What is > Academic Work < ?
No - seriously - what IS academic work ?
A few years ago, I would have idealistically answered with something about Scholarship - and then set out to explain Scholarship. Scholarship - based on the Modernity of the Enlightenment and 1000 + years of the western University with multicultural ambitions in a global marketplace today. I have been a pragmatic idealist for a long time when it comes to my own understanding of Scholarship and the Academy in which I work. I like to believe that scholarship can be addressed or encompassed by looking at research, methods and a form of output (publishing?); but, still, often wonder - how can I share this with any/many of my students in teaching them?
While I always try to simplify what Scholarship means for an undergraduate population - I feel continuously undermined by an industrial situation that wants to reduce ALL scholarship to some kind of measurable industrial output. Even my undergraduate students at a large public University see through the templates and formula of academia and its portrayal of Scholarship. If our only common goal is to see that they have remunerative employment - where do we leave the other facets of education? How do we understand historical and cultural context, the evolution/development of ideas, and/or a critical understanding of power in society?
In the meantime, various so-called Stakeholders: from students and parents all the way up to and including President Obama (and his Secretary of Education = Arne Duncan) and the billionaire Bill Gates (who dropped out of a very prestigious University), have had increasing feedback on subjects of Academia. Of course, teachers, instructors, lecturers and Professors should also have some input on the subject - and most of us believe we KNOW it all too well. We certainly all have opinions on the subject, which are also reflected by administrators at ALL levels, as well as the politicians of various stripes who distribute, limit and evaluate funding. Then there is the media and shaping of attitudes towards Academia. But, still we have not said anything about what is academic work or who is the academic worker?
Organizational Communication does recognize Academic Organizing as one of the many subsets of its discipline to investigate the world of work and the world of organizing vis-a-vis academical organizations (including both public and private schools, colleges, universities, and unions, etc) and a wide variety of various academic theories of organizing (hierarchical, hr/hr, systems, cultural, critical, etc) to help explain our workplaces. Then - there are all of the multiplicities of schools that teach aspects of academia in all of its widely varied forms of scholarship: teaching and training of teachers, instructors, administrators, etc. Circles within circles within circles. More importantly, as any number of Deans, especially those from Colleges of Education, and teachers and administrators have pointed out to me - EVERYONE has opinions about education because we have all been its subjects. We have experienced some form of education - almost everyone has been a Student on a multiplicity of levels, and some of us actually do function as Teachers (or instructors or trainers or professors).
But few of these investigations actually address the idea of what is academic work and how it is organized. Furthermore, how could it be organized to address the loftiest standards and goals of education and scholarship? If we abdicate the responsibilities of critical scholarship, we will default to the templates and implications of industrial models of academic organizing and academic work. Not only does this leave the assessment and evaluation of academic workers to ever increasing quantitative standards (e.g. digital databases, formulaic weighting of CV's, numbers of journal articles and quantitative weighting of the standards for those journals, etc), but students really do not have any value outside of consumers intended to become the most productive efficient workers in whatever field they are slated to enter in an industrial world. This, of necessity, would include those students who themselves intend to become academic workers. What do they have to look forward to and what impact will they have on the academy? And, just as importantly, should they have a voice in these processes?
This blog is an INVITATION to those who help me shape my attitudes towards Academic Work. From students to co-workers, to professors and scholars at various levels - I hope to elicit a number of posts and/or short or long essays that can help us all to establish a better idea of Academic Work. These posts may be personal musings, thoughts, researched scholarship or reviews of others' works. After all, Academic Work is central to those of us whose lives center around the academy as students, teachers and scholars. I also invite these same scholars to comment on each other's posts (and mine!) and to go off on their own tangents. Yes, for now, I am targeting my own social network circles to help me develop this blog. If you are interested in becoming a part of the ongoing work (or know someone else who is), please contact me at mhmbear.prof@gmail.com. I look forward to the reading and the writing ! Let the games begin.
