What If It All Came To A Halt?

As someone whose education has involved the study of language, I find it fascinating that higher education is increasingly referred to as an "industry" or as being part of the "Educational-Industrial Complex."

Like any industry, it has people--honest and otherwise--who depend on it for a living.  And, like any complex, it is vulnerable to those who have no interests but their own, and those of their cronies, in mind.

One result is that many families and communities depend upon educational institutions for survival.  In America, we have the "college town":  something I've seen in no other part of the world.  It almost goes without saying that if the college or university in the town closes, stores, restaurants, bars, and offices offering all sorts of services would die with it.  Also, the value of homes would plummet, or those homes would become completely unsellable. 

Really, the effects would be no different than those of an industry leaving another kind of town.  That's what happened, for example, to Camden, New Jersey (a.k.a. Newark Without The Charm) after RCA and Campbell's Soup left town.  Now the town doesn't have even a single movie theatre or auto dealership, supermarket or department store.  It's not hard to imagine the same thing happening to Ithaca, NY if Cornell were to close down, or even Princeton if its eponymous university were to shut its doors.

Although Cornell and Princeton don't seem like likely candidates for closure in the immediate future, even they might not be safe if the financial industry or other sectors of the economy were to collapse.  Sure, some schools--including, possibly, Cornell and Princeton--would survive, if very reduced and forms different from their current ones. After all, if tuition were to go high enough, some students who currently attend and pay for it would be priced out of it.

More to the point, other schools would be devastated by a collapse of the financial industry and a loss of government largesse.  Think of how many students wouldn't be able to attend those schools lower in the pecking order than the Ivies.  Sure, there are some professors who don't teach, whose careers are all about research.  If the institution isn't being sustained by tuition (paid mainly through loans) or other forms of government funding, how many of those professors would keep their jobs?

If there aren't students to teach, and research can't be done, what is the raison d'etre for a university?

But if there is no college or university, all of those professors and administrators will have nowhere to go.  Contrary to what job-placement officers and other shills like to say, most of those professors' skills and work experience aren't "transferrable."  And, even though many administrators pride themselves on bringing a corporate mindset to higher education, the truth is that in the larger economy, academic administrators don't garner nearly the respect their counterparts in the corporate world enjoy.  So it would be difficult for many of them to find other employment.

Things would be worst of all for the students who were displaced.  Most 18-year-olds aren't trained for anything at all; if they are, the end-result of their training is that they can pass tests and complete assignments that have no bearing on anything outside the school walls. 

Imagine what would happen if State College, PA became Benton Harbor, MI, or if College Park, MD were to turn into East St. Louis, IL.  The way things are now, most Americans still see the so-called "dead" cities (Detroit being perhaps the most egregious example) as "pockets" of poverty and decay.  The hope has been sucked out of them; at least a generation has grown up in each of those cities knowing that there simply is no future for them.   On the other hand, if whole communities full of people who've tasted hope and cultivated their dreams and aspirations suddenly has those things taken away from them--and that scenario is played out in hundreds of communities across the country--will they be so placid?

Why The Kids Aren't All Right

Lately, thanks to Nando, I've spent some time perusing "College Misery."  And I've even made a couple of posts on it.


As I begin a new semester, I think of all of the irresponsible, manipulative and just plain immature behavior I've seen from students.  I don't think most of us who became college faculty members had any idea that we'd encounter such things; at least, they weren't on our minds as we pursued our degrees and dreamt of "a life of the mind" or some such thing.


As much as I empathize with the other contributors, I can't help but to notice a lot of student-bashing.  Yes, students' acts (or inaction) can be frustrating.  And, they are--at least according to the law--adults and therefore accountable for their actions.  However, I have learned that young people, whether consciously or not, almost always imitate their elders and express those values they learn from said elders, and their environments.


So the "little snowflakes" lie to your face?  Make excuses?  Text their friends while you're talking to them?  Simply "forget" things?  Well, guess what?  They've figured out--again, consciously or unconsciously--that their schools, families and communities, and the society in which they live, reward such behaviors.  Or, at least, those behaviors aren't penalized.  


I'm thinking now of a younger man I dated a couple of years ago.  The term "dysfunctional family" has been used to describe any and all kinds of unpleasantness. However, his family fits just about any definition of that term.  They are all addicts of one kind or another and can only communicate with each other through screaming and threats, and navigate the turbulence (which they helped to create) of their home through all manner of lying and manipulation.  


Guess what my now-ex did when he was with me.  Now you know why he's an ex.


The difference is that he was old enough to choose to behave differently.  Most 18- and 19-year olds are not mature enough, or simply don't have enough life experience, to know that they can be different from what they've learned how to be.

The thing is, there's absolutely no incentive for them (or my ex, for that matter) to do so.  If CEO's can, through recklessness and fraud, bring the world's economy to the brink and be rewarded for their behavior with bailouts and bonuses, what can we tell young people about personal responsibility? 


If politicians can lie to get themselves elected, or to take us into a war, what can we teach students about the importance of being truthful? 


If schools won't stand behind their policies on plagiarism and other academic dishonesty, what reason does a student have to do his or her own work?  For that matter, if a student who cheats ends up with a high GPA or some award or another, what do we say to the honest student who doesn't win those awards or gets a lower GPA?


How do you convince kids who are texting during a lecture or who lie to you that they should respect you enough not to do those things, when they know that you are probably making less money than their siblings who went to trade school--or, perhaps, less than they themselves make?  I think now of a time I warned a student that he wasn't going to pass the class unless he made more of an effort. He shrugged his shoulders.  "I have my own business.  I make $100,000 a year.  What do you make, prof?" 


My point is, these young people know that there's no external reward for being honest, ethical, respectful and courteous. They weren't raised with anything like the notion that "Mine honour is my life, both grow as one.  Take honour from me, and my life is done."   If anything, what they've learned is more along the lines of "the end justifies the means."  


