More Teaching, Less Education

So, I had a bit of a melt-down on Twitter (and on the departmental e-mail list) when I heard rumours that my faculty is considering adding another course to my already onerous course-load.  Full faculty members would also have their course-count increase by one.

I want to explain why I became so angry.  I teach three English courses (a total of 160 students) each regular semester and one during the summer semester.  As I have stated in a previous post, this course-load requires a ridiculous amount of grading.

I can assure you that with an additional course added to my load, students who take my courses will suffer.  If this extra course is added, I will eliminate at least one of my two essays.  I expect that my exams will become multiple choice.  And the quality of education that students receive will be greatly reduced.

However, I do not see my job--my career--as just teaching and grading.  I do a fair bit of work on campus to try to build community.  I run the Creative Writing Association; I am faculty advisor of the ill-funded Whetstone Magazine; I chair the committee of the “Striking Prose” prize that sees $2500 go to three winners of this creative writing competition; I do other service (committee) work for the department (even though I am not required to do so because of my “teaching-only” position); I frequently teach “independent studies” courses in creative writing, experimental poetry, literature and nothingness, and Canadian Literature because often students require courses that are not offered that semester because our department is already horrendously under-staffed.

I do not list this sample of my work to suggest that I do more work than my colleagues, only to say that much of what we do as academics does not happen in the classroom.  I expect that many colleagues across Alberta have similar or more demanding non-classroom duties.

I am angry because I believe that education is not about conveying information but about building a community of learners.  If I have one more course, all of that other work I am doing will, by necessity, be eliminated.  I simply do not have the time to grade that many essays, attempt to mentor students, seek to create community, while teaching what is already an untenable teaching load.

Sadly, my view that education is about community is not shared by Mr. Lukaszuk or his government, who seem to think that education is an assembly line.  But I guess that’s what happens when “enterprise” gets rolled into the advanced education portfolio.