What began in 1971 as what Clark Kerr called the most radical experiment in higher education, Metropolitan State University in the Twin Cities is now the nation’s premier university for adult learners. Faculty and graduates share tales about a truly working class institution.

http://bit.ly/TTT-MetroStateU

Link to the interview EXC Fall 11

This post first appeared on the opinion page of the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Thursday, July 15, 2010. I adapted this column from remarks I made upon receiving Metropolitan State University’s 2010 Alumnus Award.

Teaching, learning and hemlock

Creating capacity for dialogue — with one’s self

Gov. Tim Pawlenty used a recent appearance with Jon Stewart on ‘The Daily Show’ to promote his market elixir for the purported ills of higher education. If his idea of an ‘iCollege’ were to become the norm, liberal arts professors like me would have little choice but to join Socrates in drinking the hemlock.

“Can’t I just pull that down on my iPhone or iPad whenever the heck I feel like it, from wherever I feel like?” he said. “And instead of paying thousands of dollars, can I pay $199 for iCollege instead of 99 cents for iTunes?”

Implicit in this sound bite lurks a philosophy of education: College is primarily a consumer transaction. Pawlenty’s business model makes no mention of quality, rigor, or critical thought. In his iCollege, the development of well-educated persons and well-informed citizens would take a back seat to the convenience and cost of buying credentials online.

Gov. Pawlenty: Socrates and I beg to differ. If only teaching and learning were so effortless. Let me assure you, as a college teacher and lifelong learner, they are not.

Education does not occur within the head of a teacher or between the ears of a student. Instruction takes place in that mysterious space between educator and pupil. The teaching-learning process is a dialogue — and nothing demonstrates this truth like its absence in a classroom, or online. The educator speaks and gestures inarticulately; the pupil sits mutely, mystified by the charade. The teacher pretends to teach and the student pretends to learn.

Monologues like this are a perversion of teaching and learning. What is more common in classrooms and online is what the social philosopher Martin Buber calls “technical dialogue.” In this circumstance, the educator transmits knowledge and skills and students receive and utilize these tools. The transaction is only skin-deep. Technical education seeks competence, not the meaning of life.

In genuine dialogue, teachers bring not just knowledge and skills but their deepest selves to the encounter. The purpose of this vulnerability is to reduce the distance between the instructor and the pupil. This dialogical moment creates a sacred space, what Buber calls the “between.” Within this realm — for both the teacher and the learner — intellect encounters heart and soul. “Good teachers,” writes the educator Parker Palmer, “join self and subject and students into the fabric of life.”

Once the student embarks on this journey of self-discovery, the quest for meaning is transcendent. A true educator does not impose but seeks only to further the student’s personal destiny. For Buber, this ends the educational process. I would argue that he neglects a crucial final step in teaching and learning.

Whether it is an introductory course or a senior seminar, I begin each class by telling the students that it is my intention to help them kill their teachers. (Since my demanding nature always rubs a few students the wrong way, I take the precaution of explaining that my meaning is metaphorical, not literal.) This invariably baffles beginning students, as it should. My remark is like a Zen koan, a riddle to ruminate upon until understood. If it still puzzles a senior, I realize I am only one semester away from failing as an educator. What is the point of my tutelage? Pursuing their own counsel, students must leave their teachers behind, no matter how cherished or respected. Teachers, on the other hand, should welcome such autonomy, seeking intellectual peers, not disciples.

Socrates describes this last stage as “a discourse that the mind carries on with itself about any subject it is considering.” Carrying on a dialogue with oneself is the hallmark of becoming one’s own teacher. This capacity for contemplation has always been the ideal outcome of a liberal arts education. The most valuable endowment that any university possesses is a wealth of such graduates — and wise the society that invests in their education.

This article appeared in yesterday’s Minnpost.com, “a thoughtful approach to news.” It is one of the nation’s most successful daily online news sources that was started by the former publisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and is staffed by former senior “Stribe” journalists who either took buyouts or were laid off as the newspaper became a shell of it former self due to hedge funds failures and poor external management.

Monte Bute’s circuitous route to winning 2010 alumnus award from Metropolitan State University

By Casey Selix | Published Tue, Jul 6 2010 8:30 am

Monte Bute must be one of the most-unusual winners of Metropolitan State University’s annual alumnus award.

