A Typical CUNY Academic's Day?
I enjoy working until battle fatigue sets in each day -- all seven of them. And I imagine that I am pretty typical of us CUNY academics these days. I have a couple of professional obligations -- book reviews to do and am far too late with one. However, I have been putting first things first this weekend. Have just mailed out the 3rd recommendation this weekend for our super stars among our 150 Brooklyn College philosophy majors. Ours is a super department -- fifth largest in numbers of students at B.C. with most going on to the various professions. I would imagine that we have at least 4 times as many majors as any other college in the country. Our students routinely win the big fellowships -- a Rhodes and a Beinecke among my own recent students with some likely prospects for repeats already in the hamper.
Today I am, however, dealing with the best and worst of things at CUNY. We are now so under-funded that few students come to me with experience either in writing exams (unless they have attended a good secondary school) or in writing critical papers. We have to teach them that. I personally have 3 overstuffed classes this semester -- two electives which will have me reading 20 pp. research papers -- I used to ask for 30 pp., but many of my students are having their first experience at this sort of thing, so I set a lower page limit and allow those really psyched out to do two shorter papers adding up roughly to the 20 pp. requirement. Our librarians claim students don't want to come to the library after 9 p.m. when they close -- perhaps few research papers required, although we just spent $70 million redoing it!? Looks beautiful, but our 24-hour-operation ("Library Cafe") is in another building with 50 computers and no library access. Nice place to hang out, I gather.
At the other end of the scale I ordinarily do an introductory course at least once a year. And here the rubber meets the road. Most of our students have not been taught to read tough stuff. They have had baby food textbooks, if those, most of their student days. I lead these beginners (no few upper-class men and women nearing graduation) through the basics by having them identify arguments in a philosophy reading BEFORE we have discussed it and explain and illustrate fallacies from a British text on thinking straight -- which assumes the standards of students in Britain rather than Americans in levels of sophistication (e.g. the capacity to GENERALIZE which Alfred North. Whitehead identified as the third level of learning in his Aims of Education following after a) interest, b) command of materials). It is quite a job to convince students that they must read stuff 3 times through: 1) first quickly to get the drift, 2) line by line to figure what they understand and where they need to ask 'the teacher' to explain things in class, and 3) through again to get it all together in their heads. Such seems to be new to each class in which students would rather not bother to read things, but instead have the teacher explain whatever so that they can take notes to be parroted back on a mid term and final exam (not even returned to them with comments and often all the writing they will do for a course) and promptly forgotten!
As I have been suggesting to our CUNY Board members and others appointed by Giuliani and Pataki for reasons seeming to have little to do with supporting CUNY higher education, we need more money and people and lighter teaching loads so that we can do the job right. Students need much individual attention at some point in their educations and unless they have been educated outside the U.S. or in our private or super public schools, they are most unlikely to have had that. We pass like ships in the night at CUNY with complicated work and teaching schedules both of students and faculty. My fourth recommendation letter this weekend will follow from a student coming to my home in Manhattan after work Monday so that I can interview her and write an informed recommendation. This is a common pattern for finding joint times when former students and I can connect. I post my home address and phone number on my syllabi and send travel directions by email.
Forgive this for being a bit personal, but perhaps it is the only way to get through to CUNY board members who are likely to respond to things that I write with pithy comments such as: "Lunacy - even the thought." I am not complaining -- at least it was a response ;-).
What I am trying to get through to these guys and the pols who appoint them is that we have roughly 200,000 hard-working, often extraordinily brilliant, students who are our future. I can imagine no more valuable investment for NYC, NY, the nation, than giving such students the best possible educations rather than doing things on the cheap. Remember, India and China, as well as the Europeans are going to be our big time 21st Century competitors from here on in. And THEY are by all reports doing it right. I can pick up my phone and speak to an Indian college grad just by checking on my credit card balance. And the Chinese are now moving in on our leading scholars as well as our military secrets. Pretty soon we will have to be stealing such secrets from them, because they will have pulled ahead of our bottom-lined-on-the-cheap corporatized American higher education.
