2014 - No Predictions Here

I was going to blog a list of predictions for the coming year.  But then thought it might be better to write about some less certain, but very sure, reality.

Jeremiah 17:9 - The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked:  who can know it?

On New Year's Eve I had opportunity to play one of those games where you take a card, read the word on the card, and then try to draw it.  Then, if your team guesses the word, they roll the die and move their little marker along the board.  This is all sand-glassed.  Time is of the essence.  I think the game was called Win, Lose, or Draw.

One of the cards I pulled had the word Hercules on it.  How does one draw Hercules in two minutes?  Never-mind that I draw about as well as a person who just had his hand crushed in a vice.  Yet I persevered, drawing a box with a baby in it and then a snake.  Then, I x-ed out the snake.  Then I drew a stick figure with bulging arms.  We got the point when one of my teammates got the clues.  There were seven people on each team.  This was the first time in my life when knowing that infant Hercules killed a serpent in the cradle proved useful.  He actually killed two, but that time thing.

Let's go with the anecdote.  Two out of every seven people know one obscure fact about Hercules and  that information will be useful once in a lifetime.  Ahh… the bane of the liberal arts.

Part of the problem with the oft-intoned, 'follow your heart' is that often the heart leads one astray.  I mean, it's not like I ever got a decent job because I knew the differences between Ionic and Doric columns or that I can talk a bit about how one of the cornerstones of Western Literature (that would be the Illiad) is little more than a barroom brawl over a woman.  Nine years of war could have been avoided had Agamemnon decided to follow something other than his love for a two-timing, albeit supremely beautiful, Helen.  Though, I fear, our appreciation for hollow wooden-horses would be much less.  See how fascinating that all is?  That and three bucks will get me a cup of burnt coffee at Starbucks.

Point being, I currently work with a whole parcel of adjunct instructors at a community college.  These are very-well educated people.  Yet the adjuncts make perhaps a third of what the full-time professors make.  They do the same work and, in many cases, have the same letters after their names, but they make dimes on the dollar to what the full-timers make.  This situation is typical of colleges throughout the country and I am not griping about the full-timers.  This divide is not the Professors' fault.

You see, colleges are businesses.  Decades ago, collegiate management bean-counted to the realization that it's more profitable to pay part-timers without benefits than it is to pay full-timers with benefits.  When I say benefits I'm talking about little things like retirement, healthcare, and paid time off.  Thus, most colleges are staffed majoritatively (I just made that word up) by part-time instructors.  Never mind what the coaches make.

My guess is, many of my coworkers followed their hearts in college.  I think that's what I did.  Then again, my memory is a bit fuzzy on a few things from that timeframe.

To whit, upon reading the above, many will say, "Get a different job."  Begrudgingly, they are correct.  If one doesn't like their current place of employment, then seek elsewhere.  It is what it is, and let us realize that following one's heart comes with certain costs.

There's talk about raising the minimum wage to whatever they want to raise it to.  I have conflicting thoughts on this.  But I would be less than honest if I didn't confess that the thought of a burger-flipper, who may or may not have graduated high school, making more money than a person with a PhD trying instill a love for learning any specific topic, royally pisses me off.  When the drive-through attendant is making twenty-dollars an hour and when the happy meal costs ten, get back with me.  And in the meantime, what value education, when the college graduate needs two jobs to eat?

Or, consider the fact that a man playing a game (football) for one year can make exponentially more than a man who boils pre-fabricated French fries in vats of oil, eight hours a day, for a decade.  Interesting consideration, is it not?  Again, following one's heart comes with certain costs.

That sound of bone crunching into a stone wall is me banging my forehead against reality.  Complaining doesn't reframe reality, or much of anything else.  It's not always the best artists who win the game.

Writing With Others - Probably Part 1

In 1978, ancient history I know, Robert Asprin began a series of books known as the Thieves’ World Series.  No, they were not about Washington D.C.  Rather, each book was a collection of short stories by different writers sharing a fantasy setting wherein the writers could utilize the characters the other writers created.  If memory serves, the only caveat to using another writer’s character was that the ‘borrowing’ writer couldn’t kill a character he or she hadn’t created.

Along similar lines is the duo of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (think end of the world, Lucifer’s Hammer, and elephant-faced space aliens, Footfall).  Neil Gaiman also comes to mind as someone who has worked with many other writers on lots and lots of projects.

In my less spectacularly-successful world, I drive students to the group writing project.  I save this towards the end of the semester when the chaff has drifted from the classroom.  Nothing is worse than the ‘superhero’ saving the group project while the knobs receive the shared grade.  Students know this.  They have a history of group-work slurry that has left a bad taste in their mouths.  This is mostly because they are thrown into the group project arena and no one offers to share, exactly, how do conduct a group project, let alone how to write a document with one or more human beings.  Nor have they been given the liberty to hold one another accountable.

A small, good thing about writing with others is this accountability.  There are deadlines and non-classroom bound writers tend to feel at least a teency bit guilty at letting their partner down; would that I could say the same for the students.  Plus, people who want to write also appreciate a good deadline.  It’s a goal, like writing 50,000 words in the month of November is a goal.  Deadlines are goodness.

