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Stanley Eugene Fish

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Save the World on Your Own Time Edition Unstated

by Stanley Fish (Author)

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What should be the role of our institutions of higher education? To promote good moral character? To bring an end to racism, sexism, economic oppression, and other social ills? To foster diversity and democracy and produce responsible citizens?

In Save the World On Your Own Time, Stanley Fish argues that, however laudable these goals might be, there is but one proper role for the academe in society: to advance bodies of knowledge and to equip students for doing the same. When teachers offer themselves as moralists, political activists, or agents of social change rather than as credentialed experts in a particular subject and the methods used to analyze it, they abdicate their true purpose. And yet professors now routinely bring their political views into the classroom and seek to influence the political views of their students. Those who do this will often invoke academic freedom, but Fish argues that academic freedom, correctly understood, is the freedom to do the academic job, not the freedom to do any job that comes into the professor's mind. He insists that a professor's only obligation is "to present the material in the syllabus and introduce students to state-of-the-art methods of analysis. Not to practice politics, but to study it; not to proselytize for or against religious doctrines, but to describe them; not to affirm or condemn Intelligent Design, but to explain what it is and analyze its appeal."

Given that hot-button issues such as Holocaust denial, free speech, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are regularly debated in classrooms across the nation, Save the World On Your Own Time is certain to spark fresh debate-and to incense both liberals and conservatives-about the true purpose of higher education in America.

ISBN-10

0195369025
ISBN-13

978-0195369021
Edition

Edition Unstated
Publisher

Oxford University Press
Publication date

August 11, 2008
Language

English
Dimensions

8.3 x 0.9 x 5.7 inches
Print length

208 pages
See all details

Steven M. Cahn
3
Paperback
26 offers from $5.44

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fish's lively polemic skewers the popular perspective that universities have an obligation to foster ethical, social, and political virtues, arguing that academic institutions are best served by admitting to the distinct (and limited) nature of their task: [to] introduce students to bodies of knowledge and traditions of inquiry... and equip [them] with the analytical skills that will enable them to move confidently within those traditions and to engage in independent research. To professors using their podium to politically influence or engage with their students, the author chides: Do your job, Don't try to do someone else's job and Don't let anyone else do your job—and offers refreshing takes on Ward Churchill, Bob Newhart and how writing ought to be taught. Despite the repetitive reiteration of initial premises and a few rhetorical inconsistencies, Fish's penultimate chapter shows off his unconventional style in its most personable guise; he lays out a simple strategy by which academics and administrators may fight (not work with) those who demand that academia justify itself; he writes, The only honest thing to do when someone from outside asks, 'what use is this venture anyway?' is to answer 'none whatsoever.' (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

A college teacher has just two professional responsibilities, Fish says: (1) “introduce students to bodies of knowledge and traditions of inquiry” and (2) “equip those students with the analytical skills” needed to absorb those traditions and perform independent research. Those should take up all a teacher’s professional time. Political advocacy, religious instruction, and pet causes should be prosecuted outside the classroom. To show that conscientiously pursued teaching can take all one’s work time, he sketches his own way of teaching English composition, intriguingly enough to make one wish to have been in his classroom. He is trenchant and cogent on the dangers of trying to do someone else’s work and of allowing someone else to do yours, and the particulars in his argument include his defense of academic work (it is not good for something but good in itself), his experienced administrator’s revelation that public (i.e., tax) support of higher education has plummeted throughout the U.S., and his evisceration of the activist maxim everything is political. All who care about higher education should read this book. --Ray Olson

Review

"[This book] is invariably smart, stimulating, and provocative. It is filled with insights and crackles with verve. It is a joy to take in."--Texas Law Review

"Particularly clear and engaging prose--a far-from-common gift in such a high-powered thinker."--Rocky Mountain News

"Fish's lively polemic skewers the popular perspective."--Publishers Weekly

"Is deeply committed to teaching and to higher education and relishes presenting his views with zest and wide-ranging scholarship... is a great debater and is ready to scold all who confuse the issues, including faculty, students, trustees, and members of Congress... this work is recommended for public and academic library readers who enjoy a lively interchange."--Library Journal

