Profs owe college students something more than blather via Zoom

[Mark Crispin Miller]

Here's proof-positive that US academics, however theoretically sophisticated

they purport to be, and however much they know about their own subfields,

know nothing about propaganda, or about how "our free press" routinely

misreports and/or blacks out important news, in service to their owners, and 

their advertisers (and the CIA). About this COVID-19 crisis, they know only

what's been dished out by the New York Times and NPR, which is to say that

they know nothing, while presuming that they're really well-informed. 

So they're too terrified to teach in person, and outraged by the expectation

that they maybe should, considering how much it costs the students, and

their families, to attend the schools where those professors teach. Nearly

all these very comfortable professionals are so coked-up on fear that they 

can't see how wrong it is to ask those students to sink into lifelong debt to 

pay for what they'd get a lot more cheaply from the University of Phoenix.

Although completely addled by the fear porn that they soak up from the 

Times et al., and evidently thinking that their schools owe them a living

even if they won't go near a classroom, these professors see themselves

as radicals. Check out this (unwittingly) hilarious passage from "Colleges 

Face Rising Revolt by Professors," which the Times ran on July 3:

“Until there’s a vaccine, I’m not setting foot on campus,” said Dana Ward, 70, an emeritus professor of political studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., who teaches a class in anarchist history and thought. “Going into the classroom is like playing Russian roulette.”

Does Prof. Ward think he's an anarchist, or does he just make a living (and

no doubt a fairly handsome one) yammering about "anarchist history and 

thought"—which he'll now do only via Zoom, until he can bend over for that 

lucrative injection, whose (rushed) manufacture has been funded by a syndicate

of predatory billionaires, to make themselves still richer? 

Whether that guy deems himself an anarchist or not, Emma Goldman must 

be spinning in her grave.

MCM

What professors owe college students

Jonathan Zimmerman

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-what-professors-owe-college-students-20200805-n35xljtf2ben3dz4pyimpdadgm-story.html

August 5, 2020

Hey, did you know that Columbia wants its professors to contract the coronavirus and die?

That’s what the Twitterverse said last week, after Dean of Faculty Amy Hungerford sent out an email asking professors to teach face-to-face classes. Noting that most Columbia professors had elected to teach online in the fall, Hungerford urged them to reconsider.

The reaction from faculty — at Columbia, and around the country — was fast and furious. “Here, we hope you’ll change your mind and come die in the classroom!” tweeted Rutgers historian Evan Jewell, a recent Columbia Ph.D. Building on his thread, dozens of other posters hated on Hungerford for supposedly valuing student tuition dollars over faculty health and survival. “It’s inexcusable,” one scholar wrote. “Money can’t be more important than human lives here.”

But here’s what almost nobody said: Students learn more in-person than they do online, especially if they come from first-generation or minority backgrounds. And now that they are coming back to campus, we have a duty to teach them in the classroom when we can.

The attacks on Hungerford were yet another reminder of how quickly academicians can descend into the snarky, take-no-prisoners quagmire that characterizes the rest of our culture. If you believe the professorial social-media mob, Amy Hungerford isn’t just a harried administrator doing the best she can in a difficult situation; she’s Cruella De Vil.

Even more, the Columbia dust-up demonstrates how fear and cynicism have overcome all of us in the age of COVID-19. Of course, teaching safely in person presents huge challenges. But that doesn’t mean we should simply throw up our hands, declare it impossible, and denounce anyone who thinks otherwise.

Unlike other places where students congregate, such as dormitories and fraternities, the classroom is our domain. We can require our students to wear masks and maintain proper social distancing. We can model good hand hygiene. And, most of all, we can kick out anyone who refuses to comply.

Let me be clear: Nobody — I mean, nobody — should be required to teach face-to-face. Senior citizens are at higher risk of contracting coronavirus, as are people with a variety of medical conditions. Most of them don’t want to teach in person, and we shouldn’t make them do so.

Now that many school districts have delayed opening, meanwhile, faculty members with young children might want to teach online so they can care for their kids at home. That’s exactly what I would do, in their circumstance.

But the rest of us should try to teach face-to-face, especially if we have tenure. I worry that junior faculty members and adjunct instructors might feel compelled to teach in person so they can hold on to their jobs. That’s why the tenured faculty like me have to step up. Someone needs to teach the students who come to campus. And if we don’t, it will be sloughed off on somebody with less power than we have.

All of this will require our institutions to carve out small enough classes to teach face-to-face. A 300-student lecture class can’t be taught safely in person, of course. But smaller classes and seminars can be, if we play our cards right.

That means equipping classrooms with extra masks and also with plexiglass shields. It means arranging desks, chairs and lecterns so that they are spaced appropriately. And it means wiping them down at the end of each class, so that they’re clean for the next one. It won’t be easy, but it’s also not rocket science. We can do it.

This fall, I’m scheduled to teach a freshman seminar that is capped at 15 students. It’s called “Why College? Historical and Contemporary Perspectives.” I typically begin it by asking the students a version of the question in the course title: Why are we here?

God help me if I have to do that over Zoom, which will raise a different and much more depressing question: Why aren’t we here? The answer, I fear, will be that the faculty lacked the courage and commitment to provide the best instruction we can. Teaching in person will expose me to more risk, to be sure, but I’m willing to do it on behalf of our students. I hope you’ll join me.

Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America.”