To my boss

Caracas, July 28th, 2015

To my boss

Dear Mr.

    I am writing this letter to inform you of my personal decision to quit teaching. This is motivated by the fact that, today, after having the world experienced many Schools of Thought and after having it come up with many learning theories, we still believe that teaching (especially at the university) means transmitting knowledge from an all mighty (and all knowing) supreme mind to thirty to forty students each class.

  As I see it, inspired by those learning trends, teachers have assumed different roles. We have been instructors, auditors, brain challengers, facilitators and promoters of learning environments… This rings many bells in my head.

I strongly believe you don’t need professors to “instruct” people anymore and you don’t need professors to quietly accept to teach your lessons every year. You don’t need professors to transmit knowledge. I believe you need professors to challenge it.

In fact, people should not even go to college to acquire knowledge. We are not that simple. People should go to college to defy it. See it this way, once students have understood “your” content, they must be able to confront it, generate hypothesis, confirm them, reject them, and build new theories from there. So, why do you want professors to transmit knowledge? Why professors at all? And if students were able to do all those things, why would you expect professors to do less? Transmitting knowledge is plain too selfish.

    I am sorry, I cannot teach the same “lessons” anymore. What’s more, I cannot silently support an undisputable system by obediently teaching your lessons every year. I cannot believe professors are needed for that! I am not here to fill in empty bags. I cannot support without questioning and I refuse to join the hopeless (already full) group of unheard conformist professors who have chosen carrier stability over creative freedom.

    I understand Mr. that my arguments deliberately ignore all the elements involved in this great university life specter; however, those are the ones that speak to me the most. I must, then, sadly inform you that I’m quitting teaching for good, and I say “sadly” not because I regret my decision but because of all the unpleasant experiences I have had trying to do any teaching these years.

    I thank you for considering me qualified enough to do this job and for letting me in in this higher education environment.

Sincerely yours,

The frustrated professor.

PS: You must also know that I have no plans to stop working at the institution. I hope you have not thought this a resignation letter. It is not. I have only written this letter to inform you that from now on I am not teaching anymore. You may find me in my classroom when you finish reading this.

© 2015 Grecia Albornoz