Accountability in the two‐year college

Plato once defined man as the plumeless genus of bipeds, birds, of course, being the plumed. Whereupon Diogenes purportedly plucked a chicken and presented it as Plato's man. The Plantonists reacted by extending the differentia in the definition to, man-the plumeless genus of bipeds, having broad One is left with the feeling that the Platonists were somehow missing the point of the whole thing. And in a somewhat similar fashion, I contend that the unreconstructed critics of the concept of accountability in the teaching of English are somehow missing the point of the whole thing when they characterize accountability as a simple-minded behaviorism that is a consequence of simple-minded cost-accounting, as Robert Zoellner did in the October 1971 issue of CCC. 1 The issue is that man is not really characterized in any meaningful way as being a featherless biped, with or without nails. Nor is educational accountability accurately characterized by attempting to identify it within the context of any single learning theory, simple-minded or not, with or without a cost accounting bias. I offer to you what I consider to be some essential properties, attributes perhaps, of accountability as I think it should apply to education generally, and to the teaching of English in two-year colleges specifically. Accountability does require measurement; it requires that we use relevant criteria to evaluate learning and teaching. From what I read in journals and hear from fellow teachers, this point seems to be the single, most objectionable aspect having to do with accountability; that is, that objective measures be applied to the results of our teaching. Yet, as Professor Fred Standley of Florida

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