Before the CityU demonstration, I was reading the inspiring paper of Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University and former director of the Office of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts, Professors on the Production Line, Students on their Own (2009) published by the Future of American Education Project at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). (However, it is rather disappointing or strange that the paper is no longer available to download from the web)
The foreword written by Frederick M. Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies of the AEI, unveils the mask behind the glittering crown of "research": "[is] the publication of more research the same thing as the publication of better, more informative, or more useful research?" (emphasis original) No-one can deny the smell of gunpowder in the air.
With focus on language and literature teachers as a case study, Bauerlein examines the main, or crucial, factor preventing them from engaging undergraduate teaching, research productivity. In fact, we are too familiar with the binary answers of academic career, publish or perish. Here I just quote passages of great interest to me. (obviously, this blog serves as a personal reading notebook for me)
"Thousands of shorter minor texts offered virgin terrains to younger scholars searching for unplumbed materials. The edifice of literary scholarship had numerous gaps and fissures, and books and articles were bricks and mortar filling them in." (p. 7)
It is interesting to note, as the author claims, that "the 'coverage' project is complete" after the rigourous intellectual enquiry in the last four decades. (p. 7) Really? 99% yes, I think. 1%, I disagree. Academia is more than the endless intellectual game of "coverage" or "discovery", but "reflection on discovery" and "discovery of reflection". The cliche "there's nothing new under the sun" is no new. But why we have long believed in it, and how and when it has evolved to such is in the field of intellectual history or history of idea.
It follows by the "strange economy" "at work" concerning the peculiar scholarly book market. "Demand goes down and supply goes up, as does price." (p. 11) The economy is such strange that it focuses "not on the commodity or the consumer, but on the producer alone." (p. 12) Who are the consumer? The readers? No, the producer. Who are the producer? The authors, young scholars aiming at getting a job or tenure. No wonder Bauerlein asserts that "[p]ublication is a fact of survival, the foot in the door and the seat at the table, and nobody imagine otherwise." (p. 13) Whoever would be so naive to think the otherwise? It's all about "publish or perish". Inevitably, "[u]ndergraduates become duties to manage and minimize, research a duty to secure and prolong" (p. 17)
Undergraduate teaching is an integral part of uni. education. "Students come and go in 14-week semesters, but distinguished scholars can dominate a field for decades." (p. 17) To inspire or to bore is critical and determined by prominent professors, or assistant professors. A number of Nobel laureates, and world-star scholars and authors are honoured to lecture (or teach?) in various British and American universities, on the basis of their research expertise and creativity, not teaching capacity.
However, Bauerlein forces me to think what is teaching. To inspire? To take care of?
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