Furthermore, even the dumbest kid has figured out what this country, culture and society--not to mention his or her own community and family--really value.  I can tell you that it doesn't include putting forth extra effort, attention to detail or practicing any sort of restraint.  Only chumps work any more or harder than they need to.  Niceness is equated with stupidity, and gentleness and politeness--not to mention choosing not to prey on someone when the opportunity to do so presents itself-- are seen as weakness.  


I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with feeling exasperation at students' behavior or frustration that you can get yourself into more trouble by trying to set the student on a good path than he or she would for behaving irresponsibly.  I'm just saying that we need to remember the sources of those behaviors. 

What's In A Name?

While munching on some excellent fresh bread from my neighborhood bakery and some stinky French cheese, I was listening to the local all-news station.  Two news items--which, on the surface, seemed only peripherally related--struck me.


The first is about the increasing cost of elite private high schools in New York.  I'm talking about places like Columbia Prep, Horace Mann and Fieldston.  Their tuitions now approach $40,000--which is actually more than Harvard's undergraduate tuition.  


The second news item concerned 74 high-school seniors who were sent early-acceptance letters from Vassar College. The students weren't supposed to get those letters, and now the college is sending letters telling those students to ignore the acceptance letter.


Now, I have never been in, or even near, any position to attend or send a kid to one of those elite private high schools.  And, at this point in my life, I don't plan on attending, or sending anyone to, Vassar.  So why should I--or you, if you are (as I am) not a member of the socio-economic elite--be concerned about these events?


Well, I'll tell you:  They are both symptomatic of the same problems in education and, more specifically, people's attitudes toward it.  


For one thing, when you realize how much some parents are willing to pay (that they have the money is another issue altogether!) more than I've made in all but three or four years of my working life to go to high school, and when you realize how students have reacted to the "Whoops!" from Vassar, you start to realize just how much of a commodity education has become.  It's such that the parents of one of the kids who got the faux acceptance letter is "looking into legal action."


Let me backtrack a bit:  It's not the education itself that's become a commodity; it's the name of the school.  I often tell my students in CUNY schools that the main difference between their schools and the so-called elites is in the networks to which one has access by attending Vassar or one of the other "Seven Sisters," or the Ivy League and its brethren.  


I actually taught in such a university and was surprised by the low level of skills some of those students actually had.  I'm talking about real skills, not just the stuff in which their tutors coached them.  However, in that school, I taught the daughter of one of the world's most famous musical performers, the son of the CEO of one of the world's largest corporations and the daughters and sons of ambassadors, heads of surgery and other leaders in their fields.

Of course, such students will always have their parents' name behind them.  The other students will have the name of that school--a name revered largely because it's attended by students who share names with famous parents.  And, of course, if the students of more modest backgrounds should befriend their classmates who have revered parents, they, too could have access to the same networks of friends, family friends and parental colleagues whose recommendations (sometimes nothing more than a phone call) can spell the difference between getting into or not getting into a high-ranking law school, graduate school or a prestigious internship--or even a well-paying job.


What I've just said applies as much to the so-called elite high schools as it does to the colleges and universities I've mentioned.  In fact, those high schools' networks might even be more powerful, as they all but guarantee admittance to the sorts of colleges and universities I've mentioned.  That, as far as I can tell, is the main reason why parents are willing to shell out so much money to give their kids the privilege of attending such institutions, and why there's such fierce competition for whatever scholarships and reduced-tuition seats those schools might offer.  


It's also, I believe, the reason why tuitions actually have risen one and a half times as much in those schools (at least in New York) as they have in Harvard and the other Ivy League schools over the past decade.  That's saying something, as the cost of attending the Ivy League schools, Vassar, and all of the other colleges in the United States, has risen three times as quickly as the overall cost of living.


As you've probably realized by now, everything I've described is fuel for the inferno of student loan debt that is destroying a generation's ability to do the sorts of things a college graduate could once take for granted, which in turn makes this country's economic crisis even worse than it would have been otherwise.  


Now, of course, most of the parents who send their kids to elite private schools aren't taking out loans to pay the tuition.  For that matter, they--and many of the kids themselves--don't take out loans to go to Harvard, Vassar or schools with similar name recognition.  But bright students from poor families realize that one of the few ways they can compete--credential-wise, anyway--with the kids from Beacon Hill, Park Avenue, Brentwood, Boca Raton and Pacific Heights is to attend the same schools.  So, those poor kids have to take out loans, even if they get scholarships, to attend those schools.  And, even if they get scholarships or reduced tuition to the elite private high schools, their parents will still have to work additional jobs (if they aren't already) or take out loans.


Those items I heard on the radio this morning helped to answer the timeless question posed by Shakespeare, via Juliet:  What's in a name?  It just figures that Juliet would have that question put in her mouth by someone who had practically no schooling!  Can you imagine what he'd make of the situation I've described?

Leaving Them Ripe For Exploitation

My fellow bloggers like "Nando," "JD Painterguy", the author of "Student Debt Emergency" and Cryn (of "All Education Matters" have done much to show the perils of taking out higher education loans.  So does "Lawprof," even though he, like "Nando" and "JD Painterguy" are primarily focused on the scam that law school has become for too many students.


Today's post on "Lawprof"'s blog, in particular, struck a nerve in me, especially in light of what I wrote yesterday.  A second-year law student wrote to him, asking for advice on whether to stay for the JD or drop out.  This student is not in any journal or review and has grades that are mediocre, at best.  These factors equate to chances of getting a good job as a lawyer  that are, as the saying goes, slim to none.  


Already on the hook for a lot of money, this student will owe $130K by graduation.  What further complicates this student's dilemma are the ambitions and dreams of immigrant parents.  Dropping out means failure and disappointment to such parents, who seem not to realize just how dire are the straits for today's graduates and job-seekers.


