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Gone Fishing
This month, Oxford University Press will publish Stanley Fish's long anticipated new book, Save the World on Your Own Time. The title says it all -- this book represents the culmination of Fish's evolving thinking about what professors should (and should not) be doing in the classroom. Once a leader in the move to politicize humanities departments -- during the 1990s Fish transformed the Duke University English department into a top-tier, cutting-edge center of politically motivated teaching and research -- Fish has since recognized that many college teachers go too far. He has posted eloquently on what academic freedom is and isn't at his New York Times blog, and now he has developed his thoughts into a book. The timing is vital: In an interview with Inside Higher Ed, Fish estimates that around 5 to 10 percent of college faculty "are always imposing their loyalties on the students in an attempt...to recruit students into a political agenda." Given that the American professoriate numbers about 1.7 million, that's somewhere between 85,000 and 170,000 professors who are abusing their positions in unconscionable ways. If Fish is anywhere near correct, that's a pressing problem that requires immediate attention.
Fish's estimate tallies with figures ACTA uncovered in Politics in the Classroom, a 2004 survey of college students done by the University of Connecticut. Politics in the Classroom revealed that 46 percent of respondents said "some professors use the classroom to present their personal political views;" 49 percent said "that professors frequently comment on politics in class even when it has nothing to do with the course." When both students and experienced faculty members are reporting the same problem, there's reason to believe it's real -- and there's reason for trustees to initiate institutional self-studies to identify and address problems on their campuses.
Posted by Erin O'Connor on July 07, 2008 at July 7, 2008 04:26 PM
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