Stanley Fish recently authored a piece in the NY times entitled,
The Two Languages of Academic Freedom. Fish discusses Professor Denis Rancourt of the University of Ottawa, and how he was suspended from teaching, banned from campus, and arrested for trespassing. The Board of Governors has now recommended his “dismissal with cause,” which, from what I’ve read, seems to be that he drastically altered course content, and used, what the university apparently feels were ineffective teaching methods. Heroism or irresponsibility?
Rancourt said that higher education had oppressed students, and so advocated critical pedagogy. He believed in what he called “squatting,” where you take a class and transform it into something else, a practice he felt would make the university “a place of greater democracy.” Rancourt had (and still has) a number of students who respected him and enjoyed his classes, while others complained that he allowed debates to veer off topic. Calling himself an anarchist, Rancourt did not grade his students – or rather, he told students the first day of class they all had an A+.
Intellectual freedom involves the freedom to impart information and express one’s opinions, though, I think academic freedom is a slightly narrower concept, in that one always has to be respectful of others and their views. (Librarians also have to consider academic freedom when doing library instruction). Of academic freedom, the AAC&U says that “faculty are responsible for establishing goals for student learning,” for cultivating the “intended learning,” and for “assessing students’ achievement.” Academic freedom also includes one’s right to determine what is taught in a classroom. I cannot speak as to how effective Rancourt was in these or any other areas. But if Rancourt was imparting information in his classroom that he believed was relevant, and if (some) students believed they were learning something, then perhaps he did nothing wrong. Maybe the university is simply turned off by those radical types. Or was he being disrespectful to his institution, colleagues, and students?
2 comments:
In 21 years of school without a break, I can safely say that more often than not, it was the classes taught by instructors with unorthodox teaching methods that I enjoyed the most and from which I learned the most. One of my favorite French professors completely threw out the syllabus on which he was supposed to teach and we spent the semester reading other books, watching movies, making art from things we found in the dumpster, and giving speeches almost daily. Of course, problems did occur when the end of the semester came and we were forced to take the departmental exams, but I definitely learned more real French in there than any other class.
I think that even off-topic debates have merit in a classroom. They may foster a greater sense of community; the experience gained when having to defend and explore your own thoughts on any topic can be transferred to another. And in the end, isn't becoming a more well-rounded person (with the ability to think and create and defend and explore) what undergrad is really about? Perhaps the goals of classes should expand to reflect the overall goal of education.
Classrooms can be challenging places in which to operate regardless of what your role is. Recently I read a book by Clayton Christiansen called Disrupting Class in which he talks about how traditional classrooms are unsuccessful in promoting learning because they are so focused on the group rather than individuals. As an instructor perhaps Rancourt was trying to break through established patterns to move his students to a new place where they could truly grow.
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