Using myself as an example

Earlier on today, and in the context of discussing the recent strike action, Jo Wolf tweeted something that caught my eye and made me think. To quote the relevant-to-this-post bit: "What mattered to me as a student was whether teachers were clear, insightful, enthusiastic and engaged. Even if we had keep coats on because rooms so cold." What’s under discussion here is the extent to which University management may have tried to spend their way to better NSS scores. The Article Jo is commenting on is this one.

Jo’s remark brought me up short, because my immediate response was to think about students generally. If you didn’t already know, I should say that Jo’s a Professor of Philosophy. To the extent that he enjoyed his degree, and pursued a further degree , and made his career out of the subject, and now in fact teaches and researches it, I think it’s fair to say that Jo would be the exception, rather than the rule! (If he’s not, the that was one hell of an UG student cohort.)

As I say, what brought me up short was the fact that, at least dialectically, Jo appealed here to his own experience of being a student to seemingly draw a general conclusion. “He’s clearly atypical!”, I thought.

Problematically, so I am (though less exceptional than Jo!—more’s the pity…), but I also use my experiences of being student to work out what I think ought to happen.

I think I should stop. I think that most (all?) of us should. A few salient points. When I was an UG student (1998-2001), we didn’t really use the internet. Not much, anyway. There weren’t powerpoint slides. There frequently weren’t handouts. I had to use hard-copies of anything I wanted to read. None of these things are true for most of our UG students.

More, School has changed. I lack the data to assess ‘for the better’ or ‘for the worse, but given the pervasiveness of the internet and social media, it’s clearly different. So, the students coming in have different skills and different expectations to the ones I had.

As soon as I stop and think about it, it’s clear that I need to be more cautious than I have been in thinking through those differences and where those differences might be telling. I really need to stop appealing to my own experiences of being a student.

A much better contrast would be my experiences of being an academic. And am I so different from my students? In some ways, no. Like many of them, I prefer to use electronic resources, rather than go to the library. Like at least some of them, I’ll leave work closer to a deadline than I should. Like at least some of them, I’m sometimes prone to irritation if I have to read through pages and pages of guidance before I can do something (For essay writing guides & module sign-up, see REF or TEF policy; I can recognise the import and value of such things, whilst still wishing they were otherwise).

In closing I should be clear that I’m not meaning to have a pop at Jo here. His tweet had a particular context that means that I don’t think we can be at all confident in reading in to it that he would disagree with me on any of this. The framing is simply autobiographical; his tweet was what made me reflect on my own practices, which I then found wanting.

Striking times

I tend to avoid politics and the like on here; echo chamber and all that, but also because there are people who are far better at it than I am, and who are far better informed. I read, and think about, what others have to say (and learn a great deal from it), but mostly do not think that I have anything useful to add. But this, about the strikes, seems to me that it is worth saying. YMMV,

I am not (here) interested in discussing the vices of the various different potential agreements and I am not interested (here) in discussing the approaches taken to negotiation, or the transparency provided by any particular group. Nor am I (here) interested in discussing what a fair pension looks like. See above: I am less able than others to work my way through it, and I am less well informed. I have nothing to add. I commend Mike Otsuka's work to you, as what seems to me very insightful discussion and data.

What I have seen on social media, and elsewhere, is people being deeply unkind and spiteful to, and about, senior managers at their respective institutions. And that makes me sad and angry.

What sits at the bottom of all of this is that I think people should be civil to one another--at absolute bottom; kind, would be my strong preference. Numbers of people are falling well below that standard. This makes me sad and I do not think that they should do it.

I should also note that some very angry people are absolute models of how I would hope we behave towards one another. #notallangrypeople is absolutely true. But there are some. Too many, indeed, for my liking.

"But Jonathan, you need to understand how F (for some value of F) VCs and similar have been, and how high passions are running." I do need to understand that. This is true. And I have listened and I have read and I have learned a great deal.

But what I don't see is that being angry, or VCs and similar 'being F', justifies being unkind or spiteful to them. It explains it, I agree, but it does not justify it.

So, consider this a plea for kindness. I'm sure I fail (and will continue to fail) to meet this standard myself (I must, I make mistakes). This does not stop me from desiring it as a standard, and I would hope to be called out when I fail to do so.

As I noted in my last post, Jonathan Lowe, my late PhD supervisor, behaved in a way that I would seek to emulate:

"Everything that was said was weighed, carefully, and with respect. You could be a Professor of Philosophy from VERY IMPORTANT UNIVERSITY, or someone outside academia who'd written in with a question; in my experience, it didn't matter. Jonathan would kindly and patiently work through what it was that interested you and try to help you see how the idea could be developed."

That thought guides me here, just as much as it does in my research and teaching.

(I should also acknowledge a debt to Carrie Jenkins here. A while back, Carrie posted something about the idea of kindness of academia that impacted on my thinking. I can't now find her post.)

Professor'd? Professored? Pro...

As I noted on Twitter, this week I received the rather lovely news that I'm to be promoted to Professor this summer. I am delighted!

People have also been extremely kind about it. This has been very wonderful, and I've had to push down the desire to shout 'there must be some mistake' and simply enjoy all of the very nice things people have said.

In among all of those positives, and moments of kindness, there has been one thought that has been ono my mind quite a bit--I hope I can be indulged in talking about it here. I think that the person who had most impact on me as an aspiring academic was Jonathan Lowe. Jonathan sadly passed a few years ago. You can read an interview with him here (http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/metaphysical-foundations-for-science/ ) and an obituary here ( https://www.dur.ac.uk/philosophy/ejlowepages/ ). It was with sadness that I was not able to attend the memorial service in Durham when it was held. I was examining a PhD the same day--probably the only thing I didn't feel I could cancel to be there.

I've been conscious this week of feeling his absence rather keenly.

To me, Jonathan was a model of what I had always thought an academic should be. He was incredibly clever and well read, and a wonderful teacher. But, more than that, through working with him I also came to recognise that he was exactly the kind of academic that I would most like to be. Setting aside his research (it is clear enough that Jonathan was a far better researcher than I will ever be), what stays with me is his enduring kindness, patience, love for his subject, and respect to everyone around him. No question was trivial; no request was insignificant. Everything that was said was weighed, carefully, and with respect. You could be a Professor of Philosophy from VERY IMPORTANT UNIVERSITY, or someone outside academia who'd written in with a question; in my experience, it didn't matter. Jonathan would kindly and patiently work through what it was that interested you and try to help you see how the idea could be developed.

So,  I've been somewhat prone to navel-gazing this week, and wondering 'what sort of Professor would I like to be?' Maybe that's pretentious of me. I don't know. But I do have an answer.  I'd like to be as much like Jonathan as I can be. If I'm half the Professor he was, I'll consider it a job very well done.