SUNY Article Praiseworthy—and Objectionable
Stephen Watt, Reuel Shinnar, Mark Shechner
To the Editor:
I am writing to express my great admiration for Mark Shechner’s essay," Ozymandias on the Erie" in the November–December issue of Academe. I am not, to be sure, an expert on the state of higher education at public institutions in the state of New York. But having spoken last spring to the combined faculties of schools in the state system, I was made very much aware of the enormous obstacles higher education faces in the state. From boards of regents hoping to impose a core curriculum on faculty to other efforts to quash faculty governance and academic freedom, the picture painted at this meeting wasn’t pretty.
And neither were the photographs of blasted industrial sites that accompanied Shechner’s almost Beckettian wit and critique. They fit the thrust of his essay beautifully, making for one of the most effective uses of visual material I remember seeing in Academe. Not that the mandatory images of faculty sitting around tables isn’t always a thrill! One can never get too much of that.
Shechner’s exposition is also particularly sad, because Buffalo has produced outstanding graduate students in my field, among the best and brightest it has been my pleasure to know. That a state would so easily sacrifice such quality at the altars of exigency and ideology is hard to understand.
Stephen Watt
(English)
Indiana University
To the Editor:
I read with great concern the article in the November–December issue by Mark Shechner about the attempt of New York State to reintroduce academic and intellectual standards into the state university. Regrettably, what the article describes is not the decline of the university but the decline of your journal, which seems to have become the journal of the frustrated academic fringe. I find it really hard to understand why demanding standards and a sound academic core curriculum should do any harm. On the contrary, they are needed to save American higher education.
The idea that professors should be free to choose or teach anything they want and all the state should do is pay for it is too ridiculous to discuss. Academic freedom is not to be completely free to decide what subjects to teach, or even what material to cover, but free to write and express new ideas. Society pays for the university, especially for undergraduate education to provide students with basic knowledge and skills that allow them to function in society and earn a living. A good core curriculum based on the culture, literature, and history of ideas of our society is essential.
What bothers me especially about the article is the tone. The committee that proposed new standards for the university included some top educators. While Shechner is free to express his objections or promote his views, a proper academic should be able to do this in a respectful way. Maybe Shechner could himself benefit from a good core curriculum.
Reuel Shinnar
(Chemical Engineering)
City College, City University of New York
Mark Shechner Responds:
Several years ago I asked a journal editor what instructions he gave to his reviewers in assigning a book. He answered, "Read the book." His experience was that people reviewed and lambasted what they had only imagined, or pretended, to read. Reuel Shinnar is one such person.
Had Shinnar read my essay, "Ozymandias on the Erie," in the November– December issue, he would have known that it does not oppose "a sound academic core curriculum" or a general education curriculum. That there might be grounds for questioning how it is imposed, what punitive rhetoric accompanies its imposition, what ongoing programs it replaces, and how it is funded surprises him. From his isolated vantage point in chemical engineering, he seems to have been spared discussions on his campus that the new general education curriculum initially provoked. I know nothing of what finally transpired at the City University of New York, but on my own campus the problems of organizing a state-mandated general education curriculum have been solved, after grueling faculty labor. The issue of staffing it has not, as instructional resources provided to general education have to come from somewhere.
Similarly, Shinnar’s diatribe against professors who wish to be "free to choose or teach anything they want and all the state should do is pay for it" is a red herring, since nowhere do I call for faculty freedom from program responsibilities. The question in the humanities and social sciences, which are most heavily invested in general education, is where to find instructors who are competent in the subject areas and free of other obligations. For the most part, they are full-time faculty who are rerouted from their undergraduate majors or graduate programs; one department on my campus is fielding only a single graduate seminar this spring in order to staff required major and general education courses. The consequences of this for faculty morale, degree accreditation, graduate student recruitment, faculty hiring, and national rankings are predictable.
But Shinnar’s language gives him away, and his dismissal of my article as the lament of a "frustrated academic fringe" tells us all we need to know. As a professor of English for thirty-one years and full professor for twenty-two, I may indeed be just as Shinnar claims: academic fringe. Certainly one hears such rhetoric from sectors of the university that prosper on external funding, while state-supported sectors are hard pressed to retain their faculty, recruit students, and maintain programs. The attitude he takes toward fragile and beleaguered departments—serve and be still about it—and his presumption to being uniquely anointed to speak for "society," betray a rare and admirable self-assurance. Accordingly, he sees no harm in dismissing my account of the sorrows of the State University of New York without first subjecting himself to the troublesome inconvenience of reading it.
Mark Shechner
(English)
State University of New York at Buffalo
|