Read this article by Rinaldo Walcott and write a critical review of at least 500 words.
Article
During the coronavirus, academics have found themselves in a
crisis of their work
Rinaldo Walcott: After decades of pushback, the move to online
teaching has been swift. It's time for academics in the humanities
and social sciences to step out of the virtual classroom and into
the community.
By Rinaldo Walcott
April 15, 2020
This is part of a series of essays from Canadian authors on the
coronavirus and how it affects our lives.
Rinaldo Walcott is professor of Black diaspora cultural studies at
the University of Toronto. His research cuts across the humanities
and social sciences.
COVID–19 has placed modern work in crisis. More than anything, the
crisis has pointed to the unnatural nature of modern work. In
contemporary late modern society work is one of those unifying
forces that binds us together. But even more importantly, work has
become the means through which human survival and reproduction now
appears to be hinged. Work as individual self-worth has been
proffered as the most fundamental way to contribute to the
collective well-being of a modern society.
But work and its rank status in the order of jobs, with some jobs
considered more important than others, is a problem for our society
too. The nature of our work and its compensation, has impacts on
health, material experiences of life and social status, including
who might survive COVID-19. And of course, there have always been
those among us many who are incapable of working.
We have replaced the human instinct and impulse for survival with
work as the only way to survive. Indeed, work now stands in for the
totality of what surviving meant to our ancestors and its meaning
exists well beyond the reproduction of human life; the meaning of
work is primarily connected to the reproduction of monetary
wealth.
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In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, academics have been adamant
about getting their work done—writing articles, books, teaching and
catching up on overdue activities. In my view this is wrong. I
think now is the time for academics to be practicing a public
pedagogy where humanists and social scientists engage the public
beyond the university in what it means to be human.
Over the last decades we have seen the humanities and social
sciences come under attack from numerous forces as not worthy of
their status in our universities, and now is a time to prove those
claims incorrect. Instead, academics and their managers have taken
a decidedly different route. In a rush to practice physical
distancing, most post-secondary institutions in North America
shifted to online teaching. It was a stunning and swift move, and
one that most of us would not have imagined before it actually
occurred.
I have found this quick switch to online teaching as well as the
claims of furthering productivity by writing books and articles
maddening and unthoughtful. In this moment, some academics need to
work (the microbiologists); others not so much (the Medievalists).
So what are these claims to work all about then? Currently,
academics are professing their love of teaching and their students
as fundamental to their identity, and while such emotive claims are
admirable, most teachers are not trained to offer the kinds of
therapeutic practices that might be required right now.
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Furthermore, students who are impacted in various ways by the
crisis might find it difficult to continue as though things have
not been absolutely turned upside down. Can most of our students be
fully attentive in online classes? Many were not able to prior to
the crisis given their multiple jobs, family arrangements, mental
health and other health issues. If as academics we were not
attentive to those issues in the face-to-face classroom, can we
magically be attentive to them online? For these academics then,
work is doing something else: COVID-19 unravels work.
In the current situation, some forms of work matter less. For many
academics, the fear that what they do might appear to matter less
in the aftermath of the crisis underwrites their affective and
emotive responses to teaching during coronavirus. Academics find
themselves in a crisis of their work; a crisis of the meaning for
their labour. And the desire to keep going is a buttress against
that fear of not mattering. Now more than ever, we must forcefully
demonstrate why we matter so powerfully to the society we have
helped to make by refusing to pretend that what we do is so easily
transferable.
For at least a decade or more, faculty in universities and colleges
have argued that online teaching required not only special skills
but an entirely different approach to course material delivery. And
as they made that case they won concessions from education
authorities who placed online teaching in a special pedagogical
bracket. With coronavirus, those cautions disappeared
immediately.
MORE: What the Gulf War taught me about coronavirus
This swift transformation might mean a change to post-secondary
education from which there will be no return. There exists a latent
desire for education to be commercialized and forced online. The
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and their spectacular flameout
was a significant attempt not long ago, but this rush to online
teaching has returned and has dreadful possibilities to
education.
Academics, especially those in the humanities and social sciences
have been given an opportunity in this crisis to show what really
matters: that civics, social good and ethical considerations, the
foundations of an excellent liberal arts education, is what makes
us who we are and is the core of what we might become.
Instead, we largely chose to perform a false and faulty notion of
care, endangering the entire educational enterprise and leaving it
open to commercialization. Goldman Sachs already put out a memo on
the possibilities of online education for its investors. Should
those wishing to commercialize education in the aftermath of this
crisis succeed, academics will have to take a significant amount of
responsibility for the outcome, since years of resistance to online
teaching crumbled in two weeks without debate or union protest in
universities.
Now is the time when the humanities and social sciences can
demonstrate that critical thinking, ideas and practices of care,
community-making, understanding culture are the social practices of
everyday life. Who better to teach these values than those who have
spent their adult lives studying, researching and writing about the
meaning of human life? Now is the time for academics to step out of
the ivory tower and into the community.
Read this article by Rinaldo Walcott and write a critical review of at least 500 words. ...
Read this article by Rinaldo Walcott and write a critical review of at least 500 words. Article During the coronavirus, academics have found themselves in a crisis of their work Rinaldo Walcott: After decades of pushback, the move to online teaching has been swift. It's time for academics in the humanities and social sciences to step out of the virtual classroom and into the community. By Rinaldo Walcott April 15, 2020 This is part of a series of essays from...
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