As an education major, I like to think that in the past four years here at Brooklyn College, I’ve learned a little something about the world of education and what it should be like. And being an honor’s student with a 3.8 GPA, I also like to think that I’ve come away with a decently rounded idea of what a good teacher is, the different ways they can implement their pedagogy, and the effectiveness they have on their students. I’ve been exposed to Professors who can barely remember their own name and Professors who remember my name four semesters later. I’ve had Professors who have taught me as best they can; who have truly showed that they care and I’ve had Professors who come into the classroom totally unprepared and unwilling to help anytime outside of their office hours. I’ve had the opportunity to be in classrooms filled with intelligent and well thought out lectures and discussions and I’ve also been in rooms where the text book would have done a better job at teaching if it could stand up and speak. I’ve seen both sides of the teaching spectrum here at Brooklyn College and to think that the Professor who holds my highest regard is being denied tenure and asked to leave come the end of his contract disgusts me. Year after year I’ve sat at my desks in the education department and year after year I’ve received the same lecture at least once from every Professor in it. And when they said that the most important thing that you must remember when you become a teacher yourself is to not let the politics and bureaucracy of the world of education effect you as an educator, I believed this to be possible; however, my beliefs have now swayed. For when someone who puts his whole heart into what he does, someone who goes out of his way to help anyone who needs it, someone who is truly brilliant and knows how to clearly relay his intelligence onto his students, someone who has published many times by the age of thirty-five is asked to leave Brooklyn College for, in its most basic form, a difference in opinion; I can longer sit back and trust that a good education is coming to me here and that the same kind of situation won’t happen to me when I become a teacher myself. What is happening is a true contradiction to learning. It is true that I may not know all the minuscule details of the Johnson situation but I do know what it means to be an arresting educator and I cannot simply let one of the best be taken for granted and then tossed out with the garbage.
Everyone who has taught and taught well, has experienced that light bulb moment when one or two or maybe all of your students say, “aha, I get it; I know what you are trying to tell me; you make sense to me.” And anyone who has had this happen to them cannot deny that it is the reason you continue to walk into that classroom everyday. You yearn for comprehension; you delight in understanding and you hope among many other hopes that you are not the only person getting through to your students in such a manner. You want them to be exposed to other teachers who can turn the light bulb on as well; you wish for them to succeed. You get a feeling deep down inside that lets you know you are doing some good in this world and now, in light of this situation, you have picked that feeling up, tore it to shreds and threw it away by taking Professor Johnson out the equation. You, the teacher who really got through, have now robbed your future students from the education they deserve. How does that make you feel?
I know that Brooklyn College may not be tops on the list of Universities students wish to attend. I know that the majority of students at BC are here because of its price tag. I know not to expect the same education that I would have received had I been able to attend an Ivy League school. But I trusted that by taking classes with Professors who come from the Ivy League, that really know how to teach, and that impact their students lives in uncountable ways would, at the least, put me in the running when it came to graduate school. The basic premise of education is to learn and by taking away Professor Johnson, you are taking away the most important element in the learning process. By doing what you are doing to one of the most knowledgeable Professors I have ever encountered, you are letting and adding to the idea that Brooklyn College is just another city school for poor kids. You are contributing to the low reputation Brooklyn College holds when it comes to academia (in comparison with private or state schools). And while you may continue to call Brooklyn College a place of higher education, I don’t know how high that education can reach when the standards it sets for those who educate us are laid so low. Professor Johnson is an outstanding teacher but even more, he is a genuine, good-hearted person that would come to the defense of any of his students. I only hope that they will do the same for him in these trying times.
by j schlanger on November 30, 2002 at 12:11 PM