In my days as a postgraduate student one of the things I enjoyed not being a part of most was the process of academic administration - the meetings and chores that inevitably crowd into an academic teacher's life and prevent him/her from doing what he/she feels called to do - teach students, research, publish and so on. Academics often wish they could be freed from the grind of admin in order to do the real thing.
Today was the marathon meeting of our academic year at Moore, the famous post-exams 'Board of Studies' meeting. It is 8 hours of hard slog, for the most part. Meditating on the process when I was supposed to be thinking about something else, I realised that the nexus between academic administration and academic knowledge (in the best sense) is tighter than it feels. It just isn't true that they have nothing to do with each other. Governing the process of teaching and learning depends heavily on - and in turn informs - teaching and learning itself. The ordering of education is in itself educative. While the process can be more or less pleasurable, it is still part of the business of academic thought to which academics are called.
The history of the university depended on this observation: that knowledge was united and its various parts ordered to one another in a certain way was at the heart of the medieval university. And theology, of all the disciplines, held the honoured place - 'the queen of sciences'. The university, as much by its structures and by its location and communal disciplines as by its curriculum, upheld and reinforced a view of knowledge.
It doesn't make it more pleasant, but hopefully makes it feel more purposeful!
1 comment:
This nexus is sometimes present in other disciplines - legal administration and legal knowledge are often one and the same thing, although the former is often viewed as much less important than the latter. Of course both are important and necessary, but knowing that still doesn't make the admin any more pleasant.
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