Letter to Aspiring University Teachers
I assumed early on in my teaching stint that teaching is all about teaching. But as soon as I got started, people started pressuring me to finish my M.A. then my PhD. Then circa late 1990s, the institution incentivized publication and just so that you can survive on a teacher’s salary there are opportunities available in socsci to engage in contract research, consultancies and trainings.
A colleague of mine at the University once said, "Can’t I just teach?" to which another said upon learning of that remark, "Eh di dapat magturo na lang siya sa high school". [I have nothing against my friends who teach in High Schools, of course]
Early on, I realized that the University does not do a very good job of explaining to people like me what a position in the University is all about. A number of people like me entered just wanting to teach and ended up initially confused or resistant to all the myriad pressures they bring to bear on us.
It was late in the game when I had my awakening and it was only last week when I could put words to that awakening. A university is different from a teaching college in that it produces new knowledge and does not merely transmit knowledge. It was Fr. Joey Cruz who said something in a way I could understand; that new knowledge could also mean a new way of looking at things, a new way of proceeding, a new way of saying things and not necessarily a new discovery.
Last week, while listening to my U.P. teacher I also realized that someone in a University must be aware of methodologies, or ways of comprehending what is true and how to comprehend that truth. In the past, we would have said that a professor produces new knowledge using the scientific method. But today, with so many approaches beyond positivism, academics can also handle knowledge using approaches that are interpretative, constructivist, post-colonial, feminist, post-positivist, post-structuralist, post-modern, etc. Nonetheless, an academic must pick one methodology (or craft a new one or use methodologies alternatively) and run with it producing paper after paper after paper.
I realize now that what truly makes an academic is not knowledge of the field per se (although obviously that is important). Knowledge of the field plus good communication skills and classroom sociability makes you a good teacher. A good academic must know the various methodologies, what could be considered the tools of the academic trade and apply them (or apply some) with great skill. That is why we study for our M.A.s and our PhDs, not so much for the content but for the tools, the mastery of which is manifested by a thesis or a dissertation.
I look around at my colleagues and realize that the people who are respected are those who demonstrate mastery of the tools as seen in their publications. Sometimes I wish though that their works weren’t just things of academic beauty but papers that move forward discussion on development (praxis, of course, is my methodological bias).
To teach is a craft learned best by experience. But to be an academic is also a craft which involves the mastery of tools available to academics.
