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I'm about to get myself in trouble again. As regular readers know, I helped develop PCC's consensual relationships policy last year. (See here.) Now, I've been asked by the Academic Senate to chair a related committee looking into revamping the college's "nepotism" policy. The problem is that some of my colleagues don't want to prohibit what I consider to be one of the most flagrant examples of nepotism: having one's own children enrolled in one's classes, and grading their work.
I've been adamant about the issue of consensual amorous relationships. I don't think it's possible for a professor to evaluate fairly the work of his or her spouse or lover. Even if it were possible (and I don't think it is), the simple perception of wrongdoing that would arise in the minds of the other students is reason enough to consider such relationships between teachers and current students to be inadvisable and unethical. In the years we spent developing the policy (between 2001-2004), my colleagues and I encountered some opposition to the idea of banning faculty-current student romantic and sexual relationships, but most folks on campus seemed supportive.
But here at the community college, I can think of several examples -- from within my own department -- of young people enrolled in a parent's course.
One of my colleagues has taught three of her four children in recent years. This problem is much more common at a community college than it might be at a four-year school, where many students are living away from home. At PCC, a large percentage of our students still live with Mom or Dad, and in more than a few instances, are being taught by Mom and Dad.
I've been making the argument for years that teaching and evaluating one's children is analogous to teaching and grading one's lovers. I see no reason to believe that you can be fairer to your child than to your sexual partner. What's more, while it is at least theoretically possible to keep one's romantic affairs a secret, it's utterly impossible to disguise the fact that one student is your son or daughter! And again, there's the issue of perception: it doesn't ultimately matter whether or not you can separate family loyalties from the quality of a student's work; what matters is whether or not other students perceive a bias.
I've been candid about my own reasons for getting involved in developing a consensual relationships policy. I've admitted past wrongdoing in this area, and I've made amends. But a few of my colleagues are vigorously defending the idea that while it may be unethical to teach a lover, it is perfectly acceptable to assign grades to one's own children. I am dumbfounded, failing to understand the reasoning that suggests that there is ultimately anything less offensive about having one's child in class than having one's sexual partner. In informal discussions with other colleagues, I have found that the majority take my side and support the idea of a ban on PCC faculty members teaching and evaluating the work of their own children. Such a ban, like the consensual relationships policy, would not involve any retroactive discipline for those who had taught their kids in the past. But it would draw a clear and bright line for the future..
I'm curious to know what Cliopatria readers think. Do you agree with me that teaching one's kids is as unethical and problematic, both in terms of evaluation and perception, as teaching one's sexual and romantic partners? If not, why not? Am I missing something here, perhaps because I am not yet a parent? In the meantime, I'm going to work hard to make sure that the nepotism policy comes down as firmly as possible against the practice of profs teaching and grading their own children.
You're right, for all the reasons you give. This really ought to be a no-brainer by now. The salient question is why it isn't.
Norman G. Owen -
10/29/2005
Just adding a note of endorsement here, particularly with regard to grading. I'm sure that if my son had simply wanted to _learn_ from me I'd have been more than happy to oblige him. But since "teaching" customarily implies evaluating, as well as instructing, there is an inevitable conflict that ought to be avoided. IMHO, this kind of nepotism should simply be forbidden; parents should not be allowed to teach their children. (I suppose that waivers might be granted in exceptional circumstances, but they'd have to be pretty darn exceptional.)
If, OTOH, we were talking a system like the English one of a generation ago, in which one's tutors and lecturers were preparing one for exams to be set and marked by others (strangers), the conflict would disappear. There might still be some minor discomfiture over absence from tutorials or the evaluation of essays, but since none of this would count in the final results, it could be survived, I assume. Both teacher/parent and student/child would have a common interest in preparing the latter as much as possible for success in the exams.
There were problems with that (old) English system, which is why it has since been modified (e.g., in favor of counting course work for at least partial credit), but it did have the great advantage of putting instructors and students on the same "side," rather than as partial allies and partial adversaries, relationships built into the American system. ("I'm going to prepare you for an examination that I'm going to set and grade, but I'm not going to tell you exactly what questions I'm going to ask you, because that wouldn't be fair, and if you fail to understand something, perhaps because I didn't explain it very well, I'm going to mark you down ...")
Charles V. Mutschler -
10/28/2005
I tend more toward Mr. Luker's approach. I'd really rather not have to grade the immediate family of my immediate colleagues. I also felt some pressure to perform well in Geology 101 just so that I wouldn't be an embarassment to my father. I suspect that I did acquire a very thorough grounding in geology just from what I learned around the dinner table, as noted above.
