It isn’t uncommon for colleges to have a senior faculty member sit in on a junior or adjunct faculty member’s class and then write up an evaluation. That could be valuable if the evaluator observes serious problems in the class, but that is not apt to happen because the professor being evaluated will be on his best behavior on that day. What is more likely, is that if the professor is not using the generally approved pedagogical approach he will be called on the carpet. Thus, instead of identifying “problem” profs, the evaluations just help to perpetuate the status quo.

In today’s Pope Center piece, Troy Camplin explains all of that. He was called on the carpet for deviationism in the way he taught composition. Rather than devoting most of the class time to “peer review” (that is, having students read and critique writing by other students) he spent quite a bit of time having students read well-written English so they would get it in their ears. Camplin had realized that “peer review” is an exercise in the blind leading the blind because few students have anything constructive to say about another student’s writing, but his evaluation was negative simply because he wasn’t handling the course the way it had been taught. College officials often claim to prize “critical thinking” but that doesn’t necessarily extend to faculty members who believe that they can get better results from students by trying a different approach.

I have to wonder how the silly notion of “peer review” in composition ever caught on. My guess is that professors who wanted to shirk the onerous business of line-editing student compositions, identifying errors and offering their own criticism, figured out that they could greatly reduce their work load by adopting the idea that other students are capable of doing that.