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Showdown Semester: Advice from a Writing Professor
A journal by a former English professor covers the politics of academia and also serves as a manual for teachers of writing and their students
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1980
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About the author
Martin Russ
25 books4 followersMartin Faxon Russ was an American military author, Marine, and associate professor at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Russ was born in Newark on Feb. 14, 1931, to Carroll and Lavinia Faxon Dunn. His parents were professional writers.
After graduating from a private school in Connecticut, Russ attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., but dropped out in his junior year to join the Marines. Assigned to an ordnance battalion, Private Russ made a nuisance of himself until his request for combat duty was granted.
Despite the fear and devastation he had faced in Korea and later wrote about, Mr. Russ remained “a gung-ho Marine’’ throughout his life, his sister said. Of his time on the front line, he wrote in his first book: “I’d rather be here than anywhere else in the world. Whether I’m ready for the loony bin or not is beside the point.’’
In later years, although he had no college degree, he taught writing at what is now Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Russ was born in Newark on Feb. 14, 1931, to Carroll and Lavinia Faxon Dunn. His parents were professional writers.
After graduating from a private school in Connecticut, Russ attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., but dropped out in his junior year to join the Marines. Assigned to an ordnance battalion, Private Russ made a nuisance of himself until his request for combat duty was granted.
Despite the fear and devastation he had faced in Korea and later wrote about, Mr. Russ remained “a gung-ho Marine’’ throughout his life, his sister said. Of his time on the front line, he wrote in his first book: “I’d rather be here than anywhere else in the world. Whether I’m ready for the loony bin or not is beside the point.’’
In later years, although he had no college degree, he taught writing at what is now Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
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May 18, 2016
Reading Hacker and Dreifus' Higher Education got me to thinking about this book, since Russ essentially offers illustrations to many of their gripes about tenure and how colleges are no longer about education. In English departments, at any rate, just about everything Hacker and Dreifus complain about was already common.
Russ goes further than the authors of Higher Education, though. He not only thought tenure should be eliminated; he thought teachers should have to audition to get their jobs in the first place, since teaching is a different skill than that required to get an English (or History, or whatever) degree. He also believed that colleges should survey seniors and alumni when considering whether to extend a teacher's contract, since he could see that some students didn't appreciate one of other teachers on staff as Frosh, but realized later that they'd learned a lot in that class. The teacher's lack of flamboyance had faked out younger students just getting out of the class, but Russ figured they'd realize how much they'd learned when looking back on the class a few years later.
Russ' book is a joy to read on many levels. For starts, I gotta love a college English prof who has to restrain himself from being flippant about Joyce, and doesn't hesitate to argue that a reader owes nothing to the author, that it's the author's responsibility to engage the reader. I suspect the college prof who recommended the book knew I'd get a kick out of how Russ regularly skewers a certain kind of uncaring English prof who really has nothing to say.
But the reason Russ is hard on poor teachers is that he cares. He cares about his students, he believes his job is to teach, he is passionate about good writing, and he has little patience with other teachers who disagree with him on all three fronts.
Russ goes further than the authors of Higher Education, though. He not only thought tenure should be eliminated; he thought teachers should have to audition to get their jobs in the first place, since teaching is a different skill than that required to get an English (or History, or whatever) degree. He also believed that colleges should survey seniors and alumni when considering whether to extend a teacher's contract, since he could see that some students didn't appreciate one of other teachers on staff as Frosh, but realized later that they'd learned a lot in that class. The teacher's lack of flamboyance had faked out younger students just getting out of the class, but Russ figured they'd realize how much they'd learned when looking back on the class a few years later.
Russ' book is a joy to read on many levels. For starts, I gotta love a college English prof who has to restrain himself from being flippant about Joyce, and doesn't hesitate to argue that a reader owes nothing to the author, that it's the author's responsibility to engage the reader. I suspect the college prof who recommended the book knew I'd get a kick out of how Russ regularly skewers a certain kind of uncaring English prof who really has nothing to say.
But the reason Russ is hard on poor teachers is that he cares. He cares about his students, he believes his job is to teach, he is passionate about good writing, and he has little patience with other teachers who disagree with him on all three fronts.
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