Getting (Back?) to Teaching
In “Diminishing Returns in Humanities Research” Mark Bauerlein—as part of a larger discussion I may take up over at CosmoPo sometime—asks an important question:
“In light of 50 years of vast research production, backed by substantial resources and subsidies, is not a redistribution in order, particularly toward teaching?”
After outlining the problem of overproduction engendered by the “publish or perish” system he makes two recommendations for change, including the notion that:
“…subsidizers should shift their support away from saturated areas and toward unsaturated areas, in particular toward research into teaching and even more toward classroom and curricular initiatives.”
Can I hear an “Amen?”
Granting even my significant reservations with “education research,” Bauerlein’s recommendation makes sense. Not only do higher education institutions marginalize the practice of teaching in a variety subtle and not-so-subtle ways, but they’ve created an advancement mechanism with a process that works actively against good teachers, creating an artificial zero-sum environment pitting teaching against research and administrative activities.
Of course the entire system of traditional publishing as a measurement of anything (it never had anything to do with teaching, of course), let alone one’s value to an institution, has become epically problematic given that it evolved—in large part—as a way of determining value in an environment where access and distribution were greatly limited by physical and fiscal constraints. But without trying to eat that whole elephant, is recognizing teaching as an important, core part of the institutional mandate not a manageable and reasonable request?