Why The Cheating Scandals Were Inevitable

I can't tell you when people began to cheat on tests.  Whenever it was, I'm sure it was a long, long time ago.

So the recent scandal in Great Neck, NY is not surprising.  Great Neck is an affluent suburb of New York City.  It's no exaggeration to say that most of the parents there are highly-educated professionals or business people or that the community has far more than its share of people with advanced degrees from prestigious universities.  As one might expect, kids grow up with great pressure and expectations about the kinds of schools they will get into and the kinds of careers they will pursue.  Given that standardized tests play as important a role as they play in college admissions, students will do whatever they can to score as high as they can.  As we have seen, for some, it means not taking the test themselves.  


I am sure that Great Neck is not the first, nor will it be the last, community in which young people (or, more likely, their parents) pay for stand-ins to take the SAT and other standardized tests.  Such things are inevitable as long as there is so much emphasis on credentialing, which makes the name of the school and the highest degree you attain in it even more important than almost any other attribute you may have.  


I would argue that such emphasis on one's educational pedigree can only lead to so much focus on testing.  John Ruskin once said that people know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Likewise, admissions officers, prospective employers--and even prospective spouses--might not know how to evaluate the qualities of the person who seeks admission, employment or another person's hand.  Test scores and other easily manipulable numerical values give such people a false sense of being able to evaluate another person's intelligence, talent, commitment or other character traits.  As a result, people who are vying for admissions, employment or simply a "yes" from the one with whom he or she is smitten, come to believe in the value, or at least the importance, of those scores.  And anyone who wants the school, the scholarship, the job or the guy or girl badly enough will do whatever he or she will provide an advantage.  


Perhaps even more disturbing--because it's also inevitable--is when teachers or administrators are the ones cheating.  That is exactly what happened in Atlanta, among other places:  educators actually changed the answers on their pupils' tests.  But, really, is anyone surprised?  After all, those teachers and educators were inculcated--perhaps to an even greater degree than other people--with the idea that those test scores are important.  


Plus, the ones who are making educational policy are managers and bean-counters rather than educators.  They have no more idea than anyone else has when it comes to separating "good" from "bad" schools.  So they rely on test scores.  In some cases, decisions about funding--or even as to which schools will remain open or not--are decided on the basis of students' test scores.  It seems to me that those technocratic policy-makers, and the standardized test industry, are the main beneficiaries of the so-called No Child Left Behind Act.


And people wonder why, every few years, the world's economy is brought to its knees after some executive of Enron, Lehman Brothers or some other megalithic corporation "cooks the books"!  

Will They Ever Be Able To Take Advantage of Black Friday Sales?

For the past few Saturdays, I've been teaching a Business and Professional Writing Class in a for-profit university's branch in Manhattan. It's only a couple of blocks from one of the world's most famous department stores.  After my class, I passed it.  Although it and other department stores are reporting significantly more sales than they had on Thanksgiving weekend last year or the year before, it didn't seem particularly crowded to me. Yes, there were more people than there would be on a day in, say, March or August.  But I seem to remember more people in other years.  Then again, I was only there for a moment.


Still, I couldn't help but to wonder how many of those people would be taking advantage of next year's Black Friday or Thanksgiving weekend sales.  Indeed, if things get bad enough, one has to wonder how much longer that store, or others, will survive.


Then I wondered about my students.  Were any of them in that store yesterday?  Would any go in today?  Would they ever be able to shop there?


That last question was particularly disturbing to ask.  In that class, I'd say that about half are veterans.  One spent more than two decades in the Army but hasn't been able to find work in the five years since he left it.  Another was deployed twice--once to Iraq and another time to Afghanistan--and hasn't had work since returning in 2007.  Still others haven't worked since their discharges even though they had specialties and training that were supposed to make them "desirable", or at least "employable" in the civilian economy.


I know these things because I've been, among other things, coaching the students in writing resumes and cover letters.  Everyone who knows anything about the subject says that you shouldn't leave gaps in your chronology.  But what do you do when you haven't worked in three, four or five years?  Unfortunately, increasing numbers of people are trying to fill such holes in their resumes, and lives.  


