Worst Professor Ever

One of the perils of blogging about topical issues, however snarkily, is that alert readers start to send you stuff. Just yesterday, Maureen Ogle, whose interview answers really nailed some pressing educational problems, alerted me to Heather Wilson’s Washington Post op-ed lamenting the ‘superficial’ qualifications of recent Rhodes scholarship applicants.

I actually agree with most of what Wilson says, viz. that a true leader cannot be a ‘mere bookworm’, and needs to have a sense of purpose and interpersonal connection. (This is why, among the uni crowd, Rhodes scholars are considered kind of sleazy — not just because Bill Clinton was one, but because charisma and social skills are generally unwelcome in the ‘serious’ academic community.)

True story: one Rhodes candidate I knew worked the party/interview by imitating the behavior of her party-girl sister. It worked, so here's an inspiration for the rest of you.

But Wilson’s conclusion is pretty lame, resting merely on the tired supposition that ‘universities are failing our students.’

If one of my students had written that, I’d have failed them for clichés, vagueness, and a poorly supported argument. Granted, that’s exactly what most students would have written, which is why I’d say the real problem is them — the students, failing us. Not vice-versa.

And the problem isn’t limited to colleges, it starts with parents who won’t accept that their kids are average. It continues with ‘standards-based’ K-12 education designed by people who’ve never actually taught. You want critical thinking? You can’t use a multiple-guess test to assess it.

But Wilson, being a former Congresswoman, knows better than to pin the problem on the voting majority, ’cause they get real mad about that. Though she has no problem accusing the universities (rightly) of pandering to said majority. But let’s be clear, there’s a general problem with consumer-driven education, at every level.

And it’s not professors who are pandering, believe me, it’s the admin that doesn’t invest much in its devoted educators and covets research over teaching. It tells parents this is good for the students, but that’s a blatant lie. Really, a little research would not have gone amiss here. There are plenty of books if you really care to find out what’s going on (e.g. How The University Works).

I’d also point out that Wilson’s putative Rhodes candidates all come from non-humanities backgrounds, which is another reason they can’t think very well. Why can’t a biochem major discuss the current issues surrounding the health bill? Easy, because the biochem department brings in bazillions of dollars in grants and can do whatever it wants in its own little mad-scientist world. Meanwhile, the humanities, which excel at teaching ‘big-picture’ thinking, are scraping by with their few burlap-clad students in the basement of the library  – and we all know how awkward things get between social classes. Better to keep them separate, don’t you think?

Sure, today’s students are superficial thinkers and generally unqualified to be great leaders. And yes, superficial specialization is part of academic culture at the highest levels. But the latter does not cause the former; both are the result of a huge systemic problem.

A little failure would have been good for these students, but failing them is no longer allowed — and yet, the fault always comes back to teachers, or at least nebulous educational entities who can’t vote. So let’s say it one more time: when the students suck it’s their fault. Not ours. Yes, even when they’re wannabe Rhodes scholars.