Teaching Gun Control

Has anyone done at least a section in a course on gun control? If so, what did you do? How did discussion go? What guidance can you offer for what to expect, what to look out for, and so forth? What readings or other materials are good to use?

Detailed Calendar versus Order of Events?

Some instructors at the beginning of the semester produce a detailed calendar for the semester that says what students can expect to be doing for just about every day of the semester. Others offer an order of events (order of readings, assignments) but no exact days from the outset. There are other options as well. I am seeking input on what works best.

I have always taught Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes for 50 minutes each. I've always done the order of events approach, in part because I think that if I produced a detailed calendar, we would soon deviate from it (due to philosophical interesting diversions that'd arise, because some topics need to be discussed more than I originally expected, etc.). But I wonder if a detailed calendar has worked well for anyone on a 3 day a week schedule; I can see how it'd work on a 2 day a week schedule, but I don't envision it working well for me, but am wondering if I'm mistaken. Thanks!

Open Source Teaching Materials

I recently ran across this article "Online Startups Target College Book Costs" in Bloomberg Businessweek. It discusses online textbooks and materials available for free download and for purchase at prices quite a bit lower than typical publishing. I wonder if anyone out there is familiar with this method of publishing and how well it might, or could, work for authors.

I presume this could work very well for students. For better or worse, at least many of my students access PDFs of readings on their phones and other devices. So this would just be more of that: although I do not like it, perhaps this is a trend that is irreversible and/or not worth fighting about.

My main concern is how well this would work for authors. A company Flat World Knowledge is mentioned in the article above; I could only find one philosophy or ethics book in their catalogue.

Some of my concerns (and some replies to my concerns) are these:

1. What kind of advertising / marketing would one get going this sort of route?

In reply, obviously there are tons of books put out by traditional publishers that get the "advertising" of being in a catalogue, sitting on display tables here and there, etc. but those books do not sell very much and fall stillborn from the press, so to speak. Maybe some higher-selling texts are often as a result of the authors' own marketing?

2. What sort of "prestige" or image is there with this route? How might publishing course materials in this way figure into tenure and promotion at various schools?

In reply, I do not know how the second question should be answered: perhaps it depends on the school, and I would hope that, at schools that are interested in teaching, they'd be impressed by materials that are designed to improve the learning process for students, by reducing costs and increasing accessibility in various ways. About the first question, I suppose it depends on what one cares about: if there's a way that e-publishing gets one's materials into the hands (and I-phones) of more students than many traditional alternatives, then, if that's what one cares, about, it likely won't matter if it's not with Oxford or whatever. Of course, if a major publisher can get the desired results, then one would want to go the traditional route: the problem there, of course, is that the costs seem to be higher than many students would like to have to burden.

3. What's the possibility for making some $ off a text?

In reply, I suppose many books don't make the authors any money, so the point is probably moot. But perhaps sales of printed versions would result in some money for the author, perhaps more than traditional routes due to the lesser overhead for e-publishing. And perhaps, following the contemporary music industry, perhaps there are alternative "business models" on which the main product is often acquired for free and money is made in other ways.

Here are a few of my questions. I wonder what other questions there are and what the answers should be. If anyone knows much about this method of textbook and teaching-material publishing, I'd appreciate hearing more about it. Thanks!

Call for Proposals: Teaching Philosophy Session at Central APA, 2011

The APA Committee on Teaching Philosophy is seeking proposals for a panel session at the APA Central Division Meeting, March 30-April 2, 2011, Minneapolis, MN on this topic:

“Does It Matter What I do? Student Engagement, Social Change and Teaching”

There are many ethical and social issues for which collective action would be required to prevent a significant harm or ameliorate an injustice. Some people (i.e., students) respond with despair to such situations, believing that it doesn't ‘matter’ what they do since their individual actions seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Others respond that they can make a difference, that what they do ‘matters.’ These issues raise some of the following concerns for philosophy teachers:

• Philosophical issues: what’s the most reasonable response to arguments for and against personal obligations in cases requiring collective action?
• Philosophy of education: what role should philosophy teaching play in contributing to social change and students’ social engagement?
• Psychological issues: why are some people “optimistic” and others “pessimistic” here? What are the psychological (and sociological) influences?
• Pedagogical issues: How do different teaching techniques influence students’ responses to such issues? E.g., does "service learning" or "community outreach" make a difference?
  

The Committee is seeking a panel of instructors to address these and related issues in teaching philosophy. Please submit a half to one page proposal by September, 15, 2010 to Nathan Nobis, Morehouse College, nathan.nobis@gmail.com

SoTL?

I am wondering if anyone know anything about something called "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)," what it is and how it relates or has been related to the teaching of philosophy. Thanks!

PLATO - Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization

From Jeff Sebo (NYU):

"Nick and I are thrilled to announce the launch of PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization), a new outreach organization affiliated with the APA.

You can find information about PLATO here: http://plato-apa.org/

This is a seriously amazing organization, with a seriously amazing website. It has all the information you could possibly want about teaching philosophy at the pre-college level. Are you interested in starting an outreach program? Do you want advice about teaching philosophy at the elementary, middle school, or high school level? Do you want access to relevant articles and books and syllabi and software? Do you want to get in touch with other outreach programs, or foundations that you can seek grant money from? All of that information is here, plus a lot more.

In particular, make sure to check out the page called "Creating a Philosophy Outreach Program" (http://plato-apa.org/getting-started/creating-a-university-outreach-program/). We wrote this guide with input from several other outreach programs, with the hope that it will make starting an outreach program a lot easier than it used to be. So if you or anyone you know is at all interested in this, check it out! And of course, let us know if you have any questions that we failed to address, or advice that we failed to include.

Also, invite your friends to this facebook group! The philosophy outreach effort is gaining a lot of momentum right now, so we should all do our best to capitalize and keep spreading the word!

Happy spring!

Best,
Jeff & Nick"

Survey of Topics in Ethics Courses

I have created a survey to try to identify which topics are most commonly addressed in introductory ethics courses that have a contemporary moral issues or problems component. If (and only if) you teach a course that focuses on practical issues (with little to no discussion of moral theory) or has a mix of theory and problems (either a unit on theory and then problems or a mix of theory and problems throughout), please fill out this survey below:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ethics-course-survey

Thanks!

