Re: TQM-like stuff for WC

[nlerner@MIT.EDU (Neal Lerner)]

Thanks for the skinny on TQM, Jeanne.  I'm wondering about a couple of 
things.  What would the opposite of TQM look like?  Top-down, autocratic 
decision making (and the current situation at the University of 
Minnesota comes to mind)?  I'd also like to hear more about what the 
principles of TQM as applied to higher education/university 
administration look like.  It's just that the idea of involving in the 
decision making process those on the "shop floor" seems almost absurdly 
obvious (and I'm not unaware of the historical reality of this).

Let me add one other point that might seem only slightly related.  I'm 
always interested in how media/popular culture characterizes the act of 
teaching.  More often than not, for higher ed in particular, teaching is 
lecturing or the top-down dissemination of information, what Freire 
labels the "banking method."  To think that students should be involved 
in their own assessment (or evaluation?), that knowledge is socially 
constructed, or that a classroom might consist of a caucophony of small 
groups intensely discussing a reading or giving feedback to each other's 
drafts, all of these concepts (the TQM classroom?) run counter to much 
of the dominant view.  The point I'm trying to make here is not so much 
to figure out the ways we can bring TQM to our writing centers or 
classrooms (because I think many of us already do), but to wonder about 
the forces that are served by us *not* doing that.  And I think it's 
those forces that ultimately make us cynical about "movements" such as 
TQM.

        Neal Lerner
        nlerner@mit.edu