"Exhilarating, the thought polished and white hot, this book makes the reader think and often wince, especially teachers like me who have aged out of the intellectual into the easy and congenial. A close reading of Save the World should purge much nonsense from classrooms."--Sam Pickering, author of Letters to a Teacher

"Stanley Fish's new manifesto calls for a major revolution in public education. Many will disagree with this provocative book. None will be wise to ignore its impact."--Richard A. Epstein, Hoover Institution

"This is a passionate defense of "Scholarship as a Calling" like the inspiring lecture of that name by Max Weber. But, of course, Fish is irrepressibly livelier than Max Weber."--E. D. Hirsch, author of The Knowledge Deficit, and The Schools We Need

"In this wise and witty book, Stanley Fish offers thoughtful suggestions for making university teaching more effective and more beneficial for our students. It is a powerful argument for learning and teaching from one of our generation's most provocative academic leaders."--John T. Casteen III, President, University of Virginia

"Fish offers a vigorous defense of that abstemious understanding of the teacher's task, laced with numerous examples of its egregious violation."--First Things: The Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life

Book Description

One of America's most incisive public intellectuals offers a provocative argument about the true role of higher education

About the Author

Stanley Fish is currently Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law at Florida International University in Miami and Dean Emeritus at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois, Chicago. He is the author of ten books including Is There a Text in this Class, There's No Such Thing As Free Speech and It's A Good Thing Too, and How Milton Works. The subject of a New Yorker Profile and a frequent contributor to The New York Times, New York Times Book Review, Harper's, the Atlantic, Esquire, Slate, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, Fish writes the "Think Again" blog for the opinion section of The New York Times and has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and several NPR shows.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; Edition Unstated (August 11, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195369025
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195369021
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.3 x 0.9 x 5.7 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,533,564 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #295 in Educational Philosophy
- #2,227 in Philosophy & Social Aspects of Education
- #60,534 in Unknown

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4.0 29 ratings

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Stanley Eugene Fish

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Stanley Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University. He has previously taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He has received many honors and awards, including being named the Chicagoan of the Year for Culture. He is the author of twelve books and is now a weekly columnist for the New York Times. He resides in Andes, New York; New York City; and Delray Beach, Florida; with his wife, Jane Tompkins.

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Charles J. Marr

Not just for specialists

Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2008

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Mr. Fish is not light reading. He never was and in this short book he employs precise reasoning that may sound redundant to a reader. "Yeah, I heard you the first time." This book has only one point: It is not the job of an academic to save the world but to teach a subject. Not really new. More than forty years ago I heard a Benedictine Professor of Genetics say, "I do not confuse the lectern with the pulpit."

This text is a rational and useful counter to accumulated rhetoric which has proposed "Teaching as a Subversive Activity" and "diversity of ideas in the classroom," and universal questioning of all fixed norms. Fish sanely says English teachers should teach English, lawyers law and philosophers philosophy. It is not the job of an English teacher to judge the law or ethics of Macbeth's actions but the quality of the play, or more precisely it is the professor's job to evaluate quality and to teach students to perform this task. Law professors should not advocate laws to be enacted but how to understand and interpret those in effect. Philosophers should evaluate ethical systems not advocate one or another. And so forth.

Fish mentions the difficulties of distinguishing right and good, the difficulties of administration and even diminishing funding streams , but his major point is central: do your job, not someone else's job. I might add, there are plenty of folk willing to save our souls, our health and our society outside academe.

There is one difficulty, the underlying assumption that the University consists solely of the classroom and the lab. The elaborate social service side (Offfice of Student Success, etc) of modern American Universities has a trail of health officers and psychologists, nutritionists, housing, affirmative action, gender equity, financial aide specialists as well as admissions, out-counselers, registrars, and so on and so onwhich is an enterprise in itself and often part of the larger commercial life of the host city. But why criticize what he does not attempt.

