To What Extent Are Instructors “Dumbing Down” Courses at Alliant?

By Dr. Christopher Tori, Professor Emeritus, Summer 2009

Accreditation visits stimulate self-reflection. One question asked by a WASC visitor concerned possible pressure to, well, “dumb down” instruction at Alliant. What do you think about this important issue? Are you really being prepared to become an innovative professional? Or, more crassly, is your $100,000 investment worth it? From a cognitive dissonance perspective, the answer to the above would be an automatic “yes, my education is fine.”

While I joined the “everything is fine” chorus, the question was thought-provoking. For example, at my first peer review evaluation (1976), it was remarked that I was more suited to teach in a university or medical school program than CSPP, and I can say that since then, I have experienced consistent demands to ask for less from students and be more elementary.

But, you might say, “This is unique to you.” Not really. For example, I saved an open letter to CSPP students by a prestigious adjunct faculty who complained of “a dehumanizing demand on the part of a highly vocal segment of the studentry who insisted that I wrap myself in the strait jacket of their concept of scholarship and teaching.” He went on note the rush “into a paraprofessional kind of pygmy psychiatry.” Powerful words, I know, but worth consideration, don’t you agree? (Some might want to read the entire open letter, available on The Diversion website).

Or again, I once asked a physician teaching our psychopharmacology course if the similarities/differences between the molecular structures of the newer antipsychotics and phenothiazines were raised in the course. He replied “they” could not understand such matters. (I am glad I was not one of “them”). Finally, will our PsyD programs become characterized by the mantra, “I am a PsyD, I don’t (can’t?) do …”

So, thought about our academic standards may be worthwhile. The student government may want to move beyond social events and devote more time to this issue. How many students complain to program directors about a lack of challenge in classes?

The “open letter to CSPP students” referenced by Dr. Tori was composed by noted Black psychologist and faculty member Nathan Hare. While originally published in the 1977 San Francisco campus student newsletter, “The Gazette,” we have procured a copy of the letter, which can be viewed here.