Don’t call your professor by his/her first name? (by Xavier)

Jeff Culbreath, of the What’s Wrong With the World blog, really thinks that there is something profoundly wrong with professors preferring their students to call them by their first names.  He writes,

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“It's undeniable that an increasing number of academics in the United States prefer to be called by their first names, viewing honorifics as pretentious and arrogant. The blame for this social calamity can be placed squarely at the feet of Marxist sociology, which more or less permeates society today. For the Marxist everything is reduced to power relationships, including titles and formalities. The use of honorifics exposes power relationships that are not supposed to exist (better translated as ‘you're not supposed to notice’) in our egalitarian society, interfering with the liberal's preferred method changing reality by ignoring it.

The first thing we know about any professor who rejects honorifics is that he defines his own position primarily in terms of power and privilege rather than knowledge or accomplishment, regarding the former as instruments of oppression. He feels embarrassed or guilty about this and prefers not to be reminded by his title. He has little respect for his own achievement, considering it something anyone else could do - which sounds deceptively humble. Behind the facade of humility there are some disturbing corollaries. It usually follows that such a man has even less respect for the achievements of others, which he thinks anyone else might have easily accomplished, most especially himself. He views many of those who fail to reach his own level of achievement with either pity or contempt, as the only legitimate explanations for inequality in his egalitarian mind are: a) oppression; or b) moral fault.”

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Ouch!!  How does he know me so well?  I do prefer that my students call me by my first name, and so I guess I must also be a spineless, drooling liberal covered in misconceived mediocrity.  “Yes, call me ‘Xavier’ because I have absolutely no respect for myself or whatever I have done to get where I am.  I suck, so call me by my first name so that we can all suck together in a mass of soupy egalitarianism.  The lord knows that I only feign humility and fake trying to even the power field because of course there are power differences and I love it – oh wait, no I hate them and I’m ashamed of myself – but ooh, power feels so good – no, bad me!!!”

Ok, nonsense.  My guess is that there probably are some professors out there with some kind of mentality as whatever he is really getting at, but to generalize to all professors who wish a first name basis is a terrible generalization. 

Let me give you MY (meaning that this is not generalizable to all profs, even at UWW) reason for preferring the first name basis.  We are all in this education game together.  We all have a common goal.  The goal: awesome education for our students.  Professors have a role to play – students have a role to play – staff have a role to play – administrators have a role to play.  We all have integral roles to achieve this goal.  My education (and I do have a lot) does not make me more special than anyone else.  It just makes me qualified to play a certain role here on this campus.  Certain roles do come with certain privileges, but those privileges are only there to help in the function of the role.  And that is how the power associated with any role should be perceived too – it helps facilitate the role.  Thus, if I do not need students to call me by some special title for me to perform my role effectively, then I do not want to be called by that special title.  In fact, I believe that I perform my role better by preferring a first name basis.

Of course, for some professors, using more formal titles might help them perform their roles better.  For instance, I know of some women professors (not at UWW) that prefer their students to call them “Dr. so-and-so” because it helps students take them more seriously as professors, where otherwise the students might not.  Unfortunately, unthinking sexist students still pervade our schools making more formal titles necessary at times.  So different professors can have different reasons for preferring first name basis or a more formal basis.

Contrary to Culbreath, this role-based thinking of mine accords equal respect to all parties without somehow diminishing achievements of my own or others.   What I find distasteful are those professors who want the special titles because they feel that they’ve “earned” them.  Oooh, I hate that!  That is what I call a lack of respect for others to make them call you a title because that is what you worked for.  Let me tell you something, there are tons of people working damn hard out there in America – in the factories, in the mines, in the fields.  They are working damn hard for not enough pay.  If anything, they have earned the right of special titles.  Getting a PhD is very hard work too.  I am not minimizing that.  But putting your “special titled” self over the many other hard working people because “you earned it” is the height of arrogance and ignorance.  I say get over yourself and focus on the role you play.

The moral of the story: there is nothing wrong with students calling professors by their first names OR by more formal titles provided that the reasons are good reasons.  And "good" reasons qualify as the professor believes, in some manner, that his/her preference facilitates in the process of student learning.