One or two of them may be working in that store right now.  After all, they all knew--and I mentioned--that it would be hiring for the holidays.  Even if they are working there, who knows where, when or whether  they'll work, let alone shop, again.

Are PhDs Making Us Stupid?

A while back, I read an article with a title like "Does Google make you stupid?"  If I remember correctly, the author of that article said that the ability to find so much information instantaneously has eroded his (for some reason I'm assuming the author was male) ability to immerse himself in a good book, and made him less patient, which made him less able to analyze an argument.


As interesting as that article was, it made an argument that's about three thousand years old.  I'm ashamed to say that it's been a while since I've read Platos Republic.  But, I recall that he said, in essence, that having more books makes us stupider because, paradoxically, when knowledge and ideas are stored outside human brains, people don't have to store--or use--as much of that knowledge or those ideas.  


Perhaps I've found the answer to a question that's perplexed me:  If more and more people are getting more and more advanced education and degrees, why is the overall level of literacy and education declining?  Why is it that there are about three times as many PhDs in English as there were when I was born, but the average American's reading and writing skills--however one measures them--have declined every year that I have been alive.  


You can see it in the level of writing in movies, television shows and the lyrics of popular music.  At the same time, one sees the coarsening of tastes reflected in the kinds of movies and TV shows that attract large audiences.  Films like "No Country For Old Men" or "Girl, Interrupted" never make the kind of money that "Porky's" or anything with Chuck Norris in it makes.  


This stratification of education and taste can, perhaps, be seen most starkly in music.  There has always been vapid popular music--and, I admit, I listen to it sometimes when I want to relax.  I also appreciate the artistry behind hip-hop:  Singer/songwriters like Jay-Z and Slick Rick are among the best poets we have.  (I once taught a course on the poetics and rhetoric of hip-hop.)  However, I think people are right to decry the "gang banging" and other kinds of banging that are glorified in some of those songs.  


Lest anyone thinks "it's a black male thing," listen to some old blues songs from Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith or any number of other African-American artists up to the dawn of hip-hop.  They are as emotionally and spiritually complex as they are heartfelt, and their expressions of pain are all but the exact opposite of the glorification of materialism, violence and the degradation of women, all of which are manifestations of avoiding any way of dealing with the grief and other feelings that come in the aftermath of trials and tragedies.


Most of those early blues artists had little or no formal education.  Some taught themselves to read music; some couldn't read it, or even their own names.  Now their songs have become fetish-objects of self-styled scholars--which, I believe is one of the reasons why so many young African-Americans are unaware of and uninterested in the music that did as much as anything to ensure the survival (yes, physical as well as intellectual and spiritual) of their grandparents and parents.


So the "blues" gets left to professors of African-American studies.  Likewise, poetry is left to literature professors and, as Donald Hall has said, Americans have had their ability to read poetry bred out of them. 


I am using the examples of music and poetry because they are subjects I am familiar with.  However, I suspect that our reliance on "experts"--which are usually defined with people with advanced degrees--is leaving people more mentally passive and less likely to follow Tranio's advice:  "In brief, sir, study what you most affect."


I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have experts, and I'm not denying that it's much more difficult than it was in Shakespeare's time to be well-versed in more than a couple of topics.  After all, in just about any given topic, there is more to know.  But I don't think that simply letting a few people be "experts" on some topic or another is any healthier than letting any individual or group gain an inordinate amount of power and make decisions for people about the things that most intimately affect them.

I Am Thankful--For Empowerment?

At the risk of going Norman Rockwell on you, I'm going to say that I actually have a lot of reasons to be thankful, not only on this day of Thanksgiving, but through the rest of the year as well.


Some of them are deeply personal.  I won't mention them only because they could hijack this blog.  But I will probably allude to some of them in this post, and others yet to be written.


