ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 17, 1995 TAG: 9512150107
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TIM POLAND
THE AMERICAN poet and novelist Kenneth Patchen once wrote: "My purpose? It is nothing remarkable: I wish to speak to you." As do I. I wish simply to speak, and to speak simply, of myself and that which concerns me, often frightens me, regarding the state of higher education in our region and our state.
There was a time, not so very long ago, when even to consider that which I now confront would have been unthinkable to me. Now I can think of little else.
I am one of the fortunate people who has known from early on in life what I wanted to become - a teacher. To make my way through life, not as a guardian of knowledge who dispenses information, but rather as someone whose role is to create an environment in which curious, searching young people will encounter an affirmative space in which to learn, in which to learn how to learn, and in which to gain confidence and facility in unraveling and understanding the complexities of the often challenging and enigmatic world they inhabit.
Despite the many difficulties and detours along the way, that goal was always clearly in view. And now, after 13 years as an educator, more than seven of them at Radford University, I sit back and reflect.
I have known the long, exhausting years of graduate study and the fear that there would be no flesh left on my bones after a voracious dissertation committee finished feeding on the few shreds of meat remaining on my meager academic carcass. I have known, and relished, the ongoing process of study and scholarship that must always continue in order to keep a teacher vital, current and effective. I have known, and accepted, the drudgery that often accompanies teaching, as a necessary component of the system.
But I have also known the indescribable joy of seeing that flash of light in the eye of a student who suddenly sees the scattered and rough fragments of what had been a confusing and disjointed world connect and coalesce into comprehensible focus. For this one moment, this moment in the life of both teacher and student, all that preceded it is utterly justified. Everything was worth it.
What emanates from this moment, and continues to unfold throughout the life of both teacher and student, cannot be assessed quantitatively. It cannot be perceived in the language of short-term profit. You cannot affix a dollar amount to the ongoing benefit either to the individual student or to the community in which that student will come to reside.
You can, however, most certainly affix a dollar amount to what is necessary to create that environment in which such a moment of insight may occur. And on this score, the administration that currently occupies our statehouse, with the apparent complicity of my own university, is sadly deficient.
Admittedly, this issue is not unique to Radford, though perhaps more extreme here than in some of the better-heeled universities in our state. I can only speak to my own sphere and hope to connect with others outside my own orbit.
The current administrations, both locally and statewide, seem determined to offer a cut-rate, discount version of education based primarily on a corporate model that seeks a maximum of short-term gains with a minimum of investment. Human beings, and the quality of life they are capable of engendering both for themselves and their communities, are not ciphers to be tallied on spreadsheets. The investment in people and communities is decidedly long-term, and repays us in a more substantive and enduring tender.
You may say that I am a utopian fool. Perhaps. You may say that I am an idealist. Most certainly. I stand accused.
Meanwhile, the administrators of our higher-education system work not for the quality and depth of the educational experience our state provides to a deserving population, but rather settles for the mere warehousing of students, emphasizing the flow of inventory and disregarding the substance of the product flowing in and out of its doors.
Funding is slashed to embarrassing levels. Libraries acquire impressive new additions, but remain hollow facades, granted only a laughable and virtually useless pittance to acquire the books and materials necessary to make them the viable libraries of which their facades speak. Valuable programs that make authentic contributions to the community are eliminated or reduced to the point of expiration. Faculty salaries languish far below all averages, with no hope of an appreciable raise, leaving dedicated, productive and innovative teachers barely able to support their families and searching elsewhere for opportunity. Capable and qualified adjunct faculty, many with years of devoted service to their credit and without which a university cannot function, are summarily dismissed. Funding for systems that nurture faculty and student development, both in and beyond the classroom, are virtually eliminated, leaving teachers and students stranded in the trenches, without support.
Salaries for front-line faculty, the core of the university, stagnate. Accomplished faculty, their work and contributions devalued and unrecognized, understandably leave the state for positions that afford them a higher degree of reward and respect. Class sizes increase, making faculty little more than baby sitters, merely managing classrooms overcrowded with worthy students who cannot receive the type of instruction and attention they deserve.
I am told over and over, there "simply isn't any money," and I will be the first to admit my innocence when it comes to financial matters. Nevertheless, forgive me if I scoff rather loudly.
On the local level, there appears to be an abundance of money for the surfaces of a university while ignoring its substance. On the state level, there are apparently untold millions to lure Disney theme parks to our state and to entice with extravagant incentives the prison contractors and Wal-Mart superstores that will devastate our landscape and send their enormous profits back to corporate headquarters, leaving behind a thin film of minimum-wage jobs for a populace desperate for any kind of work.
It is a question of priorities. And I question those priorities.
Allow me to return to where I began. What did I wish to speak of to you? What is it that I found so unthinkable at one time and am now so consumed with? Doubt. I am filled with doubt where there had before been only confidence. I gaze out the window of my office onto the campus before me. I see students and faculty passing to and from classes. I see human beings passing to and from experiences that could invigorate and sustain them both. I see students longing to learn and expand their lives. I see faculty longing to teach and contribute to those lives. I see a place where the quality of work that is and could further be done by both students and faculty is shamefully matched by the lack of quality in the support provided them in their efforts.
But now I am forced to reconsider my place in this flow. Will it be possible to maintain that learning environment so necessary to these people I see, and others, given the current state of affairs?
In so many ways, I have been one of the lucky ones. I have been paid to do that which I love, have been able to make what I think to be a genuine contribution, and have never had to be ashamed of how I earn a living. Now, doubt pushes me to wonder whether I can continue. I wonder, under the unjust restraints of our time and the cynical disregard for the well-being of students and community, if my battered and beaten morale, like that of so many of my colleagues, yet retains enough strength to nurture and even to notice the flash in the eye of that student when it does ignite.
To lose that moment, to lose that to which I have devoted my career, to lose, in fact, that which is an integral part of my identity, is what I find so unthinkable. Is there too little left to go on in this place? Given what is lost, is it even possible? Will it make any difference? Must I count my losses and move on, as so many teachers finally must and will? Have I absorbed the cynicism that has so overwhelmed our academic community? I can only hope others will fight back and not succumb to the sense of despondency that I find sucking me down.
And if my part in that moment of youthful insight has, in fact, been drained from me, been driven from me, what is left behind? Resignation? Bitterness? Anger? Most likely. But more than that, much more, I am left with a paralyzing sense of sadness. Deep, deep sadness.
Tim Poland is an associate professor of English at Radford University.
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