Charles V. Mutschler
Ralph E. Luker -
10/27/2005
I can't be absolutely certain. I found it very difficult to give the "F" to a faculty colleague's wife that she earned. I practically begged her to see me at office hours for extra help. I found it very difficult to give my chairman's daughter the "C" that she earned after weeks of his glaring at me and repeating the words: "My daughter, the 'B' student." Nonetheless, I gathered up my courage and did the necessary thing. I'd rather not be tested by having my own daughter in class.
Oscar Chamberlain -
10/27/2005
Ralph,
I think part of my problem--and this is point that I had not made above--is that I suspect that the situation of teaching the child of a friend is equally problematic. But in those cases any favoritism is less obvious and unlikely to come to the attention of students or powers-that-be.
So let me pose a question. Are you sure that having colleagues teach the children of colleagues is less prone to abuse?
Ralph E. Luker -
10/27/2005
Oscar, I just don't think that home schooling is analogous to a parent being the professor in her or his child's classroom because evaluation in a classroom inevitably has comparative elements, whereas the individualized instruction of home schooling probably does not. I have known otherwise honorable people to throw all ethical reservations out the window when it came to evaluating their child's academic performance. The temptation to do that can in most instances be avoided. Under certain circumstances, as when a parent teaches and is the only teacher of a required course, a dean could grant an exemption from a rule that should otherwise prevail.
Oscar Chamberlain -
10/27/2005
I fully grant that having the chile in the parent's class--or the reverse for that matter--isn't a great idea. But banning it suggests that it is close to irredeemably bad. And I just don't think that's been shown.
Andrew D. Todd -
10/27/2005
Practically speaking, tutoring is a much more effective form of learning than classroom teaching. It is just too expensive to be practical on a large scale. The implication is that if your children have any affinity for whatever it is that you do, normal dinner-table conversations are likely to carry them far beyond the level of ordinary students before they are old enough to take your class in the ordinary way.
The kind of fairness issues that arise might be something like: is it fair to introduce someone into the class who already knows the answers, having grown up with them? Here is another case. Your colleague's nine-year-old daughter wants to take your class, and you have sufficient reason to believe she could do well in it. Is it fair to require the students to compete against the Little Princess? What if the Little Princess insists on bringing her teddy bear to class?
I remember giving my father's department a fairly wide berth, simply as a matter of instinct. They were all de-facto aunts and uncles, and I simply didn't want to take a class with someone who knew me by my baby-name, and who might use it in public. Obviously, that presents difficulties when one is trying to fashion an adult identity.
Charles V. Mutschler -
10/26/2005
I can see this from the student perspective, having considered taking a class from my father for my general university requirements. Even as a freshman I knew that I was not going to be a geology major, but I wanted to take an introductory geology class to meet one of my math / science requirements. I and my father talked about it, since his class was at a convenient time. I also wanted to have the experience of taking one of his classes, since I'd heard positive things from other people.
We talked at some length about the issue of how other students might see the situation, and my father stressed that if I took his class, we both would need to be aware of this. He felt that since this was not a class that was only offered by himself, it might be best for both of us if took another section of Geology 101, so there would be no appearance of nepotisim. I took Geology 101 from another member of the department.
Several years later, I audited an upper level geology class my father taught, so that I could have the experience of seeing how he worked. I would have liked to audit the field camp course he taught, but, as he pointed out, this was not fair to students majoring in Geology, since space was limited, and it was a required class for them. I ended up auditing an extended field trip class he taught over a winter break which was an optional class. This gave me an opportunity to see how he taught, and did not place either of us in the position of having an apparent conflict of interest, since I was an observer, not a student being graded. I attended all the class sessions, but did not take the exams.
I am glad I audited the field trip, and I don't have any great regrets about not taking 101 from him. I got a chance to see why his students thought he was a good teacher, but neither of us had to be in a positiuon where the rest of the class felt that there was a case of possible unfair advantage to me.
I think the perception of unfair advantage is strong, and has to be recognized. Even though I was taking 101 from a different professor, one of my classmates still thought I had an unfair advantage, simply because my father was a member of the geology department. I think I had the best of both, by not taking a class from Dad for credit, but by observing, I got the pleasure of watching him work, and I learned a few things I've applied to teaching history.
Home schooling raises some of these issues. Good points for consideration.
Charles V. Mutschler
Oscar Chamberlain -
10/25/2005
Is it unethical to homeschool?
Is it unethical to judge the quality of the actions of one's children?
Should parents only coach kids team's when they don't have children on them?