Plusses and Minuses of Online Readings

I wonder what experience people have had with using online readings. A recent email prompts this query:

"Drs. [Tim] O'Keefe and [George] Rainbolt [from Georgia State University, Atlanta] have become shocked and annoyed at the high cost of intro to philosophy anthologies. We have decided to put together a web site that has the format of a standard anthology but is composed exclusively of materials in the public domain and of materials that authors have given us permission to use for free. We plan to make this available free on the web. We are looking for input about the web address we should use. We hope that you will take a moment to fill out a one-page survey on some options. To take the survey, just click on this link:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Srex6oIyncqF7NI1T_2b0Llw_3d_3d

Thanks in advance for your time. If you would like to forward this message on to other philosophy students or faculty, please feel free to do so."

I wonder what experience people have had with using online readings. Mine has been mixed: the problem has always been, at least with my students, that too many of them either don't read them and/or don't print them out and/or they don't bring them to class. So, even though a lot of $ could be saved by their using online readings, they seem to unfortunately resist it and so I am forced to try to make them buy sometimes expensive books. Anyone have any better luck out there?

Getting Students Involved in Research

Happy holidays!

Some schools are interested in getting students involved in research, e.g., working with professors and getting involved in their projects (if not much more independent research). This would be easier in some fields (e.g., some sciences), but this seems like it would be more challenging with philosophy for a variety of reasons. I wonder if anyone has had much success in getting students involved in their research and, if so, what they did and how they did it.

‘On Course’, Part 5: In the Classroom: Discussions

This chapter begins with a little story of an instructor planning for class next morning. She has high hopes to “lecture” for a short to introduce the issues, ask a few provocative questions and then step back as spirited, focused, and engaging discussion erupts amongst nearly all the students. The class runs into overtime and the students spill out of the classroom to the local watering hole to keep on yakin’ about deep ideas and important stuff. 

This, of course, is just a professorial fantasy. (At least it is for most of us; is there anyone out there for whom anything like this is the norm? If so, how do you do it?!). But in this chapter Lang gives some advice on how to make your reality match this discussion-oriented ideal. His concrete suggestions to increase the quantity and quality of discuss are these:

1.      In-class writing assignments that are either ungraded or count for only a tiny percentage. These assignments can get students “transitioned” into the day’s class, gives them time to produce some thoughts about the issues, and preclude social loafing, i.e., their hoping that someone else is going to say something and so they won’t have to say anything. Also, since students have written responses, it’s less obnoxious to call on people, since it’s less threatening for anyone to, if need be, read a prepared response, as opposed to speaking off the top of their heads.

2.      Give each student one minute or so to verbally respond to some question you pose and say what she thinks is important, relevant or interesting (about the reading or whatever for the day). (p. 92). This can work in smaller classes and could work at the beginning or the end, as opening or closing statements. I suppose this response should follow some in-class writing, since that should lead to better one minute responses.

3.      Put students in small groups or pairs for brief discussion (p. 93). These are called “Think-Pair-Share” groups. They can help give students confidence if they find that other students have similar responses, questions, confusions, etc. They’ve already begun talking and thinking in a smaller group so they’ll be better prepared for doing this in front of the whole class.

4.      Ease into discussion with some fact-finding and collecting evidence. First focus on compiling information: have students get the facts out there on the board for all to see. This will get them talking and so better prepared to engage in more challenging analysis, interpretation, evaluation, etc. I suppose this would also work with review material from last class, if you’ll be building on material covered last time.

5.      Have students prepare for debates. In-class writing can be used to help prepare them to take a side.

6.      Finally, start early. The more talking the more people do the earlier in the course, the more likely the trend will continue. Lang observes that students can be encouraged to speak up by (among other options) challenging them to a “duel” of sorts (“I’ve said something interesting, now you say something interesting”) or in more of an unconditional positive regard manner where we assume that students are going to say something great (“Listen to all of these terrific ideas and comments; can we hear your thoughts as well?) (p. 97).

 Here are some other important things from the chapter.

 Lang says that participation should be graded only if you can do it fairly and consistently by really having some sense of who is and is not participating. He expresses doubts that this can be done in large classes. He mentions a method of allowing each student to grade his or her own participation, but allowing professorial veto over the student’s evaluation.

 When discussions get off track, Lang says to be OK with it for a while since students will appreciate the opportunity to discuss what they find interesting. If things get too far from the issues that are supposed to be under consideration, he advises pointing out that what they are talking about won’t be on a paper or test (p. 99!!) or, much better, asking another question to re-direct the discussion and/or finding threads in what’s been said to redirect. He notes that this ability can come with experience of leading discussions.

 If you have a few students who dominate the discussion in an obnoxious way and few others speak, Lang mentions someone’s system where, say, two comments are required per class and students who very much want to participate can do so only once everyone else has met their quota, so to speak. When some students dominate Lang also just asks the others to not allow the “repeat responder” to be the only one to participate and so to contribute because we want to hear from everyone. The goal is to prevent the majority from feeling like they can avoid participation because a few students in the class will do that. He also advises kindly and gently calling on people, not solely relying on people to volunteer.

 Finally, Lang advises giving students time to talk. Wait for them to speak up. Don’t give in to the silence and start speaking (or rephrasing the question[s]). Supposedly teachers typically only give students two seconds to respond before taking over; Lang advises waiting ten. Use those ten seconds to write on the board, drink coffee, walk around the classroom, or whatever, but give students time to respond or else they’ll think they don’t really have to do it.

 Here are some of my reactions, as I related what Lang says to some of what I do:

 On in class-writing:

One way I try to do this is just to write some moral or philosophical claim on the board. If it’s somehow unclear or ambiguous, I’ll ask, “What might this claim mean?” Or, “What might someone mean if she says this?” and give them a few minutes to write out an answer. Or I’ll ask what reasons anyone might give in favor or against this. Or write up an argument and ask how anyone might respond to it. These kinds of question would work also by considering some actual philosophers’ claim(s) or arguments from the assigned readings, if they have done the reading or are able to look at it then and discern an answer.

 I like to do this because, in addition to Lang’s reasons, it helps me find out what students are really thinking. I have found that students’ reactions to philosophical issues, conceptions of how to respond to them, etc. often tend to be very different from professors’ and so it’s good to find their reactions to try to ensure that we aren’t on totally different pages, two ships passing in the night, etc.

 On debates:

For better or worse, I have always been leery of “debates” and have never used them in classes. My vague sense is that they are needlessly adversarial and polarizing, aren’t an ideal method for open-minded, dispassionate inquiry and – my main worry – can reinforce a common, and false, sense that, for every controversial issue, most major positions on the issue are equally rationally defensible. I might be totally wrong about this and a debate forum would typically not have the skeptical “all views on this topic are OK” result. What have people found?

