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

Radical Teacher, Summer, 2004 by Michael Damian Jeter

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,