"You must modify Haltom's Third Law. You have posited that 'Those who profess ethics have none.' But you have noted as well that those who campaign for rigor often or usually have none. Why not combine the two adages?"
Beloved reader, I can go at least this far. Whenever anyone campaigns for more rigor in the classroom, check the teaching evaluations immediately to find what is wrong in the campaigner's classroom. Whenever a colleague demands changes in the forms with which students evaluate teachers, seek out the bad set of evaluations that is spurring the colleague. Whenever an alleged scholar campaigns for rigor in scholarship or for more professional growth, locate the scholar's CV and marvel at chutzpa.
Regular readers of this blog know that at the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce] up is down. What my reader apparently does not appreciate is the artistry that the clowns bring to their affectations. Anyone who has professional growth may talk about professional growth; it takes a true bullshit artist to banter about professional growth amid a career-long slump. A colleague who could smear his arms and hands with tuna but still could not get a cat to sit up has some nerve talking about teaching, which makes his act all the more breath-taking. It is one thing to do a high-wire walk without a net, but without a high wire?
And what about the cunning by which the polymorphous incompetent induces colleagues to cover for her? She calls attention to her minuscule scholarship even as she begs someone to create a simple document for her. You think that is easy to pull off, dear reader? She faults another's teaching but is herself infamous for truncating classes for which she has barely prepared. That's genius!
Meanwhile, colleagues have to keep doing the jobs of and for the poseurs. Various frauds drag their feet regarding diversity, compelling more productive scholars and more accomplished teachers to struggle for diversity. Those committed to scholarship have to argue that committees handing out money for scholarship should ask for CVs before granting moneys and proof of accomplishment after the grant has run. Those who have served the university in multiple capacities for multiple decades must wrestle with slackers and slugabeds to induce committees and the Faculty Senate to follow by-laws. Men and women who are quite busy should not have to devote free time that they do not have to inducing women [and a few men] to stop bringing down or driving out women.
Still, I wonder that my reader can generate any juice over these matters. For as long as I have been here, the working faculty have done their own jobs and the jobs of blatherers and bullshitters for, more often than not, a sucker's payoff.
Beloved reader, I can go at least this far. Whenever anyone campaigns for more rigor in the classroom, check the teaching evaluations immediately to find what is wrong in the campaigner's classroom. Whenever a colleague demands changes in the forms with which students evaluate teachers, seek out the bad set of evaluations that is spurring the colleague. Whenever an alleged scholar campaigns for rigor in scholarship or for more professional growth, locate the scholar's CV and marvel at chutzpa.
Regular readers of this blog know that at the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce] up is down. What my reader apparently does not appreciate is the artistry that the clowns bring to their affectations. Anyone who has professional growth may talk about professional growth; it takes a true bullshit artist to banter about professional growth amid a career-long slump. A colleague who could smear his arms and hands with tuna but still could not get a cat to sit up has some nerve talking about teaching, which makes his act all the more breath-taking. It is one thing to do a high-wire walk without a net, but without a high wire?
And what about the cunning by which the polymorphous incompetent induces colleagues to cover for her? She calls attention to her minuscule scholarship even as she begs someone to create a simple document for her. You think that is easy to pull off, dear reader? She faults another's teaching but is herself infamous for truncating classes for which she has barely prepared. That's genius!
Meanwhile, colleagues have to keep doing the jobs of and for the poseurs. Various frauds drag their feet regarding diversity, compelling more productive scholars and more accomplished teachers to struggle for diversity. Those committed to scholarship have to argue that committees handing out money for scholarship should ask for CVs before granting moneys and proof of accomplishment after the grant has run. Those who have served the university in multiple capacities for multiple decades must wrestle with slackers and slugabeds to induce committees and the Faculty Senate to follow by-laws. Men and women who are quite busy should not have to devote free time that they do not have to inducing women [and a few men] to stop bringing down or driving out women.
Still, I wonder that my reader can generate any juice over these matters. For as long as I have been here, the working faculty have done their own jobs and the jobs of blatherers and bullshitters for, more often than not, a sucker's payoff.
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