His teenage rebellion landed him in Red Wing’s reformatory school for boys. He dropped out of college in 1967 and dropped acid in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. He earned his peace stripes as an anti-war activist. He toiled for laborers as an organizer for Jobs Now! of Minnesota. He’s labored for the union representing faculty for Minnesota State Colleges and Universities.

Bute, an associate professor of sociology at St. Paul-based Metro State, took not only the road less traveled but also the long and winding road to his bachelor’s degree. Even Metro State’s award bio notes that he became a “a social scientist by the seat of his pants.” Excerpts:

Monte Bute

“Bute began teaching at Metropolitan State as a community faculty member in 1984. He finally finished a long-delayed B.A. at the university in 1991. After a 20-year career as a community organizer, he realized that his next mission in life was teaching. To fulfill that calling, Bute began graduate school rather late in life.”

The official bio also describes Bute as a “prolific writer” and “first and foremost, a master teacher.”

But Bute’s account of his life is far more entertaining. His 2004 speech, “The Making of a Backstage Sociologist,” travels to the far-out corners of his life and reminds us of Metro State’s experimental roots. He gave the speech upon winning the Distinguished Sociologist award from Sociologists of Minnesota. A few excerpts:

“To be honored with the Distinguished Sociologist award is alone enough to leave one somewhat tongue-tied. Further compounding this sense of being dumbstruck is the eerie coincidence that this year’s meeting of the Sociologists of Minnesota (SOM) is being held at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Red Wing.”

“I inhaled my sociological moxie the old-fashioned way — as a deviant, a dissident, and an organizer. I will probably never receive the American Sociological Association’s seal of approval.”

“Founded in 1971, Metropolitan State was an experimental college for adult learners. Finding myself at a school known for thumbing its nose at the academic establishment, I devised a course that was befitting — ‘Interpersonal and Social Power: A View From Below.’ While this was a pleasurable avocation, I kept my day job.”

The deviant, the dissident, the organizer and the sociologist come through vividly in his speech. Definitely worth reading. Too bad there isn’t video.

Update: No video link has shown up yet, but photos of Bute from the 1960s and later are on “The Monte Bute Fan Club” page on Facebook. Bute, who is undergoing chemotherapy for a rare form of lymphoma, says he still isn’t sure who among colleagues, friends and students set up the page. But he’s getting a kick out of it.

5 Comments:

(#1) On July 6, 2010, Author Editor Nancy Hokkanen says:

I’m pleased to see Monte Bute’s educational contributions thus recognized and awarded. His vivid real-world presentations easily hold the attention of his weary, overcommitted working adult students.His provocative sociological discussions were in-depth, open-ended, inclusive. Participating in his class was a refreshing intellectual workout. He’s a gem.

(#2) On July 6, 2010, Author Editor Ken Peterson says:

Bute is a madman. That’s what several people have told me in the thirty years I’ve known Monte. Maybe. He’s also an inspiring teacher; an old fashioned search for truth,non-ideological public intellectual; an excellent organizer; a fine family man; and a loyal friend. The world should have more madmen and madwomen like Monte Bute.

(#3) On July 7, 2010, Author Editor Russ Stanton says:

http://www.ifo.org

Monte is indeed a madman, who revels in speaking truth to power. A teacher by instinct, he has the rare ability to unfailingly turn five minutes of testimony before legislative committees into a half hour of meaningful dialogue with legislators. His background and unconventional style are a prefect fit for Metro state and the students it serves.

(#4) On July 8, 2010, Author Editor Edward Malecki says:

