Teaching at SLCC

I've mentioned a few times in previous posts that I'm currently working at the Daily Herald in Provo. However, that is only a part time gig. In addition, I'm also teaching at Salt Lake Community College. I teach two sections of advanced writing. In many ways, the job is a pain. I have to get up early, commute 40 minutes there and 40 minutes back, my class sizes are relatively big, and the pay is terrible.

However, despite all those negative aspects of the job, it's really kind of cool. Also, because I was previously teaching at BYU, I can't help but compare the two teaching environments. BYU pays much better (even though I was a graduate instructor I made roughly twice as much), has smaller classes, and better facilities.

Yet, in many ways, teaching at SLCC is a better experience. The students, for example, are at least as engaged as BYU students. In fact, many of them are more engaged. They make a lot of comments, and have insightful things to say. There is also a lounge for instructors that has complementary hot chocolate. I don't have a cubicle (as I sort of did at BYU), but I do have most of the resources I need to teach.

The other big thing that makes teaching at SLCC interesting is the diversity. It's no secert that BYU is a pretty homogenous place, but I think that a lot of people at BYU kid themselves into thinking that it has some substantial diversity too. (I know I did this.) Sure, there are a handful of international students, and a slight variation in economic class.

Yet, at SLCC probably a third of my students can barely speak English. Virtually all of them have jobs, and they practice a variety of different religions, political ideologies, and value systems.

Diversity, by itself, may not be inherently good (though I tend to think it is), but the advantage it offers is that class discussion is more lively, nuanced, and probing than it tended to be at BYU. No one can simply take values for granted. If someone starts assuming something about everyone else (like, for example, that everyone agrees politically or religiously), there are a bunch of people to immediately call that person on it. This rarely happened in my courses at BYU and those students who were different (who were, say, moderate democrates) tended to either get shut down by other students or danced around their actual beliefs in an effort to avoid alienating people. (That didn't always happen, but my point is that in this regard BYU pales in comparison to SLCC.)

There are a few reasons this matters. First, I think it'd be useful for BYU to attempt to diversify itself. If the point college courses is to encourage critical thinking (which it was in the courses I taught), diversity is one of the best and easiest ways to accomplish that.

Second and more broadly, however, I think that people (especially university-educated people, including myself) should avoid knocking community colleges. Personally, I can't remember a time in my life where my sphere of university-bound kids or university alumni didn't look down on community college.

As I've been teaching at SLCC however, I've come to see this as not-so-thinly veiled class politics. It's a way to look down on certain people, and a way to believe that one group is "better" than another. Of course, few people would actually admit to these attitudes and perhaps few even personally hold them. But the over arching meta-narrative in the university world is that community college is filled with the incapable, the unmotivated, and the unpromising.

My experience thus far at SLCC suggests otherwise.

Education

Recently, I read an article on CNN.com about a Trina Thompson who decided to sue her college because she couldn’t find a job.  To someone like myself who just completed a master’s program that, to my knowledge, has 0% job placement (and no services to speak of to raise that number) my first thought was that she was being ridiculous.  However, as I considered the situation more I started to agree with her.  In fact, Ms. Thompson’s situation made me wonder if I should consider doing the same thing. 

 

I have no plans to sue my school, but the incident raises questions about the purpose of higher education.  Much of the criticism leveled at Thompson seems to be based on the romantic idea of a “liberal education,” which might be summarily described as a broad effort to make people better, more ethical and well-rounded citizens (and people).  While, as a recent MA, I’m obviously a disciple of this idea, I also know that just about everybody goes to college today because it will make them more marketable for a future job. 

 

The point then, is that nearly every college degree is simply a technical certification from a trade-oriented school.  Ms. Thompson’s school is more obviously so, but even students at prestigious schools are there because they’re trying to become more marketable.  The skills they’re learning might prepare them for white-collar jobs, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re learning the “techniques” of a “trade.” 

 

This reality is a problem for a couple of reasons.  First, because no one is admitting it.  Most college educated people look down on someone like Thompson because her argument is painfully honest about what people expect from an education.  There are a lot of people who don’t have jobs when they graduate, but the criticisms of Thompson demonstrate that people don’t see that fact as a problem (with either the education system or the post-graduation market place).  Indeed, the defense of education-for-education’s sake that has been invoked actually suggests that people don’t think there are any system-wide problems at all.  It doesn’t matter, the argument implies, that people today take longer to get through school, are more saddled with debt, and have less of a guarantee of employment after college; just because that happens with many people, the system is still working just fine. 

 

Second, this is a problem because liberal education has a lot to offer and because if we abandon it, eventually no one will be able to think critically about ideas like ethics, citizenship, and community.  Instead, people will be locked into roles determined by class and economic status (as well as race, gender, etc.) without the ability to raise questions about those roles.  In other words, the recent debate sparked by Trina Thompson suggests both that liberal education is quickly slipping away from us while we delude ourselves into thinking that it isn’t.

 

Luckily, liberal education isn’t completely gone.  It coexists with work-oriented schooling in a way that apparently satisfies many people.  (If it didn’t satisfy them, they’d stop going to school.)  Still, if people refuse to recognize the effects of business and the market place on education there will be nothing to mitigate the capitalist onslaught in colleges.  People will continue to be in debt and unemployed, and no one will stop to consider if that is a problem.  At the same time, high-minded ideals embodied in a liberal education will keep slipping away from us until no one even remembers what they were.