meanwhile, back on the ranch...

I was very surprised a few weeks ago to hear that my former Arabic teacher, Pauline Sadek (who taught at Earlham for less than a year) was dismissed, apparently without warning, in the middle of this semester. Even though I found her teaching to be lacking I had a great relationship with Pauline. Please take a minute to catch up on this story at ecword.org. There is a wonderful news story as well as a piece written by Pauline herself. What follows is a piece I have written in response that will (if all goes according to plan) be my column in next week's Word. I have posted it here first because spring break at Earlham means there will be no paper tomorrow, and I wanted to get what I have to say said. I have a lot of respect for the administrative and bureaucratic complications of running a college (ok, not respect. Understanding) ; still, I wish that Earlham could have handed this (and Marcelo, and the German department, and the athletic conference switch) differently.

I met Pauline in Arabic 103. While it’s true that I found the class to be unfocused and unstructured, I whole-heartedly believe that Pauline, who came from a different academic background than other Earlham professors, did her best to teach a class that had never been taught before at Earlham. Pauline’s under-qualification to teach the course was never a secret, as she said herself in her letter to the Word last week.

Pauline was open to criticism and suggestions from the class—maybe too open, letting students walk all over her—and fell back on the tried and true pedagogical method of: if you try to teach it one way, and they don’t get it, try a different way. In the end, however, there was nothing she could do to solve the real problem with Arabic 103: that it was a bad idea for a class.

I firmly believe that nobody could have taught “Colloquial Spoken Arabic” well to students with no previous exposure to Arabic. My complaints about 103, however, are directed towards IPO for advising me to take a class without giving me a heads up that I was going to be a guinea pig in a course designed and taught by an unqualified instructor.

But despite a distinctly unsatisfying course experience, I benefited enormously from Pauline’s loving support both inside and outside the classroom. I cannot imagine her doing anything to warrant a mid-semester dismissal. Student complaints? A dress code? Bad teaching methods? Really? Though these are all the reasons I’ve heard cited, I know that none of them, not even in combination, could be the reason. I would be disgusted if I thought that Earlham dismissed a new teacher in the middle of the year rather than assisting her to become better at her job, even if it was just for the next two months.

I understand that the inner administrative workings of Earlham have to be kept confidential and above the metaphorical head of the student body (like they were with Marcelo, with the German department, with the athletic conference switch) but I can’t help but wish I weren’t being kept in the dark about this decision, which seems—from my uninformed point-of-view— unjustified and, quite frankly, harmful to Earlham’s goal of setting up a stable Middle East study abroad program.

To elaborate, briefly: last spring only two students joined Bruce Stanley on the Earlham Jordan Program. Now, a year later, there are twelve of us—a huge success for Bruce and for Earlham in the attempt to reestablish a relationship with the Middle East in the tradition of Landrum Bolling. This year, however—in the midst of fascinating political and cultural developments—only five students have applied to study in Jordan next spring.

This is heartbreaking to those of us who are, you know, having our lives changed over here and know also the depth of the Earlham student body’s commitment to Middle Eastern conflicts. But who can blame them? Without Arabic at Earlham, there is no way for students to prepare themselves for a semester in Jordan.

Now is the time to develop a strong Arabic program at Earlham. Given the notorious lack of Arabic teachers in the United States right now, we were lucky to have Pauline, who I am confident would have worked with any criticism she was given to make herself the best instructor she could be, even if it was only for the completion of the semester. I can only hope that there is more to Pauline’s story than I understand.