Monte Bute and Metropolitan State have followed parallel paths. Both began as irreverent, radical experiments in higher education thumbing their respective noses at conventional wisdom and academic tradition. But over the years both have embraced enough of those traditions and enough of that wisdom to create a unique educational environment for adult learners. Students in Monte’s classes are challenged to think critically, which is the hallmark of classic liberal education and the core element of lifelong learning that is at the heart of Metro State’s educational philosophy.
Monte Bute embodies the passion, critical thinking and lifelong learning that Metropolitan State faculty seek to instill in all its graduates. Naming Monte as the 2010 recipient of the Alumnus of the Year is a tribute to the thousands of students who have graduated from the University and embody the traits of a well educated person. The award for Monte is also a tribute to the outstanding faculty in the Social Science department– Professors Nancy Black, Janet Enke, and Thomas O’Connell–who have not only tolerated this madcap academic, but also supported him and nurtured his students who do not always understand his passion for learning means that they will have to struggle with difficult materials and with critical self-examination of their own beliefs.
Everybody who has met Monte knows that he wears his passion for learning and teaching on his sleeve. If you are afraid about somebody bursting your balloon of hallowed beliefs, you might think it wise to avoid Bute and take an easier route. But you would be wrong because underneath his passion and strong beliefs is a gentle person who has learned that a life without pain is a life without learning. By struggling with and coming to terms with his own personal demons, Monte has served as a role model for countless students who came to Metro State doubting their ability to succeed in a rigorous academic environment. Like Monte, many of these thirty year olds started the journey earlier in their lives and had failed to achieve their goals. But Monte over the years has greeted thousands of new Metro students, young and old, at orientation meetings with an inspiring message: if a crazy guy like me can start late and succeed so can you.
Make no mistake, the Alumnus of the Year award is not a popularity contest. If that were the case, Bute would never receive the award. He has broken far too many eggs at Metro to make a seamless academic omelet. When I was the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, I could have earned my entire salary simply cleaning up the muddied waters Monte left behind in his drive to right wrongs and defend rights which were not universally perceived by others as rights and wrongs. Those stung by his barbs will probably question his selection as Alumnus of the Year, but even some of his harshest critics have to reluctantly concede that they too have occasionally benefitted from his willingness to attack pomposity and provide leadership at crucial moments in the life of Metro. Without his passionate leadership for a wide variety of causes, Metropolitan State would be a much different institution than it is today. And Monte’s selection as the Alumnus of Year is living proof that Metro State does indeed follow the beat of a different drummer.

(#5) On July 8, 2010, Author Editor Nancy Black says:

The stereotype of a university professor is a rather pompous, somewhat stuffy individual with elbow patches on jackets, a head in the clouds, who dithers around a campus. A single glance at Monte Bute explodes all such images.
This “madman’s” passion has many students soaring to reach intellectual heights they never dreamed possible. Not only does he continually hone his teaching style to engage and inspire students, but his contributions to Metropolitan State University over the years have been immeasurable in shaping the institution’s mission. As my colleague for the past 22 years, he has supplied endless material for social science courses. For example, when illustrating the term “socialization” to undergraduates, I often ask them to think of a professor in the Social Science Department who was “socialized by a pack of wolves.” They immediately understand the concept.
Working with, for and against Monte for the past two decades has never been dull, and I would not trade it for anything in the world. Thanks Monte.

I am an experiential creature. When I find myself facing an existential dilemma within a group or an organization, I draw upon the populist hunches I’ve refined over the years—and then I take action. Only later do I indulge in reflecting upon that experience. The following few paragraphs provide context and give meaning to the circumstances and social interactions captured in the exchange of e-mails recorded below.

Minnesota has perhaps the most over-centralized system of public higher education in the nation. With the best of intentions, former Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe in 1991 orchestrated a consolidation of three independent systems—state universities, community colleges, and technical colleges—into an über-bureaucracy called the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU).

Moe and his legislative colleagues were oblivious to the unintended consequences that would follow. Established in 1995, MnSCU is now fittingly ensconced in the palatial and well-secured Wells Fargo Bank building in downtown St. Paul. This behemoth has now mushroomed to over 500 bureaucrats who implement policies and dictate procedures to its 32 member institutions.

A Board of Trustees, appointed by Governor Tim Pawlenty, governs MnSCU. Business leaders, including current and past executive directors of the Minnesota Taxpayers League and the Minnesota Business Partnership, dominate the board. The implicit philosophy that guides the board’s leadership is that MnSCU’s mission is to provide the vocational training that meets the needs of Minnesota employers.

Given this ideological bias, cost-benefit analysis trumps all other criteria for teaching and learning. The business model that the Trustees promulgate, and MnSCU’s minions implement, is one of mass production for mass education—resulting at best in employable masses, and at worse masses that are unemployed.

The good employee is, consequently, a well-trained worker bee. As you might imagine, the leadership qualities fostered by a traditional liberal arts education are, at best, an afterthought. The development of well-educated persons and well-informed citizens still does occur on our local campuses but in spite of, not because of, the Trustees and their over-staffed chain of command.

The first European universities developed in the 11th and 12th centuries in Italy, France, and England. By the 13th century, Peter Abelard had established at the University of Paris the progenitor of the modern college and university. Modeled on the medieval guild, Paris exemplified the principle of autonomy, a federated and self-regulating community of teachers and scholars.

