[csaa-forum] Rebecca and the beach

[kiley gaffney]

Thanks Graeme. I'm sure we are all infuriated with the way education is 
heading but unfortunately this right hand turn is across the board (I 
also work in the music industry). As a post-graduate heading towards 
academia, I look to my teachers for inspiration more than than the 
faculty or the university, and have always found great solace and drive 
in their belief in what they teach and their belief in me. Although 
this sounds a little 'feelgood', their is a great joy in teaching that 
must be found to be both effective and happy. Put into perspective, 
things could be worse - you could be a student!

kiley gaffney



On 11/08/2004, at 9:33 AM, Graeme Turner wrote:

> Hi Rebecca, (and anyone else listening should know that I must take 
> some of the blame for Rebecca's condition: she was once one of my 
> students, and a very highly valued RA on Fame Games!)
>
> I am a little leery of doing this, knowing how it might come across, 
> but I do think this is a topic where the old lags should contribute. 
> Not to be quietistic, or  patronising (because God knows, we have all 
> found ourselves in some pretty terrible jobs from time to time) but 
> just to try to reinforce your patience and determination.
>
> So, before we get too depressed about managerialism, shortage of funds 
> etc., I'd like to share my memories of what the university was like 
> when I started. Of course, to start with, there was no such thing as 
> cultural studies. What there was, was literary studies, which had no 
> theoretical content and in which one was judged by how vigorously one 
> vibrated when brought into close proximity to a classic text. This 
> was, as Eagleton correctly observed, an ideology and when you taught 
> it, that's what you were teaching. The University was run by 
> God-Professors most of whom were male; virtually all the female staff 
> in my department at Sydney (with the exception of Leonie Kramer!) were 
> on rolling short-term contracts, or employed as teaching assistants 
> (full-time teaching load, half-time PhD enrolment, no continuity of 
> appointment, suck up to the professors or else you're out).  Everybody 
> was Anglo - pretty specifically, actually, since just about everyone 
> was either English or had a British PhD. Working class accents were 
> only really acceptable if they were British (Howard Jacobsen, then a 
> tutor now a famous novelist, actually affected a Liverpool accent at 
> the time, probably to cash in on the popularity of the Beatles!). 
> Junior staff had no input into the syllabus. In my Department, there 
> was a fight between the two professors which resulted in two parallel 
> courses being run; anyone below that level had a choice as to which 
> they taught, but no input into what was taught. As a student, I only 
> ever received one essay back from the English Department in my whole 
> four years there -- it was a fail, by the way, and the tutor told me I 
> displayed no aptitude for this kind of work. Staff displayed very 
> little sense of having responsibilities to their students; the idea of 
> using something like pedagogy to ensure a tutorial worked would have 
> seemed very foreign. One professor was reputed to routinely begin his 
> tutorials with the remark 'Any questions?'. If there were none, he 
> would declare the class closed. Despite the presence of Germaine Greer 
> in an office in the main quad, finishing off The Female Eunuch,  
> sexual harassment was routine; tutors regularly preyed upon their 
> students and were the object of resentment among the male 
> undergraduates who wished they had their power. When one of the two 
> professors who ran the competing courses left, classes in this program 
> were subject to visits from the remaining professor ensuring that 
> nothing with which he disagreed was being said.  Needless to say, the 
> kind of material cultural studies deals with every day was absolutely 
> out; indeed this professor objected to teaching D.H.Lawrence because 
> he was so common and anyway none of his characters ever seemed to have 
> a job!  The class-based ideologies underpinning an Arts education were 
> visible and no-one even bothered to disavow them.
>
> I won't continue this old fogey rant, but the simple point is that 
> there are far worse options than we have now. Of course, I recognise 
> that the first year of teaching is infuriating -- for just about 
> everyone. Particularly because your colleagues seem to know so little. 
> In my first job I redesigned the whole curriculum, unrequested, and 
> presented this to a staff meeting for their approval. I remember being 
> deeply hurt that no-one seemed to appreciate what a helpful gesture 
> this had been. So, I did it again in my next job (and my next, and the 
> next.....). Eventually, I did get what I wanted -- although the design 
> had changed quite a bit since then. The point is, it is helpful to 
> look on this as a long haul. Even though it looks, from the outside, 
> as though the conditions for change and intervention are there, they 
> aren't. They have to made, each time, and they have to be  constructed 
> politically as well as intellectually and pedagogically. So this first 
> couple of years has to be seen as if it is a continuation of the PhD. 
> That was a process of learning how to complete a large intellectual 
> project; this is a process of learning how to complete a much larger 
> and more diffuse intellectual and political project, and it takes a 
> long while to see where the gaps and tolerances in the institutions 
> actually are. (They will be there, though.)
>
> The consolation is that you still have your students to yourself. I 
> think it is easy in these days of research performance indicators to 
> underestimate how important that relation is, and to overlook how 
> valuable your teaching is to them at this stage in your career. Also, 
> they are also the first real audience for your ideas -- not as big as 
> an op-ed perhaps, but certainly the place to try them out. For what 
> it's worth, my view is that it is better to leave the institution 
> pretty much alone for the first few years and focus on getting 
> yourself on top of your teaching -- because that will be the way to 
> feel that you are doing something worthwhile. In the meantime, you 
> will be gathering knowledge and power. Then you might not have to 
> resort to going out to sit on a Welsh beach quite so often.
> Cheers
> Graeme Turner
>
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