Tenured Bosses and Disposable Teachers: Writing Instruction in the Managed University.

TENURED BOSSES AND DISPOSABLE TEACHERS: WRITING INSTRUCTION IN THE MANAGED UNIVERSITY

Edited by Marc Bousquet, Tony Scott, and Leo Parascondola. Southern Illinois University Press, 2003.

As I began Spring semester, 2004, marking my eleventh year as an adjunct, I decided that I would begin making a serious move toward a full time job in a community college. Carrying six composition classes across three campuses, I planned to devote as much time as I could to publishing my first academic article--doing the work, acting the part of a "real" academic. I saw the request for this review and decided to pounce on the opportunity. In addition, I planned to write an essay, and compile my perfect composition reader.

I teach in the New Jersey community college system. I had taught for three to five years at two of my campuses. Spring 2004 marked my first semester at this third campus. One day, around midterm by chance, I visited the office of my chair at this third campus, as she spoke on the telephone. She held up her finger telling me to wait; she want ed to speak with me. She told me "Another adjunct has just quit; do you want her dames?"

In my current economic state, I could not refuse. Without realizing it, this experience placed me in the perfect position to review Tenured Bosses and Disposable Teachers: Writing Instruction in The Managed University, the collection edited by Marc Bousquet, Tony Scott, and Leo Parascondola. I made it through my first semester teaching eight classes across three campuses, a feat I hope not to repeat. I did not write the essay, but I have almost completed work on my reader. And I have learned a great deal, including how much I have to learn about the realities of the academic market place, from Tenured Bosses and Disposable Teachers.

A review tells the reader as much about the reviewer as it does about the object reviewed. I have an MA in Secondary Education. Lacking the emotional tenacity to teach high school English, I have decided, after ten years on and off teaching college Composition, to pursue a career for myself at the college level, including teaching eight dames across three campuses. I do not claim to understand all the issues raised by the collection.

Marc Bosquet, in "Composition as Management Science," examines the phenomenon of the non-tenured full time position. Bosquet views this position as constituting nothing but acquiescence to corporate market values that the university should challenge and change. I understand Bosquet's point, but as a person struggling to pay bills, I cannot say that I would find unattractive Joseph Harris's proposal of "reasonable salaries, benefits, working conditions, and job security; autonomy over [my] work; and to be treated with respect as colleagues" (28), which Bosquet quotes critically. However Bosquet righdy claims that the major changes in history did not come about without bold action and powerful rhetoric. The non-tenured, full-time position greeted by many, including me, as innovative, contains neither boldness nor power, but for the adjunct working two or more campuses, it may offer hope. Amanda Godley and Jennifer Seibel Trainor, in "Embracing the Logic of the Marketplace: New Rhetorics for the Old Problem of Labor in Composition," examines how two institutions have dealt with staffing using the full time, non-tenure track rank. Neither has completely succeeded, as administrators--deans--have continued to view the traditional adjunct workforce as a cost saving measure. However, English departments themselves seem to support these positions.

Richard Ohmann continues Bosquet's analysis by demonstrating that writing program administrators--WPA's--and politicians separate "Citizenship and Literacy Work" in their own rhetoric. This separation results from university administrations' vision of the university as properly serving market forces. I admit a particular fondness for this piece, as the exploration of citizenship and literacy comprise major pieces of my own work. Ohmann correctly voices the position of the composition teacher as gatekeeper when he forces the reader to realize that "literacy, ... in spite of many compositionists' egalitarian hopes, is a birthright to some, a meritocratic attainment for others, a low grade marketable skill for many, and a remedial insult to still others" (37). I feel a twinge, however, when Ohmann writes,

   The academic profession ... has
   failed to limit entry, regulate
   careers, restrict the practice of
   teaching to fully credentialed
   members and selected apprentices,
   control the definition and assessment
   of its work, and secure the
   high pay and prestige that people
   in strong professions enjoy. (41)

After eleven years at four different colleges, I would like to think that I would at least qualify as a "selected apprentice," but I have doubts. Does my presence as an adjunct demean composition?

Donna Strickland, in "The Managerial Unconscious of Composition Studies," states that as the practitioner becomes management, she finds her practice at odds with those she manages. The manager must insure, for the sake of her charges, that she does not falsely identify herself as one of them. In the present university, the goals and desires of managers and workers represent different goals, and the manager must recognize these differences. Not doing so creates a cruel illusion. Walter Jacobson, however, speaks from a different perspective by contrasting the position of WPA Richard Miller of Rutgers and adjunct Helen O'Grady. Miller "urges collective identity with the bureaucracy" (195) for both management and labor; Jacobson describes O'Grady as "an outsider who identifies with her students" (196). Jacobson views these two seemingly opposite positions as linked and, in fact, very similar reactions to the same circumstance: an economy where academia can no longer afford, if it ever could, to create "either/or divisions and distinctions" (196) between ourselves as workers and managers. Jacobson proposes that managers need to view themselves as labor,

