[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Killing academic creativity

[Alexander, Peter]

This use of Foucault becomes a long-winded way of moaning and doing nothing. Time to mobilise! Left academics in Gauteng have established a Higher Education Crisis Committee, and are building for a national workshop on 15 March in Jo'burg. The aim is to involve students, non-academic staff, education experts, trade unionsists and others, as well as academics, and we are already beginning to have some success. If you'd like to get involved, write to Kezia at the address in the CC line.
 
Peter 

________________________________

From: debate-bounces at debate.kabissa.org on behalf of MFleshman at aol.com
Sent: Tue 1/29/2008 7:21 AM
To: debate at debate.kabissa.org
Subject: Re: [DEBATE] : (Fwd) Killing academic creativity




O pity the poor oppressed professor workers.

In a message dated 1/28/2008 11:51:52 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
pbond at mail.ngo.za writes:

Bert  Olivier (Nelson Mandela Univ)
www.thoughtleader.co.za

University  audits: A panoptical theatre of the absurd?

With virtually all my  colleagues shaking in their boots, so to speak, in
the face of an  impending double audit at our university this year - one
internal, in  preparation for the other, external one, later in the year
- and my own  instinctive as well as not-so-instinctive (philosophically
informed)  response being one of immediate suspicion, it is time to
reflect on this  bogeyman of South African universities.

In his book Discipline and  Punish, the French philosopher Michel
Foucault gave us a genealogy of  modes of punishment, contrasting the
punitive practices of the pre-modern  era with those of the modern. While
the pre-modern was characterised by  blood, gore and spectacle (through
drawing and quartering, for instance -  recall William Wallace's
execution in Braveheart), to scare off would-be  offenders by example,
the modern form of discipline has turned out to be  far more effective,
by insidiously inculcating in people a kind of  internalised discipline,
by means of which they ultimately learn to  discipline themselves.

One of the most effective means of doing so has  been various
"panoptical" practices, a name that derives from the "ideal"  prison -
the Panopticon - imagined by Jeremy Bentham in the 19th century,  where
prisoners' cells would be arranged in circular form, with a central 
tower from which wardens would have optical access to each cell, and 
every prisoner would know it. Understandably, the awareness of such 
constant surveillance on the part of prisoners would have the effect, on 
pain of severe penalties, to behave in a "disciplined" fashion.

It  is easy to recall fictional counterparts to this panoptical procedure
-  the Sharon Stone thriller Sliver comes to mind, where a New York
high-rise  apartment block turns out to be the electronic surveillance
counterpart of  Bentham's Panopticon, with similar "disciplinary"
purposes in mind. Or  think of The Net, with Sandra Bullock, as a
reminder of the postmodern  panoptical surveillance techniques that
virtually control our official  identities.

But panopticism, as Foucault calls it, is not restricted to  fiction; it
is very real, and all around us. Every time you slow down  instinctively
when the lights of an oncoming car flash, to avoid being  speed-trapped,
you are succumbing to panopticism. For academics like  myself, one of its
most invidious manifestations is the much-dreaded  university audit. And
I stress "like myself" because I love teaching and  doing research (that
is, reading, thinking and writing, with a view to  publishing in academic
journals, which I do regularly) - something which  cannot be said of all
academics.

For many of them, it is just a  job, a way of earning a living, and for
such "academics" the dreaded audit  is just another administrative schlep
among others.

The vast  majority of academics don't read philosophy or an equivalent
critical  discipline (such as literary or psychoanalytic theory), of
course, so they  lack the critical means to reflect on and judge
panoptical practices such  as audits in an informed manner.

But are audits really panoptical  practices intent on disciplining the
people who have to submit to them?  Yes. Think of it this way: academics
have two fundamental functions,  namely teaching and research, and if
they are worth anything as academics,  they will teach on the basis of
their research (while teaching often has a  reciprocal cross-fertilising
effect on research as well), otherwise their  teaching becomes arbitrary.

Of course, a minimal amount of  administration always accompanies one's
teaching at undergraduate as well  as postgraduate level, such as writing
course outlines, marking,  calculating percentages, getting student
feedback and so on; that's par  for the course, and one readily accepts
it as the mostly boring stuff you  have to do to be able to indulge
yourself with the really exciting stuff,  like sharing the wonderful
thoughts of Gilles Deleuze or Julia Kristeva  with your students.

