Honouring teaching excellence

The Distinguished Teacher Award 2023 celebrates the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) most inspiring teachers, whose techniques and mastery of their subject matter make them leaders in the lecture halls. From a large pool of portfolios, four recipients were selected for 2023: Professor Brandon Collier-Reed, Department of Mechanical Engineering; Dr George Hull, Department of Philosophy; Dr Yunus Omar, School of Education; and Dr Bianca Tame, Department of Sociology.

UCT News caught up with two of the recipients, Dr Omar and Dr Hull, to find out more about their views on teaching excellence, and what the award means to them.

Tivania Moodley (TM): What is your teaching philosophy?

Yunus Omar (YO): Central to my teaching philosophy is an increasing realisation that teachers ought to listen more. For example, in the opening minutes of a school leadership class in 2022, when the COVID-19 pandemic required us to maintain social distancing and wear masks, I posed this question to the class: “Which word, just one word, do you associate with school leadership?” Several perceptive answers followed. One, who sat silently, finally whispered: “Love.” Tears welled up in my eyes. That moment changed my view of what I was doing at the university. Teaching is the willingness to learn from everyone, and it speaks to the need for a principled and enacted intellectual humility. My students are my best teachers.

George Hull (GH): I want students to come out of a philosophy course with a new (hopefully justified) confidence in their own agency as an arguer and reasoner. Philosophy is less about doctrines and more about method, equipping students with tools of conceptual analysis and evaluation of arguments which enable them to do their own critical reasoning about almost any problem. As they become able to isolate an argument’s premises, and test it for validity, or master the method of counter-example, they begin to become philosophers.

TM: How does winning the Distinguished Teacher Award mean to you?

YO: It is a great personal honour that gives me a sense of my life having been at least partially useful. UCT has shown itself to be on the right side of history, and to teach at this challenging, complex but courageous university, and be accorded such a prestigious award, is quite overwhelming. It is also extremely motivating.

GH: It is humbling, because it is not something for which you apply. People nominate you and then you are notified. I feel very grateful to the students and colleagues who put in the time and effort to do this.

TM: What are some of the teaching challenges you’ve experienced at UCT?

YO: The key challenge is that the university has largely been neo-liberalised, as has the globe more generally. Even in the pocket of privilege that is the historically white UCT, austerity, budget cuts and a lack of adequate funding have prompted a slide into teaching for “the market”. This sounds strange in the face of our country’s “most unequal society in the world” status, and our quite astonishing unemployment figures, with some 65% of employable-age youth unemployed. As such, as a university, we need to take seriously our responsibility of preparing our graduates for meaningful employment, pushing back against the entrenched cycle of sadly established economic “wisdom” that increasingly commodifies us all. If not, the university will become an academic factory, rather than a space of open thinking towards a substantive democracy and justice for all.

TM: How have you worked to help address these challenges?

YO: My work engages directly with the legacies of colonialism, racial-capitalism, conflict and post-conflict contexts, and education as a public good in the face of increased private-capture-for-profit. This is central to my teaching and research, and I’m heartened to see that many postgraduate students are drawn to this kind of offering, which is often new and challenging to them. It has also been my privilege to contribute to the work of the university through various committees, where issues of equity, equality, transformation and excellence are central to the debates. In working with colleagues and student formations around these challenging and necessary matters, the task of the university as a robust intellectual space is experienced beyond personal academic achievement.

TM: Outside of formal training, what impact have you made on students?

GH: A lot of students grapple with philosophical questions even when they are not formally studying philosophy. I’ve helped set up some semi-structured regular meetings which tap into that. The philosophy department is blessed with bright, energetic postgraduate students. In 2022, I collaborated with several of them on a series of philosophical discussion groups aimed at non-philosophy undergraduates. The springboard for each meeting was one philosophical concept – epistemology, relativism, essentialism, ontology – which students might have encountered and want to explore further. Discussion was student-led and informal, but with a subject matter expert on hand if required.

TM: What drives your teaching excellence?

YO: My teaching is a constant attempt to infuse intellectual rigour into what is a moral purpose: the creation of a new world, alongside my colleagues, my students, my communities, and those I converse with through their writings across time and space. I want to understand more fully, in order to advocate for and bring to reality a world free of injustice and barbarism. What drives my teaching, and the endless quest for a better understanding of the world, is the realisation that there is an alternative to injustice. Quality teaching and learning matters, and I am inspired by those who have gone before, and by those who I live alongside, in order to be part of a global surge that bequeaths our youth a new and fine world, in which no one evades justice, and all can sustain and enjoy its fruits.

GH: To me, philosophy has always meant a special kind of pain (I was not born a logic whizz, and I have to put in the hours), but also a special kind of pay-off. After the late nights re-reading difficult sentences 20 times, there comes, sometimes, that moment when a new vista opens up, when you realise that the truth about something fundamental might be, not just different, but the opposite of what you had always thought. It is a privilege to be able to help set others on the path towards experiencing those mind-expanding moments.