How to Rate a Teacher

One implication of the "publish or perish" syndrome is that university administrators, unable to measure teaching ability, tend to abdicate this responsibility and rate teachers solely on their research. Contending that one of their favorite teachers is the victim of this practice, 200 Yale students last week picketed for three days and chilly nights outside administrative offices in Woodbridge Hall.

They held that Richard J. Bernstein, 32-year-old associate professor of philosophy, had been passed over for tenure despite exceptionally "creative" classroom teaching. The Tenure Appointments Committee refused to discuss its decision, but there were hints that it was not impressed by his book (A Study of Some Aspects of Education in Israel), his manuscript on John Dewey, and three chapters of a projected book on pragmatic and analytic philosophy.

Bernstein's fellow philosophy professors had unanimously recommended him for a tenure vacancy, and Professor Paul Weiss called the committee's decision "stupid, unfair, dismaying." Professor Robert S. Brumbaugh pointed out that under the committee's criteria, "we could not have gotten tenure for Aristotle when he was 32, we could not have gotten it for Kant, and on a much homelier level, I could not have gotten it." After the wave of criticism, the committee decided to consider reopening the case.

Evaluating classroom performance is complex, but a growing number of university administrators are insisting that it can--and must--be done. Ohio State's new dean of faculties, Dr. John C. Weaver, recently warned that the university must "seek attractive, indeed compelling, reward and recognition for good undergraduate teaching." This should become "every bit as important an element in the formulae for promotion and salary increases as research and publication." If not, he said, "we would do well to close the university's doors."

Mightn't administrators get a good line on teaching ability merely by attending a few lectures? Most professors consider this a form of snooping. William Fidler, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, doubts that many teachers would stand for it. Such classroom monitoring, he says, "is a very ticklish problem." But many a layman, openly and constantly evaluated in his life's work, feels entitled to wonder.

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