http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/ Writing by Myshele Goldberg. en-us Nucleus CMS v3.24 © Myshele Goldberg 1998-2008 Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://myshelegoldberg.com/words//nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/ http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=87 Originally published in Network, the magazine of the British Sociological Association.

Sociologists at the University of Strathclyde would like to thank our colleagues and supporters across the UK and around the world (including Professor Noam Chomsky) who signed petitions, wrote letters and spoke out to prevent the Sociology programme from being cut alongside Geography, Community Education and Music.

After university managers proposed ‘disinvestment’ in May 2011, a month-long consultation brought up compelling arguments about the importance of Sociology as a discipline. Supporters focused on its role in helping students develop critical thinking, citizenship and understanding of social issues, as well as highlighting the department’s excellent reputation for public-interest research, knowledge exchange and high-quality teaching.

However, management, Senate and Court were unconvinced, voting in June for a ‘phased withdrawal’ from all four subject areas. Their reasons included a potential loss of income from cuts to the teaching grant, a ‘lack of research critical mass’ and a move to re-brand the university as ‘MIT on the Clyde.’

In his letter of resignation, Professor David Miller (who will move to the University of Bath in January 2012) wrote, “In Sociology we were told that though we might be doing well in PhD numbers, grant income and research trajectory, we were not improving fast enough.”

Between 2007 and early 2011, the department was subjected to several reviews and audits, all of which identified the problem of understaffing. External reviewers and university managers alike recommended additional senior-level research posts to increase ‘output,’ but these never materialised. By the 2011 consultation, such recommendations were re-framed as a ‘high-risk strategy,’ despite funding for dozens of new posts in other humanities and social science disciplines.

Reassurances that Sociology will not be eliminated completely, but ‘reconfigured’ to fit into a new Social Policy degree, offer little comfort. The future shape and staffing of this new programme are still unclear, though the Head of School has insisted that “Sociology will continue, but not in its current format.”

Meanwhile, more than half the Sociology staff are on fixed-term contracts that end 30th June 2012, and even permanent staff have been notified that they are at risk of redundancy. Recruitment of new Sociology PhD students has been suspended, and both first-year Sociology and Social Policy are conspicuously absent from the 2012-13 prospectus.

Ultimately, though, the most troubling piece of news hints at a more fundamental threat to the discipline. The new Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, Tony McGrew, appears to be the driving force behind the closures. According to Principal Jim McDonald, McGrew believes that Sociology at Strathclyde is “too critical,” and not “mainstream” enough.

What does this kind of attitude mean for Sociology more broadly? In my research on the discipline in Scotland, I found that the vast majority of sociologists consider a critical perspective absolutely central to their practice and teaching.

Again quoting David Miller, “what is the point of an ‘uncritical sociology’ that is unable to conduct rigorous empirical research without fear or favour and to publish the results? This is – in my view – the only way that human knowledge can progress.”
]]> Published http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=87 Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0100 http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=86 Noam Chomsky pointed out on 3rd June. In their haste to pursue financial and strategic aims, managers have forgotten that a university does not exist to ‘produce’ grant income and research papers. The wealth created within university walls is not easily measurable or immediately obvious – but it is nonetheless important. All students in higher education develop new ways of thinking and engaging with the world – this is why areas of academic study are called disciplines. In the social sciences, students learn to question the world around them and understand how that world is deeply interconnected. The skills of identifying patterns, seeking evidence for claims and thinking independently are not only useful for workers in an information economy, they are also crucial for citizens of a democracy.

The social sciences do not have a monopoly on wisdom, as Alex Salmond said of the Scottish National Party. However, we do hold an important perspective, and we study areas that are overlooked or taken for granted by other disciplines. Management’s zealous enforcement of its ‘strategic plan’ only underlines its own short-sightedness. A ‘technological university’ is pointless if we lack the capacity to understand the meaning of that technology for human beings. Our world’s most pressing problems cannot be solved by technology alone, and technology certainly cannot help students understand their place in the world. Invoking the university motto, ‘a place of useful learning’ it is important to ask, useful for what? Useful for whom? To what end?

Geography and Sociology at Strathclyde maintain a strong focus on public interest research, examining topics of concern beyond university strategy. These topics include issues of inequality and social justice, culture and identity, the privatisation of public services, lobbying and spin, media and political power, ethnicity and migration, environment and sustainability, globalisation, and even the social and cultural aspects of technology. Our concern with public issues forms a key part of our teaching, and we help students to develop critical and creative ways of thinking about the world and its problems. The ongoing popularity of our courses, our students’ high percentage of good degrees and our excellent scores and positive feedback on student satisfaction surveys all indicate that for our students, Geography and Sociology does provide a ‘place of useful learning.’

