Professor X (34 page)

Here is Daniel Yankelovich, founder and chairman of Viewpoint Learning, Inc., who believes that anyone who can should go to college:

Part of American culture and tradition, yes, but as outmoded a tradition as the ritual stoning in “The Lottery.”

Here is the bitter reality, as spoken by Marty Nemko, a career counselor who is subjected to a steady diet of college aspirations from people who in all likelihood will not succeed:

The United States of America does a few things extremely well. It is unmatched at completing a certain species of task requiring a relentless approach. John Kennedy knew this when he promised America would land a man on the moon by 1970. For us, that was kid's stuff. We're not the best at figuring out why we're doing any particular task, but we are a people who can get the stuff done. Is there a bathroom in America without a handicapped-access toilet, or a parking lot without a couple of special-needs spaces? Is there a residence abutting a highway that has not been discreetly separated from the noxious flow of traffic by one of those decorative noise-absorbing walls? The Hurricane Katrina debacle was particularly upsetting, I think, because the tasks at which we failed, the rescue and cleanup, the airlifting and people-moving and retrofitting of levees, are of the sort usually right in our wheelhouse.

We are, if nothing else, thorough.

Years ago, it seemed a noble goal (if you didn't think about it too carefully) to get as many students as possible into some sort of postsecondary education. And we have done that. God, have we succeeded. We have done too good a job. We haven't figured out why all these people are going to college, and we haven't figured out a way to get them to graduate, and the colleges haven't come up with a good grip on their new identities as vocational schools on steroids, but we've got those people enrolled. Every high school student in America who understands even dimly the concept of higher education can be whipped into a desk in an ivy-covered lecture hall so fast his head spins.

To automatically reclassify every high school graduate as college material just to conform to a national philosophy or as a shortcut for human resource departments is not a very precise approach. We have to adjust our thinking, and reject our sense of the primacy of the bachelor's and even the associate's degree. The old model of the vocational school is not a bad one. For everyone's good, industry should take a hard look at the value of those college degrees it persists in requiring. Let's reboot the civil service at the federal, state, and local levels by eliminating the college requirement for jobs that clearly do not need it. The list is longer than we think. Let's start devising human resource qualifications that actually reflect an ability to do the job, and not an applicant's skill at coming up with a certificate of dubious relevance. Let's start judging based on skills and experience and talent, and save failing students from a mountain of unnecessary debt.

But, meanwhile, I keep my weapon raised. I press on. I teach my classes. And I know that all the usual stuff will happen.

I will teach college students for whom college is a fairly meaningless exercise. I will give them a questionnaire at the beginning of the course and ask: have you ever taken college English before? Yes, two years ago, someone will respond, but won't remember specific details. Did you write essays? I will ask. Don't remember. Did you do a research paper? Not sure. Two years ago! I can remember details of college classes I took 35 years ago. Their answers will suggest that they have suffered a profound head injury in the interim. They don't need me; they need Oliver Sacks.

They will write argumentation papers, and I won't know which side of the argument they are on. I may have to ask: are you fur it, or agin' it?

I will continue to attempt to fairly evaluate students in an introductory literature class who have spent their lives avoiding all mention of the subject.

I will teach off-campus, as I occasionally do, at the satellite locations set up to serve those who, for whatever reason, cannot rouse themselves to get to the main campus. This will put me in an actual high school classroom. There will be nasty messages left for us on the blackboard, reminders not to touch certain books or equipment, not to use up all the chalk, not to change the arrangement of desks and chairs. The high school teachers will post DO NOT ERASE signs and leave every blackboard in the classroom filled with writing. The behavior of my students will sink to a high school level. Some of my underperforming students will be sitting in one of the very same classrooms in which they underperformed as high school students. Our class will meet while varsity athletic teams condition themselves by running up and down the stairs. We will study Shakespeare with the faint buzz in our ears of
Oklahoma!
, which is being staged in the auditorium. One of my students will ask me, plaintively, can we go to the play? Wouldn't that be good for an English class? And I will be sorely tempted.

I will give tests with matching columns, and the students will leave three or four answers blank, as though the effort of guessing were simply too much for them. If I tell them before the test that each matching column letter is used just once, they will get all skeptical on me, and use “M,” say, three times.

They will tell me interesting things about Flannery O'Connor's characters in answers to questions about “The Dead.” They will think that Edward Said is a literary technique, and “allusion” the author of
Ulysses.

