I started my college teaching career as an adjunct back in the 1970s. I was a summer composition instructor in New York at Fordham's Lincoln Center campus and I didn't mind the small salary because I was living at home.
I'd attended Fordham and in my senior year had been mentored by two dedicated, gregarious, hard-working professors, unofficially inducted into the club. My mother and her father had been teachers, so being in the classroom was as much a dream of mine as becoming a published author.
I was thrilled as an adjunct to be doing every single thing connected to teaching, including grading papers. Even grading papers, I should say, since that's what most teachers complain about. It was all new and exciting, and I was lucky because I felt the world was all before me. The academic world, anyway.
Professor X, author of In the Basement of the Ivory Tower, was not lucky when he started his adjunct career. He was forced into it because he and his wife had purchased more house than they could afford and he desperately needed a part-time job to supplement the income from the government job he already had. He picked teaching, the only thing he says he could do with a "worthless" MFA in Creative Writing. It was not a happy choice.
Just as he hadn't thought through his home purchase, he had only a dim understanding of what awaited him in the classroom. He expected his night students to be much better writers than they were, and also to benefit from his instruction more than they did. What he found was unprepared, under-educated students whose grasp of language was chaotic at best. The work they produced was marred by "yawning canyons of illogic and error."
Perhaps because he'd been an English major and in love with poetry, novels, and writing itself, he expected similar passion or at least curiosity in his students. It's hard not to think of the author as woefully unprepared in his own way, and he assesses himself and them as having screwed up in major ways. But isn't his mistake the greater one?
Professor X, who's taught at a small college and a community college for a decade, is passionately depressing about his students' deficiencies and the problems of a culture that pushes people to college when they shouldn't be there. He's equally impassioned and a real downer about the difficulties of writing and writing well. Though he finds some joy in the classroom, joy and writing seem almost antithetical in his worldview. That's as sad a discovery for the reader as X's own discoveries about what his students don't know and don't seem able to learn. I'm happy to say that writing--whether a blog or a novel--has always been enjoyable for me.
X not only dilates at length about the rigors of writing well, he also claims that all writers are afraid. Terrified, in fact. It's a dark assessment, and not every writer will agree. I certainly don't.
But you can't deny the power of this scathing report from the front lines. And whatever you think of him, you're likely to end up wondering as X does how Americans have come to view "college not as a consumer product at all, but as both a surefire, can't-lose financial investment, and even more crucial than that, a moral imperative."
Follow Lev Raphael on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LevRaphael
Michael Roth: Tales From College Writing Courses: The Horrors Continue
Unfortunately, it is not our duty as adjuncts to decide who can and who cannot be in our classes. Of course, we can do our best to communicate and be involved in planning and organization within our respective departments, but in the end it is what it is and we are paid to do what we do.
Do I get frustrated with the students who sign up for my class, and then don't attend after the second week when their financial aid comes through? Of course! Am I irritated by students who have no idea what the responsibilities and expectations of college and life really are? Duh! But in the end, it is my job to do my best to impart knowledge to those who will receive it. And for those who put the effort in and truly gain the knowledge, what a reward!
So we can sit around and complain about students who should be better, or we can invest in those students who really want to be better. The ball's in your court, are you in or out?
I don't think so. At least he can write, whether you agree with him or not. That is more than many can do.
I start as an adjunct at a smaller private university next fall semester; I'm hoping that the students there actually want to be there. As for next semester as a TA here, I'll just have to take my valium.
Good luck in the Fall!
One thing that struck me about the book was how unhappy X has been teaching and how difficult he finds it, and how he also doesn't seem happy about writing, either, and talks about it as if it's an ordeal most of the time. That's become a kind of solipsistic cultural cliche: writing = suffering if it's any good. I recommend all teachers read his book whatever they think of it, it's illuminating.
Wanna know what's wrong with composition courses?
Trying to teach people who have never read a book in their life how to write.
In 4 months, a few hours a week.
Good luck.
You won't see near this level of empty rhetorical dreaminess over on thhe nuclear blogs. Life or death over there.
Why all the rhetoric? One reason is Hollywood. Everybody is supposed to be Robin Williams. Whose wonderful inspiration, btw, resulted in a suicide, if you follow the rather lame drift of that lame movie.
Here's the first lesson that should be taught in Frosh Comp: nothing in this world is "inspirational." That's the kind of talk they use when they are sending you off to war.