David N.

Arrogance of Academia (Final)

David Noble

Eng 319 

21 September 2008

Word Count: 1404

The Arrogance of Academics

The arrogance of academics means that the Academy has assumed its method's are right, brainwashing arrogant professors into thinking they are helping students, and not talking at them. The fact is, it has been a long time from when a professor was last an undergraduate student to where they are now. They forget what it was like hearing professors harp at them, and not relating anything back to the student. Because of this, it is even harder for a professor to remember what a good pro-fessor was like; a coach who nudge you in the right direction and let their knowledge go to the students, allowing them to adapt their professor's experience to better the student's own academic work. Sadly, these self important professors are in far greater numbers than the 'coaches' students need, and the Academy is to blame, but so are the professors and students who have let it control our academic careers.

This idea of an arrogant academia has not settled as well with me because I have learned the same way as everyone else. Which is to say that I was taught, but not coached or guided by teacher's own ideas or methods. For instance, when an English professor tries to pound down my throat how to write an essay a certain way, I just follow the process, I never really learn it. I do, however, take away from the process each method that I find that would better my own writing process. That could be anywhere from nearly the whole process, to where I only decide that I like where the professor wants me to put my name on the heading. This is important fact because students are not equal in knowledge, or have the same personalities or the same styles of communicating knowledge or even the same education; and we cannot be taught in uniformly. It is due to the Academy, at each schooling level, that forces teachers to teach generically, and not to cultivate students.

Still, it was not until a couple of weeks ago that I had found out about my profound dislike of the Academy and professors it has cultivated. I knew I was on to something when after reading Elbow and his philosophy on teaching when my hairs stood up. However, it was not until after reading Bartholomae, and the class discussion that followed, that something clicked, and I reached the epiphany of the Academy. While walking to one of my classes I realized, I had never learned anything when I was being taught to (talked at), and while Elbow and Bartholomae's arguments are completely different, they both argue for the cause of some kind of Academy institution. This proves how far the Academy has brainwashed professors, as two prominent English college professors are blinded by their institutional and arrogant superiorty that they do not realize what being a good teacher really means.

The reading of Patricia Bizzell's take on Foundationalism and Anti-foundationalism only helped solidify my ideas. When Bizzell argued that to be an Anti-foundationalist, some sort of foundation was needed. That kind of... irony, I guess you could call it, only helped prove that none of these profound academics were really thinking about what it meant to be a student. When I read Corbett, I thought for a moment someone had realized that, yes, it was all up to the student and what they learned, and the teacher to what and how they presented their knowledge. Again, I was disappointed, when Corbett ignored his own teaching and thinking, when he himself took one thing away from a professor and later tried to emulate his teacher's institutionalized teaching and dismiss what learning to a student really means.. 

To this date, I have never had a teacher who just laid out their knowledge for me.  Where some professors teach exactly as the course guidelines read what the class will be, other professors teach their class by name only. That is to say, a philosophy class dedicated to Aristotle's teachings, is directed by a professor who likes to discuss present day ethic problems. I bring up this point to illustrate the pride professors have; their arrogance in their PhD allows them to think that they are smarter than the students. This brings to point another downfall of the Academy; while trying to regulate what students are to learn, it completely fails to keep out professors with their own agenda or who are complete hacks.

Sadly, for me, I have only found out about my own way of learning this semester... my last semester. I will graduate with a GPA no higher than a 2.33 (if I get all A's). I intend to take most of the blame for my poor showing in college, late nights and even later mornings will do that to a GPA. However, some blame should go to the professors, who have forgotten what it is like to be a student, and the Academy for deciding that I should learn everything it wants me to learn. No matter how useless the information is to me, or how irrelevant it is to the current course I was taking. 

For instance, a class I took to learn debate and the various different styles included, really consisted of discussions on current events and the method of parliamentary debates. If I were to go into politics, how would knowing how to debate in a parliament benefit me when the United States is Republican based? Or if I were campaigning, I have to debate another candidate in a Lincoln-Douglas debate, how would knowing how to argue with a group help me? Knowing this, I took nothing away from the class, because I am a student, I can learn what I want, as long as I go through the professor's method, and while the Academy didn't play a direct role in the situation, it still allowed a hack professor to teach me. I remember nothing from that class, and if I do go into politics, that professor has sabotaged my future. 

I do know the reason for why the Academy has situated students and teachers in this situation. The uniformity makes things easier, simply put. It takes pressure off professors, trying to decipher various types of writing and format, and giving uniformity to grading. The Academy's method also makes sure that each student passing through its doors knows how to write a paper in a systematic fashion, conveying that the student can communicate somewhat intelligently. However, is it worth it? Is it worth having millions of papers, essays, and documents looking exactly the same as if some computer with high artifical intelligence spat out information? These methods the Academy forces students to go through, and conditions teachers to enforce stifle the human element. Voice, the proof that a human wrote the work, is taken out of the final product, making all of everyone's hard work sound zombie-ish or robotic.

The fact that professors and educators in general teach at students, instead of coaching them along makes a big difference. Being a good “teacher” does not mean that a professor knows their stuff, because anyone with the drive can get a PhD, but for someone to engage their students, not teach mind you, but give them the tools that the professor has, and let the students pick and choose which of those tools they want to take with them for the rest of their lives is the markings of a good teacher. Knowing different methods, styles, and whatever else Elbow and Bartholomae and Bizzell and Corbett think are important are indeed, superfluous. However, the Academy has condition teachers, and by the time they have graduated, students, to follow the rules and guidelines it has set for 'academic writing and thinking.' The fact that I have decided that I only take away from teachers the things I want, is not a new phenomenon. Every student, from Aristotle to me and you takes away what they want, but most students are too preoccupied with trying to figure out what their professor is trying to teach them, to figure this out for themselves. It has been the arrogance of the professor that has blinded the student, and themselves to their own conditioning by the Academy, which begets the endless cycle of arrogant teaching.