Like any other professor pegged as "leftist," I knew that I would be a possible target of such organizations and I wondered how to deal with it. The solution for me came from a wonderful book by the late, great media scholar Neil Postman called Conscientious Objections (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988). Postman was an outspoken liberal who spent many years on the advisory board of the left-leaning Nation magazine. In an essay in the book called "Columbusity" (pp. 128-135), Postman announced that his way of dealing with Accuracy in Academia was to put this statement in his course syllabus:
Statement of Honorary Membership in Accuracy in Academia
During the semester, I will be doing a great deal of talking. I will be giving lectures, answering questions, and conducting discussions. Since I am an imperfect scholar and, even more certainly, a fallible human being, I will inevitably be making factual errors, drawing some unjustifiable conclusions, and perhaps passing along my opinions as facts. I should be very unhappy if you were unaware of these mistakes. To minimize that possibility, I am going to make you all honorary members of Accuracy in Academia. Your task it to make sure that none of my errors go by unnoticed. At the beginning of each class I will, in fact, ask you to reveal whatever errors I made in the previous session. You must, of course, say why these are errors, indicate the source of your authority, and, if possible, suggest a truer or more useful or less biased way of formulating what I said . . . And to be sure that you do not fall into the torpor that is so common among students, I will, from time to time, deliberately include some patently untrue statements and some outrageous opinions.
There is no need for you to do this alone. You should consult with your classmates, perhaps even form a study group which can collectively review the things I have said. Nothing would please me more than for one or several of you to ask for class time in which to present a corrected or alternative version of one of my lectures.
I placed that statement in my syllabi every semester from around 1991-1998, and I really don't remember why I stopped. In those seven years I had two students ask for class time to correct what they perceived as inaccurate statements I had made about whatever, and while I did not agree with their "corrected" versions it did make for fascinating class discussion.
Perhaps in the current climate it is time to put that statement back in the syllabus?
4 comments:
Most students are so lethargic, I can't imagine many would actually bother to check their professor's facts. Your syllabus policy might work since what it really threatens them with is more work.
And turning in entire class lectures, accurate notes, and copies of all materials, for just $100? That seems kind of cheep. As a graduate student I'll do just about anything for money, but come on. Throw me a bone here.
Nathan,
Being that you have been through many years of college now, both as an undergraduate and graduate student, what is your take on the right wing critique of the universities? Has it been your experience that the classroom is filled with fire breathing lefties? Is that how you would describe most of the profs you've taken classes with over the years? Or do you think that most profs are as lethargic as the students you described?
Tony,
I'll try not to write an essay here.
In my experience, most professors fall into the liberal camp. The trouble is, my higher ed experience has been primarily in Communications and English, two subjects that tend to draw the coffee drinking liberal types. Were I in buisness or engineering classes, my response might be different.
Although most of my professors fall into this so-called liberal humanist description, a lot of them do not do much more than bitch about what they see as wrong with the world. Lately I have been lamenting how inactive these people are. They can recognize the problems (usually) and can even come up with solutions. But no action takes place. So yes, they are as lethargic as the students they teach.
Another problem: just because they are liberal does not mean that they agree. Liberalism, by defintion, is a one room school house with lots of ideas. People who the right would lump together do not see themselves as being on the same page. I think you know what I am talking about.
I do think that the right wing is largely making a paper tiger out of all this, which is something they tend to do a lot of anyway. Although academia tends to be liberal, I don't think most are bleeding hearts. Society exists on a bell curve and most people will be in the middle of it.
The focus of the whole debate is largely misplaced. The faculty member's political orientation should not matter because they should be grading in a viewpoint neutral way. If a student writes a well researched, well written paper that is opposed to the faculty's political orientation, her or she cannot and should not penalize the student for that. If a professor does do that, then there is a problem. And if professors give opinions, whatever their orientation, they should preface that it is indeed their opinon. That's just a matter of being professional. But I don't believe that the indoctrination or preaching occurs as often as the right-wingers would have us believe.
To turn things around a bit, shouldn't the right wingers ask themselves why the most educated people in American society tend to be opposed to them? Some would argue that the ideology is self-reproducing and draws in and inculcates a new generation of liberal academics. But if someone is truly an intellect and has consciousness, they will question all ideas presented to them, right or left. That is the purpose of education, to create skeptics. I suspect that is what the gun totin', gay hatin', Jesus lovin' right wingers fear the most.
Oh crap, I did write an essay.
Nathan,
Perhaps skepticism is part of the problem? We should of course be skeptical of the claims made by politicians, professors, police chiefs, priests, pundits, policy makers, PR flacks, point [wo]men for corporations, and all other persons of power. I think most students and professors are skeptical of the claims of the powerful, which is probably one of the reasons why once trusted institutions no long enjoy any widespread public support.
The problem is that students and professors are not only skeptical of the claims of others, they are even more skeptical of their own ability to provoke change. When I tell my students, as I do every semester, that every single one of them in the room has the potential to make great and positive changes in the world or at least in their own small part of it, they usually look at me like I am horribly naive or perhaps from Mars.
So I'm wondering if the lethargy comes not from too little skepticism toward what we are told to think, but TOO MUCH skepticism about what we can do about it. --Tony
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