Well, enough of a break for now. Need to reread some of my texts for the next week's classes and I am fighting off a cold that I picked up probably on the subway. Any of you board members listening? Going to send along a few thousand blind copies as well and will send on any responses to same that you wish. Best, Ed Kent
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net/blognews.asp
Today I am, however, dealing with the best and worst of things at CUNY. We are now so under-funded that few students come to me with experience either in writing exams (unless they have attended a good secondary school) or in writing critical papers. We have to teach them that. I personally have 3 overstuffed classes this semester -- two electives which will have me reading 20 pp. research papers -- I used to ask for 30 pp., but many of my students are having their first experience at this sort of thing, so I set a lower page limit and allow those really psyched out to do two shorter papers adding up roughly to the 20 pp. requirement. Our librarians claim students don't want to come to the library after 9 p.m. when they close -- perhaps few research papers required, although we just spent $70 million redoing it!? Looks beautiful, but our 24-hour-operation ("Library Cafe") is in another building with 50 computers and no library access. Nice place to hang out, I gather.
At the other end of the scale I ordinarily do an introductory course at least once a year. And here the rubber meets the road. Most of our students have not been taught to read tough stuff. They have had baby food textbooks, if those, most of their student days. I lead these beginners (no few upper-class men and women nearing graduation) through the basics by having them identify arguments in a philosophy reading BEFORE we have discussed it and explain and illustrate fallacies from a British text on thinking straight -- which assumes the standards of students in Britain rather than Americans in levels of sophistication (e.g. the capacity to GENERALIZE which Alfred North. Whitehead identified as the third level of learning in his Aims of Education following after a) interest, b) command of materials). It is quite a job to convince students that they must read stuff 3 times through: 1) first quickly to get the drift, 2) line by line to figure what they understand and where they need to ask 'the teacher' to explain things in class, and 3) through again to get it all together in their heads. Such seems to be new to each class in which students would rather not bother to read things, but instead have the teacher explain whatever so that they can take notes to be parroted back on a mid term and final exam (not even returned to them with comments and often all the writing they will do for a course) and promptly forgotten!
As I have been suggesting to our CUNY Board members and others appointed by Giuliani and Pataki for reasons seeming to have little to do with supporting CUNY higher education, we need more money and people and lighter teaching loads so that we can do the job right. Students need much individual attention at some point in their educations and unless they have been educated outside the U.S. or in our private or super public schools, they are most unlikely to have had that. We pass like ships in the night at CUNY with complicated work and teaching schedules both of students and faculty. My fourth recommendation letter this weekend will follow from a student coming to my home in Manhattan after work Monday so that I can interview her and write an informed recommendation. This is a common pattern for finding joint times when former students and I can connect. I post my home address and phone number on my syllabi and send travel directions by email.
Forgive this for being a bit personal, but perhaps it is the only way to get through to CUNY board members who are likely to respond to things that I write with pithy comments such as: "Lunacy - even the thought." I am not complaining -- at least it was a response ;-).
What I am trying to get through to these guys and the pols who appoint them is that we have roughly 200,000 hard-working, often extraordinily brilliant, students who are our future. I can imagine no more valuable investment for NYC, NY, the nation, than giving such students the best possible educations rather than doing things on the cheap. Remember, India and China, as well as the Europeans are going to be our big time 21st Century competitors from here on in. And THEY are by all reports doing it right. I can pick up my phone and speak to an Indian college grad just by checking on my credit card balance. And the Chinese are now moving in on our leading scholars as well as our military secrets. Pretty soon we will have to be stealing such secrets from them, because they will have pulled ahead of our bottom-lined-on-the-cheap corporatized American higher education.
Well, enough of a break for now. Need to reread some of my texts for the next week's classes and I am fighting off a cold that I picked up probably on the subway. Any of you board members listening? Going to send along a few thousand blind copies as well and will send on any responses to same that you wish. Best, Ed Kent
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net/blognews.asp
posted by Ed Kent at 1:07 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home