When I first started teaching English at Large Urban Community College, I wondered why certain colleagues in other departments looked at me a little strangely when I told them what I taught. I was blessed to have outstanding professors for the most part throughout my undergrad and grad education, and I always felt as if being part of an English department meant being part of a vibrant community of thinkers. Now, after all this time, I'm beginning to understand why colleagues think we're a little weird at best and find us to be the most entitled, snowflaky department ever at worst. The following are actual, slightly edited statements to come out of my colleagues' mouths during department or college-wide meetings:1. We're not just the best department at Large Urban Community College. We're the best department of any college in the entire system, English or otherwise!
2. People who teach literature are smarter than people who teach other disciplines. We have to be much more versatile in our subject. Literature relates to everything else, so we have to understand everything else. Professors in other subjects don't.
3. Teaching English is so much harder than teaching anything else! Other disciplines deserve to have larger class sizes. All they do is just lecture and hand out Scantrons for multiple choice tests. We make people write. No one else does that! Our classes should be the smallest of all.
4. We don't need to look at what our colleagues at other colleges in the system are doing. We're the leaders. They should be looking at what we're doing.
5. Why should we have to follow the same rules as the other departments? Doesn't Administration understand we're bigger and we influence so many more students? We deserve special consideration.
6. We don't have to do what Administration says. We're faculty. We are the most important people at this college. It's not like they're going to do anything to us anyway if we don't comply. Why should we?
Meanwhile, we have clique factions like junior high, departmental meetings are akin to cock fighting sometimes, and I'm pretty sure collegiality isn't in the vocabulary of about a third of my coworkers.
I would blame this on the fact that we're so large we attracted sheer numbers of more snowflakes, but one other academic department is actually larger than we are, and they get along fine and don't walk around in public saying such stupid stuff. One other large department in the occupational division is as dysfunctional as we are, but at least they're not snowflaky.
I have some great colleagues who are a pleasure to work with. The ones who aren't are getting harder and harder to live with. My hope is that some of them will retire, but they've already groomed their Millennial successors to pick up the cross.
I heartily apologize for the ignorance or outright stupidity of my gumdrop unicorn colleagues. I hope to God this isn't just an English thing. While I wouldn't wish this environment on anyone, it would at least lessen my misery to know that I don't work in the only snowflake department in higher ed.
English isn't the most entitled, snowflaky department ever at worst. That would be political science. Engineering can be pretty bad, too.
ReplyDeleteAnd as far as item 6 goes, I say damn right! ;-)
Most incompetent, excuse-riddled, failure of a department award has to go to Business Administration, whose students model their instructors' behavior in our classes.....
DeleteEnglish isn't snowflaky here: they're deeply earnest, and fully complicit with the administration's push for push-button teaching in other disciplines.
Not sure why you have to poke BA professor behavior here as at my upper Midwest of a sort institution, business profs publish frequently and are, in many cases, quite well regarded in their disciplines and across campus. So, what is your story? On what basis can you make this claim?
DeleteI will agree that some business students (like some students in other disciplines) are not ready for prime time, what ever we conceive that to be when they get there. OK, some are as dumb as a box of hammers, can't write, can't do simple algebra and generally make you despair for the future of humanity. And there are others that are absolute gems and a joy to know.
I direct a grad program in business. I see all sorts. I will tell you that no discipline has a monopoly on excellence or incompetence.
It is funny. I have heard very similar stories from the professors of the English department at my school. It must be something in the coffee.
ReplyDeleteI have some sympathy with some ideas in #3, except that I'd be in favor of more people in all kinds of departments having small enough classes to allow for substantial writing. Also, if my non-English colleagues *aren't* assigning written work, why do they keep complaining that we don't teach students to write?
ReplyDeleteI deduce from #6 that there is still tenure at this institution (and I'm pretty angry at the speakers for living up to several stereotypes about tenured proffies).
See, I would have said Economics or Chemistry for most snowflakey, and I have taught both English and Business.
ReplyDeleteI'd agree that economics is a very flaky discipline, but most economics proffies I know are almost rational.
DeleteChemistry, on the other hand: what's not to like? They make great drugs, you know.
I would argue for Education or Communications for more snowflakey than English...
ReplyDeleteAs an EngProffie myself, I'd have to say that the comments coming from your colleagues probably stem from their knowledge that if they're not there *trying* to teach the little flakes how to write, who else is going to do it?
#3 speaks specifically to recommendations by national organizations (CCCC and NCTE) on class size for writing courses. Skills-based classes *should* be small (the recommended cap is 20).
Honestly, it's hard to get much more snobbish than Physics - we are probably the worst for thinking our discipline is the hardest and most worthwhile. (That damn poster with the quote from Rutherford about stamp collecting has been an embarrassment to me for years.) So, the level of hubris here is pretty impressive.
ReplyDeleteHard to teach English? Perhaps in the sense of 'hard work', but not in the sense of 'hard to get students to understand'. Or else med schools would be using Lit courses to weed people out instead of physics and o-chem.
Ah, but pure reason shows that physics rightfully deserves everything it gets. Imitation being the most sincere form of flattery, Feynman's observations of "cargo cult science" are germane here.
DeleteAnytime I'm in public, and anyone asks me what I do, I never tell them I'm a physicist. People will literally get up and run away if you do that. I always tell them I'm an astronomer: people say, "Cool!" Alas, about half of them then ask me for horoscopes, always for free, of course. That quote from Rutherford is therefore annoying to me, too, particularly since some stamps can be quite valuable.
If I don't want to talk to someone, I tell them I do "nuclear astrophysics." Anytime anyone gives me the usual crap, "I took physics, and I hated it," I let them have the old standby:
IT DOES REQUIRE INTELLIGENCE!
As far as snobbishness goes, pure mathematics, philosophy, and especially engineering students can all give us a run for our money.
EnglishDoc, I'm beginning to wonder if you work just down the hall from me. Seriously.
ReplyDeleteTeaching writing can make you say things you'd never have thought you'd say back in your young idealistic padawan days. BUT, I think you have a particularly tedious department. The only one I've heard said by my colleagues (and even by myself from time to time) is that it is soooooo hard being an English proffie because of all the essays to correct. We feel so sorry for ourselves. But, actually, at least at my college, I do believe the Math proffies have it just as bad as we do. They do seem as though they are attempting the impossible, and yet they have to be much more exact in their grading and so have very little leeway if they want to be Flakeprofs. I have some Flakeprof colleagues in English who manage to do very little even though we teach comp.
ReplyDeleteWe don't need to look at what our colleagues at other colleges in the system are doing. We're the leaders. They should be looking at what we're doing.
ReplyDeleteAnyone remember the greatest vid of all time, the one about "27 poems about my dead dog"? This is exactly like that student talked. "I do not want to read other writers. I want to be original."