...before I teach my final class at RIT. And for that matter, perhaps ever: I am tired of teaching part-time, and although I've been offered contracts for the fall at all three of the institutions at which I've been teaching, none of them can offer any assistance over the summer, and none of them can offer me anything other than part-time work. I don't mean to sound bitter (which is always a bad thing to preface a blog post with), but I'm tired of this, and two particular reasons come to mind. (If you're not interested, please just read the cartoons and ignore the text: you're not my students!)
First, there's this thing about supply and demand. There is a consistent demand for philosophy courses, either generated by the college itself (making one or more courses mandatory for the general ed or core curriculum) or else just by students wanting to take courses outside their majors (that they perceive to be easy, but more on that in a second). So, the demand is there. Unfortunately, the supply is also there: too many people such as myself, running around with PhDs, willing to teach at McDonald's wages (no offense to McDonald's). So the administrators squeeze where they have some leverage, and rather than hiring someone such as myself to teach full time - and please remember, there is sufficient demand! - they continue to hire adjuncts.
Second, it seems to me that fewer and fewer students are bothering with the reading, or coming to class, than when I was teaching twelve years ago; perhaps I was simply naive then, but I don't think so. That seems to be true across all three of the schools at which I've been teaching (and I may have previous linked an article that talked about a lack of preparedness among NY high school graduates - empirical evidence that I'm probably not imagining it). But it makes teaching less fun, less rewarding: I enjoy digging into a topic, having a good debate, getting a response from students. I still get this, to a certain extent, but from surprisingly few students, and it seems, fewer each quarter (here at RIT).
So, this may be the last class I ever teach, and I have some pretty mixed feelings about it. Probably more to follow in the next few weeks.
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