Re: i have a question here (fwd)

[Eric Crump <wleric@showme.missouri.edu>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 15:15:13 -0500
To: Multiple recipients of list WCENTR-L <WCENTR-L@MIZZOU1.MISSOURI.EDU>

Sharon:

Sorry to be so long in responding--I've been pretty negligent in my email
lately...

I, too, spend a lot of my time wondering what my peers in lit programs are
doing in grad school if they aren't interested in teaching.  I *came* here
*because* I wanted to teach, because I loved teaching.  Part of the problem, I
think, comes from the way MA and PhD programs categorize teaching for grad
students--for the most part, we teach composition, regardless of our own areas
of study.  While there are a vast variety of transferable skills between lit
and comp classrooms, the sense often is that teaching comp isn't REALLY
teaching, it isn't really why we're here.  Cynthia Tuell, in a great essay on
the marginalization of comp teachers (which I can't think of the name of just
now) talks about the "normal progression" of grad students: first you teach
composition and then you get to teach literature, to do what the "big kids" do.
This attitude drives me crazy.

I finished my coursework this spring, and took, as my last class, a seminar on
being and English professor (it had a fancy title, but I can't remember that
either).  We spent a lot of time reading things like Roger Kimball's *Tenured
Radicals* and Dinesh D'sousa's *Illiberal Education* and talking about how the
rest of the world sees and thinks about academics.  What was most distressing
to me was listening to my classmates complain that they were being asked to do
too many things which were irrelevant to their own scholarship--like teach.  It
makes me sad.

I think you're right, Sharon, to mention career counseling.  When I applied to
grad prgrams, no one told me how bad the job market was.  I think graduate
school advisors, those who talk with undergrads interested in MAs and PhDs,
need to emphasize teaching, in all disciplines.

This is a pretty major soap box for me right now; I wrote a whole paper this
spring about critical pedagogy and graduate school reform.  Part of me would
like to send it out for publication, but another part of me--the part that is
worried about getting a job--doesn't want to make anyone angry.  But I think
the bottom line is that grad programs that de-emphasize teaching are doing both
their students and those people's students a great disservice.

Whew.  Sorry to be so long-winded.

Susan Wagner