Talk about a failure of the educational system (and, for that matter, of parents and society)!  How can someone reach the age of 23 or 24 and even think about taking out 130K of non-dischargable debt in order not to have disappointed parents?  For that matter, how does anyone decide to get 150K in the hole for an undergraduate degree in almost anything in the humanities or social sciences, or to train for a profession like social work?


Some would argue that an 18-year-old isn't mature enough to be entrusted with so much money.  It's probably true about today's 18-year-olds--at least most of them, anyway.  In times past, people that age were becoming competent adults, in part because they had to take on responsibilities for raising families and running businesses and such, and because some were in apprentice programs in which they learned how to practice such diverse trades and professions as blacksmithing, pharmacy, bookkeeping, coopering or being a seamstress or a horseshoer.  Abraham Lincoln, whom many regard as America's greatest President, had less than a year of formal schooling, and learned how to be a lawyer by working for other lawyers.


In those times--really, almost until my parents' generation-- people knew how to make serious decisions that affected not only themselves, but also their families, co-workers and communities, by the time they were legally considered adults.  In fact, many adults had such skills long before they were considered old enough to vote, drink or drive.


Now, it may seem--especially if you read my previous post--that I'm laying all of the blame for the immaturity of today's young adults at the feet of the educational system, all the way from pre-school all the way to the PhD level.  In fact, they do deserve much of the blame.  However, in fairness, I want to point out that in addition to outdated curricula, outmoded teaching methods (actually, teaching methods that abandoned much of what previously worked) and an overall philosophy (if a system could be said to have such a thing) that is utterly antithetical to actually educating people, schools have been burdened with a role that they are simply not made to handle. 


One of the greatest fallacies of education is that educators and their institutions can be in loco parentis.  There are some things that, really, can only be taught by families--whatever their makeup--and communities, not by paid professionals who have no involvement with the child outside of school.  And there are other things that can be taught by such professionals, but aren't likely to stay with the child unless he or she hears it from someone with whom he or she has a familial or community connection.  Many of the skills we call "life skills" fall into that category, and I think that what is commonly called "financial literacy" falls into that category.


One of the responses to Law Prof's entry included this gem:  "I was 22 when I started law school and was stressed out at the amount of money I was borrowing.  I had never borrowed anything in my life until that point.  I remember thinking to myself that neither the government nor the school would allow me to borrow this much if they did not think I could pay it back."   Look closely at that last sentence:  I'd bet that many other students think the same thing when borrowing what are  probably even larger amounts of money than that person borrowed.  They are willing to trust governments and schools--in other words, people they've never met and with whom they are unlikely to have any sort of relationship beyond that of lender and borrower--in ways they never could trust the people who were supposed to be closest to them.  


Their lack of loving, supportive relationships precludes so many of today's young people from learning vital skills they need for living--skills that schools can't teach effectively, if they can teach them at all.  That leaves them ripe for exploitation by rapacious or simply disinterested people and institutions.  


When I think of the situation I've just described, I realize that if there is a God, then Cryn, Law Prof, Nando, JD and others are really doing God's work. Now there's something they can't teach you in any school!

Is This Worth My Time?

Before entering the academic world, I worked in public relations and was a journalist.  In each of those roles, I had to write anywhere from 200 to 1000 words on next-day deadlines. (In journalism, I often covered something that occurred overnight and wrote my article for the morning edition.)  While the stuff I was writing probably won't be read generations hence, I did learn a few things I never learned in any writing course, at any level.


What's the Big Secret I uncovered?  Here goes:  People are busy.  When they see any piece of writing that they don't have to read for school or their jobs, they ask themselves this question:  "Is this worth my time?"  It doesn't matter whether that piece of writing is a treatise on libertarianism, a technical manual, a horoscope or one of my articles or poems: Whatever the piece of writing, people make instantaneous decisions as to whether they'll get enough information or pleasure from reading the piece in question to warrant the time they spend reading it.


When I look back, I'm not surprised that nobody ever taught that in any class I attended.  Most teachers and professors, as smart, hard-working and well-intentioned as they may be, are products of a system that never, ever taught that--not even implicitly.  In the courses they took, they were as often as not rewarded for obfuscatory language, or their instructors didn't call them on their lack of clarity.  (A Criminal Justice professor once told me, "I know none of them can write.  So I just look for key terms in their written assignments.")  And the schools they attended were, as often as not, parts of systems that rewarded people for their ability to, basically, mumble with administrative positions.  


Of course, the situation I described at the end of the previous paragraph is not unique to education. Government reports are notoriously long-winded, and we all know that there are situations--particularly in politics--when otiose orotundity wins out over honest clarity.


How do people learn to write well and effectively?  When they have to write something that will get a result of some sort.  It could be a plea to the city government to fix a play area in a park or a petition to the board of education to hire teachers who speak Mandarin, or part of a campaign to raise money for some cause or another.  Or the writer may simply want to stir some sort of emotion or to put the reader into his or her, or someone else's, shoes.


In other words, we learn to write by writing something of consequence.  That's how we learn the things to which people will and won't respond, and how grammatical a piece of writing has to be in order to be understood and received in the way its writer intends.  Most of us, I think, don't learn those things by doing in-class exercises or homework that has no relation to any actual situation.


What I've said about writing applies to any number of other skills, including "critical thinking."  Believe it or not, colleges--including two in which I've taught--actually teach courses in that.  It always seemed to me that people learned such a skill by learning, whether experientially or academically, and sifting through those things they learned from those experiences.  We learn to judge the validity of what people are saying by how it squares with what we've learned as well as in relation to what other people say--and how they're saying it. 


John Holt has written, "We learn by doing.  There is no other way."  Too much of education, I think, ignores the truth of what he says.  