One of the strengths of social science at Strathclyde is that students are able to study a broad range of social science disciplines. However, because we do not conceive of usefulness in the same limited terms as university management, our high-quality programmes have been under-funded for years, and are now being replaced by a narrow ‘social policy stream.’ Maintaining a diverse disciplinary base for student learning and socially-relevant research is being sacrificed to the whims of finance and strategy, which themselves have been determined by the values and priorities of business. A broad range of research has shown that running universities as if they were businesses damages not only the experience of students and staff, but also the ‘usefulness’ of a university in meeting the needs of the society it serves.

Ultimately, we need to consider who and what a university is actually for. At the end of the day, that’s what this is all about.]]> Political http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=86 Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:03:12 +0200 http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=85 Originally published in the Times Higher Education Supplement.

John Field has proposed that Scottish academics should accept voluntary pay freezes to "help shore up the sector's finances" ("Seeking volunteers: scholars urged to take pay freeze to aid Scottish academy", 30 November).

He writes about the social contract between universities and civil society, urging academics to consider their responsibility to the latter. What he fails to consider is that this social contract has become increasingly one-sided.

For decades, the UK government has systematically withdrawn support from higher education. Academics have filled the gap by accepting ever-increasing workloads in an effort to maintain the quality of their teaching and research. Tenure was abolished in 1988 under Margaret Thatcher, and today more than half of all academic workers in the UK hold fixed-term or part-time contracts.

Alongside the rest of the education sector, academics struggle to "do more with less" because they care about their work and the people they serve.

Field rightly points out that our current system is unsustainable, but he forgets that it is already heavily subsidised by personal commitment.]]> Published http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=85 Thu, 9 Dec 2010 20:47:16 +0100 http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=83 Originally published in the Scotsman.

As part of my PhD research, I’ve been interviewing academics across Scotland. One of the surprising topics that’s come up repeatedly has been labour exploitation in academia.

When most people think of exploitation, they picture cramped sweatshops filled with unskilled minimum-wage workers, not the hallowed halls of academia. But the similarities are striking. One of my informants reflected that sociology has a long history revealing the substandard working conditions of the poor – yet today, many academics put up with conditions that would seem insane applied to other occupations. Most of us keep going because we love our work, because we care about our research projects and our students – but does that make exploitation acceptable?

One of my supervisors warned me that academic work is a “24-hour-a-day” job. It’s considered normal to work during evenings, weekends, and holidays, especially for junior lecturers, postdoctoral researchers, and (perhaps especially) PhD students. The popular stereotype of carefree summers could not be further from the truth – the break from undergraduate teaching is prime time to catch up on research, writing, and fieldwork. Semester time is packed with teaching, preparation, and student support. Growing class sizes and shrinking contact hours increase the pressure on individual lecturers, often meaning that teaching-related work overflows into time set aside for research.

Meanwhile, the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) judges academic departments on their publications and determines funding eligibility. Departments with publications in the most prestigious journals receive high scores, while those with fewer or less prestigious publications rank lower. In a perverse feedback loop, a high RAE score attracts funding, which allows for the hire of extra researchers who can produce publications without worrying about teaching. In departments that score lower on the RAE, publications must be produced by teaching staff, who are often overworked to begin with.

Adding to the stress of unlimited hours and constant pressure to publish are the short-term contracts that are becoming the norm in academia. Gone are the days when scholars could reasonably expect permanent employment within a few years of earning their PhDs. Instead, contracts for research projects and lecturing jobs usually last between six months and three years, forcing untenured academics to scramble for scarce funding when they could be focusing on their actual work. Academics accept this lack of job security as a matter of course – although, as I’m discovering in my interviews, few are happy about it.

In many ways, the situation in academia reflects the larger pattern of a neoliberal economy. Downsizing, outsourcing, turning employees into independent contractors who are endlessly interchangeable – the now-familiar patterns of manufacturing and other industries are creeping into higher education at just the time when innovation, creativity, interdisciplinary cooperation, and long-term thinking are most needed. The social and environmental crises we face cannot be solved through six-month contracts, yet those in an important position to develop solutions are hampered by a system that values profitability above all.

