In the previous installment, it was concluded that teachers can and do make a difference in the lives of others, sometimes in the classroom and sometimes away from it. Unfortunately the rewards of teaching often do not occur for many years, making teaching both a mystery and a heavy responsibility.
But the question on the table is whether advanced degrees add to or take away from the responsibility?
Having spent much of my career as a band director, I often found myself moving music stands from one place to another, and setting up chairs, and putting music in folders. A few days after completing my Doctor of Philosophy, perhaps expecting to feel differently, maybe relieved, maybe wiser, maybe special, instead I simply felt the same. This was further confirmed when I stepped into the band hall and began moving music stands, setting up chairs, and putting music in folders. Much to my comfort and maybe a touch of chagrin masked in wry amusement, I realized that nothing had changed, I was and still am the same person as always with the same expectations as always, the same aptitude, and the same larger purpose. Or had it?
But after thinking through the issue, I realize that in fact the responsibility question was answered. To an extent my advanced degree increases my responsibility in teaching. Education, study, research, or scholarly achievement do not, in and of themselves, replace or subjugate the absolute necessity for culpability, honesty, or obligation by a teacher to uphold the highest in integrity in all things presented. This is true regardless of rank, tenure status, or age of the teacher. Too often, professors are given a license, or carte blanche, to present information without consideration of the responsibility expected, and consequently ignoring or least denying the mystery of education, which is revealed over time.
The age of the students, the discipline being taught, the circumstances surrounding the teaching, the ultimate purpose of the teacher. None of these abdicates nor excuses irresponsible teaching in any form. From the 1st grade teacher working diligently to teach her children to read, through the junior high science teacher dedicated to explaining the basics of biology, to the Ph.D. class of students seeking to understand the philosophical purpose of aesthetics and their nature in art, the teacher has a calling, an obligation, a requirement, to be absolutely committed to presenting the truth.
The influence a professor has over his college students is significant and should never be taken lightly nor irresponsibly. Much has been written on the concept of tenure, and there is no reason to add to the literature on the subject, but in my mind tenure does not provide a license for poor preparation or poorly presented facts. Tenure is also not freedom to misrepresent truth or to mold students into a teacher's personal work of pottery. Tenure carries with it a tremendous obligation to pursue academic purity in highest form, and to offer that truth in an excellent manner so as to prepare others for honesty in scholarship and cognitive development.
Meanwhile, back at the responsibility ranch, when you are invited, even called to the education profession, and you enter through those doors to reside among people who trust your calling, your aptitude, your training, your heart, then you must do so with the utmost dedication to accuracy, honesty, and purity of information. It is a dangerous profession in many ways, for to mislead a young mind with casual, unprepared conjectures that have not been presented as such is to commit a crime of academic and educational heresy.
To that end, as I study and learn, as I refuse to rest comfortably on the amazing education I received, as I dedicate myself fully to greater discoveries and greater scholarship, as I continue to teach and to enjoy the opportunity to teach, I am reminded that my responsibility for imparting truth is of the utmost and must be done with comprehensive excellence. What they are learning and how they use the information may be a mystery but it does not abdicate my responsibility as a teacher. With luck, my responsible adherence to truth will one day be revealed by an informed and contributing adult. Maybe even an adult playing in the New York Philharmonic!
No comments:
Post a Comment