> I want to be clear about what I'm saying, here. I was/am
>speaking on a personal level; I think we all ought to get up in the
>morning and, before breakfast, we ought to think of five alternate career
>paths that would make us happy. I'm serious about that. Eric is heading
>off to the corporate world in his mind before breakfast. Bob's doing
>consulting (well, he _really_ is). Me, I'm alternating between
>homeschooling my kids, being a freelance writer, teaching kindergarten, and
>running a canoe livery on some river in Maine. I think that's a really
>important way for us to keep our sanity and sense of self-worth.
Frankly, I find this line of discussion quite frustrating. I KNOW there
are lots of other things I can do besides being a college teacher. Unlike
a lot of my colleagues (everyone from some freshly minted PhDs like myself
to folks who came out of grad school in the late 60s), I didn't go straight
through to my PhD and I've had real jobs of the 9-to-5 sort and otherwise.
I know I COULD do a lot of other things to pay the bills and try to make
myself happy, but I don't WANT to do anything else. I think that teaching
at all levels is a "calling" in some classic sense, but this is also a
profession that I PICKED because it's what I like to do and it's what I
think I'm good at. So please: can we move past the "do something else"
argument for a second here?
Marcy also points out (rightly so, I think):
the big
>threats to tenure _aren't_ the full-frontal attacks such as we're seeing
>in Minnesota, they're the losses we incur through attrition. I know of
>at least two schools where tenure lines were lost because somebody
>retired, and rather than hire another tenure-track person, the schools
>opted to hire lecturers instead. In one instance, four out of nine
>people in the English department retired -- and to replace them, the
>department got two lectureships for this year.
>
No question about it, and I think the last thing we want to do to prevent
this from happening is simply lie-down and die on the issue of tenure. If
anything, we (I mean that collectively, as a profession and also as faculty
on a campus-- ie, a union) need to encourage a _reform_ of tenure while
simultaneously fighting for _more_ tenure and "tenure-like" securities for
folks teaching as instructors or part-time adjuncts.
Now, I know Eric and Victor are ready to start the magical rhetorical
circus tour (coming to a town near you soon!!!) and I appreciate the fun of
all that. But I doubt this circus will provide me or my wife any sort of
medical insurance; I doubt there will be a retirement or insurance plan; I
doubt it will pay me a wage that will allow me to live a semi-decent life;
and the idea of always being "on the road" doesn't sound like fun to me.
So while it might be fun for a while, I think if we went to a more
circus-like system for teaching (ie, even more part-timers, instructors,
and other non-tenure-track, non-"permanent" staff), I think the circus
workers/teachers would be unhappy, and education would suffer. So, when
Marcy says (in part) that:
>And it [tenure] _is_ a luxury. We'll be poorer without it in too many ways to
>count. But taking the long-term view is not very popular these days . . .
>
...I'd argue that considering the alternatives (the rhetorical circus, a
group of roving "temps" running the show), tenure of some variety is not a
luxury if we value the concept of higher education. If anything, while we
re-define tenure, we ought to be working to increase the definitions of who
is eligible for tenure instead of shrugging our shoulders or deciding to
wonder off to other jobs.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Steve Krause * Department of English * Southern Oregon State College
1250 Siskiyou Blvd. * Ashland, OR 97520 * Office Phone: 541-552-6630
School e-mail: krause@wpo.sosc.osshe.edu * Personal e-mail: krause@mind.net
WWW: http://www.sosc.osshe.edu/English/Krause
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=