So what’s the answer? I wish I knew. But I do know that we need to start by asking what universities are for, then figuring out how they can best fulfil that role. Whatever the end goal, labour exploitation seems a poor strategy for accomplishing anything worthwhile. ]]> Column http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=83 Wed, 21 May 2008 06:00:00 +0200 http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=82 Originally published in the Scotsman.

There aren’t many masters courses that inspire graduates to return and help mentor new students, and even fewer where they volunteer for the unglamorous tasks of fundraising, advertising, and course development. But I’ve just spent a weekend with more than a dozen graduates and teachers from the Centre for Human Ecology, organizing exactly that. I finished the course in 2005, and am now a member of the Board of Directors.

The CHE’s main focus is helping people develop the practical, intellectual, and emotional skills to pursue social justice and ecological sustainability – to “be the change” in a challenging world. We offer short courses, educational events, and networking, and the masters course is our largest ongoing project. Although delivered through a mainstream university, the course challenges conventional ideas about learning. An interdisciplinary focus on experiential learning, personal development, and group process encourages students to ask difficult questions and find creative solutions.

Now the CHE itself is exploring creative solutions for issues that are affecting all of higher education. With increasing student numbers and shrinking budgets, Scottish universities are scrambling to cut costs, often sacrificing educational quality for financial expedience. Typical approaches include cutting contact hours, increasing class sizes, and techno fixes – all of which have a negative impact on student experience. There have been some positive developments as well, like the increase of cross-disciplinary courses, but these don’t remove the growing pressure on lecturers and tutors to do more with less.

All courses that lack outside sponsorship are struggling, and the masters in Human Ecology is more resource-intensive than most. Teaching takes place in workshops that last two to seven days. Class size is limited to the number of students that can reasonably have a group discussion, and there is a strong emphasis on building an effective “learning community.” The course is team-led, team-taught, and heavily reliant on guest speakers, many of whom contribute their time for free – but an enormous amount of energy goes into crafting a coherent educational experience from diverse perspectives. It’s a course that changes and evolves each year, requiring intensive preparation and development work, but there is a fifteen-year track record proving the effectiveness of the approach.

This year, a group of graduates from the past six years was invited on an intensive working weekend to reflect on their experience of the course, and contribute to its ongoing evolution. Where many courses are being forced to cut corners in order to survive, we’re hoping to draw on the enthusiasm and dedication of graduates to bridge the gap between student needs and university funds. The weekend followed a similar approach to the course itself, moving freely between “head, heart, and hand.” We discussed emotional issues, engaged in heavy intellectual work, and took collective responsibility for the practical side of things. Of course, it wasn’t all work – we also made music together, walked in the sunshine, and chatted with friends old and new. Somehow, the different elements clicked into place, and we finished the weekend with clear plans for action.

There is a lot of work ahead to implement those plans, but the weekend has reaffirmed that it’s possible. As we were reminded at one point, the Centre for Human Ecology does not represent the whole solution, either to the problems facing universities or those facing the world at large – but it does represent one small part of the solution, and I’m glad to be involved.]]> Column http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=82 Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:00:00 +0200 http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=81 Originally published in the Scotsman.

In order to carry out fieldwork for my PhD, I’ve had to apply for clearance from my department’s Ethics Committee. I never thought about it much before, because I’ve never worked with children or “vulnerable” populations. But my study involves students in my own department, so I need to show there are no conflicting interests.

Unsurprisingly, the ethics paperwork was less about rigorous moral questioning, and more about protecting participants (and protecting the university from lawsuits). Will participants be risking physical danger or psychological distress? Will their information be kept confidential and anonymous? Does the project require highly personal information? Does it involve deception? Ticking the right boxes seems to ensure approval, implying that ethical research simply means avoiding immediate harm.

While it’s comforting to know there are oversight structures in place to protect participants, those structures lack space to consider wider ethical questions. Ethics paperwork is usually seen as just another hoop to jump through, disconnected from the actual work of research. But there’s very little else it could be, in the standardized structures of university bureaucracy.

For instance, paperwork cannot easily capture fundamental questions about the power relationships embodied in the research process, or the wider social role of a project or discipline. Red tape cannot easily quantify who benefits from the outcomes of research, and who suffers. But what we choose to study, how we choose to learn, and who we choose to share our knowledge with can have wide-reaching social effects. The ambiguity of these issues makes them crucial to address through self-reflection and honest conversation. The answers may never tick any boxes on an ethics form, but they will go well beyond protecting the immediate safety of participants.