But the advent of "audits" has created this third  "thing", the QA
(quality assurance) file, or box, which would still be OK  if it only
contained the (to my mind minimalist) course outlines and so  forth that
one routinely writes and distributes among students (the real  energy
being reserved for the important, difficult, but exciting work).  But
this is not sufficient: the QA department - the university counterpart 
of SAQA - has to justify its existence somehow, and therefore a 
suffocating avalanche of forms to be completed descends on  academics.

I need not go into the detail - it probably differs in the  minutiae from
university to university - but what these measures all have  in common is
that they consist of some form of panoptical commentary (by  lecturers)
on the two fundamental functions that we have, namely teaching  and
research - it is neither of these, nor does it relate directly to  one's
teaching as a necessary way of keeping records, and so on. It is a  form
of window-dressing, of self-aggrandisement (or at least the  opportunity
to engage in it), of irrelevant, time- and energy-consuming  description
of what it is one is supposed to do as academics, but can no  longer do
because of the colonisation, if not invasion, of one's precious  time by
these truly panoptical practices.

Why panoptical? Because  they do not enhance teaching and research one
iota. All they achieve is to  "discipline" academics by ordering them to
fall in the same line by  conflating standards and standardisation. In
fact, they systematically  undermine the work that academics are supposed
to be doing by turning them  into glorified clerks. I know what
supporters of university audits would  retort, however, in the
unmistakable discourse of bureaucracy: "Audits are  a way of assuring
quality teaching and research at universities." Yawn ...  wrong. For
quality to be maintained - or better, improved - lecturers  should be
encouraged not to fill in forms endlessly and mindlessly, thus  wasting
precious energy, but to do everything possible to get to know  their
disciplines and students better.

In fact, the only proper  quality "audit" (although a new word would be
necessary to describe this)  would be for representatives of SAQA to come
and sit in our lectures,  unannounced, at unpredictable times, and see
the way we teach and read our  research. I, for one, would welcome that -
perhaps they would learn  something valuable in the process.

But I'll bet they would be in for a  shock - students often share with me
their frustration with lecturers who  simply read from prescribed
textbooks in class, or insist on verbatim  reproduction of passages from
such books in tests, instead of opening  things up for debate in class,
encouraging student participation and so  on. The same so-called
lecturers, however, may come across as very  impressive if they complete
the required audit forms with the same  pedantic but irrelevant
fastidiousness - they would be very good at  window-dressing.

Although some may argue that the practice of  university audits is
well-intentioned (I have my doubts - it smacks too  much of an attempt at
exercising optimal control over universities on the  part of government),
its overall effect is therefore detrimental to  university practice,
which should be aimed (as I have argued before) at  the cultivation of
critical thinking abilities on the part of students by  lecturing staff
whose primary functions are acknowledged as being teaching  and research,
instead of submitting to stultifying bureaucratic  measures.

And incidentally, while (as stated earlier) no lecturer could  function
properly without a minimum amount of administration of his or her 
lecturing and research practice, there is a fundamental difference 
between administration and bureaucracy.

At universities,  administrative networks are supposed to serve the core
functions of the  university, namely teaching and research, instead of
the  reverse.

Bureaucracy is what happens if administration occupies the  position of
raison d'être, the be-all and end-all, of the university,  where
lecturing staff are coerced, panoptically, into serving the  monstrous
bureaucratic machine, in Kafkaesque fashion, ultimately  relinquishing
their own intellectual and scientific function. It happens  when the tail
starts wagging the dog. This is a perversion of what  universities should be.

The large number of resignations at South  African universities in recent
years attests to the unbearable pressure  that increased bureaucratic
rule has brought - and I don't say this  speculatively; many colleagues
who have resigned or retired early have  explicitly referred to
bureaucracy as a cardinal reason for  leaving.

Hence, it should be abundantly clear to so-called  "authorities" --
so-called, because, with the Enlightenment philosopher  Immanuel Kant, I
agree that the only ground for accepting authority is  superior
knowledge, and I see scant signs of superior knowledge on the  part of
the "authorities".

Besides, in the process of  bureaucratising our lives, they reveal their
lamentable lack of historical  knowledge - does one have to remind anyone
who claims to be "educated"  that it was Stalin's rigid bureaucratic
regime that nearly destroyed  Russia?

Bureaucracy kills creativity, healthy dissent and debate,  inventiveness
and the true spirit of democracy. And if dumped on  universities like a
cloud of sleep-inducing gas, no one should be  surprised if truly
creative teaching and research eventually fade or even  disappear. I hope
the "authorities" come to their senses; unless they do,  we can forget
about ever becoming one of the leading nations in the  world.



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