But discussion/disagreement can take place with books, and the dead can be right when the living are wrong. If there's some info/perspective that is so unique and it's only in the classroom, that teacher should put it in writing so it reaches more people and so that it lives on after they're dead.
Sorry but I just find this a really odd standpoint, learning requires a dialogue with people who understand the subject,that's how you develop critical skills. Like I taught myself a good chunk aesthetics and metaphysics from books but when it came to doing my own stuff I still needed someone who...
knew what they were talking about to help me develop my own arguments and test my interpretations against.
My perspective on this comes from Egyptology, an outlier field when it comes to language/linguistics. The trouble is that linguistics has not been sufficiently integrated and the typical locus of expertise -- top-flight faculty at major departments -- do not necessarily possess necessary skillsets.
A prime example is the late Robert Ritner at UChicago. Coptic is super important to reconstruction of Egyptian because it consistently marks vowels. He taught the specialized class on that, and his essay in Daniels and Bright shows he didn't understand the vowel system on a very basic level.
It's what I call "a partial crisis of epistemological authority' -- some scholars with training gaps like that occupy positions to which certain expertise is attributed, but they do not actually possess it. Again, this is an unusual situation, but "the magic of the classroom" can camouflage that.
But surely that's more an issue with an academia rather than a counter to the need for knowledgeable people? Like I agree the current system is incredibly flawed and should be replaced but I think the sudden loss of it would be incredibly detrimental.
Yes, academia's the "first resort" place to look for expertise but expertise is not identifiable with its specialists -- it's based on content command. If anything, you need *more* scholars, because small fields are prone to lasting training gaps & bad effects from off-mission actors abusing power.
The current tenure system is a huge problem. In practice, the screening for tenure can actually be screening out competition or screening for docility & complicity. You'd be better off with something like federal employment, where it's indefinite after hiring & a few years but firing for cause.
This whole "magic of the classroom" thing also seems to be a bit downstream of the current tenure system. While some of it's true, a lot is also the flattery and elevated self-conceptualizations that come along with attaining and possessing lifetime employment as the purported "best."
You have some marginal loss of efficiency and responsiveness with language teaching, and overall if positions reduce you won't have robust conversations that further knowledge. But, diss supervision hasn't been a recent priority for many UChicago profs. chicagomaroon.com/25957/viewpo...
Living teaching is def. more efficient/responsive than books. However, I also think that philologists can be prone to characterize language teaching as some sort of "sit at the foot of greatness" esoteric priesthood. Initiation with particular persons is not a valid form of intellectual authority.
I actually critique Egyptology this way at conference presentations. There's a subcultural malfunction among a subset of philologists, and it's profoundly anti-intellectual... They use these sorts of rationales to disguise training tradeoffs that have hindered needed linguistic research.
Oh don't get me wrong, I hate academia and think it mostly exists to control rather than generate knowledge, but I do think people who know their shit are necessary for learning.
Yeah, and in academia there can be abuse of power by mediocrities to hinder progress (like is mentioned in discussion of academic incivility/bullying).