as the "typical adjuncting type." Perhaps she and her partner choose not to participate in patriarchal practices, or not to wear their rings, or maybe they couldn't get married legally. There are a lot of possibilities here that our writer shuts down in favor of sexist cliches that are both trite and offensive.

When faced with the statistic that 49.2 percent of college teachers are women, our intrepid author suggests that their presence, "coupled with our discovery of the postmodern narrative," has feminized the college environment. This is responsible for grade inflation, and the learner centered teaching model that encourages students to make sense of the texts for themselves rather than regurgitating instructor's lectures on THE CORRECT interpretation for a text. He bemoans how difficult it is to grade fairly after a full paragraph about how women are more empathetic, more compassionate, and therefore unable to grade "fairly." Not that he manages to explain what he means by "fair."

I don't care that "Professor X" felt his masculinity was compromised because he couldn't participate in 9-11. He seems to have this gender identity crisis throughout, actually. And while I do believe that certain gender scripts are outdated and that masculinity is being revised, our author fails to see his own sexism as part of this process. He endorses using essays in class that comically compare "fat people" and "skinny people," referring to them as ephemera that nevertheless are mildly amusing. I'm so glad that he finds participating in indoctrination and ideological hegemony a good time. The lack of self awareness is disturbing, particularly in the face of his draconian pedagogy that serves only to further entrench the systems with which he claims to take issue.

In all, this book was written to shed light on the ugly underside of academia; I wish more attention had actually been paid to that purpose and that less space had been granted to arrogant and sexist self indulgence that bemoans how unfashionable megalomaniacal pedagogy has become.… (meer)