Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 12, 1995                   TAG: 9505120005
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-21   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LARRY SHUMSKY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

WITH TENURE, MORE IS AT STAKE THAN JOB SECURITY

Tenure is much more than "a measure of job security for those faculty who can earn it," as one recent columnist wrote. In fact, tenure does not exist solely for the benefit of faculty members who receive it.

Tenure exists to protect education in a free society. It helps to guarantee academic quality and the integrity of education at any level - not only at colleges and universities but also at public schools whose teachers also can earn tenure. Tenure does this by promising that faculty are free to teach their disciplines as they believe them to be true, regardless of the prevailing political climate or fleeting fads in public opinion. And it does this in the only way possible - by giving teachers job security of a kind that enables them to teach their subjects accurately and to show all of their complexities, without being intimidated by the power of administrators nor constantly anxious about being fired for some trumped-up reason.

Our educational system and our educational institutions are absolutely dependent upon the existence of competent, professional and independent teachers who feel free to teach the truth - as they define it - without being subject to popular political or social whims.

To understand this better, it is essential to recognize that most knowledge is not absolute and is subject to constant questioning and re-evaluation. That process of ongoing reconsideration is the dominant force that pushes forward the development and acquisition of knowledge and students' ability to think for themselves. However, that involves examining and questioning the prevailing orthodoxies, standards and beliefs of any society. If that challenge is stifled, new ideas cannot emerge, intellectual progress cannot occur, and citizens cannot learn how to think independently.

This is true in both the humanistic and scientific disciplines. Many ideas now commonly accepted were once revolutionary, including Galileo's astronomy and his notion that the sun, and not the Earth, is the center of the universe; Freud's proposition that human beings have an unconscious mind that guides behavior without their knowledge; and even Columbus's belief that the Earth is round, not flat. Similar ideas exist today and provoke heated debate - Darwin's theory of evolution, Marx's theories of economic determinism and Thor Heyerdahl's theories about cultural transmission, just to mention a few.

We don't know the fate of those ideas - or any others - in 10 years, or 100 years, or 1,000 years. Some parts of what we now accept will probably still be accepted, but other ideas of ours will almost certainly be discredited; some ideas that are controversial are likely to be embraced, and others will no doubt be shunned.

What we do know, however, is that the development and evaluation of ideas requires an educational system in which faculty can present a range of ideas and are inspired to teach students how to judge those ideas and conclude which to accept and which to reject. Without such a system, knowledge is static, rigid and never develops in new directions - and citizens are sheep.

To avoid this, faculty must be protected. Unless they are extraordinarily courageous, far fewer faculty will teach new ideas, present new concepts and propose new ways of thinking without protection. To teach this way is to challenge what the majority accepts and what constituted authority wants children to learn and to know. Without real, widely accepted and acknowledged safeguards, only some of our professors and teachers will have the bravery and determination to make the gamble. That is the reason for tenure and why it is so important. It shields teachers from attacks based on how they teach their disciplines.

Many of us can remember one of the most surprising series of events that occurred in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union after the communist regimes collapsed several years ago. Public schools and universities in those countries suddenly experienced a severe shortage of textbooks and other teaching materials. Why? Because faculty had no confidence in, and would no longer use, textbooks that the communist governments had provided and required to be assigned.

Unbeknownst to their students, faculty at all levels of the educational system had been teaching material that they themselves did not believe and did not consider correct. But the power of the government was so great that teachers did what they were told because of worry about their jobs and financial security, and because of concern for their personal safety and that of their families. Without tenure, they had no job security, and without job security, they could not teach viewpoints that the government opposed, regardless of their own convictions.

This might seem like a far-fetched analogy to the situation in the United States, but it is not so far afield. Throughout our history, teachers and other educators have been subject to outside control, have not always been able to teach what they believe is correct, and have worried about what material they could present safely.

In our own time (at least in mine), a number of examples leap to mind. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, American involvement in the Vietnam War made American militarism, imperialism, foreign policy and pacifism controversial subjects that many teachers and professors avoided. At about the same time, several professors began writing and teaching about the relationship between race and intelligence, a subject that has recently been raised once again. Not only were their theories denounced, but they were personally subjected to political pressure and vilified, and so were the universities where they taught.

In the last decade, faculty across the country in almost every conceivable discipline have been forced to be politically correct as they consider what subjects they will teach and how to present them.

Just within the last year, Congress has been the scene of an intense struggle over the national history standards that were prepared by a large, representative group of respected historians and educators, and which have been attacked both for what they include and what they exclude from the proposed national history curriculum. And within the last few months, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., has been condemned because of its proposed exhibit on the dropping of atomic bombs at the end of World War II.

The point is that none of these subjects can be presented neutrally or in a way that is value-free. As a result, the attack can come from either end of the social and political spectrum, and faculty can be threatened and attacked either from the left (American involvement in Southeast Asia, race and intelligence, political correctness) or the right (the national history standards, the NASA exhibit). The very decision about what to teach and what not to teach involves making moral decisions about what matters. The very words that we use contain values that are inescapable and put faculty at risk.

An easy example is the arrival of Europeans in North America during the 1500s and 1600s. Are we going to talk about the discovery, colonization and settlement of North America, as is traditionally done? Or, are we going to use a different perspective, and a different terminology, and discuss the invasion, conquest, subjugation and exploitation of North America and its population by Europeans? From the point of view of the Pequod tribe, I have no doubt about which presentation would be preferable, but both interpretations would discuss exactly the same events - and a teacher would have to decide which vocabulary to use in class.

One would be perfectly acceptable and noncontroversial to the majority of residents of the United States today. The other would raise some eyebrows, generate at least some controversy, and could become an issue in legislative chambers and in capital cities across the country (not to mention on local school boards). How many faculty would be willing to risk school-board inquiries, much less a legislative investigation of their teaching, if they had no guarantees and protections? Tenure is the crucial guarantee and the essential protection.

I am not arguing that tenure is a perfect system. It is not. It can be abused. It sometimes provides a lifetime job for faculty who do little or nothing after receiving it. Sometimes the tenure process can be used to prevent a teacher from keeping a job. Fortunately, such cases occur less frequently than the media and public opinion would suggest. More than that, as tenure becomes more difficult to earn because of diminishing university resources and because of the higher standards that are being demanded of candidates for tenure, the number of unqualified or incompetent faculty is diminishing. I should also point out that the truly incompetent or immoral are not protected by tenure and have been fired in the past. The less qualified receive lower pay raises and, over the years, can fall behind their peers in salary.

But, in some ways all of that is beside the point. No system is perfect, and all systems have unintended consequences. In the case of tenure, few candidates whose credentials are less than ideal do slip through the I would strongly argue that the flaws, regrettable as they are, must be accepted in a free society. They are the price we pay for a system that helps preserve educational and intellectual honesty and freedom in our schools and colleges.

Larry Shumsky is president of the Virginia Tech Faculty Senate.