Paul Goodman wrote The Community of Scholars in 1962. He saw an unbroken lineage between those medieval institutions and contemporary colleges and universities. He argued that there is one dominant ancestral trait in the genealogy of higher education: “The community of scholars is self-governing, and has never ceased to regard itself as such.” Nearly a half century ago, Goodman had already pinpointed the most toxic threat to this venerable tradition.

Will the community of scholars survive its present plague of administrative mentality? The ultima ratio of administration is that a school is a teaching machine [online learning is the latest iteration], to train the young by predigested programs in order to get pre-ordained marketable skills . . . Such training can, and must, dispense with the ancient communities, for they are not only inefficient but they keep erasing or even negating the lessons.

Am I living in Catch 22, or is it One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?

Monte,
I received notice that you would like LIB 301 or LIB 218 for the following classes for Spring 2010 as a special request:
SSCI 452/01
SSCI 501/501G

Unfortunately these two spaces are designated as conference and meeting rooms rather than classrooms. Without getting into detail, there is a negative impact on our state utilization data when we use these as classrooms and the fact is our room allocations do not include them. If you are looking for small seminar spaces, I suggest FHL119, FHL120, or FH L121. We would be happy to work with you on assigning one of these spaces.
Jean Alaspa
Educational Services and Special Events Director

Jean,                                                                                                                                                                                                    Please understand that you are merely the recipient of this message [my e-mail was also copied to top administrators and faculty union leaders]. I realize you are only the messenger and are not responsible for this decision. Nevertheless, the implications of your message are an affront to every teacher and academic program at the university.

The values embedded in this decision to suddenly take two precious classrooms off the grid to meet the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system’s (MnSCU) perverse notion of education should be reprehensible to the leadership of any university worthy of the name. I only ask Metropolitan State’s administrative leadership one question: whose side are you on?

Let me see if I have this right. The university is in perpetual crisis over the shortage of classroom space. This is particularly true for space appropriate for seminars—there is none on the St. Paul campus. Suddenly, we take two of these rooms out of circulation, used only episodically for meetings and left sitting empty for the vast majority of the time. Why is this? To give the illusion of space allocation efficiency.

This is an absurd shell game—we are developing well-educated citizens, not producing widgets. The space allocation policies of the MnSCU Board of Trustees, none of whom to my knowledge has ever taught a college class, result in policies and procedures that resemble the accounting system of Enron.

The tail again wags the dog. It is outrageous that MnSCU utilization data requirements dictate the use of Metro State’s classroom space. Senior seminar rooms are for seminars. Once more, bureaucratic priorities trump teaching. Are we here to help, to the best of our abilities, students learn? No, we are here to meet the cost-benefit analysis of some bean counters that were obviously sleepwalking through their own education.

I ask that every administrator receiving a copy of this e-mail tour the three rooms that Jean mentions. These large lecture classrooms are entirely inappropriate for the purpose of senior seminars. I also suggest you read the appropriate literature about the importance of space in the process of teaching and learning, particularly for seminars. If you are unfamiliar with that literature, I would be pleased to develop a reference list for you. In lieu of that, let me quote the foremost proponent of the seminar format during the last half century, Mortimer Adler:

The seminar should be the very antithesis of the ordinary classroom or lecture hall, in which the teacher or lecturer stands in front of auditors who sit in row after row to listen to what he has to say. That kind of room may be ideal for uninterrupted speech and silent listening, but it is the very opposite for good two-way talk in which everyone is both a speaker and a listener.

Educational facilities should be a means to the ends of teaching and learning; at Metropolitan State, teachers are rapidly becoming mere factotums for the ends of a bunch of Suits in the Wells Fargo Bank building who know as much about quality education as GM executives knows about quality cars.
For your edification,
Monte

Dear Monte:
Thank you for your message. When we met on Thursday afternoon and you remarked that you were about finished with indignation, I was thinking of your latest message, rather than Philip Roth’s latest book (Indignation) and rather hoped things had cooled down. But your message deserves a response and what follows was drafted, principally, by Barbara Keinath, who has a good, working knowledge of the issues involved in the situation about which you wrote. This message is sent in behalf of both Barbara and me.

