Daily Blague

Is teaching a profession? I think that it is - and a vocation, too; I hate the idea of teachers who don't like what they're doing. (That's the root of the only good argument for teachers' shockingly poor compensation.) Professions necessarily have standards: practices that distinguish practitioners from laymen. The most important standard of any profession is the level of demonstrable expertise that must be attained before credentials are conferred. Next in importance is the code of conduct that members of a profession must observe. Serious violations of the code of conduct are grounds for expulsion no less forceful than carelessness or incompetence.

There may be aspects of the code of conduct that infringe upon a professional's freedom of speech. Doctors, lawyers, and clergymen are required to refrain from mentioning many things, particularly the names of people in their care. No one regards such restrictions as a derogation of the First Amendment.

I don't know anything about what they teach at teacher's college, but I'm sure that the first duty of a teacher is to teach. To teach, specifically, a particular subject matter - to impart a body of information. Learning to criticize information, and the way in which is gathered, is an essential part of any education, but one that ought to follow the acquisition of knowledge. I'm well aware that "knowledge" and "criticism" are not free-standingly distinct; to teach something is to assert that it is worth knowing, and to omit something from the curriculum is equally meaningful. But too much emphasis has been place on inquiry. Inquiry is important, but it is not everything. A completely open mind is a completely empty one.

I also believe that teaching is not a dramatic art. That's to say that teachers ought not to be playing for their students' attention and approbation. The focus in any classroom must be the material to be learned, not the behavior of the teacher. Classes ought to be compelling because they're demanding, not because they're interesting. It's for this reason that I would forbid teachers to make inflammatory remarks. By "inflammatory remark" I mean any comment that recklessly excites the passions of ignorant people.

Teaching Darwinism may excite the passions of ignorant people, but where it is done in a classroom in normal conversational language it cannot be called reckless. Publishing an essay in which financial professionals trading bonds and typing contracts are compared to the man who organized the logistics of death camps is reckless. I defy anyone to sustain the claim that Ward Churchill's by now infamous book is not deliberately inflammatory. I don't contest Mr Churchill's right to publish whatever he likes. But I don't believe that a man of such intemperate views has any business teaching.

At Common Dreams News Center, Anthony Lappé writes, "Ruffling feathers is what good professors do." Ruffling feathers is what good professors do occasionally, when a bit of ruffling is the only way to improve their students' habits of mind. Gratuitous ruffling is self-important and, where it is published, inflammatory.

There are those who will argue that, rather than censor public speech, we must enlarge the understanding of the public. Something like this was clearly in the minds of the authors of the First Amendment; informed, intelligent people will give rubbish the treatment it deserves. But while I agree that we must do whatever we can to enlarge the general public's understanding of affiars, we must also acknowledge that it is sore need of enlargement. Reckless speech has had a way, recently, of inducing genocide, as witnessed in Bosnia and Rwanda. You can't get much more reckless than by provoking or ignoring the passions of ignorant people. Freedom of speech is not unqualified: crying "Fire" in a crowded theatre will get you arrested.