Never a Safe Place to Grumble

[rebeccmeister]

Perhaps I am overcautious, but as a general rule of thumb, I try to be extremely careful when writing about sensitive school/work-related subjects on teh internets. After all, some day I will be looking for a different job, and I want to be able to look interviewers in the eye and clearly tell them that all of my internet-based activities are conducted in a professional manner.

But there are some potentially inflammatory subjects that I can't help but talk about because they're on my mind and I am hoping that talking about them will help me cope with them and move on with my life. The current subject relates to some specifics of my teaching responsibilities, but I am going to try and talk about the situation in as abstract of terms as I can.

The fundamental situation is this: what should a person do when they believe that there is a disconnection between stated learning goals and the mechanics of how a course is taught, and yet this person is not in a position to make decisions or changes related to this disconnection, or to even engage in dialogue about it?

I have a feeling that my friends who work in corporate environments will recognize this type of situation as a management problem, because of the involved communication issues (and personally I feel like I have tried and tried and tried and tried to communicate, to no avail...).

My personality type is such that I still feel compelled to correct the situation because my primary responsibility is to the students I teach. But time and resources are limited, and I am also charged to teach in such a way that my instructions parallel the instructions of the other teaching assistants for the course. Basically, I feel set up for failure.

I will get over this feeling, to some degree. I know that I tend to get really passionate about teaching, and that I am a really opinionated idealist (though I hope I still stop to listen!). I also agree strongly with a lot of the concepts/methods with which I have personally been indoctrinated, which may make me closed-minded about other ways of knowing (I am particularly scornful of purely factual knowledge, and tend to find more value in reasoning skills).

Altogether, I just feel like maybe I have outgrown my current teaching environment, but there isn't much I can do about it at the moment, other than to carry on and not get too invested in the situation.

Comments

[scrottie.livejournal.com]

Dammit, stop posting topics I love to pontificate about.

Many of people's favorite stories have protagonists who listened to their conscience and rebelled -- Dead Poet's Society, Fight Club, ...

Of course, many favorite stories have protagonists who rebelled mindlessly... James Dean stuff (I guess), The Catcher in the Rye. Perhaps that's why I'm not as drawn to those stories -- the mindlessness doesn't seem that romantic to me.

To really do it right, you have to mix conformity and rebellion in a way that catches everyone completely off guard. Blending them together is one way to do that. Timing is another, but then you risk getting set in the ways of comfort and avoidance, like the people you find yourself at odds with.

That's all context. What I want to say is that it's not automatically a bad career move to be subversive. The Free Software movement was subversive -- not out of desire to be subversive, but because important social and technical concerns were being ignored by the established system. Now Ruby, Python, Linux, Apache, jQuery, JBoss, Eclipse, and countless other Free technologies are marketable. I want to actually be brief this time so I won't get into the practical concerns of rebellion. I only wanted to remark that sometimes it works out a lot better than you can anticipate -- a lot more people wind up being your friend or conspirator or admirer than you might have expected, and this leads to new, more interesting avenues.

-s

[scrottie.livejournal.com]

I think there's more management dumbness but less management smugness in the corporate world. People are secure in their positions in academia and generally for good reason, at least compared to corporate. In the corporate world, management has to make some measure of effort to defend their policies, but their reasoning is quite often misguided, ignorant, defeatist, paranoid, outdated, or irrational. Very seldom are policies instituted "just because". I guess the students/workers themselves are less permanent in the corporate world too -- it's easier to change jobs than graduate programs.

-s

[trifold-flame.livejournal.com]

It is quite possible to change ones teaching situation to be more ideologically sound.... however, I can't think of how to do it without totally dismantling the rest of your graduate career. I'd say you're best off de-investing and crunching on some data ;-)

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

You are probably correct about that possibility. I shall attempt to de-invest as much as I can. Wish me luck. :)