One of the things for which I'm thankful is that I've had the opportunity to work with as many students for as many years as I've been doing it. Although I sometimes feel exasperated when I teach my under- or un-prepared students, my frustration is never directed toward them.  Very few, if any, students try to come out of their high schools lacking in fundamental skills; nearly all students who are academically (as well as socially and functionally) deficient are in such a state as a result of dysfunctional or corrupt school, community and home environments.  Others are, or are children of, immigrants who haven't been here long enough to be fluent in the lingua franca of this culture, let alone of academic life--and not sophisticated in the ways of this society (though they may have been very well educated in their or their parents' culture).  And still others have been egged onto college simply because their teachers, parents or other role models could not, or did not want to, imagine anything else for them.


None of what I've described is nearly as frustrating or mind- or soul-draining to deal with as the shenanigans I've dealt with from administrators and, on occasion, some faculty members (usually the ones who are in charge of some committee or hold some other relatively meaningless title).  The difference between even the most difficult students I've had and the administrators and faculty members I've mentioned is that almost no student, no matter how recalcitrant, sets out to become an asshole.  Sometimes they are acting in frustration toward a system they don't understand--or, perhaps, understand all too well but haven't found a way to articulate, much less understand their ability to change or other roles in it.  And, on occasion, the work I do with students helps them to acquire or develop the means to deal with a system that, to them, can seem like a conspiracy against them.  I am very grateful to have the opportunity to do that.


On the other hand, I am perhaps more grateful that the work I've done has enabled me to see that being on the job I just lost, or any particular job, is not as important as the work I'm doing and, even more to the point, what my mission or purpose, or whatever you want to call it, might be.  People have told me that I'm a "natural" teacher.  I'd say I've become a pretty good one, but I don't think I'm a "natural" teacher because, somehow, I don't think anyone is.  Also, I think that I will ultimately move away from it.  


Writing is what I've really wanted to do--and, in fact, I've done it, in fits and starts.  But  I don't want to write a dissertation or academic articles.  That is one of the reasons why I don't plan on doing a PhD.  I need the freedom to take my writing, and the learning that goes along with it, in whatever direction it needs to take, not one that suits the whims and career aspirations of some academic advisor.


In that sense, not getting re-hired at one of my jobs might have been a wake-up call.  I'm realizing that, no matter how much extra time I give students outside of class, I'm ultimately serving the institution rather than them.  The problem with serving any institution is that it drains, not only time and financial resources, but also the life-force from those who are subject to it.  You become a cog in a machine, and your supervisor becomes the switch.


Plus--Since getting notice that I won't be returning to York, I've had another experience that, somehow, I believe to be related.  I stood up to an abusive ex-boyfriend in a way I never before did.  He backed off, like a puppy with a tail between his legs, and told me (in a text message) that he hopes I have a good life.  Of course, he meant that sarcastically, but I hope it's a sign that he'll leave me alone.  

Breaking The News

Perhaps it's a good thing that I've never been a parent.  It's an absolutely onerous experience to break the illusions of someone who has trusted you.  I can only imagine what it would have been like to tell a child I might've had that there's no Santa Claus, the world isn't always fair or just, and that not everyone is benevolent .  It's hard enough for me to shatter an illusion I didn't create, for people I didn't shelter from the world.


Last night, I told my students at York that I won't be back next semester.  Some of them had asked what I was teaching next semester; in some cases, their friends and siblings wanted to take classes with me.  I have too much respect for them to give them false hopes, so I told them about the notice I'd just received.


More important, I believe, I told them a few things about how the hiring and firing are actually done in York and other institutions, and how other processes work in the academic world.  I saw the sadness of one student, whom I'll call Abigail, turn to fury; others registered the sort of dejection you see on kids' faces when they realize there's not going to a Christmas, at least not like the ones they've previously experienced.


I don't think any of them were harboring any dreams of becoming professors: They work, and some of them raise families, and all but one or two are at least several years older than "traditional" college students.  Still, I found it remarkable that nearly all of them thought that a professor was a professor, and that is who teaches their courses.  "You know, you pay the same tuition whether a part-timer like me or a full-time professor teaches your classs," I revealed.  Then, I turned to Abigail.  "How many classes have you taken with me."


"This is the third."


"And you took the others..."


"In the Spring of 2009 and the Spring of 2010."