We will spend hours on “The Lottery.” They will take copious notes. And when the exam rolls around, a student or two or three will think that the massive autobiographical novel unpublished in James Joyce's lifetime is called
The Lottery.
They will think that the word, repeatedly incanted in “A Clean, Well Lighted Place,” that embodies life's great yawning nothingness, is “Hemingway.” Whose ghost keeps appearing in
Hamlet
? I will ask on a reading quiz. The last time I did, someone answered “Shakespeare.” I had to think about that for a minute. Who would possibly give that as an answer? Who would confuse the author with his creation? Perhaps the student was simply acknowledging the tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost at the Globe. Perhaps she was conflating—no, no, there was no conflating going on.

Likewise, when they spell it “Shaksper,” it is not because they want to be historically faithful to the author's autograph.

They will manage to find new and endlessly innovative ways to flummox me, my students. But I don't care. Years of teaching have left their marks on me; I feel scarred, nicked, marked up, chipped, bearing the signs of life lived as vividly as the old wallpaper in my bedroom. But I wouldn't dream of stopping. Ever. It's too good, in its own singular way. Adjuncting used to be something I struggled to fit into my world; now, years hence, I've come to see how much it anchors and enriches that world—how much it actually is my world. Without English 101 and English 102, I think I might well be bereft. Doesn't that seem odd? It does to me.

“We need a thesis sentence,” I tell the class, for perhaps the five-hundredth time. I search for fresh words to convey what I mean. “We need an overarching statement. We need a great utterance that our writing endeavors to support. What are we trying to prove?” I throw out my arms dramatically. “Why are we writing at all? Why are we even here?”

“We have to be,” says a youthful wiseguy. We all laugh. “No, just kidding,” he assures me. “We love it here.”

I bring my hands together, the way a priest would. Experience has left me with a surfeit of hard-won wisdom, life's consolation prize. I dispense a nugget. “Having to be here will not lead to profundity. Wanting deeply and seriously comes first. Rebelling against our circumstances will get us nowhere. Acceptance of where we are—knowing the shape of one's life—is the first small step in giving shape to one's writing. Let's all have something to say. And while we're at it, very important: subject-verb agreement. Always.”

While you watch
American Idol
and
Dancing with the Stars,
we're gathering for another semester in the basement of the ivory tower. Students and teacher alike share flickerings of wonderment and uncertainty. How did we all get here? The classroom surroundings are familiar, even cozy: there's a comfort to sitting in rows, and the desks wrap around the students protectively. The textbooks seem compendia of all the world's knowledge. Who among us wouldn't think: we can do great things in this room! What happens in a classroom can be of such great consequence, but for that to be true, the work done there must be worthwhile, suitably complex, challenging, even daunting. In the classroom there must always be much at stake, which doesn't necessarily lead to ease of mind, and thus classrooms are not always the welcoming places they may seem at first. Important work is very often done in anguishing circumstances. A few students will thrive; many will wither.

We are, all of us there gathered, trembling with fright, short of breath, sick at heart, but perhaps hopeful. That our senses are so alive is thrilling. The whiteboard markers give off a vaguely medicinal smell. The edges of posters from semesters past curl away from the wall. Motes of dust bob in the light from the overhead projector. The old heating unit comes on with a shudder. There seems a meaning in all this mundanity that lies just beyond our grasp. Every new assignment, at least, starts us all thinking.

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2010.

2
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3
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In press.

4
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5
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1
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2
Michael Murphy. “Adjuncts Should Not Just Be Visitors in the Academic Promised Land.”
Chronicle of Higher Education
48.29 (2002): B1415.

3
Jeffrey R. Young. “Seton Hall Adjunct Professor Lashes Out at Students in E–mail Message.”
Chronicle of Higher Education
49.27 (2003): A12.

4
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Chronicle of Higher Education
55.9 (2008): A4.

5
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American Academic: The State of the Higher Education Workforce 1997–2007,
Feb. 2009.

6
Alexa Sasanow. “Some Departments Seeing Rise in Number of Adjunct Professors.”
Tufts Daily,
27 Apr. 2010.

7
DI Editorial Board. “Sharp Rise in Adjunct Professors Has Obvious Downsides.”
Daily Iowan,
29 Mar. 2010.

1
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2
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