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What should be the role of our institutions of higher
education? To promote good moral character? To bring an end to racism,
sexism, economic oppression, and other social ills? To foster diversity
and democracy and produce responsible citizens?
In Save the World On Your Own Time , Stanley
Fish argues that, however laudable these goals might be, there is but one
proper role for the academe in society: to advance bodies of knowledge and
to equip students for doing the same. When teachers offer themselves as
moralists, political activists, or agents of social change rather than as
credentialed experts in a particular subject and the methods used to
analyze it, they abdicate their true purpose. And yet professors now
routinely bring their political views into the classroom and seek to
influence the political views of their students. Those who do this will
often invoke academic freedom, but Fish argues that academic freedom,
correctly understood, is the freedom to do the academic job, not the freedom to do any job
that comes into the professor's mind. He insists that a professor's only
obligation is "to present the material in the syllabus and introduce
students to state-of-the-art methods of analysis. Not to practice
politics, but to study it; not to proselytize for or against religious
doctrines, but to describe them; not to affirm or condemn Intelligent
Design, but to explain what it is and analyze its appeal."
Given that
hot-button issues such as Holocaust denial, free speech, and the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict are regularly debated in classrooms across
the nation, Save the World On Your Own
Time is certain to spark fresh debate-and to incense both liberals
and conservatives-about the true purpose of higher education in America.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. The Task
of Higher Education
2. Do Your
Job
3. Administrative Interlude
4. Don't
Try to Do Someone Else's Job
5. Don't
Let Anyone Else Do Your Job
6. Higher
Education Under Attack
7. A
Conclusion and Two Voices from the Other Side
Selected Bibliography
Index |
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