Posted on 05/22/2004 5:10:42 PM PDT by Hawkeye's Girl
After nearly five decades in academia, and five and a half years as a dean at a public university, I exit with a three-part piece of wisdom for those who work in higher education: do your job; don't try to do someone else's job, as you are unlikely to be qualified; and don't let anyone else do your job. In other words, don't confuse your academic obligations with the obligation to save the world; that's not your job as an academic; and don't surrender your academic obligations to the agenda of any non-academic constituency — parents, legislators, trustees or donors. In short, don't cross the boundary between academic work and partisan advocacy, whether the advocacy is yours or someone else's.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Fish is the same one that was on O'Reilly once, seemingly stepping well outside the bounds of what he advocates in his article. Then, a professor is still entitled to be an activist, it's just that his in-class conduct should not be tainted by his outside interests.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. And those who can't teach, demonstrate. (They still cash their paychecks though.)
Good one. Thanks for posting this piece. Looks like after a decade of conservatives hammering home the point about political bias in academia, some are finally getting it.
No, those who can't teach teach other people how to teach.
I have always hated this guy.
Either he has changed or I was wrong.
Seems like pretty sensible advise from and to the ivory tower.
Very interesting and as you say, it is a quite surprising essay. I found myself in almost complete agreement with it. Unsaid is that one of the big differences between teaching CHILDREN in high school and below is that you are responsible for building character while teaching ADULTS even if young adults in colleges and universities we do not build character.
Looks to me like they are so embarrassed and controlling about their product they really don't want people reading it.
So I won't.
Besides, it's not like I can believe a single word of it, anyway...
The version I like best is, "Those who can't do, teach; those who can't teach, teach teachers; those who can't teach teachers, write books about teaching teachers. And those who can write books about teaching teachers are administrators."
Before you criticise others you should get your own facts straight.
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