Paul Lauter, in "From Adelphi to Enron," correctly analyzes the effects of capitalism on both the world at large and colleges in particular. He demonstrates how the compensation of university presidents differs from those of CEOs only by degree, However, if I may, by emphasizing the major and negative excesses of corporate America, he leaves out certain positives for the junior employee, namely, pay schedules. A few years ago, I worked freelance for a publisher. They hired me on the second week of a pay schedule and paid me that same week for my one week of work. I have never worked in an academic setting, including high schools and community colleges, where I did not have to wait for a check, often well into a semester. From my position, our pay schedule represents the greatest exploitation of adjunct labor: that an adjunct, having established a pattern of employment with an institution, cannot depend on a regularly scheduled paycheck. One might understand the delay for a brand new hire, or even across the first year of employment. However, assuming the adjunct stays beyond that first year, accepting the pay differential with full-time employees, why can we not at least be given paychecks on a dependable time schedule, enabling us to plan, to budget, to live a normal life?

Ruth Kiefson, in "The Politics and Economics of the Super Exploitation of Adjuncts," situates the current position of adjuncts within the larger encroachment of latter day capitalism. Recognizing the overuse of adjuncts as a cost-saving measure, she shows how this abuse of labor ultimately will devalue full-time employment. She proposes that full time and adjunct labor must join forces with students to "ultimately transform society" (149). The third section of the text, "Critique of Managerialism," begins with Tony Scott's "Managing Labor and Literacy in the Future of Composition Studies," in which Scott describes the effect of modern management techniques on comp/rhet. Christopher Carter, in "Bureaucratic Essentialism and the Corporatization of Composition," explains how managerial consciousness affects the content and methods of students' education.

Robin Truth Goodman suggests we might view the "Righting of Writing" when teachers move beyond personal narrative assignments to assignments which force students to engage and challenge the world around them. Donald Lazarre echoes Goodman in "Composition, Culture Studies, and Critical Pedagogy in the Managed University" when he challenges the model of composition courses as places of reflective, personal narratives instead of places where students analyze multiple real-world issues. However, William H. Thelin and Leann Bertoncini, in "When Critical Pedagogy Becomes Bad Teaching: Blunders in Adjunct Review," describe and analyze Bertoncini's use of this type of critical pedagogy in the context of a heavily prescriptive departmental syllabus. In doing so, they explore academic freedom for adjuncts and the effect of its lack on their teaching and lives. Eric Marshall, in "Teaching Writing in a Managed Environment," recounts his days teaching at Kingsborough Community College at the City University of New York (CUNY). I, too, taught at Kingsborough, but Marshall and I had very different experiences. Marshall found Kingsborough constraining on a variety of fronts, including that of academic freedom. At Kingsborough, I experienced a greater academic freedom than I ever had elsewhere, including the ability to pick my own texts and to experiment with a variety of instructional approaches.

Leo Parascondala begins the fourth section of the book, "Pedagogy and Possibility." He examines how the university has always placed itself at the service of capital in "Write to Earn." Parascondala says this service to capital occurs regardless of the teacher's approach. But regardless of the instructional approaches an institution allows, composition suffers from the view English departments in particular, and the academy in general has toward it.

In the selection "Global Capitalism, Scientific Management, and Disciplinary English," David B. Downing begins a theme that sounds throughout this book. The perceived superiority of literary study/criticism at least partially explains the position of composition. As such, what we value as composition research reflects a prejudice for knowledge creation, research, rather than for skills and activity of composition: "[D]isciplinary pressure will inevitably tend to give greater significance to the published article about the Web site than reward those who created it and participated in its ongoing success." (60) When English departments, along with the rest of the academy, so elevate research, they devalue teaching, which, in turn, devalues the teaching of "writing, the one marketable skill that everyone needs." (64) Downing proposes that English departments of the future must "more fully integrate the practices of reading and writing practices," of literature and composition, so English departments as a whole become more fully integrated and accepted--respected--by the academy at large. (68) Ray Watkins, in "The Future of English Department: Cultural Capital and Professional Writing," analyzes the privileging of literature over composition. This privileging produces two languages in the one department: the objectivist forms taught in composition and the formalist language taught in literary analysis.

In his afterword, Gary Rhoads summarizes and analyzes the collection. He again calls for an end to the divisive vision of formalist composition/literacy instruction and formalist/literary instruction as separate and unequal. Rhoads urges compositionists to return to the model of composition as necessary and pertinent to citizenship. However, in addition to building a more informed citizen, English departments must take advantage of their position to create a greater critical awareness in consumers. He supports a unionization of composition labor that builds on the common concerns of all workers, both part time and full time, such as health care. This labor coalition must extend beyond academia by publicizing-"publickcizing"--our concerns as workers.

Many of the ideas contained in this collection inspire me. However, we live during capitalism's final years, when capitalism will become, of necessity, more vicious toward workers, both our students and ourselves. Morality or the lack thereof, does not guide our employers. They respond in the only way they understand to the crisis of latter day capitalism. Can workers move against this tempest? I would like to think so, but I must admit: I want nothing more than the ability to pay my bills and contribute to my family's survival. No doubt, many readers will see my position as part of the problem: the acceptance of less than full-time tenured employment defeats the struggle of those who fight for more. Yet I admit: I want nothing more than a secure existence, and I hope to achieve that for my family.