Your response to Jean Alaspa (who is very clear about working with you to find appropriate space for your classes) is, in part, right on target. It is also, in part, based on an incomplete understanding of the complex relationship between the use of our current classrooms, the MnSCU Space Utilization Score, and the need for more and more kinds of classrooms.

You are on target in reminding all of the importance of the physical environment to the teaching and learning environment. A room designed only for lecturing to a large number of students does not lend itself well to a seminar course. Your quote from Mortimer Adler says it well. The desire to match the room to the pedagogical needs of the course and instructor is one we all share.

Unfortunately, we have neither the numbers nor the kinds of rooms we need to achieve that desire for every course and every instructor. Further, we operate within a larger system that has the authority-and uses it-to establish processes and measures. And that is where a better understanding of the relationship between use of classrooms, the MnSCU Space Utilization Score, and our ability to get new buildings and classrooms becomes useful.

As required of all MnSCU institutions, we have designated some rooms as classrooms, some as labs (computer, science, etc.), and some as meeting or office space. The room you requested for your courses has always been a designated meeting/conference room. Although it may sometimes have been used as a classroom, it has never been designated as such.

One of the important factors in MnSCU’s ranking of institutional requests for new buildings and classrooms is the Space Utilization Score, which is a measure of the extent to which we fill our classrooms with courses and students. Only rooms designated as classrooms are considered in the Space Utilization Score, which means that scheduling a course into a room designated as a conference room, instead of in a designated classroom, results in a lower Space Utilization Score.

A lower Space Utilization Score means, potentially, lower ranking of our requests for new buildings and classrooms and delays in new construction (e.g., the classroom/office building we have been trying to build on the site of the condemned structure on the Saint Paul Campus),  which leads to a continuation of the status quo number and kind of classrooms. Obviously, this is a simplification of a complex process, but I trust it serves to convey the notion that Metropolitan State is better served if we can improve our Space Utilization Score.

That said, and coming back to your main point, the learning environment is important. As Jean Alaspa’s message to you indicated, she would be glad to work with you to identify the best available classroom space to meet your teaching needs and your students’ learning requirements for spring semester and beyond. If you are interested in doing that, please let her know.
Thank you.
William J. Lowe
Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear Bill.
Your intuition was correct. As John Maynard Keynes might have put it, my “animal spirits” have diminished considerably since the original e-mail. Your response is a most rational and reasonable one. However, this rationality and reasonableness in response to the catch-22 that MnSCU and Governor Pawlenty have placed us in may, in fact, be the irrational compliance of a subjugated and cowed institution.

I chose the title of Joesph Heller’s novel to describe our situation with considerable forethought. One explication of the meaning of that novel’s title is as follows:

The title is a reference to a fictional bureaucratic stipulation which embodies multiple forms of illogical and immoral reasoning. That the catch is named exposes the high level of absurdity in the novel, where bureaucratic nonsense has risen to a level at which even the catches are codified with numbers.

MnSCU’s Space Utilization Score (SPS) may be, in itself, a catch that is “codified with numbers.” Even if we were to suppose that this is a rational and reasonable system, it remains impotent except as a means of punishing Metropolitan State. Let us not forget, the rationality of a bureaucracy counts for nothing when confronted with the animal spirits of the legislative process. Long before most of you were here, Governor Carlson first vetoed the building that was going to somewhat alleviate our classroom shortage. Despite our high rankings according to MnSCU’s bureaucratic stipulations, our classroom building has since been vetoed twice more. Before we engage in “happy talk” about the upcoming legislative session, remember that Gov. Pawlenty’s animal spirits toward Rep. Alice Hausman, St. Paul, and Metropolitan State show no signs of abating.

We need to exercise our own subversive creativity to overcome this catch-22. Like the Cowardly Lion, Metro State needs to overcome its fears and find the courage to fulfill our mission of teaching and learning.

MnSCU and the legislature process have held the needs of the faculty and their academic programs hostage since the mid-1990s. Enough is enough. There is nearly unlimited demand for classroom space in St. Paul. The Social Science Department is just one example: we get one classroom most nights of the week. We could easily fill three classrooms each night on this campus. Nearly every program based on the St. Paul campus would likely replicate this pattern.