"Well," I intoned, "you were cheated.  Those first two classes, I was a full-timer.  And now I'm a part-timer.  Yet you paid the same tuition."


"And you're still the same great prof you were then."


"Thank you.  I wouldn't have been any other way."


"So why are they paying you less now?," another student wondered.


I really tried hard not to be cynical.  Now that I recall that moment, I think that student couldn't believe I held out for as long as I did. But I could hold out no longer.  "They know I'm a sucker.  I love this work.  And they know how bad the job market is, and how old I am.  So they figured that, at the end of my last contract, they could get the same work from me for less money and less commitment."


"So this college is turning into Wal-Mart?"  If the class had been an episode of "You Bet Your Life" and I'd been Groucho Marx, the "duck" would have dropped from the air.  However, I said nothing.  I didn't need to; the student had her answer.


"I'm going to complain," an older male student pledged.  Other students murmured in agreement.  "I'm happy that you're willing to do that," I said.  "But don't do it for me.  Do it for yourselves.  Do it because the university has said that it's going to increase tuition this year, next year and every year until 2017.  Do it because while I'm losing my job,and some of you might lose yours, more administrative positions are being created in this college, in this university, in other colleges and universities in this city, in this state, in this country.  Do it in the hope that your kids won't be worse off than you are."


I don't know what the future holds.  I probably won't be back at York next semester, or ever again.  But I hope those students use what I taught them in the classroom, and whatever they learned last night.

What I'm Saying Goodbye To

Today I learned that I won't be going back to York College in the Spring.  On one hand, I'm upset about it:  Who wouldn't be, about losing a job, in this economy?  On the other, I more or less knew it was going to happen, and it's a bit like a denouement, if not a relief, to have gotten the letter in my hand.


I have some other work for next semester, but I still have to find something to fill in the gap left by York's decision not to re-hire me.  I don't know how difficult that will be.  Still, I am glad,in some ways, not to be returning to York.  For one thing, I hope to lose the 25 pounds I gained during the nearly seven years that I've worked there.  Plus, I won't have to enable some of the more unethical things the college has done, such as beginning new majors in fields that are dying or for which there is no application or employment. In previous posts, I mentioned the journalism program. Around the same time the college started to offer that major,they started another program in somethng called "aviation management."  


But the best thing about not going back to York might be the opportunity to reclaim something within myself.  I realize that spending almost seven years in the college has caused me to forget why I'm teaching at the college level.  A young math prof reminded me of that reason during a conversation today:  "Remember, you're an artist and an intellectual."  One of the problems, he said, is that the college's administration doesn't seem to realize that we're there because we value ideas and the process of creating something; what they want instead are people who will kowtow to them.  Sadly, most faculty members are not only willing, but at times eager, to do that:  After all, academic jobs are scarce and, really, some profs can't do much else because they've put so much time into preparing for the careers they hoped to have, and into the college itself.


What the administrators also seem not to understand, or to willfully ignore, is that students actually want a prof who's an intellectual or creative person, even if they don't understand what that it means to be such a person.  In other words, the students don't want profs who are just like their high school teachers:  They want people who can actually stimulate them and help them prepare for the "real world."  


While I'll miss some of my colleagues and students, I certainly won't miss the expression I've seen on many of their faces, and in their bodies.  It's exactly the same as the one I've seen in kids who live with abusive parents.  

Protesting A Waste Of Youth

Just now, I found myself thinking about Occupy Wall Street and the articles William Pannapacker has written (some under the pseudonym Thomas H Benton). 


Both, I believe, are speaking up against exploitative systems.  Pannapacker's message is more focused and coherent though, to be fair, he has confined himself to criticisms of the way graduate programs in the humanities play on the hopes and dreams of young people.  On the other hand, I think OWS protesters are trying to show that "the system"--which seems to include the financial-services plutocracy, in their view--is inherently unjust.  While I agree with them, I think they are just beginning to develop a more incisive analysis of the ways in which the few are controlling the many, and will need more time to spread the message that comes from it.


