I certainly have opinions about graduate education and academic work in general. And let me state from the beginning, that is, acknowledge my positionality as it were, that I am a sometimes graduate student and a wannabe academic with strong ties to higher education. And let me also state that I am aware that my opinions likely vary from the wide range of opinions out there on the subject. All that being said, I want to put forth my stance on the purpose and goals of graduate education.
Graduate school is supposed to be about preparing students to enter the realm of academia as independent thinkers and scholars. Students should be introduced to the profession of intellectual work. They should be aided in the forging of their own paths into ideas and the creation of new ways of looking at the world and its artifacts, that is, the very creation of new knowledge.
My experience is from the area of liberal arts, but I believe my opinions and views are valid across the disciplines. That being said, within liberal arts, there are far too many texts, far too many ideas, and far too much knowledge for any one scholar to have a wholly comprehensive experience of those texts, ideas, and knowledge. Indeed, our training is not in the specific experience of a text or idea, but in the development of skills at interpretation, contextualization, and discourse between and around texts and ideas. A scholar properly trained should be able to engage in contextualizing, analyzing, and interpreting ideas and texts beyond his or her immediate experience. And I acknowledge here that the depth of skill at doing these things does vary with the range of experience. Nevertheless, a trained academic should be, must be, able to examine and evaluate ides outside of his or her immediate experience, and he or she should encourage the same from students.
It has recently come to my attention that an academic on the graduate faculty of a local public university has limited the range of texts and ideas that the students in his seminar can interrogate because the faculty member is unable to evaluate them not having direct experience of them. Furthermore, he has rejected ideas that he is simply ignorant of without trying to understand them or see how they relate to the larger discussions and themes of the course. This mode of “teaching” is wholly unacceptable. It is stifling and limits the ability of the students to develop their own ideas and voices, much less create a space for themselves within the academy. A curriculum, a syllabus, and a reading list for a graduate-level seminar is only a beginning, a framework for independent thought. It is not, and should not be, a box that student and teacher must remain trapped in. What would be the point?
I am furious that such and individual is on a graduate faculty, and I’m not sure I’d be any more comfortable if he were only on an undergraduate faculty. The students being forced to conform to his pre-defined, pre-determined way of thinking are some of the brightest and promising minds I’ve recently come in contact with. It is utterly unacceptable that bright students dedicated to intellectual work should be wasting time and energy in this seminar. The faculty member in this situation believes himself to be unqualified to evaluate ideas that stem from his curriculum but that also go beyond it. I suggest that this faculty member is not qualified to be on the faculty at all. His approach to graduate instruction does a disservice to his students, to the university, and to the academy at large.
1 year ago