Ignorance is Business, Part 3 (see also the first and second parts)
by Frederick K. Lang

While I was teaching three sections of English Composition 2 in spring 2002, Tremper tried to follow Matthewís advice about the need for documented student complaints against me. She first solicited student complaints, then documented them. On March 6, 2002, she sent a letter to each of the 74 students enrolled in my three sections of English Composition 2. Her rationale for writing this letter was that I had misinformed my students about their right to protest a final grade.

Although Tremperís letter of solicitation was sent to 74 students, only 8 students ìcomplained.î Almost a year earlier, Tremper received an e-mail letter from a disgruntled student and a signed letter from another, and she wrote a memorandum that she claimed the complaining student refused to sign, a memorandum that did not include the studentís full name.

Tremperís letter to my English 2 students did have the desired effect of eliciting more so-called student complaints. But not very many. On March 8, 2002, one student wrote an e-mail letter to Tremper. On April 16, 2002, Tremper wrote a memorandum supposedly summarizing a studentís complaints against me, and this memorandum was signed by the student. The remaining so-called student complaints were actually 6 unsigned memoranda written by Professor Tremper.

But even if all the so-called complaints submitted in evidence were authentic, the number of students who complained would amount to 11, 11 out of the approximately 750 students whom, according to Professor Tremperís own testimony, I have taught in the English department, and out of the thousands I have taught at Brooklyn College.

It is no wonder that CUNY could not have relied on ìstudent complaints,î but needed both Tremper and especially Matthews to testify against me. It is also no wonder that they both agree to testify, since they had been conniving against me since November 2001.

(At the beginning of the hearing, which lasted three days, each weeks apart, CUNYís lawyer told me that several of the 11 students who had ìcomplainedî about me might be called to testify against me. In the event, none appeared, though three did submit sworn statements to the CUNY lawyer, which she read into the record.)

The arbitrator considers the seemingly damning e-mail exchange between Tremper and Matthews irrelevant, because it took place after the complaints about my grading had begun. I had already been told my students regarded me as a ìprick,î and had refused to inflate grades and thus alter their assessment of me.

I continued being a ìprickî partly because I had a very personal for doing so. On January 23, 2002, I wrote to Tremper to tell her why I would never lower my academic standards. I sent a copy of the letter to Matthews.

I think I owe you an explanation. Or, to be precise, I should complete the explanation I began to give you on one of the several occasions when I told you I would never inflate my grades. Besides stating the obvious, that inflating grades was dishonest and unethical, I said I had a more personal reason for refusing to accede to your wishes.

Inflating grades is obviously detrimental to those students who, at this point in their lives anyway, are unable to profit from a college education. If their grades are inflated, they are fooled into thinking otherwise, and thus have no motivation to seek the skills and knowledge they need to become college students. But grade inflation also hurts those students who are able to profit from a college education.

I have mentioned to you that I come from a working-class background, like many, if not most, of the students at Brooklyn College. I have also told you that I could not have afforded to pay for the education I received in college and graduate school--that I went to NYU on a full-tuition scholarship and to Columbia on a full-tuition fellowship.

Full-tuition scholarships at private institutions are, I believe, a thing of the past. Were I far younger and beginning to attend college now, I would probably be at CUNY. I might even be attending Brooklyn College. (Indeed, I was accepted by the college in 1965, but elected to go to NYU on a scholarship.)

If I am as well educated as my record indicates, it is because I was held to the same standards as the students who were paying tuition at NYU and Columbia. Were I currently a student at Brooklyn College, I would receive high grades, but I would quickly realize that I was not being required to meet high standards. I would not study as hard, learn to write as well, or strive to distinguish myself. In short, I would probably graduate with honors and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, as I did at NYU, but I would not be nearly as well educated.

In short, my personal, perhaps selfish, reason for refusing to inflate my grades is that I can easily imagine myself being victimized by the practice. What this means to you is that I am even less likely to succumb to your harassment than you may have imagined, and that, although you may feel you know how much I despise your attitude and lack of ethics, you donít.

(I have been told that this letter, together with the fifty or so others I wrote, antagonized the collegeís administration. Thatís probably true.)

In my letter I referred to students who could profit from a college education and those who could not. There is also a third group, students who could profit from a college education if Brooklyn gave them sufficient time and assistance, something promised to students in the college bulletin. Students needing needed extra time and assistance used to receive it, but no longer, because it is considered too expensive.

The Brooklyn College web page contains the boast that BC is the most beautiful college in the country. This claim revivifies the clichÈ about appearances being deceiving, and, as a former teacher of English literature, I see a parallel with Wildeís Dorian Gray, whose physical beauty conceals moral ugliness. I am not referring only to what the collegeís administration did to me, or even what, during the same period, it did other instructors as well. The greater crime is what BC is refusing to do for its students. Now that a large portion of financial aid is given only upon graduation, the college wants to make sure that students graduate in four years. Giving them additional time means that they will take longer to get their college diploma, and so the college will have to wait longer for its money.

Brooklyn Collegeís criteria are now financial rather than academic. Several times during my arbitration I was told that I had been suspended from teaching partly because I was causing the college to lose money. If, for example, I gave a student an NC (No Credit) in a composition course, which meant that I thought the student needed to take the course again, the college suffered financially, because it had to spend more money on that student than it would have if I had simply given a passing grade.

to be continued