PART 2:
ReplyDeletePhD in Physics Donald E. Simanek’s article, “What is the meaning of ‘Academic’?” wrote, “there was a time when ‘academic’ meant “pertaining to the development of the mind.” Nowadays it seems to mean “anything that occurs in a school.”” If we consider this academic work, then what does not constitute as academic, reading children’s books to young children helps mental development, is then a children’s book academic? But, Simanek answers. He goes on to remove sports and arts (music and theater included) as not academic because they do not “force intellectualizing.” [huh]
Personally, my belief is that academic work is anything worked on through several methods of research (at any level), can be taught, can be learned from, and can have any form of impact on those either doing, hearing, or reading, and [must] analyzing the research. As an undergrad, it comes to my attention that researched work by other undergrads, including my own, does not qualify as academic work. Maybe this is due to the lack of in-depth knowledge of a subject as one will achieve through a Master’s or Post-Graduate. In this I completely agree with your post, “students really do not have any value outside of consumers intended to become the most productive efficient workers in whatever field they are slated to enter in an industrial world.” Any number of particular professors in fields have become, “you-must-learn-this-and-that-within-this-amount-of-time--because-in-the-end-your-degree-will-be-more-valuable-than-experience-of-someone-who-does-not-have-accreditation-because-I-guess-America-said-so-although-we-all-know-that-once-you-take-the-final-everything-you-should-have-learned-in-class-during-this-semester-will-evaporate-therefore-let’s-just-hope-that-you-retain-some-information-that-I-try-to-get-you-to-regurgitate-because-if-I-allow-you-to-critically-think-well-let’s-face-it-there-is-no-way-your-input-as-an-undergrad-is-valuable-because-if-it-was-you’d-be-published.” And, many professors avoid taking undergrad mentees like if they had the plague and do not encourage questions because answering and exploring may cause delay in the syllabus. Here, we are, as undergrads, trying to achieve some sort of academic greatness and getting the doors shut in our faces. As an example, I present to you, Education Underground (EU).
EU began as a forum in Spring 2014 for students to discuss under the “guidance” of a professor, academic or professional, topics not commonly discussed in the classroom or subjects which we wanted to learn more about. At first, the group of undergrad students was excited about the opportunity to be more academic; but soon, that light was turned off by the lack of professors willing to invest an hour of outside discussion. Fortunately, some forums were possible with topics as: What is University, Freedom or Liberty, Scholarly Censorship, The 50 Shades of Grad, Ivory Tower. Although some success was achieved in that the students in EU learned, the forum had no political agenda and it pertained to the development of the mind, was EU academic work or not?
I guess the first two questions should be: who decides that is academic and what is the functional definition of academic?
PART 1:
ReplyDeleteNew York Times columnist Stanley Fish labeled academic work as “distinctive - something and not everything - and that a part of its distinctiveness is its distance from political agendas.” I tend to agree except that I lean towards the idea that everything might have academic implications to any certain degree, which makes it academic. Elitists might view academic work as any literature, presentation, and/or research, etc., conducted by any person in graduate or post graduate level that has some form of educational value.
Another undergrad and I sat at Starbucks discussing our different experiences in the bar industry. During the course of our conversation she said, “I just don’t find going out to bars and nightclubs fun anymore, I spend the entire time noticing everything that is wrong and right.” I responded, “I know! My biggest pet peeve is when people order the wrong drinks!” She looked at me confused, so I continued. “If it’s below 70 degrees outside a person should not order a blonde.” The conversation continued to be about the science of alcoholic beverages, the different types of temperatures, the right climate to drink varying beverages, the environment in which each beverage should be drunk, and the time of day that corresponds to certain beverages. Yes, there is a science. Would literary work of the science of alcoholic beverages be considered academic? Since this is a very specialized subject matter, which does contain some sort of value, I would argue it is. Mount Joseph University, Metropolitan State University of Denver and University of Minnesota are among some universities offering beer and wine appreciation courses, would the work of these professors be academic or is their work not important enough to be considered academic? As a communication student we learn about the soft, social and hard sciences. Friends studying biology do not consider communication a science. Would we, ourselves as ‘communication people,’ allow degrading someone else’s specialty as non-academic?