Now, I'm anticipating what some of you who've been reading this blog might be thinking:  What about internships?  I discussed them in a previous post.  Some readers thought I am against internships in principle.  That I'm not; however, I think the internship should include experiences that are actually relevant to whatever the student is trying to learn.  What I'm against is having to pay to get them, and the way they both employers and schools exploit them and the students in them.


Some might protest that we need people who are interested in theory and any number of things that don't seem directly applicable to the "real world."  As a poet with a longstanding interest in history, I wholeheartedly agree.  However, we need to remember that those who formulated equations and other abstract kinds of knowledge, not to mention theories that underlie much of what people learn,  extracted their wisdom from their observations of phenomena, and their ability to do that was, in large part, a function of the experience they had in observing and thinking about the phenomena in question. 


I learned how to write by doing it as well as by reading.  I'm not an historian, but I believe that what I have observed augments what I learned about it, and debunks a few things I was taught. Perhaps even more to the point, I can't begin to count (I'm lousy at math!) the number teachers, engineers, social workers, IT professionals and people in various other professions who've told me that they learned their jobs by doing them, and how irrelevant most of their coursework (including the classes in their majors or fields) were to their work.  


If education at any level is ever going to be "reformed," it will only be successful if the "reform" begins with a recognition of what I've just described, among other things.

The State Of The Union: More Of The Same--In Education, Anyway

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised at what Obama said about education--to the extent that he said anything at all-- in his State of the Union address last night.


For starters, I shouldn't be surprised that he touched upon education in such a cursory way.  After all, it's what every President--as well as most elected officials and those who aspire to be elected--have been doing at least since the reign of Bush pere.  They all want to be seen as "The Education President," or some such thing, because paying lip-service makes them--and a lot of people who vote for them--feel as if they're actually doing something to improve kids' lives.  Yet they all know that no one gets elected to anything beyond the most local levels because of his or her record on education issues.


Another reason why I shouldn't have been too surprised at what Obama did and didn't say about education is that he was giving, well, a political speech and he's facing a re-election campaign that could be very difficult if the economy turns even worse than it is, or if the Republicans come up with a candidate that people rally, rather than merely coalesce, around.  So, of course his remarks about education (and most other things) weren't going to be anything more than campaign slogans.


But the third, and most important, reason why I'm not surprised at Obama's remarks is that they betray the same ignorance or cynicism about those issues that nearly every other politician displays.  Obama's remarks, like those of other public officials, are based in the assumptions that:  1.) The educational system is reformable;  2.) Reform can be done by throwing more money at the system and 3.) We can better educate people by keeping them in school for longer.


I've written a previous post regarding 3.).  Still, in spite of all of the evidence--some of which I've presented--showing that longer school days and years, and more years in school, don't necessarily make kids better-educated, Obama wants kids to remain in school until they're 18 or until they graduate.  And he wants even more people to earn college degrees than already have them.


Anyone who has dealt with an educational system, particularly a large urban public school district, can see the fallacy of 2.).  So, for that matter, can anyone who's seen what's happened in colleges and universities.  The reason can be explained with something that's the love-child of Murphy's Law and The Peter Principle:  A bureaucracy expands in direct proportion to the amount of money accessible to it.  So, if we increase taxes to increase school budgets, or raise tuitions to colleges, graduate schools, law schools or almost any kind of school you care to name, it will almost invariably increase the size of the administration because the first people to get their hands on the money are administrators.   


And what do these administrators do?  Whatever will enrich their friends, family members and colleagues who contract with the schools.  That's one of the reasons why there's so much more testing in schools than there was when you were attending.  (Sometimes I think that was the real purpose of the so-called No Child Left Behind Act, which was signed into law by Bush fils.)  That's also one of the reasons why your college has more deans and vice presidents than all of the schools in your state had when you were a student.  


Call me a cynic, but it's hard for me to imagine people in such positions changing anything that enriches them financially.  What that means is that change is about is likely as Newt Gingrich campaigning for gay marriage.


Obama and other politicians are blind to, or simply ignore, that fact.  But that is just one reason why they believe, or say they believe 1.).  Even without all of the corruption I've mentioned, schools at any level couldn't be "reformed."  


I think now of what someone said about this country's system of health care delivery: It's a great system, but it's not designed to provide health care; it's designed for other things.  Replace "health care" with "education," and you have a good summary of the education system.


If we say that the goal of an educational system is to educate people--which is not the same as "turning out educated people"--we would have to conclude that, no matter how we define "educate," the system fails miserably.  And it cannot do otherwise.  


That is because schooling--from kindergarten to the PhD--separates students from the rest of the world.  When they are in school, kids are around only other kids their age.  (Most often, those kids have similar racial, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds.)  The same is true in residential colleges and in graduate and law schools. How can anyone hope to function as a capable, confident adult if he or she never has exposure to them?  How can they envision their own futures unless they living examples of the sort of future they might want to have?  Conversely, how can young people learn about the pitfalls of certain choices unless they meet the people who made such choices, and are living with the consequences of them?


That, of course, doesn't mention the fact that students aren't exposed to the world of work.  I know:  Some schools offer internships or even vocational programs.  However, in many schools, students have to pay extra for such things.  Also, by the time students get into those internships, much of the damage has already been done.


And what sort of damage is that?  Part of it involves a basic lack of literacy:  A kid knows he or she wants to "work in the travel business" and gets an internship with, say, an airline.  But he or she has no idea of where Paris or San Francisco are in relation to New York, or to his or her home town.  Worse, the kid has no idea of how to read a map, or to follow or write directions.  But, perhaps worst of all, the kid has no idea of how to interact with adults, much less ones from backgrounds different from his or her own.  And then there's the kids' complete lack of ability solve problems, or simply to read a situation from a perspective different from the one he or she has always known.