However, apart from their disgust at the exploitation of those systems they criticize (which, by the way, is very similar to the attitude of those who are exposing the law school scam), I think that Pannapacker and OWS (as well as the law school scambloggers) also have a common understanding of the enormous amounts of talent and potential that are being wasted or destroyed.  


Graduate and law school professors train their students (if they train them in any way) to become lesser versions of themselves.  To some degree, they accomplish this through the ways they teach, or don't teach. But, even worse, they inculcate their students with the notion--or affirm it if the students already hold it--that the subject of the professor's research is the only worthwhile pursuit in life, and that forsaking it for business, government or any other kind of non-academic employment is a kind of death or betrayal.  What those professors never tell the students, of course, is that the vast majority of them will never do the kind of work for which they are studying.  And, because the students have spent so much time in school and have no practical expereince, by the time they graduate or leave their programs, they're not much more employable than most high-school graduates.


Think of how the talents and work ethic of the bright and motivated students who go to graduate and law school could be used if they were encouraged to use their skills, talents and education in areas outside academia, and if the schools provided some sort of guidance on how to do that.  An education in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and arts does provide the sorts of analytic and writing skills that can be used in any number of endeavors.  I think that, if anything, this society would be better off with people in government, the foundations and corporations who have a better understanding of many different points of view and the ability to work creatively rather than with a bunch more people who will compete for a shrinking pool of academic jobs.


Otherwise, we'll have plenty more "overeducated" and "overqualified" people who can't get jobs, or who are working jobs that are outside their areas of skill and interest in order to pay off their student loans. If that's not a waste of talent, I don't know what is.  


Then again, you might bump into some of those people at an OWS event.  At least some of those protesters are putting their educations and energy to work!

How Else Could It Have Been In A Football Factory?

I'll try not to spend too much more time discussing the Penn State football scandal.  However, tonight I'd like to share a thought I had about it:  that, really, it's not the aberration within Penn State, or education generally, that the university's spin doctors would have us believe it is.


Head coach Joe Paterno was said to preside over a "clean" program.  That is to say, there weren't any recruiting violations, and most of the football players graduated.  I am willing to believe that such conditions prevailed and that Paterno may well have been an honest man who made a bad decision, or who wasn't paying enough attention to what his assistants were doing.  


But, really, what Paterno and his crew were doing--at least from an educational standpoint--is exactly the sort of thing educators have been doing in this country for more than a century.  Some writers on education, like John Holt, have described the sorts of schools and colleges we have as factories.  In other words, they are facilities that turn out a product (in this case, graduates).  Each sample of that product is just like the others, and they are made to the specifications of whoever is paying for them.   In doing these things, the factory sucks the life out of, if not exploits, those who work in and for it.


And such were the conditions of Penn State and its football program.  Their goals were to turn out graduates and NFL players--not educated people, not well-rounded human beings, not young men and women who are mature, confident and self-reliant.  In this sense, Penn State is really no different from any number of other universities or schools in this country.  When they talk about turning out "citizens," "workers" or "leaders," you know that the goal is not to teach people how to think, communicate or empathize.  That is to say, the goal is never to educate people; the gestures of education might be performed, but there will not be actual education.  


Of course, in such an atmosphere--which is no different from what one finds in most educational institutions--the goal of the school is not to serve the student.  Instead, the student is there to serve the school.  The student does this by being a number, a statistic, a label.  He or she is another tick on the enrollment sheet; if he or she is in one program or another, that can mean additional funding--whether in tuition, grants or money allocated by Federal, state and local governments--for that school.  And, if said student is a football player (or, in some other schools, a basketball player), he brings additional money to the school in everything from ticket sales to product endorsements.


Finally, the school wants those student/athletes to graduate--preferably "on time"--for media and public relations, not for the betterment of the student.  Plus, once those students graduate, they are no longer sources of revenue--unless, of course, they give, as alumni to the school.


To me, it's not surprising that, within such a system, someone would exploit the young people for his own personal gain or pleasure.  That is what former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky is said to have done when he was working under Paterno.  I am hardly surprised that in a system in which student/athletes are commodities, and graduates are products, such a man would be drawn to the job he had.  After all, although paedophilia involves adults having sex with children, it is not primarily a sexual relationship.  Rather, it is the entanglement of vulnerable young people in the power of an authority (if not authoritative) figure.  And, really, it's difficult to see how Penn State, or just about any other university or education system, could not have people like him working for them.