Paradoxically, we have managed to take every potential seminar room off the grid. Because we have no seminar rooms, numerous non-traditional offerings are using in classrooms as traditional classes. There is still a sign outside the room on second floor of New Main that reads “Senior Seminar Room.” Ironically, administrative files fill this space. The St. Paul Room, formerly used for seminars, is empty nearly every night of the week, every week of the year. These rooms, and L218 and Lib 301, if advertised to all academic departments, would fill every night of the week. This would free up at least four other classrooms every evening.

If filling these potential seminar rooms nightly punishes us, then perhaps we are no longer in the world of Catch-22—we are actually incarcerated on a ward in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Best,
Monte

Dear Monte:
Thank you for your reply. I would have responded sooner, but, particularly at my advanced and accelerating age, it is not a simple to thing to get off my knees and back to the keyboard. You have pretty well covered the literary and theoretical waterfront, but please do not overlook Jean’s willingness to help to find an appropriate for your courses.

The classroom/office building that we are trying to get built here in Saint Paul will help to make more seminar-style rooms available. And, as you point out, the history of that project in the last couple of years has certainly not been especially encouraging. But, since you mention “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, something comes to mind about our efforts to finally get our new classroom building. Was it not McMurphy who said: “At least I tried.  At least I did that much.”

I am still working on the Cowardly Lion image.
Thanks, again, and all the best.
Subjugatedly yours
William J. Lowe
Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear Bill,
Thanks for the best belly laugh I’ve had in weeks. I do appreciate your sense of humor in these matters. Like McMurphy, I had little idea of what I was in for when I managed to get my sentence stayed by entering an insane asylum. I anticipate that in the final act my Chair, Nancy Black, will be playing the role of Chief Broom, finally putting me out of my misery and allowing life to go on as usual around here.
Best,
Monte
P.S. Perhaps while we are awaiting the state’s largesse, facilities might creatively search the inventory for two or three “designated” classrooms that could serve as seminar rooms. That will require the purchase or movement of some large oval and/or rectangular tables and the acquisition of 15-16 comfortable chairs for each room. Perhaps some of our well-appointed meeting rooms could provide such resources, replaced, of course, with some uncomfortable chairs, lined up a row. At least then no one would doze off during important staff meetings.

So it goes. (Kurt Vonnegut)

Some quixotic members of my profession have fostered an image of the public sociologist as a romantic swashbuckler—the sociologist as community organizer, public policy guru or “organic intellectual.” In an article appearing in Academic Matters and Inside Higher Ed, a Canadian sociologist suggests a more realistic alternative to these charades. Robert Brym’s “Why I Teach Intro” is an elegant endorsement of teaching as a genre of public sociology.

The truth is that most sociologists who promote these activist fantasies are wannabes. Self-delusion, however, is not limited to this discipline; these reveries are perhaps even more widespread in departments of literature and cultural studies. When I hear folks who have spent their entire adult lives in academic monasteries prattling on about organizing and advocacy, I recall Marx’s nostalgic utopia:

While in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes . . . it [is] possible for me to do one thing to-day and another to-morrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming a hunter, fisherman, shepard or critic.

Becoming a community organizer or a public policy advocate is not a hobby. Last week I spent two days meeting with legislative leaders. Over the weekend, I exchanged e-mails about legislative strategy with the Speaker of the House. Last evening I testified at a legislative town hall meeting. Yet I harbored no illusion that I was practicing a profession. I was merely being a good citizen—and, by my lights, a public sociologist. I encourage sociologists to engage in citizenship whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself. However, do not delude yourself by conflating the practice of citizenship with the practice of professional organizing.

Before becoming an academic, I spent 20 years mastering the craft of community organizing. I spent those years learning a skill set: mentoring leaders, building organizations, researching issues, developing strategies and tactics, speaking and writing for public audiences, and exercising political moxie. Drawing upon the work of the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, I now chart that half of my adult life as an experiential learning process, a slow and anxiety-ridden progression from novice to master.

Dreyfus has spent nearly 30 years refining a typology of skill acquisition that has applicability to everything from basketball and chess to professional practice and intellectual dexterity  (On the Internet, 2^nd ed.). He structures the learning process into a useful continuum of six stages. Growth is a gradual transition from rigid adherence to rules to an intuitive mode of reasoning that resembles Aristotle’s concept of “practical wisdom.”

The first three stages—novice, advanced beginner, and competence—are generally accomplished by instruction and practice. To successfully advance through these three stages requires only the limited commitment of a layperson. This first package of skill acquisition describes the civic repertoire of a reasonably competent citizen. To move through the second level of acumen—proficiency, expertise, and mastery—requires a deep allegiance to craft and an apprenticeship to one or more masters.