Teaching young people lots and lots of atomized facts in isolation from everyone but people like themselves makes people ready to sit in front of a computer screen all day, push paper or send text-messages.  But it also leaves them unprepared to learn anything new, let alone place it in any sort of meaningful context.  That, I think, is also the reason why so many young (and some not-so-young) people live life in what I like to call The Eternal Present.  For them, there is no past or future:  Their consciousness is bounded by the moment in which they happen to be.  How can we expect people so limited in their perception to become the thinkers, the innovators, the creative people--or even competent managers of those who do those things?  

Does Obama really think that by throwing money at what I've described, we will return to our place as the most innovative and creative country?  

Raising Cains

There's a story going around about a health-education teacher who was fired after three of her students got pregnant.  According to this story, two of those students came to her defense by saying that they were trying to get pregnant, and did so by applying some of the knowledge they gained in the class.  Unfortunately, they only helped to strengthen the school board's case against the teacher.


So...If someone uses what he or she learned in a chemistry class to blow up a building, is the teacher or professor responsible for the ensuing death and mayhem?


Also:  If that student was persuaded by another student who used rhetorical devices and methods of argumentation he or she learned in a writing class, is the teacher or professor responsible?


All right...I'll stop ragging on all of those people who don't want sex education or evolution to be part of their kids' curricula.  Maybe they are on to something after all.  

Registration Enablers

"Nando" of Third Tier Reality fame tipped me off to a site called "College Misery."  As you might expect, many of the stories recounted on it were all-too-familiar to me.  


One in particular was about the student registration process.  It seems that the writer's school has something in common with the ones in which I've taught:  Administrations set rules, then tell their students to ask professors to break said rules.


That writer's school, like the others in which I've taught, has a "no overtally" policy.  That means no more than a certain number of students are allowed in each class.  Even if you believe "class size doesn't matter" in the teaching of students, you cannot fail to realize that increasing class sizes short-changes the students in other ways.   For one thing, professors don't have as much time to spend with each student, whether in class or during office hours (or at other times).  For some students, it's not a problem.  But in some classes, such as the "core" requirements, students need extra help in everything from understanding the material to learning how everything from papers to procedures are different in college from what they did in high school.


Anyway, some students legitimately need to take a class at a particular time or prefer one professor's teaching style to another.  However, there are those who can't get into their classes of choice because they are registering at the last possible moment, and registration for the courses they wanted has closed. 


So, those administrators actually tell the students to "get an overtally from the professor" or, in some cases, the department chair.  Notice that they don't tell students to "ask" for an overtally; by those administrators' choice of words, the student is led to believe that they simply have to approach the professor and he or she will give an overtally.  


I've been in those situations, and when I refused, I was beseiged by parents who bellowed, "I'm paying your salary" or who said that their kids' lives would be absolutely ruined if they couldn't get into my class.  And a few students brought in family members, friends or others who were supposed to intimidate me into signing their overtally forms.  Once, a director of some program or another  (and a good friend of a dean) in a college in which I taught actually threatened to make sure I wasn't rehired and would be blackballed by other colleges if I didn't sign one of her students into my class.  


Almost as bad as their duplicity about overtallies are colleges' policies on late registration.  I once was forced to accept a student into my class four weeks into a sixteen-week semester.  I tried pointing out to the dean and department chair that the course--a remedial writing class--wasn't the sort which could be "crammed," as it was designed to develop skills.  


If you think I'm merely whining about being inconvenienced, I want you to think about the message such practices send to an 18- or 19-year-old who has never had to be responsible for his or her actions.  Granted, some really do have dire circumstances.  But, if their circumstances are so dire, I wonder what they're doing in school.  Worst of all are the students most likely to take advantage of the situation I've described:  the ones who "forgot" to register because nobody "reminded" them to do it, or the ones who were simply trying to forestall the inconvenience of registration.


Why do college administrators coddle these students and--to use the parlance of Al-Anon--enable their behavior?  The cynic in me says that it keeps enrollments--and, therefore, revenues--high.  What academic administrator doesn't want that?  


My question to them is:  Would you hire anyone who behaved like those students?   For that matter, would you hire anyone who enabled their behavior?

No Future, Then And Now

I have finished a winter session course.  In less than a week, the Spring semester will begin.  It's hard to think I'll be starting a "Spring" semester when, outside my window, the streets and sidewalks are covered with snow.


Something tells me this semester, these next few months, are going to be an interesting time.  It might be the end of an era, or of something. After all, many states are slashing their budgets, so some programs, and even whole schools and colleges and universities, might be in their final days.  Also, there are large tuition increases scheduled for college and university systems all over the country, and many students and families who can't or won't borrow more money.  


Most important, though, is the discontent I see.  Occupy Wall Street is an expression of it.  But I see it even more in the faces and body language of some of my students:  They look like conscripts being marched off to a battle in which they know they're going to die.  They couldn't get jobs before they came to school; now they know they won't get jobs after getting their degrees, either.  


In my youth, the Sex Pistols screamed "No Future!"  John Lydon--better known to the world as Johnny Rotten-- said that in England in the Seventies, young people were explicitly told by their schoolmasters that they had no hope if they came from the wrong side of the tracks. Some might say that in that sense, English authorities were less hypocritical than their American counterparts are.   At least those British kids three decades ago weren't endebting themselves in the hopes of getting a careers in declining professions and industries, and their teachers weren't encouraging them to pursue such careers.  


The thing is, students don't need to be told that there's no hope, at least in their current situations.  Most will figure it out, if not articulate it. What most of them can't figure out on their own is how, and toward what, to proceed.  The problem is, most educators can't help them with that.  I'm not sure that I've ever been very helpful about such things for my students. 


I really want them to have hope. But sometimes it's hard to help them find it, let alone give it to them.  Still, I think the quest to help students find their own fulfillment, whatever it may be, is the only good reason to become any sort of educator.

