Ignorance is Business, Part 4 (see also parts one, two, and three)
by Frederick Lang

Before being transferred to the English department in 1998, I had spent twenty years teaching in a remedial department. (In 1996, I was given an award for distinction in teaching as well as scholarship.) I was preparing students for a college education. By ìcollege education,î I mean nothing more than what is offered in the Brooklyn College bulletin.

When I joined the English department and taught both literature and freshman composition, I tried to give my students a college education. I found that most of them were unprepared for one, but had been deluded into thinking they were doing just fine because they had been receiving passing grades. At arbitration, Tremper and Matthews admitted that most Brooklyn College students were unprepared, but insisted that I should have awarded my students only As, Bs, and the occasional C, so as not to ìhamper their progress.î In effect, they admitted that the college was deluding its students.

There are other teachers besides me who have been persecuted at Brooklyn College. Those I know of are scholars. I have a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature, and am a well-regarded Joycean, owing to articles and a book. I submitted a proposal for a course on Joyce to the English department, which was turned down, and was criticized by Tremper for using Joyce as the focus of English Composition 2, the departmentís course on research. In other words, as I did at Columbia and NYU, where I also taught, I wanted to draw upon my scholarship in my teaching. But doing so meant that I was requiring students to acquire information, to analyze and synthesize it, to think critically about it, and then to reveal the results of their intellectual activity in clear, coherent prose. This most Brooklyn College students cannot do.

But the administration wants to retain these students nevertheless, because it wants the money that comes with them. At first the administrationís solution was to convince those instructors who drew upon scholarship when teaching to lower their standards. I am now an example of what happens to those who refuse. A further step is to get rid of those with scholarship or not hire them to begin with. A final step is to dilute the collegeís core curriculum to make it far easier for students to pass its courses. (President Christoph Kimmich has said publicly that the Core in its present form is too expensive, and that many students have complained about the Core.)

At Brooklyn College the dichotomy between appearance and reality has assumed a second form. Matthewsís agenda seems lame-brained: ìdiversity training,î and all that nonsense. But there is shrewdness underlying it. If students are not asked to learn information or skills, they cannot be held to any real standard, and so they will not be given criticism or correction. They will all pass and graduate in four years.

Speaking of Matthews, she has already threatened me with disciplinary action for not doing properly the tasks I was given in lieu of teaching. Now that my grievance has been denied at arbitration, I am even more vulnerable. I canít afford to retire, feel I am too young to even consider doing so, but Matthews will soon bring my academic career to an end. The last lesson I teach will be to demonstrate to my fellow instructors at Brooklyn ìCollegeî what happens to anyone who takes the word seriously.