 On the one minute verbal response:

This again allows the instructor to find out what students are thinking and adjust accordingly, which is good. I would worry about this activity though because if students say something significant, then you’d want more than one minute to discuss it: you wouldn’t just want to drop the interesting comment and move onto someone new. Perhaps interesting themes or patterns in commentary would emerge that could be picked up later, but you might miss a lot. You could wind up with a variety of reactions and only some of them could be pursued in detail which might be OK. I think this would work out best only if the instructor is quite able to think on her feet really well; I suspect most philosophy teachers have this ability, but I am not sure.

 This was just a short summary of Lang’s interesting and helpful chapter. I look forward to people’s responses and questions!

Teaching Personhood and Abortion

This isn't exactly a teaching question, although it seems that just about any philosophy question can be turned into one by adding, "And how would you teach this?" My question is what the best arguments for thinking that (early) fetuses are persons, or what's the best way to present this point of view. I think I may be too close to some of these issues, in terms of some research interests, to step back and see things from a more helpful perspective for classes.


Here's a bit of background. To avoid it, skip to *** below.

My general strategy for teaching the abortion issue is to first distinguish a number of conclusions that one could hold on the topic, e.g., that it's always wrong, always permissible, sometimes wrong (in what circumstances?), sometimes permissible (in what circumstances?) and even perhaps sometimes obligatory (in what circumstances?). My goal here is to encourage them to become more precise in their conclusions, avoid slogan-mongering and make it clear that more complex views on abortion are possible, such that some are (or could be) wrong because of some reasons, whereas others could be permissible because of some reasons, etc. (I use this nice page from Fred Feldman to help with this).

Once more precise conclusions are distinguished, I tell them we are going to overlook some of this precision for a bit (!!) and have them break up into groups to develop lists of as many reasons as they have ever heard anyone give in favor of thinking that most abortions are wrong or abortions tend to be wrong, as well as a view that most abortions are permissible or they typically are. I then focus on the arguments for views that abortion is wrong.

Students tend to initially give lots of responses that are "question-begging" or close to it: it's wrong because it's murder, because it's a bad choice, because there are better options (like adoption), and because it's irresponsible and because it's wrong to end pregnancies. They have some better arguments as well, but I tend to have to provide them with the kinds of arguments that philosophers tend to focus on.

***

Eventually we get to personhood arguments. I am not at all impressed when folks just say "Here's what persons really are" and then give some Locke-inspired definition (I believe Mary Anne Warren just "suggests" her view on personhood), since someone can easily respond, "Well, I just don't accept your definition." So what I do is some kind of "inference to the best explanation" type exercise where we identify some clear cases of non-persons, some clear(er) cases of persons (including fictional and otherwise possible but perhaps not actual persons) and then try to figure out - from these clearer cases - what makes persons persons and why non-persons are non-persons. We then arrive at something like Warren's view, but with some reasoning behind it, instead of a mere suggestion.

The problem, if it is a problem, is that on this view early fetuses are clearly not persons. However, obviously some people do claim that fetuses are persons and so I am wondering what, if anything, can be said in favor of this (or, at least, what anyone says to one's students in favor of this!). One thing I try to point out is although many people think that -- if fetuses are not persons, then abortion is permissible -- this is not true because abortion could be wrong even if fetuses are not persons; they could be non-persons for whom there could be excellent moral reasons to not kill. I think my fixation on this fact has given me some mental block to seeing why people might think that early fetuses are persons.

Folks will say, "Yes, these fetuses are not concious, sentient, rational, communicative, etc. beings, yet they are persons nevertheless," so clearly they reject the Lockean view (or at least deny that meeting its criteria is necessary for personhood). I don't like to think that these people are saying something that is analytically false; I think they just have a different view on what persons are.

They then might propose that all living human organisms are persons, that if something is a living human organism then it is a person. This is a view, although what would be of interest would be the reasons that could be given in favor of it.

My speculation is that, for many people, "a person" just means something like "a being with high moral value," "a being that is wrong to kill," or whatnot, some purely moral definition, perhaps with no psychological component built into it. Is this what many people (including students) often mean by person? Is this definition false?!

Sorry for this long post. Perhaps someone out there has had similar bewilderment about personhood, how the term is often used, how you might figure out what persons "really" are, and so on and can help me out. Thanks!

A No Longer Teaching Philosophy Blog

Here is a new blog called "Leaving Academia Behind" that some ISW readers might find interesting. The blog's author (and others pondering similar moves) would, I'd guess, appreciate anyone's relevant experiences, observations and advice. Here's the blurb about it:

"This blog has been created to explain my decision to leave academia behind. In addition, I hope that it can serve as a guide to those in a similar situation. I know that when I first made the decision I did not know what I'd be doing next. Discovering that there are things to do outside of academia took some time and hopefully this blog can help speed that up."

Teaching Multicultural Philosphy of Religion

A reposted "bleg" (blog+beg) from The Prosblogion: A Philosophy of Religion Blog:

Because I am teaching philosophy of religion in the fall and teach at a historically black college, I am looking for writings on what might be called African-American philosophy of religion or African-American perspectives on philosophy of religion (or even African philosophy of religion). I have not had much luck finding things. If anyone knows of anything relevant and can pass on the info or post it, I would appreciate that greatly.

Here are some of the replies so far:

Nicholas Rhodes said:

I wrote a long post that was accidentally deleted. It's simply too much to rewrite. I suggested some of the following texts to get started:

African American Philosophy of Religion

Yancy, African American Philosophy: Seventeen Conversations
West, Prosphesy Deliverance
West, Keeping Faith
West, African American Religious Thought
Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation
Cone, God and the Oppressed
Pinn, African American Humanist Principles
Pinn, The African American Religious Experience in America

African Philosophy of Religion

Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity
Hallen, African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach
Griaule, Conversations with Ogotomelli
Brown, African Philosophy

If you want to chat more about this topic leave a note here so that we might get in touch.

Let me know if you would like to chat further.

Patrick Todd said:

The Blackwell Companion to Phil. Religion has an entry, "African religions from a philosophical point of view." Seems like a good place to start.

The Psychology of Resistance?

Fred Feldman notes that, "It sometimes appears that the quality of our thought on a topic is inversely proportional to the intensity of our emotions concerning that topic." This observation is surely relevant to some philosophy courses, since they often involve trying to get people to think about topics and questions that they would rather not think about (this can especially be the case with topics in ethics and philosophy of religion) and get them try to understand and carefully, patiently and responsibly evaluate arguments in favor of conclusions they might think are false, bad, wrong, reprehensible, awful, etc. A "natural" response to all this, sometimes, is resistance, manifested in a variety of different ways.