In other words, if you really want to be a community organizer or an “organic intellectual,” give up tenure, find a mentor or two, and embed yourself in a couple of grassroots organizations for a decade or so. If not, then perhaps a more humble definition of public sociologist is in order.

While there are a variety of venues for this modest rendition of public sociology, Michael Burawoy has identified the one skill that best suits the vast majority of sociologists seeking a more public practice: “Students are our first public.” Anyone with aspirations as a public sociologist should first dedicate themselves to the craft of teaching as a vocational calling. Dreyfus provides a useful guide for those perplexed about the requisite skill acquisition.

A professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, Brym has made a poignant case for humility when professing public sociology—becoming a masterful teacher is virtue enough.

A version of this essay first appeared in Academic Matters.

Why I Teach Intro

By Robert Brym

You probably recall that in George Orwell’s 1984 the authorities bring Winston Smith to a torture chamber to break his loyalty to his beloved Julia. Perhaps you do not remember the room number. It is 101.

The modern university institutionalizes Orwell’s association of the number 101 with torture. Faculty and students often consider introductory courses an affliction.

I suspect that colleagues award teaching prizes to 101 instructors partly as compensation for relieving themselves of the agony of teaching introductory courses—a suspicion that first occurred to me last year, when I shared an award with the University of Toronto’s Centre for the Study of Pain, much praised for its relief of suffering.

Why, then, do I teach introductory sociology? My colleagues have been too polite to remind me of the alleged downsides, but they are well known. First, teaching an introductory course is often said to be a time-consuming activity that interferes with research and writing—the royal road to prestige, promotion, and merit pay. Second, it is reputedly boring and frustrating to recite the elementary principles of the discipline to young students, many of whom could not care less. Third, the 101 instructor performs supposedly menial work widely seen as suited only to non-tenured faculty members, advanced graduate students, and other personnel at the bottom rung of the academic ladder. Although I understand these arguments, I do not find them compelling. For me, other considerations have always far outweighed them.

In particular, teaching intro solves, for me, the much-discussed problem of public sociology. Some sociologists believe that working to improve human welfare is somehow unprofessional or unscientific. They hold that professional sociologists have no business drawing blueprints for a better future and should restrict themselves to analyzing the present dispassionately and objectively. However, to maintain that belief they must ignore what scientists actually do and why they do it. Sir Isaac Newton studied astronomy partly because the explorers and mariners of his day needed better navigational cues. Michael Faraday was motivated to discover the relationship between electricity and magnetism partly by his society’s search for new forms of power.

Today, many scientists routinely and proudly acknowledge that their job is not just to interpret the world but also to improve it, for the welfare of humanity; much of the prestige of science derives precisely from scientists’ ability to deliver the goods. Some sociologists know they have a responsibility beyond publishing articles in refereed journals for the benefit of their colleagues. One example is Michael Burawoy’s 2004 presidential address to the American Sociological Association, a gloss on Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach”, in which Burawoy criticized professional sociologists for defining their job too narrowly and called for more public sociology. Still, many sociologists hold steadfastly to the belief that scientific research and public responsibility are at odds—largely I suspect, because they are insecure about whether their research is really scientific at all, so feel they must be more papist than the pope.

Setting such anxieties aside, one is left with the question of how to combine professional pursuits with public responsibility. One option is conducting research that stimulates broad discussion of public policy. Some of my colleagues study how immigration policy limits the labour market integration and upward mobility of immigrants; others how family policy impairs child welfare; and still others how tax and redistribution policies affect inequality. To the degree they engage educated citizens in discussion and debate on such important issues, they achieve balance between their professional and public roles.

I have chosen a different route to public responsibility. I have conducted research and published for a professional audience, but I have also enjoyed the privilege of addressing hundreds of thousands of members of the public over the years by teaching Sociology 101 in large lecture halls and by writing textbooks for intro students in several countries. As Orwell wrote, communicating effectively to a large audience may be motivated by aesthetic pleasure and egoistic impulses. Who among us does not want to write clear and compelling prose and to be thought clever for doing so? But in addition, one may want to address a large audience for what can only be deemed political reasons.