The Real Story At Penn State

For the past few days, the media have been full of coverage of the Penn State scandal.  As always seems to happen with such a big story, the talking heads and pretty faces are missing the point.  


The real story isn't the fact that, for the first time in half a century, Penn State played a football game without Joe Paterno as coach.  It isn't even the accusations against former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, who served under Paterno.   In fact--as cold as this may seem--the young men who carried the burden of the sexual abuse they experienced are also not the story, either.


Rather, the real story in the Penn State scandal is that an institution and the authority figures within it, who were entrusted with the lives of young people, committed mental and spiritual--not to mention physical--violence against those young people.  In doing so, they used that trust against the parents who, overtly or implicitly, inculcated their kids with that trust for those authority figures and the institution they represented.  


Of course, if those kids were abused in the way they say they were, the emotional scars will never heal.  A lot of parents, I imagine, will flagellate themselves for entrusting their kids' well-being to predators who worked for an exploitative institution.  Still, Paterno has his golden parachute, and a few people--administrators, mainly--have enriched themselves from the enormous profits the Penn State football program generated.  


This situation has so many parallels to that of the student debtor crisis, the subprime mortgage debacle and the Iraq invasion.  The underlying cause of all of them, however, is the same.  It's not, as some have posited, misplaced trust on the part of those who go to play football at Penn State (or any other major college athletic program), enlist in the military during an imperialistic war (conducted under the pretext of 9/11) or take out a loan to buy a house or go to college.  Instead, the problem is that academic institutions, banks and other corporations and the government--specifically, those who represent those institutions--have gamed the system so that people, particularly the young and members of "minority" groups--have no choice but to trust them and to follow their dictates and mandates if they want to survive, let alone prosper.


For too many young people--particularly those in the inner cities and the post-industrial post-apocalyptic moonscape that has become large parts of this country--really have no choice but to play sports (or cheerlead) for large universities' teams, join the Armed Forces or take out large loans with terms that would make even Mafiosi blush.


In other words, too many young people really have no choice but to put themselves at the mercies of people and institutions who do not have their interests at heart.  These young people will find their lives ringed in, and themselves enslaved to those who have been rewarded for their moral bankruptcy and predatory behavior.

The Future of Post-Industrial America?

Earlier this week, while riding my bike along Honeywell Avenue in Long Island City, I saw these people:

They were all waiting to register for public assistance.  The building was, until recently, a factory and warehouse.

A Double Standard?

After longtime football coach Joe Paterno was fired yesterday, Penn State students rioted.


I couldn't help but to notice that those rioters haven't been subject to the kind of criticism that's been heaped on Occupy Wall Street protesters.


Now I ask:  Why?


The OWS protests have been mainly peaceful, if not always harmonious.  Some protesters have fought among themselves, which is inevitable when so many people are huddled together for a period of time.  Other than those intercine skirmishes, the protesters have not acted with any agression unless they were provoked by police officers.  


On the other hand, the Penn State rioters acted as they did without any provocation.


Furthermore, detractors have imputed a lack of diversity to OWS protesters.  Perhaps that criticism was valid in the early days of the protests; however, the composition of the protests has changed in every possible way.  


In contrast, nearly all of the Penn State rioters are white men.


It took a while for OWS to develop anything like a coherent message.  It's still evolving, but we can say with certainty that the protesters are opposed to the actions of plutocrats that have left millions of people unable to maintain the standard of living their parents provided them (even though said protesters, as often as not, have more and better credentials, and are working longer and harder, than their parents), let alone improve their lot in life.


Joe Paterno's firing affects no one outside the Penn State community, save for some high school football prospects who may have been considering PS.  Certainly the rioters' lives are no better or worse for the firing.


Finally, both the financial oligarchs' greed and the Penn State assistant coaches' sexual predations have left young people permanently scarred.  Yet there seems to be more sympathy for those coaches and for Paterno, who enabled them, than there is for their victims or those who were exploited by the educational-financial complex.

