While Zizek's behavior is reprehensible, especially given that his
teaching duties are almost certainly minimal, it is not uncommon that when
teachers get burned out, they start to take short cuts. These are often
indirectly encouraged by the administration which cuts funding for teaching,
takes on too many students for the faculty, rewards easy teachers who give
high grades, etc. Teachers start to give micky mouse tests, reduce
readings, cut short their classes, take days off, etc. Avoiding students
is a common enough short cut.
Of course, a basic problem is that tenure often enough has little to do
with teaching well. Disdain for the undergraduates is an occupational
disease.
Michael Yates
Response Jim C: Absolutely true. I am ever
mindful that being tenured, I have some degrees of freedom in my own
work--sometimes--that few people have in their own work situations. I am
always mindful that abuses of tenure provoke reactions to eliminate tenure
which is exactly what the right-wingers want.
I am also mindful at all times of the
sacrifices that students are making and must make and that they are paying
dearly and count on me to be ready to rock n' roll in and out of the
classroom. But I am also mindful that I have x amount of
physical/emotional/compassion energy that must be rationed so that some of the
obvious punks, deadbeats, flakes, posturers, players and just plain preppy
punks (like Bush) do not crowd out the truly deserving and/or get with the
program to be among the truly deserving of extra attention and
care.
I know that my students (who were assigned
Michael's book "Naming the System" as soon as it came out and still are) were
so taken that the author of one of their texts would care enough to come and
talk with them and answer their questions. I told them I only met one of the
author's of one of my texts when I was in school--and he was a total asshole
and pompous narcissist. Every one of my students had read Michael's book
cover-to-cover within two weeks without any prompting by me and not one, I
mean not one, ever asked me if the content would be on the tests or what to
focus on in the book; it was truly inspiring and a testimony to the clarity,
engaging writing style and content in Michael's book.
Those who hold these scarce and
potentially influencial positions in academia must always remember that
without those students, such positions--their jobs--would not exist. Beyond
that, there is simply the mandate for all self-described radicals: serve those
in need of help or get out of the way.
Jim C.