In 1844, Charles Dickens read his recent Christmas composition, The Chimes, to his friend William Charles Macready, the most famous Shakespearean actor of the day. Dickens later reported the reading to another friend as follows: “If you had seen Macready last night—undisguisedly sobbing, and crying on the sofa, as I read—you would have felt (as I did) what a thing it is to have Power.” I understand Dickens. I, too, relish the capacity to move and to sway a large audience to a desired end because it signifies that my influence will not be restricted to a few like-minded academics and that I may have at least some modest and positive impact on the broader society. I find most students burn with curiosity about the world and their place in it, and I am delighted when they tell me that a lecture helped them see how patterned social relations shape what they can become in this particular historical context. On such occasions I know that I have taught them something about limits and potential—their own and that of their society. Teaching intro thus allows me to discharge the public responsibility that, according to Burawoy and others, should be part of every sociologist’s repertoire.

In Marx’s words, “it is essential to educate the educators”—especially those who persist in believing that teaching intro bores, frustrates, interferes, and suits only the academic proletariat.

The careful writer is an endangered species.

The evidence is all about us: at America’s best newspapers the economic bottom line now trumps journalistic values; bloggers pollute the Internet with unedited, stream-of-consciousness musings; e-mailers and text messengers practice a staccato disregard for spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

No one is immune.

Minneapolis Star Tribune, Oct.19

Kersten rebuked

In her Oct. 15 broadside against bans on sports teams with Indian names, Katherine Kersten manages to both violate principles of sound argument and indirectly denigrate the deceased. As a columnist, she has every right to savage policies with which she disagrees. But in her typical ad hominid style of argument, Kersten gratuitously attacks a nationally respected young sociologist who is only tangentially connected to the story. She does so by mocking the titles of his books and articles, scholarly works that have nothing to do with her topic at hand.

We are all responsible for the consequences of our actions, even unintended ones. It was thus a supreme act of cosmic justice that her column appeared on the same day that the Star Tribune had a front-page obituary of Vernon Bellecourt, the man who initiated the nationwide campaign against Indian mascots.

Given her rigid mindset, she could probably never get her head around the idea that a Christian God had struck her such an ironic blow. OK, perhaps it was Karma? I look forward to a future Kersten column in which she laments the invasion of both South Asians immigrants and their alien religions of Hinduism and Buddhism.

MONTE BUTE, WOODBURY

At 7:30 a.m. on the day that my “Kersten rebuked” letter appeared, I received an e-mail from my university provost: “ad hominid?” Once the visceral flush of shame had passed, I rushed to check the editorial page. Sure enough, I had committed a malapropism.

Given the universal impulse to save face, I first gave thought to claiming intentionality–of course, Kersten’s simple-minded arguments really are ad hominid! Upon further reflection, I decided to be forthright. I contacted the Star Tribune editor so that he might as least correct the on-line version. I also asked why he had not caught and corrected my gaffe with “ad hominem.”

Actually, Monte, I did stop at it and was in the process of changing it when I thought, wait. Monte’s a smart guy. Maybe he knows something I don’t. So I did a quick search and found a couple of dozen uses of it. In hindsight, I should have checked further. But it’s one of those things: If it’s a writer I know and trust, I’m inclined to believe him, even if he’s using a term I’m not personally familiar with. I may not know every word that exists, but I sure as hell don’t know every word that DOESN’T exist.

Alas, you gave me more credit than I was due. Nevertheless, the error was mine, and mine alone. Given the probability that few read the letter, and even fewer recognized my mistake, why don’t I just let this embarrassing lapse lie? Even a parish priest needs confession. As a teacher, I profess that self-editing is the key to writing well. I counsel students that every composition, even an e-mail, deserves careful proofreading and at least a couple of drafts. I must fess up: I was in too much of a rush.

And particularly when using newly-minted prophylactics–spelling and grammar checkers, for instance–realize that these tools are neither infallible, nor do they absolve us of editorial culpability. A highlighted suggestion should not provoke an automatic click on the “change” box. Regrettably, I did not practice what I preach; when prompted, I mindlessly changed a word that I had originally spelled right. Too late, I learned that my computer’s abridged dictionary did not contain that word–and an absent word is a spell checker’s misspelled word.

How can we save this endangered species of careful writers? For my part, I will henceforth distribute this scarlet letter on the first day of every class. Perhaps then, this faux pas will be an edifying moment not just for me but for my students as well. Author, heal thyself.