The Aftermath Of My Ignorance

I have been teaching long enough at the college level that former students of mine have kids who are now in college.  Yet, after what I did last night, I was--for only the second time in all of those years--certain that I acted ethically.

A student from several years ago asked me whether I’d write her a letter of reference for law school.  When I was teaching her, I was ignorant of what was happening to the profession and practice of law, mainly because, never having had serious aspirations to become a lawyer myself, I had little reason to think about it.  However, I was teaching her—and she was confiding details of her life to me—just as the market for lawyers was collapsing along with the economy, although few people realized, much less acknowledged, it.

She became one of my favorite students for her intelligence and for the way she faced up to a very difficult issue in her life.  She said she admired me for my honesty and courage; the truth is that I admired her even more because she faced up to the issue in question much earlier in her life than I did in mine.

In any event, we talked for about an hour.  During that time, I told her about some of the perils of going to law school, given the state of the job market.  She reiterated something she told me when she was my student:  It had always been her ambition to go to law school, and because of some of the experiences she’s had, she wants to practice civil rights law.  If anything, she has all the more reason to pursue that dream.  On the other hand, I advised her, it’s difficult even to get internships, let alone jobs that will actually allow her to pay her student loans and live on something more than Ramen noodles. 

I could see the hurt in her eyes.  For a moment, I wished I hadn’t said the things I’d said.  But I realized that if I was going to be that professor she looked up to—let alone true to myself or anything I believe in—I simply had to tell her those things. 

Perhaps she will, one day, understand why I didn’t offer the sort of encouragement she was accustomed to hearing.  Whatever may come, I told her, she can always write or call me.  And, yes, I’ll write the letter of recommendation, as long as she thinks about, and understands, the potential perils of going to law school.

Gatekeepers Living In Their Parents' Basements

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with a tenured prof at one of the colleges in which I teach.  We were lamenting the state of the universe, the planet and the academic world.  One topic led to another and somehow the perpetually depressed job market for humanities professors came up.  She mentioned that two lecturers the college hired three years ago were living with their parents.  So are some other faculty members, at other colleges as well as the one in which we're teaching, she said.  

"I don't see how any young person could do it any other way," I declared.

She thought about it.  "You know, that's going to change the makeup of faculties. They'll draw more from local populations.  That means less diversity."

Translation:  Faculties will be even whiter than they are now. And, of course, they will also become more homogeneous in socio-economic terms.  After all, how could anyone who has to support him or her self, and isn't independently wealthy, go to graduate school--especially if current economic conditions persist and universities start to cut back on funding for graduate students?  

It's not just a matter of paying for tuition and living expenses.  Anyone who expects to pursue tenure-track jobs will need to go to conferences and spend money on other things that have to do with professional development.  Plus, given the difficulty of balancing heavy teaching loads with the other demands of being in graduate school or a young faculty member, it helps to have money to pay other people to run errands, do laundry and such.

Also, it may be necessary to travel for interviews.  Of course, the cost of that comes out of the student’s pocket.  And, if that student is in Architecture, Art History or a few other fields, he or she will need to travel in order to see the things their textbooks depict and their professors talk about.

In other words, grad (and, depending on the institution, undergrad) students are expected to keep up at least some of the trappings of a middle- to upper-middle class lifestyle even though he or she is being paid a miserable, risible pittance, if he or she is being paid at all.  It’s hard to see how any student can afford this lifestyle if his or her parents can’t afford to have him or her living with them.

If young people with poor parents are smart enough to get into a Philosophy grad program, they are also smart enough to notice that there are ways one can make more money or find more job security (perhaps both!) without getting a PhD.   They can become teachers in suburban school districts; they could also become nurses or police officers.  Or, they can become skilled laborers or tradespeople.  Not only will they be paid more than all but the most senior tenured university faculty members; they will also make overtime pay and have paid vacations.