I am wondering if anyone knows of any psychological research on this kind of phenomenon, which I think relates to cognitive dissonance. I suspect there must be something out there, even something that directly relates to teaching philosophy or other "controversial issues," but I have yet to find it. But a deeper understanding of this phenomena would surely be helpful in addressing it and helping students develop the cognitive skills and attitudes (and virtues?) that philosophy can teach.

Here's a few things from philosophy that I've found relevant here. First, Richard Feldman on "argument stoppers."

Second, there are a number of articles in Teaching Philosophy on a phenomena called "student relativism," starting with this excellent article by Stephen Satris:

STUDENT RELATIVISM.
			SATRIS,-STEPHEN
6		TI:	Teaching-Philosophy. S 86; 9: 193-205
		AU:	0145-5788
		SO:	IN THIS PAPER I OFFER AN ANALYSIS OF, AND SUGGEST SOME METHODS FOR DEALING WITH, A QUITE PARTICULAR AND PECULIAR PROBLEM IN TEACHING PHILOSOPHY. IT IS, PERHAPS, NOT A PROBLEM ESSENTIAL TO THE DISCIPLINE OR TO ITS TEACHING, BUT IT IS NEVERTHELESS ONE OF THE MOST SERIOUS, PERVASIVE, AND FRUSTRATING PROBLEMS CONFRONTING MOST PHILOSOPHY TEACHERS TODAY. I SPEAK OF THE PROBLEM OF STUDENT RELATIVISM--OR, SR FOR SHORT.
		IS:	METAPHYSICS-; PROFESSOR-; RELATIVISM-; STUDENT-; TEACHING-
		AB:	ENGLISH
		DE:	Journal-Article

Extra Credit Gone Wild?

There are a lot of ethics & philosophy-related events that happen in my geographical area (Atlanta). For my ethics classes especially, I let students know about select events and allow them to attend (and write up a detailed summary and reaction) for extra credit. My main reason for doing this is to encourage them to get out and be exposed to philosophical ideas, arguments, information and people that most of them are not very familiar with. Many students take advantage of these opportunities, and seem to often enjoy and benefit from them, but I am wondering about a possible problem here.

The possible problem is some semesters there are are so many of these events that a student could significantly raise his or her grade by going to a lot of these events. Thus, conceivably, a student could do rather poorly on the tests and papers -- so much so that the student would fail -- but the extra credit results in a passing average. Or the student is at a 'C' or so, but does so much extra credit to get bumped up to even an 'A'. Since I suppose one's grade should really be (mostly?) based on to what degree on has "mastered" the information and skills presented in the class, these extra-credit-enhanced grades don't reflect that competence.

Is this a problem? If so, what to do about it?

One idea is a "cap" on extra credit. But what would that cap be? And, more importantly, if there were a cap then fewer students would be getting out there to see these interesting presentations, which would be bad, from my goals for teaching.

Another idea is to revise the view that students' grades should be one's grade should (mostly) based on to what degree on has "mastered" the information and skills presented in the class. Another category could be added (e.g., "interest in the material," manifesting itself in going to see outside speakers?), but perhaps any such category would be bogus. Or maybe not: maybe cultivating students' interests in and motivation for engaging intellectual topics is a goal in itself, although one that can't easily be measured. I don't think interest in the material should be graded, but perhaps it can be justly rewarded?

Another option is that extra credit activities could be assimilated into the legitimate "skills" category, since they are supposed to be events where one applies the critical thinking skills we are learning and practicing in class, and somehow by that route such radical grade improvements are justified.

I wonder what thoughts people have to these issues. Maybe someone has already dealt with this problem and has a good response.

"It Makes no Difference Whether or Not I Do It"?

Here's a recent article by Michael Pollan from NY Times entitled "Why Bother?" that discusses a response that many people, including students, make to many possible moral demands, namely, "It just doesn't matter what I do so I don't need to do anything," "My efforts won't make any difference or enough of a difference so there's no obligation here for me" and so on. Perhaps this article will help people think about and respond to this kind of objection both in class and in their philosophizing (and, ideally, both).




April 20, 2008
The Way We Live Now
Why Bother?
By MICHAEL POLLAN

Why bother? That really is the big question facing us as individuals hoping to do something about climate change, and it’s not an easy one to answer. I don’t know about you, but for me the most upsetting moment in “An Inconvenient Truth” came long after Al Gore scared the hell out of me, constructing an utterly convincing case that the very survival of life on earth as we know it is threatened by climate change. No, the really dark moment came during the closing credits, when we are asked to . . . change our light bulbs. That’s when it got really depressing. The immense disproportion between the magnitude of the problem Gore had described and the puniness of what he was asking us to do about it was enough to sink your heart.

But the drop-in-the-bucket issue is not the only problem lurking behind the “why bother” question. Let’s say I do bother, big time. I turn my life upside-down, start biking to work, plant a big garden, turn down the thermostat so low I need the Jimmy Carter signature cardigan, forsake the clothes dryer for a laundry line across the yard, trade in the station wagon for a hybrid, get off the beef, go completely local. I could theoretically do all that, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit. So what exactly would I have to show for all my trouble?

A sense of personal virtue, you might suggest, somewhat sheepishly. But what good is that when virtue itself is quickly becoming a term of derision? And not just on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal or on the lips of the vice president, who famously dismissed energy conservation as a “sign of personal virtue.” No, even in the pages of The New York Times and The New Yorker, it seems the epithet “virtuous,” when applied to an act of personal environmental responsibility, may be used only ironically. Tell me: How did it come to pass that virtue — a quality that for most of history has generally been deemed, well, a virtue — became a mark of liberal softheadedness? How peculiar, that doing the right thing by the environment — buying the hybrid, eating like a locavore — should now set you up for the Ed Begley Jr. treatment.

And even if in the face of this derision I decide I am going to bother, there arises the whole vexed question of getting it right. Is eating local or walking to work really going to reduce my carbon footprint? According to one analysis, if walking to work increases your appetite and you consume more meat or milk as a result, walking might actually emit more carbon than driving. A handful of studies have recently suggested that in certain cases under certain conditions, produce from places as far away as New Zealand might account for less carbon than comparable domestic products. True, at least one of these studies was co-written by a representative of agribusiness interests in (surprise!) New Zealand, but even so, they make you wonder. If determining the carbon footprint of food is really this complicated, and I’ve got to consider not only “food miles” but also whether the food came by ship or truck and how lushly the grass grows in New Zealand, then maybe on second thought I’ll just buy the imported chops at Costco, at least until the experts get their footprints sorted out.

