Academic Freedom
This link takes you to the American Council on Education's statement on Academic Freedom. I found this interesting. Academic Freedom is not what people think it is--the right of a college professor to pontificate, demean, evaluate or grade as the mood hits him/her, miss class, come to class drunk, etc--in other words, the way we are portrayed in movies. Maybe (and I say maybe)in the past some of that was tolerated, but not now.
http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Search§ion=Statements_and_Testimony1&template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentFileID=2078
The American public is vastly underinformed about the professional life of college teachers. There are a lot of lazy ones out there, of course. However, the majority of us work in state and community colleges with 5/4 or 4/3 course loads, 40-50 hours a week, and all kinds of outside-the-classroom expectations. And we make less money than public high school teachers, I suppose because we should feel privileged to teach motivated students. People with that idea have never interviewed most (traditional age) college freshmen at community, technical, and state colleges. As much as my colleagues hate the situation, I have accepted that this is a market-driven environment that cannot hold on to past views of tiny class size and 1/1 or 2/2 teaching loads just because one has earned a doctorate.
All this aside, I still love my job. If only three people out of a class really get it, really come out of my class with a revised world view, that's ok with me. Only one healed leper came back to thank Christ, so I have no misconceptions about the human capacity for transformation. (Please do not think I am comparing myself to the Lord; I hesitate to use that illustration. It's only for purposes of showing how slow we humans are to recognize reality when it hits us in the face, myself included.)
http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Search§ion=Statements_and_Testimony1&template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentFileID=2078
The American public is vastly underinformed about the professional life of college teachers. There are a lot of lazy ones out there, of course. However, the majority of us work in state and community colleges with 5/4 or 4/3 course loads, 40-50 hours a week, and all kinds of outside-the-classroom expectations. And we make less money than public high school teachers, I suppose because we should feel privileged to teach motivated students. People with that idea have never interviewed most (traditional age) college freshmen at community, technical, and state colleges. As much as my colleagues hate the situation, I have accepted that this is a market-driven environment that cannot hold on to past views of tiny class size and 1/1 or 2/2 teaching loads just because one has earned a doctorate.
All this aside, I still love my job. If only three people out of a class really get it, really come out of my class with a revised world view, that's ok with me. Only one healed leper came back to thank Christ, so I have no misconceptions about the human capacity for transformation. (Please do not think I am comparing myself to the Lord; I hesitate to use that illustration. It's only for purposes of showing how slow we humans are to recognize reality when it hits us in the face, myself included.)
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