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From the Editor: Classroom Cultures
Lawrence Hanley
Teaching remains the most private of our professional activities. Scholarship is peer reviewed and often develops in public venues like conferences. Professional and institutional service requires debate and action in meetings and faculty senates. In the classroom, the audience for our efforts has traditionally excluded colleagues and administrators. But new trends, in and outside the ivy walls, are starting to transform the usually individual and secluded venue of the classroom. A cluster of articles in this issue of Academe examines these changes.
In his article, Kevin Mattson explores the implications of recent initiatives to remake teaching into "active learning." He traces the roots of these efforts to progressive pedagogies inspired by educational philosopher John Dewey. As Mattson explains, however, in a contemporary academy dominated by imperatives of efficiency and consumer satisfaction, active learning can quickly become an excuse to ignore the worsening conditions of academic labor, including crowded classes, dwindling full-time employment, and higher workloads. In many institutions, new attention to teaching has been coupled with new ways of assessing and evaluating teachers. In his article, Daniel Pratt exposes some of the mistaken assumptions behind the new academic genre of the "statement of teaching philosophy." Neither writer rejects the belief that we need to improve teaching, but both point to the ambiguities latent in this ambition.
Has the culture of the classroom itself been changing? Susan Ostrov Weisser thinks so. In her article, she meticulously analyzes a familiar, but increasingly dominant, student attitude toward faculty expertise, especially in the humanities. If everything is a question of interpretation, students often assert, then nobody can be wrong. And, thus, professional expertise becomes just another opinion. Weisser describes the problems and frustrations of this therapeutic classroom culture. She also carefully speculates on the sources of this new student-teacher relationship.
Beyond teaching, our other articles tackle equally big game. Roger Bowen, the AAUP's general secretary, met with Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian writer and poet, who now teaches at Bard College. Achebe suggests that academic freedom is an illusion in the absence of economic security. Elsewhere, Lionel Lewisdebunks the myth of the peace-loving academic sequestered in his or her ivory tower. Those who heed the call of battle in the corridors of Washington, D.C., often come armed with PhDs and scholarly credentials.
A different battle is the subject of Barbara Forrest and Glenn Branch's article on "intelligent design" in the academy. Opponents of evolutionary theory, Forrest and Branch document, are energetically trying to gain access to the university. Their article represents a thorough study of the often mysterious process through which newcomers and insurgents seek to acquire academic legitimacy.
Finally, in keeping with our efforts to prove that satire and humor can advance the interests of enlightenment, Melissa Gregory chases down the provocative question: what if reality television came to academia? Some of us may want to resist the casting call, but her humor manages to smuggle some keen insights into academic reality.
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