Impassioned Teaching
Ralph R. Acampora, Kurt Smith
To the Editor:
Pamela L. Caughie's “Impassioned Teaching” (July–August) does well to distinguish between advocacy and indoctrination. To her defense of committed pedagogy, I would add one point: contrary to some versions of classical objectivity, there is in actuality no value-neutral way of teaching—or even of thinking or living! Attempts to maintain indifferent neutrality on issues that inevitably come up in the classroom (whether as content or process) constitute de facto endorsements of status quo views, which are themselves never wholly devoid of explicit or tacit evaluations. Indeed, to stretch the point, the very notion of total impartiality is incoherent—because commitment to this brand of objectivity is, paradoxically, itself a meta-value of a certain epistemology that precisely prizes or esteems the eradication of first-order values. Hence, there can be no entirely value-free perspective and so, ultimately, no thoroughly apolitical pedagogy. The only real challenge before us as educators (rather than preachers or lobbyists) is to separate in theory and practice value-laden yet self-critical teaching from instruction that takes on the aspect of partisan proselytizing. This is a considerably more subtle and complex undertaking than any simple-minded insistence on distinguishing “mere” opinion from “brute” fact, a bromide we too often hear bouncing about the halls of academe.
Ralph R. Acampora
(Philosophy)
Hofstra University
To the Editor:
In her article “Impassioned Teaching,” Pamela L. Caughie does more than suggest that defenders of higher education are responsible for the recent attack on the academy by neoconservatives such as David Horowitz.
As Caughie sees it, by presenting the attack as a conflict between liberal and conservative beliefs, defenders have introduced nothing less than a false dichotomy. She blames Academe, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the New York Times for framing the issue in terms of a clash between values and politics on the one hand, and scholarship on the other, and the Chronicle of Higher Education for casting Horowitz’s “Academic Bill of Rights” (ABOR) as a “response to the belief that the academy is dominated by leftists and biased against conservative scholars and students.”
So, let me get this straight—the Chronicle of Higher Education, not Horowitz, is to blame for leading the public into thinking that the ABOR was a response to the belief that the academy is dominated by leftists and is biased against conservative scholars and students? Seriously? Where has Caughie been? Horowitz has time and again cast his ABOR as such a response.
Caughie blames me for manufacturing one of the many false dichotomies now circulating in the debate. It was introduced, she says, when I showed how Horowitz’s ABOR is rooted in a failure to understand the difference between what goes on in a classroom and what goes on in the public square. Huh? How is it that I am to blame for the false dichotomy? It is a problem found in Horowitz’s position. I simply brought it to light. It is Horowitz who must be held responsible for this—not me.
As I see it, the trouble with Caughie’s analysis is that it leads her to blame everyone but those actually responsible for the current mess—namely those neoconservatives involved in the current attack on higher education.
Kurt Smith
(Philosophy)
Bloomsburg University of
Pennsylvania
Caughie responds:
Kurt Smith’s response to my “Impassioned Teaching” represents the very problem that I address in that article. Smith sets up a false opposition, arguing that I “blame” journals (Academe, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times), not Horowitz. It’s so easy to fall into “blaming” and thinking in terms of “two sides” when dealing with such a fraught issue as freedom in the classroom. But if you read my article, I trust you will see that I do not “blame” anyone; I’m not pointing fingers but analyzing. My point is that as soon as we structure the issue as an opposition—advocacy versus teaching—we’ve misunderstood the debate and set ourselves up to choose sides, blaming the other (for example, the conservative promoter of value-neutral teaching or the liberal advocate for politicizing the classroom) for the problem.
Smith’s questions, “Seriously? Where has Caughie been?” are hardly an argument; they are a rant, and that will get us nowhere. I remain convinced that the more passionately we teach our subjects as “objects of analysis,” the more students will be persuaded by our positions. The values we advocate as teachers are as evident in our ways of arguing as in the positions we take.
Pamela L. Caughie
(English)
Loyola University Chicago
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