Bingeing

Over the past few years, binge-drinking among college students has garnered increased attention from researchers as well as the popular media and general public.  


One of the reasons people are noticing it is that the majority of the binge drinkers are underage because the majority of college students--at least in traditional four-year residential colleges--are underage.  That was not the case when I was an undergraduate:  Then, the legal drinking age in most states was 18.  Now it's 21.  


The hazards of binge drinking are well-known and the penalties for Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) are stiffer than they were in my day.  So why do young people who are supposed to be relatively smart engage in behavior that is so obviously hazardous to themselves.

For that matter, why do so many--particularly male--students engage in all manner of reckless behavior?  And why do so many women of that age suffer with eating disorders and engage in behavior such as self-cutting?


The facile answer is "stress."  That's the answer most self-styled pundits give, and many parents and administrators accept it because it's relatively easy to understand.  Plus, it doesn't completely take away the parents' ability to help, but it relieves them--and the administrators--of a burden of guilt.  After all, there's not much they can do about the "stress" their kids are undergoing.


But that answer is a start. The challenge lies in finding the causes of that stress.  As a layperson, I won't pretend to have to know what they are, or how to locate them.  However, I can offer some informal insights.


I think much of the stress students experience has to do with being in a generational and occupational vacuum.  None, except for a few exceptional, students has a whole lot of gravitas.  They know that the world--including their parents, professors and employers--isn't taking them seriously.  


As much to the point, though, is that 18-to-22 year olds don't have some of the alternatives to college that their elders have had.  Much of the low- to moderate-skill labor that paid relatively well has been exported to countries where it doesn't pay we.  Apprenticeship programs are few and far between. and few employers are willing to commit the time and expense necessary to train a new hiree.


Now, some students have clear goals and, therefore, solid reasons for being in college.  However, the majority do not.  They're there because that's where their parents want them or they simply don't know what else to do.  Deep down, they know that society and the economy--and, in some cases, their families and communities--don't have much use for them.  


Also:  Even if they could get jobs, most of those students wouldn't be able to get a place to live, let alone work toward the future.  Even the best-paying jobs available to young people with little to no work experience wouldn't pay enough to allow those students to get rooms, let alone apartments on their own.  So, for many of those students, the alternative to going to college is continuing to live with their parents--if their parents still want them.


Furthermore, those students don't have to be potential Rhodes Scholars to realize that getting their degrees could turn into a losing proposition.  They could go five or six figures into debt and not get a job at the end of their studies. The state of the economy has much to do with their dismal prospects; however, much also has to do with the inapplicability of their studies to much in the work world.


In short, the students see nothing but tedious work and hardship, and few or no potential rewards at the end of their studies.  And it's even worse for graduate students, particularly in the humanities.  Is it any wonder that, in spite of the Surgeon General's warning against smoking, it's on the rise among college students.

Why It's Easier To Get An 'A' In Political Science Than In Physics

Every few years, it seems, we see a spate of articles chronicling--or decrying--grade inflation.

I don't deny that it exists:  Students, for the most part, get higher course grades and GPAs than we did in my day.  I can tell you about how much harder everything was back in the day, when professors had standards and we had to recite the entire periodic table while holding a lit match between our thumbs and forefingers.  Every generation does that; one of my students joked about her father walking five miles barefoot in the snow to go to school. "But he lived in Jamaica!," she says.

But it really is easier for students to get good grades these days--especially in the humanities.  Part of the reason for that is the proliferation of study guides and even ready-made papers on the Internet.  But grades have been higher in the humanities than in the sciences for decades, if not longer.

Some would say that the sciences are simply harder.  Based on my own expereince, I'd say that's true:  I started off as a science major before realized that I really didn't want to go to medical school and that I was more of a "qualitative" than "quantitative" person.  (Someone, I forget who, made that pronouncement about me.  It's basically true.)  Of course, failing second-semester calculus and organic chemistry didn't exactly motivate me to continue for a BS in Biochemistry.

Countless students since then have had expereinces similar to mine.  More than a few studies say that STEM majors lose students because grades in those courses are lower than those in the humanities.  And, for many graduate schools as well as certain jobs, a graduate's overall GPA--especially if it's at or near 4.0--is a more important credential than his or her major or school.  So the 4.0 in Film Studies from Cowpile State has more weight than the 2.75 in molecular biophysics from MIT.  (Is there even such a program?  Does MIT offer it?)  So students go where the grades can be had.

And, aside from the content of the courses, why is it so much easier to get an A in Gender Studies than in Genetics?  Are humanities professors such softies, or are science professors ogres? 

Well, I can tell you from expereince that many humanities profs--especially those who aren't tenured--are afraid to give low grades.  They're not worried about destroying their students' self-esteem or even hurting their feelings.  Rather, those unprotected instructors know about the difference between what college administrators say and what they do.  I've learned about that difference the hard way.

When students are so worried about their grades, some will do almost anything to get the best they can.  Some know, deep down, that they're only but so smart or talented; even the most diligent students realize they can't study more hours than absolutely everyone else.  So they do whatever they need to do to get those grades.

As we all know, some will submit work that isn't theirs.  In the old days, you relied on the fact that because you read a lot, you could tell one person's writing style from another, and certainly that of the student who could barely write his name from that of Steven Jay Gould.  Today, Google and other digital programs are helpful:  One can type a suspect passage into the "Search" box and, as often as not, find its true source.

However, there are some things that even the most dedicated, diligent and literate instructor can't overcome.  One of them is a duplicitous, mendacious administration. 

I have taught in about a dozen or so colleges in about half a dozen different universities.  In all honesty, I can say that none of them is serious about combating plagiarism.  They have bigger fish to fry.  And the students, whether or not they articulate it, know it.