Sure one can find examples of rotten behavior in all of these, but more often than not, it works.
To me, the one solid argument against having children in one's class seems to be the perception argument. It's substantive, but hardly ruling. Students expect lovers to favor lovers, particularly early in relationships when hormones rule the Earth.
They all know of parents who can be tough with their students.
(In fact, a second good argument might be protection of the student.)
But I think to simply to go "of course its horrible" is to say that it's impossible for a parent to judge a child of young adult age fairly in a public setting.
Is that what people think here?
David Nicholas Harley -
10/25/2005
Academics, like everyone else, form relationships with people with whom they have frequent contact and interests in common. At universities, this means students, teachers and colleagues. We can all think of famous historians who have married their grad students or colleagues.
Clearly, there are severe problems about emotionally involved people having the power to determine the grades of students or the tenure of colleagues, especially if the relationship has ended acrimoniously. However, I sometimes wonder if the rules that have been adopted in many American universities have swung too far in the other direction, codifying a basic distrust of sexuality.
For example, it is not uncommon under university regulations for relationships to be deemed non-consensual retroactively, as soon as one partner decides to break off relations. This is both contrary to natural justice and profoundly anti-sex, surely.
It would be better by far, I suggest, for free and open disclosure to be the rule, so that academics can recuse themselves well before their relationships cause problems, and without consensual relationships suddenly being interpreted as rape.
Jonathan Dresner -
10/25/2005
... I've taught a few children of colleagues (my own is fourteen years from college, more or less) because of the tradition, the rare financial benefit (but not in Hawaii), of allowing the children of faculty and staff free/reduced tuition.
It's never really influenced my grading, that I'm aware of, but it does create an odd relationship, particularly if the student is doing mediocre/poor work or is having non-academic problems....
Michael Burger -
10/25/2005
This sort of thing has happened more than once at the university where my wife teaches history, so the practice is not unheard of.
That said, the conflict of interest is clear. Parents should not be their children's professors, and, really, should not be allowed to.
Robert KC Johnson -
10/25/2005
Agree that this is a terrible idea. And I think it would also be very awkward for the student--both intellectually and personally.
What, exactly, are the arguments being put forth by colleagues who say that parents should be allowed to teach their kids?
Jonathan T. Reynolds -
10/25/2005
... that having a PhD doesn't prove you are smart. Or maybe just not ethical. Perhaps in a class where all test are multiple-choice and machine-graded you could make a claim to objectivity, but it still strikes me as a bad idea just on general principles.
As for the concentual relations part, I can understand the case that all involved are adults, and they get to do such things if they choose. But, in the real world, I have to say that I've never seen it pulled off in a way that one party or the other wasn't taking advantage of the situation.
Anne Zook -
10/25/2005
Parents shouldn't be grading the work of their children. (My parents would have been twice as hard on me as they would have been on other students. Maybe a bad thing, maybe not.)
Having a child in a class is potentially a different problem. What if it's the only class on a topic? What if it's a large, survey class?
Romantic relationships are different. People choose to enter into them. But wanting to take a class a parent happens to be teaching...it could happen.
Brian Ulrich -
10/25/2005
Here at UW, it is considered okay to teach blood relations as long as someone else does the grading. I don't know the exact policy of student/teacher romance, but I remember from my TA training a few years ago that the University was unable to forbid them for legal reasons. I think the grading issue is probably the same, though.
Ralph E. Luker -
10/25/2005
Hugo, You've hit it with this one. I had dinner with Greg Robinson in Atlanta on Sunday and we rehearsed two quite different versions of horror stories about parent/teachers and grades. Hold your ground!
Sherman Jay Dorn -
10/25/2005
I'm bewildered by anyone who would WANT a child in a course. Oh, well... definitely ban it.
Melissa Ann Spore -
10/25/2005
It's a no-brainer. Of course they shouldn't be teaching their own kids. In addition to the reasons you've given, what about the education of the sons and daughters?
One thing we get out of higher education is exposure to different views; not only exposure to different subject matter, but to different nuances of interpretation. Give the kids a chance to grow by attending other classes with other instructors.
As to why people don't get this, I think many people don't see that its the intimacy that threatens fairness. Because the focus has been on sexual relationships, they associate such policies with sexual power issues. We may be more at ease banning anything that suggests penetration. I don't care about penetration, but I care alot about the intimacy that can lead to unfair treatment (in many directions) and the appearance of unfair treatment.
I have dealt with the situation among employees, where a really good director repeatedly had her children hired as our student workers. Awful for all of us.