Some argue that being poor or being the first in one’s family to graduate high school (as I am) prepares people for those skilled and unionized jobs, not for the professoriate.  A commenter (Anon. Nov. 4, 10:24) on “Inside the Law School Scam” blog says, sarcastically, that those of us who come from such backgrounds should know our “place”, meaning that we should not try anything that requires crossing the boundaries of social and economic class--which, by implication, includes race, religion, gender and sexuality.  Colleges and universities would then return to being what they were for most of their history: gatekeepers of the ruling classes.

Gatekeepers living in their parents’ basements:  What other society has created such institutions and workers—or young people who go six figures into debt to join them?

How Will They Remember OWS?

When I was in Prague this summer, I couldn't help but to think about history.  In the Male Strana, Stare Mesto and other parts of the city, there are beautiful buildings and picturesque squares that have changed little, if at all, in centuries.  


However, when one thinks of history, it's impossible not to think of the blood that has been spilled and all of the personal and national tragedies that have taken place.  If you've ever been to the Place de la Concorde in Paris and recall that the deposed king was beheaded there, you understand what I mean.  Today some of the most elegant and expensive residences and hotels in the world surround it, and the Prague Castle window from which two Regents and their secretary were tossed  (This defenestration was one of the central events leading to the Thirty Years' War>) now affords some of the world's most sublime urban vistas.  


And now I think of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations taking place in my home town, as well as in other places.  Things are getting pretty tense; there has already been a violent clash between protesters and police at the OWS demonstration in Oakland.  Will other demonstrations--including the one here in New York--turn into full-blown conflagrations?  


I also wonder whether anyone but historians and serious readers will remember the way the world's wealth and power--and, along with them, the lives of billions of people--were manipulated from the corridors of, and the canyons around, the Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve and the offices of those companies that comprise the FIRE economy  (which, ironically, was based--at least until the dot-com boom--on paper wealth!).  Will people remember the suffering that resulted, and how OWS was a reaction to it?  Or will future generations be as oblivous to it as most tourists are to the history behind the events that took place on la Place de la Concorde and in the Prague castle?

Should They Occupy?

Today I did something dangerous.  I had no choice, really.

Raul, in my freshman composition class, is one of the more intelligent students I've had in a while.  He asks incisive questions that reflect, not only his ability to think, but also a wisdom that, I suspect, comes from some sort of life experience that, perhaps, a person his age shouldn't have.

We were discussing revision strategies for the students' papers.  That got us to talking about one thing and another when Raul wondered, "Professor, what do you think of Occupy Wall Street?"

Usually, when a student asks for me opinion, I throw the question back at them, "What do you think?"  However, I knew Raul was expecting, and didn't want, that.  I also realized that, somehow, I wouldn't be serving the rest of the class by turning his query into some sort of classroom exercise.

Instead, I said this:  "I've been there.  When the occupation started, I didn't think there was a clear message.  However, I've come to realize that the protesters understand that a promise to them has been broken.  They've been told that if they do all the right things--including college--everything would work out for them.  In other words, they were taught that if they worked with the system, the system would work with them.  But now they're realizing that's not going to happen, and they're stuck with the bill.  Meanwhile, some bankers and other people like that ran companies, communities and whole nations into the ground so they could make themselves richer.  And they are bailed out; they are rewarded for their behavior."

At that point, you could hear hairs rustle on your head if you turned it.  After I don't know how long, another student broke it.  "Tell us some more, professor."

"Well," I continued, "I'll probably go again.  But I still think they've got half of their protest right.  They know that bankers and bureaucrats in the colleges they attended are getting richer and richer.  But they don't seem to realize that it's happening as the government gets bigger and takes a bigger slice of people's incomes.  One doesn't happen without the other:  Corporations grow to the point of dominance with the help of governments with large bureaucracies, and vice versa."

The rest of the class was listening even more intently than I expected they would.  So I told them that, if things don't improve, the lives of many of the protesters--which, for a good number of them, include underemployment as well as unemployment--could be their future.

"You mean that we could get degrees and end up with no job?," one student blurted.

I nodded. It was then that I realized how much those protestors, my students--and I--have in common.  My students, whether they realize it or not, have as much reason as anybody else has for occupying Wall Street.  I hope that leads at least some of them to action.