What that means is that if you are not tenured and you report a case of plagiarism, it's more likely that you won't be re-hired than that the student will be penalized.  I'm not the sort who likes to punish students or anyone else, but I think that students realize when they can exploit a situation to their advantage, and some will do exactly that. 

Still, I fault administrations that don't enforce their codes even more than the students themselves.  Plus, it's hard not to feel even more contempt for the hypocrisy of those administrators who won't uphold the standards they created, or are charged with upholding. 

The definition of a coward is someone who takes the easy way out. And that is what those administrators are doing.  It takes less time, paperwork, explaining and almost anything else you can think of, to get rid of an adjunct or other non-tenured faculty member than it is to go through the process of disciplining a student.  Plus, if a student is expelled, the school loses money because--not only from that student's tuition, but from money that school might not get in grants or government aid. On the other hand, if they don't rehire the instructor, they've saved themselves some money.

So, given the climate I've just described, it's no wonder that some instructors won't report plagiarism or other forms of academic dishonesty.  Some also realize--as I also learned the hard way--that an angry, vindictive student can turn the tables.  That plagiarism charge you level against the student can boomerang into one of discrimination, or something else, against you.

If you find yourself in such a situation, it's harder to defend yourself if you teach writing or other non-quantitative subjects.  Most of us know a good or bad paper when we see it; most of us (I hope!) can explain what makes it good or bad.  But we can't render that explanation as a formula full of empirical data, as scientists can. So, even though said administrator knows the paper of the student who's complaining is really a "D" paper, at best, he doesn't want to deal with the anger of that student, or the possibility of a lawsuit.  So, out goes the instructor.

Meantime, grades balloon in all of the "studies," but not the sciences.  And the school's finances grow with the students' grades and GPAs in the humanities.

Where Necessity Is Not The Mother Of Invention

When I was in college, some readers lumped poet Wallace Stevens with the Surrealists.  They pointed to his images that were rooted in the logic of dreams and likened them to the flights of fancy found in Eluard and other poets of the time.


Stevens vehemently denied that he was a Surrealist. In essence, he said that Surrealism was about invention rather than discovery.


I read his comment years ago and now realize he made, however inadvertently, the best comment anyone could have made about academia.


These days, higher "education" is not a forum for the study of knowledge and the exchange of ideas.  Rather, it has become an institution dedicated to perpetuating the generation of new theories, notions and agendae.  Particularly in the humanities, there is a pressure to be "novel":  to come up with (or to seem to, anyway) a "new" way of reading a particular text or school of thought.


Ironically, this move toward abstruseness and esotericity has accelerated with the commercialization of higher education and the corporatization of the university. Market values, it seems, have moved scholarship away from, not only "reality," but even from any traditional notions of scholarship.

The result is an academic culture that breeds and perpetuates the sort of scholars for which almost no one outside the academy can understand the need or desire.  And, I believe, it is a major reason for the warped personalities one finds in graduate programs, not to mention among faculties.


Lately, some of the scamblogs have referred to law school as a mental illness factory.  If graduate schools in the humanities aren't manufacturing facilities for psychological disorders, they're warehouses for the damaged.  And the quest for novelty can only lead to even more distortion, not to mention gestures of scholarship that are further removed from the free inquiry of knowledge, much less any practical skills.


This is one of the results of the commodification of education, which comes about with the corporatization of universities.  I guess we shouldn't be surprised:  After all, so much of what passes for industry is simply the manufacture of desire and planned obsolescence.

Let Them Know You're Poor And Unemployed

Today is Martin Luther King Day.  As I see it, the best way to honor his legacy is to follow in it by working for justice.

And, as I see it, justice cannot be achieved without adherence to the truth--or, in the parlance of scamblogging, transparency.  So, in response to "Jeff," who commented on my previous post, I exhort you to report your salary range,current occupation (if you have one) and other related data to the schools from which you graduated.

Now, I dislike participating in surveys as much as anybody does.  But I've come to realize that nearly all surveys are self-selecting in one way or another.  In other words, those who feel satisfied with the status quo are most likely to respond. It's a bit like the elections:  People may not like the system, but if they believe "the system works" (or that it can be made to work for them), they are more likely to vote than someone who feels beaten down by it.

So, people who have high salaries and are happy with their careers are more likely to respond to colleges' and law schools' employment surveys.  The JD who's the night manager at Wendy's is less likely to do so.  What that means, of course, is that average salary figures are skewed upward.  So are the numbers and percentages of people whose employment is "related to their studies" or "in their field."

So, please, the next time your school asks about your job, salary and such, don't hide. Otherwise, they can hide--the truth--too.

What Does France Mean For Today's Students?

The other day, I overheard one student--whose age is somewhere between that of the students I'm teaching and my own--that he hopes "the economy will get better" by the time he graduates.

As I was rushing off to meet someone, I didn't stop and talk to him.  For that matter, I'm not sure of what I would have said.  Actually, I know I could have said a lot of things, and I didn't quite know where to begin.

However, I can say with near-certainty that the economy isn't going to get "better" any time soon.  That is to say, things won't be what we were taught to expect when I was growing up, and he was growing up:  namely, that a degree would be a ticket to a relatively secure middle-class life.   That, I discovered, wasn't even true when I graduated; it certainly won't be the case when he or any of my current students gets his or her degree.

As I heard him, something that could make things worse for him, me and a lot of other people was happening:  the credit rating of France and a bunch of other European countries was being downgraded.  Essentially, what happened to France is what happened to the US in August:  a loss of the top credit rating.  In the meantime, the ratings of Portugal was downgraded to junk-bond status.

I'm no economist. But as near as I can tell, it isn't going to help alleviate chronically high unemployment in those countries.  At least they're honest enough to say that lots of their people are out of work.  In this country, the statistics have been manipulated, and lots of people are kept off the labor market by giving them student loans.

