Professors as Teachers

When elementary and secondary school teachers are asked what they do for a living, they typically reply, “I’m a teacher.” The usual follow-up, “What do you teach?” elicits replies such as “Second Grade,” or “Middle School,” or “English and History,” or “French and Latin.” When, on the other hand, college professors are asked what they do, they usually identify as physicists, economists, literary critics, and so on. Their primary commitment is to their discipline, not their classes.

Indeed, to many, teaching seems not a feature but a drawback of the professorial life. For instance, years ago at a meeting of the American Philosophical Association I overheard a group of graduate students responding enthusiastically as one described a position for which he had just been interviewed. “It’s a great job,” he told his friends. “There’s very little teaching, and I’ll have plenty of time for my work.” I wish someone had reminded him that, in fact, teaching was his work.

During the years I served as a provost, one of my major responsibilities was interviewing candidates for faculty positions. When I inquired about requests they might have, invariably they asked that they be allowed the lowest possible number of courses to teach. Those professors who were teaching three courses per semester hoped to be given two; those who already taught two sought to do one; those with one per semester looked for one per year. Some even expressed a desire to begin their association with our school by being awarded a sabbatical, thus allowing them the time to complete a current research project.

Along the same lines, imagine that one day you receive a notice from your Dean that as of next year all faculty members at your school will teach two fewer courses than at present. How many of your colleagues would view this news as anything other than wonderful?

Indeed, in academic jargon instructional hours are known as a “load.” Research, however, is referred to as an “opportunity.” Imagine what faculty members would think of any colleague who announced: “Good news. My research load has been reduced, and I’ll have more opportunity to teach.”

The lack of concern toward teaching was also apparent when each September my Program offered an orientation session for new doctoral students, who were asked their specialty. Those who replied with uncertainty received patronizing smiles, while the response that invariably caused derisive laughter was “I plan to teach.”

In all candor, however, that answer would have been the one I myself would have offered. I wanted to be a teacher, preferably but not necessarily at the college level. As an undergraduate I had found more success in my philosophy classes than in my other major areas of interest, including mathematics, history, political science, and musicology. Hence, I chose to enter graduate school in philosophy.

As to my planned specialty, I didn’t have one. Indeed, my earliest writing focused on the issue of fatalism, a subject about which I knew nothing when I began my graduate education. Further, my later work on philosophy of religion, the concept of happiness, and academic ethics were interests I developed after having earned my doctoral degree.

Decades later, when two of my former students, Professors Robert B. Talisse and Maureen Eckert, expressed an interest in presenting me with a Festschrift to mark the 25th anniversary of my association with the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, they asked me for an appropriate title for the book. I replied almost immediately, “A Teacher’s Life.”

To this day, when I am asked what I did for a living, I reply, “I was a teacher.” I may not be asked any subsequent questions as to what, who, or where I taught, but I take pleasure in identifying students as the primary focus of my life’s work.