Honored but Invisible: An Inside Look at Teaching in Community Colleges

Rating:
Summary: A must read for people attending a Community College!
Review: An excellent book that exposes the truth about learning instutions that advertise themselves those who "put the highest priority on teaching". Honored But Invisible shows how Community Colleges really place little regard in the quality of instruction and instead, place the greatest emphasis on increasing enrollment. The lowering of standards in order to achieve this goal is not a concern. Affirmative action also is given too much priority in the hiring processes. The sad thing is, that once these instructors are hired, it takes only 4 years to receive tenure, (unlike a 4-year university where it takes 7 years)and then it is almost impossible to get rid of them.

Rating:
Summary: A must read for people attending a Community College!
Review: An excellent book that exposes the truth about learning instutions that advertise themselves those who "put the highest priority on teaching". Honored But Invisible shows how Community Colleges really place little regard in the quality of instruction and instead, place the greatest emphasis on increasing enrollment. The lowering of standards in order to achieve this goal is not a concern. Affirmative action also is given too much priority in the hiring processes. The sad thing is, that once these instructors are hired, it takes only 4 years to receive tenure, (unlike a 4-year university where it takes 7 years)and then it is almost impossible to get rid of them.

Rating:
Summary: A very good book on an invisible field
Review: I teach client-server computing, Visual Basic and logic and critical thinking at DeVry part-time. Opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This is an excellent book on teaching in schools who proclaim themselves as "teaching institutions" but which in actuality deliver a range of teaching quality, from very good to almost unspeakably bad.

Many teachers at community colleges, rightfully concerned about their students' employment prospects, confuse understanding with support of a hegemonic ideological program. That is: in computer training at the community college level, it is a "bad" student who questions the use of all computation to make a profit (rather than, say, conform to health and safety laws.) Grubb and Ellis recognize that understanding is critical understanding and they raise questions, for example about uncritical support of the Internet, that need to be raised at community colleges.

Because of this, some readers may decide that Grubb et al. are "left wing" with an "ideological program." Well, perhaps they are. Many community colleges overemphasize the ideological program of business and produce people who lack needed technical training, but compensate for this by an uncritical support for the corporation.

This may be, in turn, healthy for people who are entering community college so alienated from business that they can't get to work on time or dress appropriately. Their anger at real injuries done to them may have produced their dysfunctional behavior, and if it takes reading USA Today to correct this, fine. But at this point the quality of technical and general education suffers because of overemphasis on "employability", and when students are presented with ideas for their own sake, they tune out, saying "this will not help me get a job."

Grubb and Ellis seem not to see the anti-intellectualism that is rampant at community colleges. You cannot ask a former welfare Mom, working three jobs, to read a book for its own sake (but you can point out that reading is a way to spend time on public transit.) But too many instructors (who themselves have low self-esteem because they wind up at two year institutions) give up at this point and try, with limited success, to ally themselves with the students. Computer instructors, for example, refer to areas of computer science of which they are not informed as "not important" in cases where they do not know whether the area is important.

It is better, and Grubb and Ellis recommend doing this, to willingly adopt the role of "professor." Students don't want an ally they want a mentor, and students at "good" schools have this. The risk is that the instructor who "adopts a pose" of respect for intellect will be isolated, not so much by students, but by fellow instructors who have given up on their students.

Grubb and Ellis recommend collective solutions to this problem and alliance building. This reduces the isolation of the teacher who finds herself teaching (to use one example) remedial reading in a computer class.

I recommend this book to any teacher at a community or career-oriented school as a way of bettering his or her teaching style.