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Richard B. Schwartz

Short and to the Point

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2011

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This is a perfectly reasonable book which has attracted some brickbats as well as more reasoned criticism. The argument is summarized at several points in the book. Basically, our tasks are defined by that which makes them distinctive. What is the distinct role of the university teacher? To "introduce students to bodies of material new to them and equip those same students with the appropriate (to the discipline) analytical and research skills."

This task involves both responsibilities (to show up for class, be prepared, create exams, give feedback on assignments, etc.) and prohibitions (taking on tasks "that belong properly to other agents," including political indoctrination. When we do the latter we open ourselves to legitimate criticism which then threatens the accomplishment of our actual task.

I believe that he argues these points convincingly and also answers the `everything is political, so I'll give my political slant to counterbalance the slant of others' argument.

One of the distinctions that has often been overlooked in the so-called `culture wars' is the distinction between the politically conservative and the academically conservative. The broad brush attacks on leftist professors have often overlooked the fact that many of those individuals are conservative with regard to curriculum, methodology, standards, and so on. Fish, e.g., notoriously tells students that they shouldn't be `expressing themselves' in class because they have nothing to express until they acquire a great deal more knowledge than they presently possess, a point repeated in Save the World on Your Own Time.

The only place where he seems to backslide on his defense of disciplinary distinctiveness and the specificity of tasks is in his implicit defense of Women's Studies, Black Studies, etc. programs. In this book he says that the study of race, class and gender has energized the humanities. At the same time, he says that if the identity-based programs stray from their task of analysis and `academicizing' and become agents of advocacy they should be prohibited from doing so by administrative authorities.

I would have thought that he would argue on behalf of `the study of women' within the disciplines but not for `women's studies' as an administrative and curricular unit, since the expectation of advocacy is nearly always part of such a unit's portfolio. There are several points worth considering here. First, the identity-based programs are overwhelmingly populated by faculty in the humanities, whereas the issues that those programs raise may, in some cases, be more effectively addressed by economists, historians, statisticians and faculty in the life sciences. It is arguable that some of the issues which these programs address were not being addressed in the past, at least not to the degree that their importance would justify. Hence the need for such programs (then). It is now late in the day, however, and issues of race, class and gender pervade the curricula and research agendas of the separate disciplines. John Guillory (who is clearly not politically conservative) has argued that women's studies, black studies, etc. should be research foci, not curricular units. He argues that on several grounds, but one important point that he makes is that anything that is constructed as an alternative to a core, anything that offers a different path than that taken by the vast majority of students (majoring in history, sociology, the biological sciences, etc.) ends up being something `secondary', something with less clout and less authority, something that, ultimately, helps widen the gap between the students who study a traditional curriculum (as defined by the disciplines; Guillory's `traditional' will be very different from Dinesh D'Souza's or Roger Kimball's) and serves to diminish the authenticity of their degrees. Given Fish's respect for the disciplines and their distinctiveness I would have expected a warm embrace of Guillory's argument.

Nevertheless, it is important to identify the proper role of university teachers and Fish does that. This is a subset, of course, of the proper role of a university, which would include the development of new knowledge as well as the dissemination of established knowledge. The development of new knowledge (faculty research) is related to instruction in various ways and forms. The choice of a subject of such research can, of course, be a political act. If a prospective faculty member in the humanities identifies his research foci as the kinds of things which Fish highlights here (genre, literary history, metrics, verse forms, stylistic effects, and so on), that candidate will be immediately and overtly identifying him- or herself as `traditional' and `conservative' (academically and possibly . . . politically?), given the fact that the easily politicized foci of race, class and gender have pervaded the academy, at least until very recently.

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Erin Hastey

Desperately needed voice of reason in Academia

Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2012

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Fish is fantastic--he brings a scathing and heavily needed argument to the issue of what, exactly, an academic is supposed to be doing, and what an academic is not supposed to be doing. I also appreciated his "Administrative Interlude," discussing the relationship between academics and administrators and the different roles of each. He's a man who knows his business and who doesn't let romantic notions--notions that are outside the job description of an academic-- get in the way of making clear what his business is. I highly recommend this book to anyone considering a career in post-secondary education.

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