February 21 , 2006
NEWSSB 1331: Pro or con, no wiggle on this fence
The balance between academic freedom and student choice hangs precariously. A Senate bill in the Arizona Legislature may tip the scales toward the student, but against the freedom of professors.
“I’ve always been a proponent of choice,” said Sen. Thayer Verschoor an East Valley legislator. Verschoor is one of 20 sponsors of Senate Bill 1331.
The bill states that a student can refuse to participate in any, “course, coursework, learning material or activity” on the basis that it is “personally offensive” according to that student’s “beliefs or practices in sex, morality or religion.” The bill also states that a student who makes an objection must be provided with an alternative course, or material “without financial or academic penalty.”
“It just strikes me as educationally unsound to try to do this,” said William Mullaney.
Mullaney is the division chair of language and humanities at Chandler-Gilbert Community College. The bill came to be partly because of the complaints of one Mullaney’s students. The student objected to reading “The Ice Storm.”
“They brought this book to us, it’s called ‘The Ice Storm,’” Verschoor said. “This was crude and vulgar offensive material that was gutter-mouth type language, and I hope that’s not reflective of our institutions of higher learning.”
Mullaney said he has taught for two years using the book and had not received any other complaints.
However, the issue of students objecting to coursework is not new.
According to Verschoor, the Senate receives complaints about offensive class material every year.
Larry Christiansen, president of MCC, said questioning teaching methods is not bad. He is however, opposed to government legislating education.
“Curriculum and the strategies that they use in evolving courses always should be a topic of discussion and question,” Christiansen said. “So the idea of question is not a bad thing. The idea of legislating practice is a thing that I feel would be harmful to our institution.”
“The faculty has, as a responsibility, to develop and own the curriculum that is a part of our colleges,” Christiansen said.
Mullaney believes the bill is poorly worded and would cause problems in the classroom.
“The way it’s written it just would make class so unworkable,” Mullaney said. “So much of what we do is group work and cooperative learning. If you have students objecting to various assignments, readings, and providing these alternative assignments, it would create chaos in the classroom.”
Mullaney said that many of the assignments given allow students to work with each other and respond to different ideas. Students choosing to work from different material wouldn’t allow for group work or class discussion.
Maria Hesse, president of CGCC, said that one of her concerns is the ambiguous wording of the bill. It would allow a student to continuously reject books or activities.
“I’m opposed to it,” Hesse said, speaking of the bill.
`“They would have to lay out the reasons why they find that personally offensive,” Verschoor countered. “I suppose everything is open to abuse, but it would be of my mind that that would happen on a rare occasion.”
In this case Verschoor’s concern was with choices already provided to the student who could have dropped the class, but it was part of a Presidential Scholarship program and dropping would have resulted in a lost scholarship.
“You start putting people into a situation where their choices are bad and worse,” Verschoor said, “We shouldn’t be putting people into that kind of situation.”
“What I don’t like about this is that it disregards this whole idea of academic freedom,” Mullaney said, “which basically says that I’m the expert in the field and I put a lot of thought into the materials I choose to achieve the course goals.”
Verschoor disagreed.
“If that’s the type of material they need for academic freedom that’s not the kind of material that I believe is college material. That’s not what I believe academic freedom is supposed to be about.”
In a meeting Hesse had with Verschoor and Reps. Andy Biggs and Russell Pearce, she agreed there was room for improvement in the educational system but disagreed with legislating teaching methods and learning material. Hesse said that the professors “still have academic freedom and we stand by it.”
“I have a Ph.D. in lit. I know what’s out there. I feel that I have earned the right to make the best choices for my students,” Mullaney said.