Academic institutions structurally reward conventional teaching and punish engaged pedagogy

Evidence

My commitment to engaged pedagogy is an expression of political activism. Given that our educational institutions are so deeply invested in a banking system, teachers are more rewarded when we do not teach against the grain. The choice to work against the grain, to challenge the status quo, often has negative consequences. And that is part of what makes that choice one that is not politically neutral. In colleges and universities, teaching is often the least valued of our many professional tasks. It saddens me that colleagues are often suspicious of teachers whom students long to study with. And there is a tendency to undermine the professorial commitment of engaged pedagogues by suggesting that what we do is not as rigorously academic as it should be. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 403

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses/qualifies the ch3 theme that professors can espouse liberatory theory while practicing domination — here the institution itself punishes liberatory teaching practice. — connects to: Departmental overloading of popular professors covertly undermines engaged teaching — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 404; Genuinely engaged teaching exhausts the spirit and demands structural support — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 402; Teacher-proofing curricula reduce experienced teachers to semi-skilled low-paid workers (+16 more)

Broader Connections

• Academic success can neutralize critical projects into received knowledge #expands (0.78)
• Academic success can convert a political-intellectual project into a depoliticized abstraction #expands (0.78) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 127