There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late. Climate change is upon us, and it has arrived well ahead of schedule. Scientists’ projections that seemed dire a decade ago turn out to have been unduly optimistic: the warming and the melting is occurring much faster than the models predicted. Now truly terrifying feedback loops threaten to boost the rate of change exponentially, as the shift from white ice to blue water in the Arctic absorbs more sunlight and warming soils everywhere become more biologically active, causing them to release their vast stores of carbon into the air. Have you looked into the eyes of a climate scientist recently? They look really scared.

So do you still want to talk about planting gardens?

I do.

Whatever we can do as individuals to change the way we live at this suddenly very late date does seem utterly inadequate to the challenge. It’s hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker piece on carbon footprints, when he says: “Personal choices, no matter how virtuous [N.B.!], cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.” So it will. Yet it is no less accurate or hardheaded to say that laws and money cannot do enough, either; that it will also take profound changes in the way we live. Why? Because the climate-change crisis is at its very bottom a crisis of lifestyle — of character, even. The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us (consumer spending represents 70 percent of our economy), and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences.

For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives suggests we’re not really serious about changing — something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do. Indeed, to look to leaders and experts, to laws and money and grand schemes, to save us from our predicament represents precisely the sort of thinking — passive, delegated, dependent for solutions on specialists — that helped get us into this mess in the first place. It’s hard to believe that the same sort of thinking could now get us out of it.

Thirty years ago, Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer and writer, put forward a blunt analysis of precisely this mentality. He argued that the environmental crisis of the 1970s — an era innocent of climate change; what we would give to have back that environmental crisis! — was at its heart a crisis of character and would have to be addressed first at that level: at home, as it were. He was impatient with people who wrote checks to environmental organizations while thoughtlessly squandering fossil fuel in their everyday lives — the 1970s equivalent of people buying carbon offsets to atone for their Tahoes and Durangos. Nothing was likely to change until we healed the “split between what we think and what we do.” For Berry, the “why bother” question came down to a moral imperative: “Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.”

For Berry, the deep problem standing behind all the other problems of industrial civilization is “specialization,” which he regards as the “disease of the modern character.” Our society assigns us a tiny number of roles: we’re producers (of one thing) at work, consumers of a great many other things the rest of the time, and then once a year or so we vote as citizens. Virtually all of our needs and desires we delegate to specialists of one kind or another — our meals to agribusiness, health to the doctor, education to the teacher, entertainment to the media, care for the environment to the environmentalist, political action to the politician.

As Adam Smith and many others have pointed out, this division of labor has given us many of the blessings of civilization. Specialization is what allows me to sit at a computer thinking about climate change. Yet this same division of labor obscures the lines of connection — and responsibility — linking our everyday acts to their real-world consequences, making it easy for me to overlook the coal-fired power plant that is lighting my screen, or the mountaintop in Kentucky that had to be destroyed to provide the coal to that plant, or the streams running crimson with heavy metals as a result.

Of course, what made this sort of specialization possible in the first place was cheap energy. Cheap fossil fuel allows us to pay distant others to process our food for us, to entertain us and to (try to) solve our problems, with the result that there is very little we know how to accomplish for ourselves. Think for a moment of all the things you suddenly need to do for yourself when the power goes out — up to and including entertaining yourself. Think, too, about how a power failure causes your neighbors — your community — to suddenly loom so much larger in your life. Cheap energy allowed us to leapfrog community by making it possible to sell our specialty over great distances as well as summon into our lives the specialties of countless distant others.

Here’s the point: Cheap energy, which gives us climate change, fosters precisely the mentality that makes dealing with climate change in our own lives seem impossibly difficult. Specialists ourselves, we can no longer imagine anyone but an expert, or anything but a new technology or law, solving our problems. Al Gore asks us to change the light bulbs because he probably can’t imagine us doing anything much more challenging, like, say, growing some portion of our own food. We can’t imagine it, either, which is probably why we prefer to cross our fingers and talk about the promise of ethanol and nuclear power — new liquids and electrons to power the same old cars and houses and lives.

The “cheap-energy mind,” as Wendell Berry called it, is the mind that asks, “Why bother?” because it is helpless to imagine — much less attempt — a different sort of life, one less divided, less reliant. Since the cheap-energy mind translates everything into money, its proxy, it prefers to put its faith in market-based solutions — carbon taxes and pollution-trading schemes. If we could just get the incentives right, it believes, the economy will properly value everything that matters and nudge our self-interest down the proper channels. The best we can hope for is a greener version of the old invisible hand. Visible hands it has no use for.

But while some such grand scheme may well be necessary, it’s doubtful that it will be sufficient or that it will be politically sustainable before we’ve demonstrated to ourselves that change is possible. Merely to give, to spend, even to vote, is not to do, and there is so much that needs to be done — without further delay. In the judgment of James Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who began sounding the alarm on global warming 20 years ago, we have only 10 years left to start cutting — not just slowing — the amount of carbon we’re emitting or face a “different planet.” Hansen said this more than two years ago, however; two years have gone by, and nothing of consequence has been done. So: eight years left to go and a great deal left to do.

Which brings us back to the “why bother” question and how we might better answer it. The reasons not to bother are many and compelling, at least to the cheap-energy mind. But let me offer a few admittedly tentative reasons that we might put on the other side of the scale:

If you do bother, you will set an example for other people. If enough other people bother, each one influencing yet another in a chain reaction of behavioral change, markets for all manner of green products and alternative technologies will prosper and expand. (Just look at the market for hybrid cars.) Consciousness will be raised, perhaps even changed: new moral imperatives and new taboos might take root in the culture. Driving an S.U.V. or eating a 24-ounce steak or illuminating your McMansion like an airport runway at night might come to be regarded as outrages to human conscience. Not having things might become cooler than having them. And those who did change the way they live would acquire the moral standing to demand changes in behavior from others — from other people, other corporations, even other countries.

All of this could, theoretically, happen. What I’m describing (imagining would probably be more accurate) is a process of viral social change, and change of this kind, which is nonlinear, is never something anyone can plan or predict or count on. Who knows, maybe the virus will reach all the way to Chongqing and infect my Chinese evil twin. Or not. Maybe going green will prove a passing fad and will lose steam after a few years, just as it did in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan took down Jimmy Carter’s solar panels from the roof of the White House.