What the credit downgrades mean is that the largest bankers will simply make it more expensive for everyone else to borrow money.  They will also make it more necessary for people to borrow money, as they will not use their wealth to create new jobs or to increase pay for those who are working.  Plus, they will use all of the defaults and foreclosures as an excuse for further increasing the cost of borrowing or spending money.

To some of you, this may seem like an overly simplistic explanation.  Forgive me if it is; after all, as I said, I am not an economist.  All I know is that events are conspiring against the hopes of that man I overheard the other day.

They're Not Going To Become More Diverse

The other day, a post on one of those "Don't Get Me Started!" subjects appeared on "Class Bias In Higher Education."


Its author, Jeffrey Harrison, is a professor at the University of Florida College of Law. In it, he described something I've noticed through my years as a graduate student, college faculty member and administrator:  the lack of diversity.


However, he's not merely another conservative who whines that colleges are liberal indoctrination camps, or another liberal who laments the corporatization of universities.  Instead, he points out that in addition to the lack of ideological diversity, most law faculty lack intellectual diversity.  The range of interests among professors, he says, is very narrow, and few have any real knowledge of any non-law subject beyond the Jeopardy! level.


To a large degree, what he says about law faculties can also be said about undergraduate professors. To a greater degree, what he says could also be said about grad-school professors.  And, like him, I notice that whatever "renaissance" men and women are to be found in higher education are about the same age as members of the College of Cardinals.


He makes the valid point that faculties are becoming less intellectually and ideologically--and, yes, racially and ethnically, not to mention socio-economically--diverse because members of hiring committees increasingly tend to choose candidates whose backgrounds are like their own.  


What Professor Harrison doesn't say is that the processes and phenomena he describes are inevitable.  Even if you don't accept the premise that an educational system that relies so heavily on testing will always favor (intentionally or not)  people with certain skill sets, and that people who possess those skill sets abundantly tend to come from certain backgrounds (middle- to upper-class, stable family life, educated parents who scored high on tests), you will have a hard time denying that those are the people who achieve the highest scores, grades and other measures of "success" in education.


Another effect a system that places such a premium on high test scores and grades, as well as adherence to rigid sets of criteria and policies, is that students and scholars won't even try anything in which there's any possibility they won't succeed.  So you don't see young professors, even in the humanities, learning languages other than their own and the one in which they took their competency tests.  (And they learn only enough to pass the test!)  Some of my foreign students have expressed consternation that their professors are monolingual:  In their home countries, they say, professors--and many other educated professionals--are expected to know more than one language.  


And most humanities professors know nothing about science.  (I'm pretty ignorant about it myself.)  Moreover, some are even proud of their lack of ability in such fields as math. 


Such attitudes also reflect, if subtly, sexism and racism.  That I am a woman who not only arrives on campus on her bicycle, but can fix it, raises more than a few eyebrows.  


If faculty members are operating from such narrow mindsets, how can they be expected to impart any sort of curiosity, let alone a true love of learning?  And if the same sorts of skills are rewarded again and again, why would anybody who wants to make an academic career for him or her self venture into any area more than six pages removed from his or her dissertation?

What NCLB Left Behind

Last week marked ten years since President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law.  To mark the occasion, the online version of Time magazine posted a piece offering different perspectives on the effect of NCLB.

Predictably, those who benefited the most from the act were those furthest removed from the children that weren't supposed to be left behind.  I'm talking about, among others,  Arne Duncan, Obama's Secretary of Education and Margaret Spellings, who was in the same post during George W.'s second term (2005-2009).  Their ilk includes various executives in think tanks and educational policy institutes. (Can anyone tell me what they do?)

If we ask the big question--Cui bono?, or Who profits?--we would find out that they, along with testing services and other companies that provide materials necessitated by the provisions of NCLB, have profited enormously from the law.

On the other hand, the closer one gets to the students, the more likely one is to realize the sheer folly, if not outright avariciousness, of NCLB.  "It makes me sad to think about how many teachers have taught only under NCLB and don't know what it was like before," laments Dennis Van Roekel, the President of the National Education Association. 

Individual teachers' comments are even more scathing.

"I don’t think the assessment should be one-size-fits-all. Every child is different. It’s like saying to a young mother that every child will walk at 10 months—we know that’s not true, every child will walk when they’re ready," says Cheryl Weaver, Director of Student Services at Rachel Carson Middle School in Herndon, Virginia.  Others fine teachers have voiced their displeasure silently, but even more eloquently, by leaving the profession altogether.

And, the closer one is to the kids, the more one is likely to be blamed for the failures of the policy.  In fact, it can be argued that they are getting blamed precisely because they are doing the best they can to bring their kids and schools in compliance with NCLB.

Now, I'm not saying that all teachers are blameless.  However, any one who's any good at all understands the wisdom of people like Cheryl Weaver.  Most people realize, by now, that "one size fits all" is one of the biggest lies ever foisted on people.  It doesn't work with schools any more than it does with pantyhose.  Just as kids don't all learn according to the same timetables, schools can't make kids progress by using the same formula. Yet that has always seemed to be the intent of NCLB.

And why would some bureaucrats want to make individual schools, districts and states subservient to the dictates of a Federal education bureaucracy?  For the same reasons bureaucrats want to centralize their power:  If local communities are forced to depend on those bureaucrats for whatever they need in order to be in compliance with the standards set by the bureaucrats, they are a captive audience and pay whatever prices the suppliers sanctioned by the bureacrats want to charge.  That invariably hurts smaller, poorer communities and people the most.

What NCLB is doing, among other things, is to exacerbate tensions between the rich and poor--and, by extension, various social classes, races and ethnic groups, as well as geographic areas of the country.  If the tensions grow--and all signs indicate they will--I'd like to see just how much bureacrats will be able to "standardize" kids' education.