By RJ Snell, June 15, 2009 in Pedagogy and Teaching
A recent Chronicle piece asks if profs should set down roots or be ready for the next move. This assumes that many (most?) academics will not teach where they grew up or even studied and that many will not in ten years occupy the same office.
Wendell Berry and others have questioned the tendency of education to teach as if students were from nowhere—perhaps this is because faculty are from nowhere (and we don't mean Utopia) after graduate institutions, one-year posts, an adjunct position.
An early desert monastic describes the vice of sloth (acedia) not as laziness but a hatred of place, and this hatred drives the monk to frenzied, but largely pointless activity as they attempt to escape the requirements of place. Sounds a bit like the tenure process!
If the teacher is not from any particular place, what good can their teaching serve? Theory might be universal, but prudence is local, and if the slothful professor is not from anywhere, what can they teach?
Brian Domitrovic on Jun 26, 2009 at 4:59 pm
I'm quite stunned when I hear academics speaking of how busy they are. My research brings me into contract with business people, and do believe me they know what busy really is. In fact, I've found that the businest of all people are actually quite unharried. These are the owners of small businesses. They have to do everything and more so that their enterprise persists. Busy-ness is actually their enemy -- because it wastes so much precious time. Entrepreneurs learn quickly how to rationalize their schedule and how to make every activity tell.
I think academics should take a page from this book. They should think of themselves as entrepreneurs (esp. if they're embarassed by their institutions) and treat every day as a proving ground of their own enterprise. They might even find how relaxed they can be. People who manage their time well, in the service of their own fruitful projects, actually come to incoporate a good deal of leisure throughout their day, week, month, and year.