Going personally green is a bet, nothing more or less, though it’s one we probably all should make, even if the odds of it paying off aren’t great. Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can’t prove that it will. That, after all, was precisely what happened in Communist Czechoslovakia and Poland, when a handful of individuals like Vaclav Havel and Adam Michnik resolved that they would simply conduct their lives “as if” they lived in a free society. That improbable bet created a tiny space of liberty that, in time, expanded to take in, and then help take down, the whole of the Eastern bloc.

So what would be a comparable bet that the individual might make in the case of the environmental crisis? Havel himself has suggested that people begin to “conduct themselves as if they were to live on this earth forever and be answerable for its condition one day.” Fair enough, but let me propose a slightly less abstract and daunting wager. The idea is to find one thing to do in your life that doesn’t involve spending or voting, that may or may not virally rock the world but is real and particular (as well as symbolic) and that, come what may, will offer its own rewards. Maybe you decide to give up meat, an act that would reduce your carbon footprint by as much as a quarter. Or you could try this: determine to observe the Sabbath. For one day a week, abstain completely from economic activity: no shopping, no driving, no electronics.

But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.

A great many things happen when you plant a vegetable garden, some of them directly related to climate change, others indirect but related nevertheless. Growing food, we forget, comprises the original solar technology: calories produced by means of photosynthesis. Years ago the cheap-energy mind discovered that more food could be produced with less effort by replacing sunlight with fossil-fuel fertilizers and pesticides, with a result that the typical calorie of food energy in your diet now requires about 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce. It’s estimated that the way we feed ourselves (or rather, allow ourselves to be fed) accounts for about a fifth of the greenhouse gas for which each of us is responsible.

Yet the sun still shines down on your yard, and photosynthesis still works so abundantly that in a thoughtfully organized vegetable garden (one planted from seed, nourished by compost from the kitchen and involving not too many drives to the garden center), you can grow the proverbial free lunch — CO2-free and dollar-free. This is the most-local food you can possibly eat (not to mention the freshest, tastiest and most nutritious), with a carbon footprint so faint that even the New Zealand lamb council dares not challenge it. And while we’re counting carbon, consider too your compost pile, which shrinks the heap of garbage your household needs trucked away even as it feeds your vegetables and sequesters carbon in your soil. What else? Well, you will probably notice that you’re getting a pretty good workout there in your garden, burning calories without having to get into the car to drive to the gym. (It is one of the absurdities of the modern division of labor that, having replaced physical labor with fossil fuel, we now have to burn even more fossil fuel to keep our unemployed bodies in shape.) Also, by engaging both body and mind, time spent in the garden is time (and energy) subtracted from electronic forms of entertainment.

You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems — the way “solutions” like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do — actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon. Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself — that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support. If the experts are right, if both oil and time are running out, these are skills and habits of mind we’re all very soon going to need. We may also need the food. Could gardens provide it? Well, during World War II, victory gardens supplied as much as 40 percent of the produce Americans ate.

But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. Chances are, your garden will re-engage you with your neighbors, for you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow their tools. You will have reduced the power of the cheap-energy mind by personally overcoming its most debilitating weakness: its helplessness and the fact that it can’t do much of anything that doesn’t involve division or subtraction. The garden’s season-long transit from seed to ripe fruit — will you get a load of that zucchini?! — suggests that the operations of addition and multiplication still obtain, that the abundance of nature is not exhausted. The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.

Michael Pollan, a contributing writer for the magazine, is the author, most recently, of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.”

The Philosophy Major Gains Popularity

Reposted from the APA webpage: A recent article in the New York Times (April 6, 2008) highlights the increasing number of undergraduate philosophy majors nationwide. Another article, from The Guardian (Nov. 20, 2007), shows evidence that philosophy degrees are in growing demand from employers.


Here they are, in case they become inaccessible at the original pages:

In a New Generation of College Students, Many Opt for the Life Examined

Sylwia Kapuscinski for The New York Times

Zachary Perry, a junior at Rutgers University, reasons out a position at a meeting of the university’s philosophy club.

By WINNIE HU

Published: April 6, 2008, NY Times

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — When a fellow student at Rutgers University urged Didi Onejeme to try Philosophy 101 two years ago, Ms. Onejeme, who was a pre-med sophomore, dismissed it as “frou-frou.”

Enlarge This Image

Sylwia Kapuscinski for The New York Times

Rebecca Clipper, a senior in a philosophy class at Rutgers, which has 100 philosophy majors graduating this year.

“People sitting under trees and talking about stupid stuff — I mean, who cares?” Ms. Onejeme recalled thinking at the time.

But Ms. Onejeme, now a senior applying to law school, ended up changing her major to philosophy, which she thinks has armed her with the skills to be successful. “My mother was like, what are you going to do with that?” said Ms. Onejeme, 22. “She wanted me to be a pharmacy major, but I persuaded her with my argumentative skills.”

Once scoffed at as a luxury major, philosophy is being embraced at Rutgers and other universities by a new generation of college students who are drawing modern-day lessons from the age-old discipline as they try to make sense of their world, from the morality of the war in Iraq to the latest political scandal. The economic downturn has done little, if anything, to dampen this enthusiasm among students, who say that what they learn in class can translate into practical skills and careers. On many campuses, debate over modern issues like war and technology is emphasized over the study of classic ancient texts.

Rutgers, which has long had a top-ranked philosophy department, is one of a number of universities where the number of undergraduate philosophy majors is ballooning; there are 100 in this year’s graduating class, up from 50 in 2002, even as overall enrollment on the main campus has declined by 4 percent.

At the City University of New York, where enrollment is up 18 percent over the past six years, there are 322 philosophy majors, a 51 percent increase since 2002.

“If I were to start again as an undergraduate, I would major in philosophy,” said Matthew Goldstein, the CUNY chancellor, who majored in mathematics and statistics. “I think that subject is really at the core of just about everything we do. If you study humanities or political systems or sciences in general, philosophy is really the mother ship from which all of these disciplines grow.”

Nationwide, there are more colleges offering undergraduate philosophy programs today than a decade ago (817, up from 765), according to the College Board. Some schools with established programs like Texas A&M, Notre Dame, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, now have twice as many philosophy majors as they did in the 1990s.

David E. Schrader, executive director of the American Philosophical Association, a professional organization with 11,000 members, said that in an era in which people change careers frequently, philosophy makes sense. “It’s a major that helps them become quick learners and gives them strong skills in writing, analysis and critical thinking,” he said.

