10 WDL With No More Brains Than You Have

The Wizard, played by Frank Morgan, is trying to give the Scarecrow the very thing that will convince him that he has those brains he's been demonstrating to his friends and the audience throughout the adventure to the Witch's castle and back.

"Back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning -- where men go to become great thinkers.  And when they come out, they think deep thoughts -- and with no more brains than you have . . . But!  They have one thing you haven't got!  A diploma!" He reaches behind himself and pulls out a collection of diplomas, choosing one for the hay-headed adventurer.  "Therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Universitatus Committeeatum e plurbis unum, I hereby confer upon you the honorary degree of Th. D."

Ray Bolger's Scarecrow queries, "Th.D.?"

The Wizard proclaims the full title in his best Barnumesque voice, "Yeah -- that . . . that's Dr. of Thinkology!"

(Script found at Wendy's Wizard of Oz pages)

This scene delights me because it parallels my own view of academic degrees.  I do not believe that they are proof of one's ability to think.  They are proof of one's ability to get an academic degree.

I completed my MA in speech and theatre and went on for the PhD because I knew that the doctorate was the required "union card" for work in academia.  And I wanted to teach because it seemed so much easier to me than fast food work or house cleaning, the other jobs for which I had a few skills.  (I'd bailed from journalism, finding it too stressful.) 

I enjoyed many of the courses I took in communication and I had a great time busting my ass at the University of Utah.  I deepened and broadened my understanding of human communication and also increased my desire to be a strong instructor who created a fun learning environment.  I also swore that I would not be a postmarxist hypocrite like some of the professors who wrote as egalitarians but taught as tyrants. 

But really, did I need a PhD to teach at COCC?  Academically, no, not really.  I've used the material I learned in my masters and doctoral courses in only one or two classes each year.  Here are the courses that benefited from my advanced learning: 

1. Introduction to Film
2. Persuasion
3. Communication Theory (I created this course and killed it almost the same year it was so out of step with our students)
4. Media, Communication, and Society
5. Gender Communication
6. Introduction to the Rhetoric of Film
7. Introduction to Visual Rhetoric
8. Popular Culture: Noir Film and Fiction (I got to teach this once when Greg Lyons was on sabbatical)

I did NOT need a PhD to teach the bread and butter core courses that I've spent most of my life at COCC instructing:  Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communication, and Small Group Communication.  What I needed in order be a competent teacher in those courses was

1. the ability to read and understand a textbook
2. self-awareness and the ability to self-monitor my own communication skills and/or lack thereof
3. the self-esteem to be honest about my own performance, even when it's flawed
4. other-awareness
5. a "we" attitude
6. an interest in teaching methods
7. the ability to read nonverbal messages
8. enthusiasm
9. respect for diversity of opinions
10. a winning smile
11. the appearance of sincerity
12. respect for my customers/clients/students

My skeptical attitude toward the doctorate was born out of the persecution my spouse faced at Idaho State when he refused to get a doctorate.  He'd been working at the college for six years when it became a University in 1963.  After refusing to go back to school to stick a doctorate on top of his MA in Theology and Literature from the University of Chicago he was given a heavier load and be treated like a second class citizen.  So in my twenties I was living with someone who read two or three books a week, taught brilliantly and who had little respect for advanced degrees.  I also saw how he suffered because he didn't have a doctorate.

So I got the doctorate to avoid suffering?  Pretty much.  I did the work so I wouldn't have to work so hard later.  And what did it teach me?  Persistence.  Grit.  As I've told my students often enough, I wrote a 388 page book that perhaps six people have read.  I couldn't write the whole thing at the last minute so I also had to learn how to plan and take it one step at a time.  Afterwords, having seen one book to completion, I knew that I could write another one.  (And so I have, but none of the later works have yet to get out of the garage.)

My Dad used to be very proud of the doctorate.  He shared the view that some of my students have that its magic -- that it makes me special.  In fact, my sister told me that once when she was visiting with Dad he introduced her to a friend and then, as she's standing there, says, "And my other daughter has a PhD."  And that's a pretty fucked thing to do.  Dad had a respect for academic degrees that I don't share.

Should I have been hired to work here?  Well, that's an interesting question.  I know that I got the job in part because I was working toward a doctorate.  I was expected to complete the dissertation and get the degree before getting tenure.  It was neck and neck!  But at age 40 I did get tenured, PhD'd and published. 

So maybe I needed the piece of paper to get the job, but I didn't need it to do the job.  All I needed was brains, courage, heart, and a little dog too.

LY #76 1988 Continued: The PhD Issue

Tonight's post continues with the happenings on October 6, 1988, as recorded in my Bendnotes 3.   Last night's post was my 1988 report on a Faculty Forum meeting.  Tonight I'm typing up a couple of discussions that occurred after the meeting.

_______________

"C. and I talked with Don after the meeting.  He gave us the story of Fred's decision to turn the school toward the PhD.   He also told us that "while I respect Ward a lot" that they don't see eye to eye -- Ward is perceived as being very close to the administration.  As we walked back to the office, C. and I shared with each other our concern about being the bad guys, the professional guns brought in to take the place of those who were good teachers but who didn't have the magic letters after their names, or who weren't committed to the PhD myth.  Although she is a Dr., she and I agree that a belief that the PhD means something about an individual's ability to teach is a belief in magic.

{By the way.  I figured out this week that little of what I learned about teaching at the U of U is useful for this job here.  The major job of a teacher here, still, is to try and teach, not to sort out the wheat from the chaff for the replication of an archaic and oppressive disciplinary society.}*

When we got back to Deschutes, we ran into Mary Monaghan, and she eased our minds by telling us that we wouldn't have been chosen if we had not been seen as potentially excellent teachers as well.  She was especially nice about me, remind me that she had supported and fought for me strongly.**

. . . So.  That's an overview of part of the political situation here.  Sometimes it's real interesting to me.  Since my depression sat in, it's mostly been really dreadful.

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*  To understand this comment, you need to know that at the University of Utah graduate students often taught one of the three "weed" courses.  A weed course is not one in which students smoke weed.  (Yeah, I know what you were  thinking.)  It was a course in which the teacher, usually a graduate student at the U Comm dept, was required to bring in a classwide GPA of no higher than 2.4 because these courses were designed to "weed out" those students who supposedly didn't have the smarts to do great work in the communication program.  Weeding was necessary because communication was one of the most popular humanities programs so their needed to be a gateway to entering.

The required C+ class GPA meant that almost every high grade (B and up) needed to be balanced with a lower grade.  If a graduate student like myself allowed a class average to slip upward toward 2.8 or, heaven forfend, a Stanford-like 3.3, then we would have been "spoken to" and threatened with the loss of the teaching assistantship.  Because I was at the U. only because I had the assistantship (which covered my tuition AND gave me enough to pay for rent and food as well) I did my job as required.  Of course, being who I am, I often told the students about the weeding I was required to do.  When one of the major departmental faculty heard about my honesty, she was very upset and told me that, "It's not a good idea to be too truthful with them."  And yes, she was someone who touted a left-wing, post-Marxist ideology.

One interesting aspect of this kind of grading requirement is that a student who might get an A in one class because they outshone the other folks, might have pulled a B or lower in another class where there were more high performers.  An undergraduate's grade in these classes had as much to do with the other students in the class as with his or her own abilities.  Thank all the powers that bee that I haven't been required to grade like this since I left the U.  Nowadays, I have a set criteria for an A which I really believe almost every student in my classes can reach if they do the work.

** Reading once again about Mary's comment about fighting for me leads me again to think that I was the second choice of the COCC hiring committee.  I wonder how I could find out for sure?