Immanent Domain

Getting Faculty Out of Advising

I was at a faculty meeting the other day where several of my peers found out that they would be expected to assume additional advising responsibilities. As I listened to the comments and complaints, I found myself reflecting on an issue that wasn't being raised, or even on the table: that they were being asked to assume additional responsibilities without additional pay.

Most academic discourse takes place within assumptions about education being an altruistic calling akin to being a missionary. Almost everything is discussed in terms of how it might benefit or harm students, and rarely in terms of teachers' quality of life or their rights as laborers. 

On top of this, there is often a cultural split between hourly wage earners and salaried white collar workers that discourages white collar workers from thinking of themselves as laborers. Perhaps this is especially the case in academia, where manual labor (and embodiment, especially teachers' bodies)  is traditionally viewed as being less important than the life of the mind. I suppose it's all in Plato.

There's a lot to unpack here, but what I'd like to concentrate on is advising, specifically the notion that it's a good use of faculty time and resources. Most full time faculty members complain about it, but I have heard few of them actually propose alternatives.

Well, here are a couple:

• Before the major, have well-trained and supervised work-study students do the advising. When it comes to specific general ed areas, have workshops where one faculty member from each area speaks to many students at a time and answers their questions.
• After the major in a school with graduate degrees. Train some graduate students to do the bulk of the advising. It will be a financial lifeline for the struggling grad students and look good on their CV when they apply for jobs. They can demonstrate that they understand how a whole curriculum fits together and what getting a degree in the field is like for an undergraduate.

This would take all the tedious book-keeping, the shuffling catalogs to figure out requirements and class schedules to figure out availability out of the hands of faculty members whose time would be better spent elsewhere. It would leave these tasks in the hands of people who do it far more often, better understand the problems and bottlenecks, and (if they are the right person for the job) don't resent it.

This would leave faculty members with more time to do what we're good at: advising students motivated enough to make an appointment. Advising them about the significance of the classes they might take, about the material we're covering, about what they want to do with their lives. Anything but book keeping.

This also would involve abandoning a key notion about faculty self-governance: the idea that as educators we best understand all aspects of the educational process. What kind of narcissistic grandiosity could sustain that illusion? There are aspects we understand with an unparalleled depth and commitment, and aspects we don't have the time, energy, stamina, or officiousness to meddle in. We should focus on our strengths, even if it means giving up an illusion of importance or control.

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Schooled by My Students

One of  the unexpected pleasures of teaching was discovering that I am actually pleased when students trip me up and force me to rethink things. I had always hoped that I was the sort of person who would be pleased by this, but until I was actually teaching, the idea hadn’t been tested. 

Recently a student tripped me up about a panel in Dan Clowes’ graphic novel, Ghost World. His protagonist, Enid, is viewing a computer-generated pornographic image of a child. Clowes’ image (or rather, his image of an image) is very rudimentary and cartoonish, but it upset one of my students nonetheless.

In retrospect, I’m kind of amazed that I hadn’t thought about this in advance. I did have my reasons, but still. First, though, here are the reasons: 

1. I am so focused on the fact that sexual assault usually occurs between acquaintances, and that child abuse happens within families or by family friends, that I can lose sight of the fact that this isn’t always the case. 

2. I was more worried about how students might react to portrayals of Enid’s sexuality, including losing her virginity at 16, and one of her masturbatory fantasies. 

3. I am familiar with strong arguments that it is misguided for law enforcement to direct their limited resources toward catching those who possess child porn instead of prosecuting actual child abusers and aiding its survivors. Given the family issues often involved, going after the consumers (rarely the producers) of images is a tempting target that can siphon resources away from the more difficult prosecution of child abuse (or the producers of the images). James Kincaid’s Erotic Innocence was my starting point. 

4. I subsumed the virtual nature of the porn in question to Ghost World’s larger questioning of issues about simulacra and simulation. This is a topic I also take up with Fight Club (think of Ed Norton in front of the Xerox machine), the book we read after Ghost World. 

5. I plan on teaching Lucky, Alice Sebold’s account of being sexually assaulted her first year of college, for the same students next term. I had thought ahead about inviting a counselor from the local sexual assault counseling and support service, in before teaching that book. So I was focused on that book instead of this moment in Ghost World. 

6. To the extent we can make out Clowes’ view, and certainly Enid’s, there is no sympathy for the producer of this porn, and the man who owns it is later prosecuted for child abuse. 

So yes, I had my reasons, but still. But having a student brave enough to speak up about the issue has pushed me to rethink it. Besides wanting to bring up the issue in advance, I may need to rethink when I teach Ghost World. Though I moved it before Fight Club because I wanted to start with two girls confronting marketing before we looked at the boys’ club that is Fight Club. 

More generally, the issue has pushed me to a better understanding of why Enid, the protagonist, might divide the men she sees into poseurs, on the one hand, and on the other, pervs. 

In the widest context, though, I will be doing some reflecting on balancing two, somewhat conflicting goals as a teacher:

1> to seek out portrayals of strong female characters capable of standing up to a world that is often both dangerous and uninviting when it comes to positive portrayals of female sexuality,

 and 2> to acknowledge the reality of sexual assault, the damage that it causes, and to be aware that in most of my classes, statistically, some of my female students have already had to contend with it.