Mr. Schrader, an adjunct professor at the University of Delaware, said that the demand for philosophy courses had outpaced the resources at some colleges, where students are often turned away. Some are enrolling in online courses instead, he said, describing it as “really very strange.”

“The discipline as we see it from the time of Socrates starts with people face to face, putting their positions on the table,” he said.

The Rutgers philosophy department is relatively large, with 27 professors, 60 graduate students, and more than 30 undergraduate offerings each semester. For those who cannot get enough of their Descartes in class, there is the Wednesday night philosophy club, where, last week, 11 students debated the metaphysics behind the movie “The Matrix” for more than an hour.

An undergraduate philosophy journal started this semester has drawn 36 submissions — about half from Rutgers students — on musings like “Is the extinction of a species always a bad thing?”

Barry Loewer, the department chairman, said that Rutgers started building its philosophy program in the late 1980s, when the field was branching into new research areas like cognitive science and becoming more interdisciplinary. He said that many students have double-majored in philosophy and, say, psychology or economics, in recent years, and go on to become doctors, lawyers, writers, investment bankers and even commodities traders.

As the approach has changed, philosophy has attracted students with little interest in contemplating the classical texts, or what is known as armchair philosophy. Some, like Ms. Onejeme, the pre-med-student-turned-philosopher, who is double majoring in political science, see it as a pre-law track because it emphasizes the verbal and logic skills prized by law schools — something the Rutgers department encourages by pointing out that their majors score high on the LSAT.

Other students said that studying philosophy, with its emphasis on the big questions and alternative points of view, provided good training for looking at larger societal questions, like globalization and technology.

“All of these things make the world a smaller place and force us to look beyond the bubble we grow up in,” said Christine Bullman, 20, a junior, who said art majors and others routinely took philosophy classes. “I think philosophy is a good base to look at a lot of issues.”

Frances Egan, a Rutgers philosophy professor who advises undergraduates, said that as it has become harder for students to predict what specialties might be in demand in an uncertain economy, some may be more apt to choose their major based simply on what they find interesting. “Philosophy is a lot of fun,” said Professor Egan, who graduated with a philosophy degree in the tough economic times of the 1970s. “A lot of students are in it because they find it intellectually rewarding.”

Max Bialek, 22, was majoring in math until his senior year, when he discovered philosophy. He decided to stay an extra year to complete the major (his parents needed reassurance, he said, but were supportive).

“I thought: Why weren’t all my other classes like that one?” he said, explaining that philosophy had taught him a way of studying that could be applied to any subject and enriched his life in unexpected ways. “You can talk about almost anything as long as you do it well.”

Jenna Schaal-O’Connor, a 20-year-old sophomore who is majoring in cognitive science and linguistics, said philosophy had other perks. She said she found many male philosophy majors interesting and sensitive.

“That whole deep existential torment,” she said. “It’s good for getting girlfriends.”

---

I think, therefore I earn

Philosophy graduates are suddenly all the rage with employers. What can they possibly have to offer?

Jessica Shepherd
Tuesday November 20, 2007
The Guardian


Philosophy student Joe Cunningham: considering a future in medical ethics. Photograph: Graham Turner

"A degree in philosophy? What are you going to do with that then?"

Philosophy students will tell you they've been asked this question more times than they care to remember.

"The response people seem to want is a cheery shrug and a jokey 'don't know'," says Joe Cunningham, 20, a final-year philosophy undergraduate at Heythrop College, University of London.

A more accurate comeback, according to the latest statistics, is "just about anything I want".

Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show philosophy graduates, once derided as unemployable layabouts, are in growing demand from employers. The number of all graduates in full-time and part-time work six months after graduation has risen by 9% between 2002-03 and 2005-06; for philosophy graduates it has gone up by 13%.

It is in the fields of finance, property development, health, social work and the nebulous category of "business" that those versed in Plato and Kant are most sought after. In "business", property development, renting and research, 76% more philosophy graduates were employed in 2005-06 than in 2002-03. In health and social work, 9% more.

The Higher Education Careers Services Unit (Hecsu), which also collates data of this kind, agrees philosophers are finding it easier to secure work. Its figures show that, in 2001, 9.9% of philosophy graduates were unemployed six months after graduation. In 2006, just 6.7% were. On average, 6% of all graduates were unemployed six months after graduation.

In 2001, 9.3% of philosophy graduates were in business and finance roles six months after graduation. In 2006, 12.2% were. In 2001, 5.3% were in marketing and advertising six months after graduation. In 2006, 7.3% were.

It is particularly significant that the percentage finding full-time work six months after graduation has risen, since the number of philosophy graduates has more than doubled between 2001 and 2006. In 2001, UK universities produced 895 graduates with a first degree in the discipline; in 2006, they produced 2,040.

And it is so popular with its graduates that many go on to postgraduate study rather than join the workforce. Charlie Ball, who runs Hecsu's labour market analysis, says: "More philosophy graduates are being produced, and they are much less likely to be unemployed than five years ago."

Philosophers have always come in handy in the workplace with their grounding in analytical thinking. Why, only now, are they so prized by employers?

Open mind

Lucy Adams, human resources director of Serco, a services business and a consultancy firm, says: "Philosophy lies at the heart of our approach to recruiting and developing our leadership, and our leaders. We need people who have the ability to look for different approaches and take an open mind to issues. These skills are promoted by philosophical approaches."

Fiona Czerniawska, director of the Management Consultancies Association's think tank, says: "A philosophy degree has trained the individual's brain and given them the ability to provide management-consulting firms with the sort of skills that they require and clients demand. These skills can include the ability to be very analytical, provide clear and innovative thinking, and question assumptions."

Deborah Bowman, associate dean for widening participation at St George's, University of London, which offers medicine and health sciences courses, says philosophers are increasingly sought after by the NHS: "Graduates of philosophy who come in to graduate-entry medicine, or to nursing courses, are very useful. Growth areas in the NHS include clinical ethicists, who assist doctors and nurses. Medical ethics committees and ethics training courses for staff are also growing. More and more people are needed to comment on moral issues in healthcare, such as abortion."

Being on an ethics committee of the NHS is something Cunningham is looking into. "It would be a direct application of my skills," he says.

The popular philosopher Simon Blackburn, a professor at Cambridge University, sees the improving career prospects of philosophy graduates as part of a wider change of public perception. "I guess the public image of a philosopher has tended to concentrate on an ancient Greek in a toga, or some unwashed hippy lying around not doing very much," he says. "I do detect a change in the way the public sees philosophers. I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of people who come to philosophy events nowadays."