In many ways, research can be used as a strategic tool for positive social change – but some scholars would cringe at that description. Better to remain morally neutral, they would argue, to seek knowledge for its own sake and avoid making value judgements about society. But the decision to avoid value judgements is itself a moral position, implicitly giving consent to the status quo. C. Wright Mills, one of sociology’s great pioneers, wrote in 1959 that “anyone who spends his life studying society and publishing the results is acting morally and usually politically as well.”

To me, these are the kinds of issues at stake when we talk about research ethics – if scholars don’t give careful thought to how we work and how our work may be used, who will? I’m lucky that my department takes these issues seriously and gives them more than passing mention. But leaving such fundamental questions up to luck seems irresponsible.

It comes as no surprise, though. Considering ethics through the tunnel-vision of paperwork reflects a much deeper pattern of fragmentation in society at large. Each of us is encouraged to focus on our own little life, without necessarily seeing how it relates to the lives around us, or to the history that has brought us here and the future we’re building each day. In some ways, fragmentation makes life in the modern world bearable, just as bureaucracy allows large universities to exist.

Still, I’m hoping to mend some of that fragmentation in my project by asking difficult questions. I want to open the conversation, create space to talk about real ethical issues, try to understand why we pursue knowledge, and what we hope for when we release it into the world. I’m not sure what will come out of those conversations, but I know it will be a lot more interesting than ethics paperwork.]]> Column http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=81 Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:26:18 +0200 http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=80 (note: I will be adding links to relevant news stories soon)

Yesterday, one of my students asked why I moved to Scotland. I told her that Scotland holds the promise of positive change for me -- America has already gone off the rails, and I don't know what I can do. Here in Scotland, things aren't so bad yet. I feel there's space for me to make a difference here, however small it might be. This is a country where the future might be better than the past.

But during the last few months, there's been a shift. For the first time in my adult life, I felt I could finally relax -- a little bit -- about the future of my own country. The campaign of Barack Obama inspired me, and gave me hope for a brighter future. His overwhelming grassroots success allowed me to release the breath I didn't know I was holding. For the first time in my adult life, I felt that I might be able to return to my own country someday.

That brief moment of untarnished hope has now vanished, replaced again by a cold, watchful fear. As we approached the crucial March 4th primaries in Texas and Ohio, the campaign tactics of Hillary Clinton became ever more cruel, nasty, and divisive. By spreading lies and rumours to discredit Obama in the days before the primary, Clinton has proven that truth means little in her quest for power. By feigning doubt about Obama's religious beliefs and making him appear "blacker" in a television ad, Clinton has appealed to racism and religious intolerance rather than unity and decency. By ranking his "experience" not only below her own, but below that of their mutual Republican foe, Clinton showed where her true loyalty lies: not to country or party, but to the pursuit of her own power.

The mainstream media has lapped it up, of course. Conflict sells. One candidate represents honour, integrity, and respect. The other represents deception, corruption, and ruthlessness. Like oil and water, they will not mix. Clinton has shown she's willing to play dirty, and like schoolchildren on the playground, media and Republicans have circled to egg her on. I have no doubt that Obama is strong enough to withstand her attacks -- but is America strong enough?

Just as Obama's message of hope and empowerment has brought out the best in people, often getting involved in the political process for the first time, Clinton's tactics have brought out the worst. There have been widespread reports of Republicans voting for Clinton, simply to divide the party. There have been allegations of vote fraud in Ohio, where voters have been turned away at the polls after absentee ballots were sent in their names, without their consent. Even if these acts have nothing to do with the official Clinton campaign, they follow its ethos and attitude perfectly. Without any outside help at all, Clinton herself is doing a very good job at dividing the party, and the nation.

And now there are news reports that Hillary Clinton is "hinting" at a shared ticket with Obama. For weeks she's been attacking him, mocking his approach and his supporters, spreading lies and malicious rumours.... And now she wants to work with him? She knows she can't get the nomination on her own, so she hopes to simultaneously discredit and take advantage of Obama's groundswell of support. I fear that most Americans are not sophisticated enough to see what's happening, with the media distortion and fearmongering and lies. We've become a nation that has trouble seeing the truth -- and Clinton is taking advantage of our weakness to keep us dependent and fearful, rather than reminding us of our strengths to empower and emancipate us.

This, more than anything else of the past few weeks, has turned my dislike of Hillary Clinton into outright disgust. So I've begun to fear for my country again. Hillary Clinton will not go down without a fight, and I fear she'll take America with her. The cracks that she opens with Obama will be dangerously inviting to those who wish to tear the country apart for their own gain -- including, apparently, the Clintons themselves. I'm not sure our weary national flesh, weakened by the continual abuses of the Bush administration, can survive another rape.

I hope the momentum that Obama has built so far will continue to grow, and continue to inspire Americans who will not be fooled -- and I hope it will be strong enough to withstand the assault of dirty tricks and treachery on the horizon. This is only the beginning of a very ugly struggle, and I hope my country can make it out the other side in one piece. As the world stands on the brink of looming crises wrought by our arrogant lifestyles and beliefs, the next few months in American politics could be a tipping point in the global struggle for transformation -- for good or ill.

Certainly, something has changed in me. After a brief glimpse, dreaming, of the distant morning, I've awoken again to face the dark and dangerous night ahead. I hope we can survive until sunrise. ]]> Political http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=80 Fri, 7 Mar 2008 02:12:40 +0100 http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=79 Originally published in the Scotsman.

The recent shooting spree at Northern Illinois University has left me shaken. Not because I’m from Illinois, but because the shooter was a 27-year-old former sociology postgraduate student. Next month, I will be a 27-year-old sociology postgraduate student.

Any display of violence is disturbing, but the sociology connection seems to make this one particularly gruesome. Sociologists are supposed to be the ones examining things like this, explaining the troubling social phenomena, making sense of a seemingly chaotic social world. Whether we’re supposed to feel numb and detached and “objective,” or whether it tears our souls apart to see the hideous injustice of the world, sociologists make the chaos that little bit more orderly. Sociologists are not supposed take guns into universities and kill people.

Of course, the violence most likely had nothing to do with sociology. It was probably the farthest thing from the killer’s mind. But that doesn’t change the fact that he had studied it. To destroy the lives of other human beings having studied the bonds that hold us together, having studied our common humanity... That’s what horrifies me the most.

According to news reports, the killer was a good student who was interested in social justice and fair treatment in the prison system. After studying sociology at Northern Illinois, he transferred to a social work course at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Some of my friends speculate that looking too closely at humanity’s dark side might have pushed him over the edge. And while I understand the despair that can arise from studying social injustice, I just can’t wrap my head around the kind of moral calculation that says becoming a mass-murderer would somehow correct or negate or appropriately retaliate for the world’s injustice.

Most reports suggest that the killer’s rampage was a result of him ceasing to take his medication, implying that it was a simple matter of a “disturbed individual” venting aggression on innocent bystanders. This kind of explanation also seems incomplete. There are plenty of depressed, disturbed, and even psychotic individuals in this world. Most of them do not go on shooting sprees. There are plenty of stressed-out students overwhelmed by the pressures of university life. Most do not unleash their frustrations through murder. So what could have caused this student to snap?

We’ll probably never know for sure, but brushing off some individuals as “disturbed” or “evil” ignores what is obviously a deep-rooted cultural problem in America. From Virginia to Louisiana to Colorado – and now Illinois – young people have seen fit to murder their classmates in deadly shooting sprees. The inevitable bickering over gun laws, while understandable, ignores the deeper questions about American culture that might shed some light on these tragedies.

One thought-provoking explanation comes from Mark Ames, author of Going Postal, a study of workplace and school violence in America. In an article on the news website AlterNet, Ames suggests that recent university shootings grow out of the hopelessness and “existential terror” experienced in middle America. In a culture that worships big winners, there is little consolation for those who carve out mediocre lives, numbed by anti-depressants and consumerism. While the full picture of the latest gunman’s life remains hazy, the broad strokes suggest that he occupied “a very familiar, flat sort of American Hell.”

This kind of explanation, combined with the others, does not excuse the killer’s reprehensible actions – but it does take us closer to understanding them. It’s a dark sort of irony that leaves sociologists to find order in the chaos wrought by one of their own. ]]> Column http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=79 Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:00:00 +0100 http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=78
Eventually I learned that politics and oppression are inseparable, and learned how the political process works. I watched the 2000 elections during my year abroad, staring aghast at television screens in Edinburgh, Scotland. I remember joking with my friends, wondering whether I could apply for political asylum in the UK.

It’s been a long seven years. I live in Scotland now, in part because I love it, and in part because I no longer feel welcome in my own country. I feel like the US has gone off the rails – better to start fresh in a small country like Scotland, where positive change is still possible.