Blackburn can take some credit. The user-friendly books on philosophy that he and other philosophers such as AC Grayling, Stephen Law, Julian Baggini, Nigel Warburton and Alain de Botton write have made their way into the mainstream.

Course design

Those in charge of designing university courses have also become sensitive to claims that their subject has no relevance to the modern day.

Blackburn says: "In the years after the second world war, there was a sort of Wittgensteinian air about philosophy, which meant practitioners were proud of the fact that they appeared slightly esoteric and were not doing anything practical. There was very little political philosophy, and moral philosophy was disengaged from people's actual moral problems, and that did lead to the subject being marginalised. That has changed. Political philosophy is a central part of the Cambridge course."

Jonathan Lowe, professor of philosophy at Durham University, agrees that courses' concern with the real world has accelerated in the past five years.

"It's probably because of the new financial arrangements for students that courses have had to prove they are applicable to real world issues," he says. "And the teaching methods have changed. There are more student-led sessions. Students have to argue on their feet and give presentations. That probably shows at interviews."

News that employers and the public hold philosophers in higher regard should presumably be cause for celebration? Not entirely, says Blackburn. "It is also slightly worrying, because people turn to philosophers when they feel less confident and more insecure."

"Lecturing is not good for children and other living things"

I am opposed to doing much traditional "lecturing" in most classroom contexts that I find myself in, which are typically classes with less than 35 students. For one, I think lecturing encourages passivity: students just sit back and typically just let ideas wash over them, at best. Second, I think it discourages doing the reading, if a lecture substitutes for that, as it often does: if the lecture will sum up the basic ideas and arguments, why bother reading about them in the readings? (And somewhere I have gotten the idea that there is research to show that most people learn best from reading, although I now retain that belief probably on the basis of wishful thinking!). I prefer spending our time doing learning activities that students could not do on their own.

Fortunately, I am not alone in having these kinds of thoughts about lectures. Here are some recent articles on lecturing:

Lecturing vs. Teaching Problem-Solving Skills

Breathing Life Into the Lecture Hall

To Lecture or Not to Lecture, an Age-Old Question

A guru here seems to Eric Mazur from Harvard's physics department.

I wonder if people have any thoughts on this issue, know of other relevant discussion, etc.

Evolution vs. Intelligent Design(ers?)

Google apparently thinks that this movie -- "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" -- is right up a philosophers' alley. Perhaps this would be useful to integrate into next semesters' philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, intro to philosophy, etc. courses. It looks like a provocative film, at least.

Academic Employment News

"Adjuncts outnumber tenured professors on U.S. campuses"

By Alan Finder
International Herald Tribune, Tuesday, November 20, 2007


DEARBORN, Michigan: Professors with tenure or who are on a tenure track are now a distinct minority on U.S. campuses, as the ranks of part-time instructors and professors hired on a contract have swelled, according to federal figures analyzed by the American Association of University Professors.

Elaine Zendlovitz, a former retail store manager who began teaching college courses six years ago, is representative of the change.

Technically, Zendlovitz is a part-time Spanish professor although, in fact, she teaches nearly all the time.

Her days begin at the University of Michigan in Dearborn with introductory classes. Some days end at 10 p.m. at Oakland Community College, in the suburbs north of Detroit, as she teaches six courses at four institutions.

"I think we part-timers can be everything a full-timer can be," Zendlovitz said during a break in a 10-hour teaching day. But she acknowledged: "It's harder to spend time with students. I don't have the prep time, and I know how to prepare a fabulous class."

The shift from a tenured faculty results from financial pressures, administrators' desire for more flexibility in hiring, firing and changing course offerings, and the growth of community colleges and regional public universities focused on teaching basics and preparing students for jobs.

But it has become so extreme that some universities are pulling back, concerned about the effect on educational quality. Rutgers University in New Jersey agreed in a labor settlement in August to add 100 tenure or tenure-track positions. Across the country, faculty unions are organizing part-timers. And the American Federation of Teachers is pushing legislation in 11 states to mandate that 75 percent of classes be taught by tenured or tenure-track teachers.

Three decades ago, adjuncts - both part-timers and full-timers not on a tenure track - represented only 43 percent of professors, according to the professors' association, which has studied data reported to the federal Education Department. Currently, the association says, they account for nearly 70 percent of professors at colleges and universities, both public and private.

John Curtis, the union's director of research and public policy, said that while the number of tenured and tenure-track professors has increased by about 25 percent over the past 30 years, they have been swamped by the growth in adjunct faculty. Over all, the number of people teaching at colleges and universities has doubled since 1975.

University officials agree that the use of nontraditional faculty is soaring. But some contest the professors' association's calculation, saying definitions of part-time and full-time professors vary, and that it is not possible to determine how many courses, on average, each category of professor actually teaches.

Many state university presidents say tight budgets have made it inevitable that they turn to adjuncts to save money.

"We have to contend with increasing public demands for accountability, increased financial scrutiny and declining state support," said Charles Harrington, provost of the University of North Carolina in Pembroke. "One of the easiest, most convenient ways of dealing with these pressures is using part-time faculty," he said, though he cautioned that colleges that rely too heavily on such faculty "are playing a really dangerous game."

Mark Rosenberg, chancellor of the State University System of Florida, said part-timers could provide real-world experience to students and fill gaps in nursing, math, accounting and other disciplines with a shortage of qualified faculty, though he, too, said that the shift could come with costs.

Adjuncts are less likely to have doctoral degrees, educators say.

They also have less time to meet with students, and research suggests that students who take many courses with them are somewhat less likely to graduate.

"Really, we are offering less educational quality to the students who need it most," said Ronald Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, noting that the soaring number of adjunct faculty is most pronounced in community colleges and the less select public universities. The elite universities, both public and private, have the fewest adjuncts.

"It's not that some of these adjuncts aren't great teachers," Ehrenberg said. "Many don't have the support that the tenure-track faculty have, in terms of offices, secretarial help and time. Their teaching loads are higher, and they have less time to focus on students."

Ehrenberg and a colleague analyzed 15 years of national data and found that graduation rates declined when public universities hired large numbers of contingent faculty.

Several studies of individual universities have determined that freshmen taught by many part-timers were more likely to drop out.

"Having an adjunct in a course is not necessarily bad for you, but having too many adjuncts might be," said Eric Bettinger, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.