In the past, I diligently voted (absentee) for Gore and Kerry. I smiled and shook my head at the hopeless idealism of Kucinich and those who would vote for him. When I was living in the US, I attended the anti-war rallies, marched in the streets, had heated conversations with my friends and denounced older relatives for their indifference. I wrote letters and organized and read the appropriate books. But in the end, I left, because I no longer felt that I could make a difference. I had given up on America.

In recent months, that began to change. For the first time, I saw a major candidate I actually agreed with – not necessarily on all issues, but on attitude. I saw a candidate who’s feeding the politics of hope, not the politics of fear. Watching Obama’s speeches on YouTube is inspirational. His energy and passion seems grounded in experience of the real world – infinitely more valuable than experience of Washington’s petty games. For the first time in my adult life, I’m watching a political race that could actually lead to positive change.

I don’t know if I’ll return to America, but if Barack Obama wins the presidency, I won’t have to be ashamed anymore. I believe that Obama will restore America’s standing in the world, and help us recover respect from the international community. And more importantly, I believe that Obama will help make America fit for human habitation again – not just for the rich, but for everyone.

He seems to grasp the structural causes of injustice, with a passion to change those structures, rather than simply treating the symptoms. As a sociologist, I believe this is the key to enduring social transformation. If Obama wins the presidency, maybe I won’t have to worry about the fate of my friends’ children anymore, maybe I can feel like they have a future.

Even if Obama is just as corrupt and useless as the other candidates, he has given me a priceless gift – a moment of hope. He’s also given me the kind of pride I’ve never experienced before. I’ll be watching the elections from Scotland once again, but for the first time, I’ll be dreaming of a better world.]]> Political http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=78 Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:47:01 +0100 http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=77 Originally published in the Scotsman.

It’s easy to forget how long a road has been, until turning around to see its beginning on the far-off horizon. Marking first-year essays has reminded me just how far I’ve travelled since my own first year of university, nearly ten years ago.

There are simple, practical habits the students have not learned yet. Many forgot to put their name and the page number on every sheet, in case one gets lost. Most did not properly format quotations and bibliographies. Some essays were not double-spaced, so there wasn’t enough room for comments. Despite several talks on the subject, many students still cited Wikipedia and other internet sites that are inappropriate for academic essays. Almost all of the students failed to consistently reference ideas that were not their own. Still, these bad habits are easy enough to correct by insisting they read the style-sheet they were given at the beginning of the year.

Grammatical conventions are even more obvious but are also relatively easy to correct. Many students haven’t quite got the hang of commas, apostrophes, and other punctuation marks. Some write sentences that are too long; some too short. A few seem to have missed the idea of paragraphs. Others mix up singular and plural forms of words, or use words incorrectly. Many would benefit from using a dictionary. But with a bit of practice, they’ll be fine.

The frustrating moments come with mistakes that are harder to quantify. For instance, most of the first-years don’t grasp the difference between describing and explaining. They had to write about particular injustices in society, and many did a very good job describing those injustices – but very few managed to offer explanations for how and why they might exist. They repeated examples from lectures and books without stopping to consider how they might be linked, or whether they were relevant to their specific essay topic. Some wrote about contradictory ideas without discussing the paradox.

Sociology is a subject full of paradox, offering rich opportunities for critical analysis and big questions. But most of the first-years have not yet developed the intellectual skills to grapple with its ideas. To me, this is the heart of what university education is all about: helping students move from seeing isolated phenomena to seeing patterns, and understanding their own place in those patterns. Whether we’re talking about politics, business, science, literature, or any other subject, it’s a long, slow process to develop the mental discipline and flexibility to understand the world more deeply.

Suddenly, it makes sense that higher education is such a drawn-out process. Most of my students’ mistakes were common for me when I started in 1998. But over time, countless teachers gently corrected my blunders and helped me understand the habits of mind required in academia. It did not happen in one great leap, but rather in hundreds of tiny steps, painstakingly making my way across the confusing terrain of cultural patterns. There was no single great leader to follow, only pointed interventions by temporary guides. There was no secret formula or exact path to intellectual growth. I had to develop my own style, choosing among the practices I saw modeled by different teachers along the way. Perhaps even more important than correcting my mistakes, university teachers have given me examples to choose from of what kind of academic I want to be.

After marking forty first-year essays, I have an overwhelming sense of gratitude for all of the university teachers who have helped me. I hope that I can be some small help to the students I’m working with, and help the pattern continue. ]]> Column http://myshelegoldberg.com/words/index.php?itemid=77 Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:35:00 +0100