Nor is this an academic exercise.  Meaning, it’s not just something for the classroom.  The world collaborates and that’s how stuff gets done.  Even Ted Kaczynski relied on the Postal Service to deliver his diatribes and nail-bombs, while it also seems like it’s the always the quiet neighbor who keeps to him-self that is involved in the mall-shooting.  Nor do I confine the lessons to typical classroom activities.  You see, I haven’t always been a writing instructor.  I have other irons in the fire, have pursued sales leads, managed software projects, hired & fired, conducted reviews, and played Dungeons & Dragons (a collaborative effort if ever there was).

That said, writing with other humans goes against the grain, does it not?  Consider the lonely writer; isolated at the screen, researching, and generally making up stuff.  Writing magic happens alone.  That’s one of the complaints.  Where is the feedback?  Where is the sounding board?  How can a writer find someone willing to read his or her material before it’s ready?

This is one of the bigger bonuses of writing with someone else.  There is immediate feedback. The audience is in place, and egos aside, they review one another’s efforts well before the material hits the grade-book or the submission-letter fan.

Yet, difficulties remain.  Many group-project documents I receive have a patchwork quilt feeling about them.  After thirteen plus weeks of reading each student’s writing, I can tell where one writer’s efforts end and another’s begins.  I’m talking about the writer’s voice, tone, vocabularies, sentence structures, and not about the self-editing that doesn’t always occur (and please, run spell-checker because it’s free).  We all know writing with others is more than a simple copy & paste.

One goal of writing with others is to prepare a document (short story, novel, cookbook, stupid Composition 1 paper, etc…) that is seamless.  The work of many should appear unified in both scope, purpose, and daresay, style?  That’s debatable, but there is probably a reason Faulkner never wrote a story with Hemingway.

True collaboration means both writers have something in mind prior to beginning and that they are willing to work towards those goals.  Enter the classroom thesis, the main idea, the point being proven, the mountaintop of the effort and that annoying thing I ask about before they continue.  For example, if student A wants to write about how text books cost too much and student B wants to write about how text books don’t have enough pictures and the words are too big, there’s a problem.  It’s time for them to refocus and someone is going to have to compromise.

And if neither student wants to compromise, this is a good clue that, perhaps, the effort won’t go so well.  The advice here is to make sure you and the person you are collaborating with are on the same page.  If not, why bother?  You’ll only aggravate one another and that’s not goodness.  Here’s a really funny link to illustrate.

In collaborative fiction, the scope and purpose is not so neat.  I mean, story writers don’t begin with an iron-clad thesis.  They have a plot and they have characters, maybe.  Sometimes they just have an idea or a situation.  I mean, there are almost always characters but sometimes the plot is not in place at the start.  That’s ok.  I’ve just about made up my mind that characters drive the plot and not the other way around.  Otherwise, the story is stilted and forced, and the only thing that should be stilted and forced is a national healthcare service – right?!

But, with only the bare bones of the idea in place, the writing team has to plan what they are trying to accomplish.  And planning is half the fun.  Think brainstorming, like what if there was this guy who fell into a portal to another world when he reached too far into his clothes drier?  Yeah, and what if a centaur found him and decided to take him to the centaur-stables to he could scoop poo for the rest of his days?  A situation like that needs to be fleshed out a bit and two brains are often more creative than one.

And, while this was never meant to be an exhaustive analysis of the collaborative writing adventure, even I know that when I start writing about centaur poo, it’s time to take a break.  Even so, there may be a part two to this.

I think that people nowadays...

The following is not an indictment of those doggonekids.  Rather, think of it as a statement about the system (public schools) producing them.

There are three neurotic elements prevalent in college freshman and sophomore writing.  I hear tell they exist in upper-classmen (classperson?) essays, but since I don’t teach at that level, I’ll stick to familiar territory.  Just call me Mr. Anecdotal.

First, without exception, students are hyper-vigilant about informing the reader that what they write is their opinion.  “I think that…”, “It seems to me…”, and “In my opinion….”, preface most statements.  When the young writers make a claim of value or policy about pert-near any topic, there is a fear or underlying concern that what they write will be taken seriously.  So, to soften the ideas, they let the reader know it’s only their opinion.  It is as though claiming anything demonstrable or conclusive should be approached timidly, if at all and, by golly, I’ll keep the backdoor unlocked if I have to make a quick getaway when someone challenges my assertion.  This reminds me of certain Woody Allen movied characters.  I’m seeing Leonard Zelig’s (Zelig) uncontrollable mimicry of the people surrounding him, or half of Alvy’s statements in Annie Hall.  Esoteric film references aside, the students will not draw attention to broad statements and observations and are very deliberate about noting the exception to every rule, while unlocking their mental escape hatch with the ever present, “I think that”.  I almost always cross out the offending lines and tell the writers that since their paper has their name on it I know I am reading their opinions.  Otherwise, they should introduce and then cite their sources like good little researchers.   Besides that, if a reader is convinced about one of their statements, then the writer wins.  Let the mushy-headed reader remain mushy-headed.

The second predominant concern of these students is to couch their writing in today’s world.  The reader must be reminded that what they are reading applies to today’s world, people nowadays, and in present times.  It is very important I not slip into thinking they are writing about the 1880s, or the 1970s (their grasp of both eras equally vacant).  But, isn’t it true, that to wake up in the morning is to wake up in nowadays?  Today is my default setting and I have yet to slip through the time-stream portal mistakenly thinking right now is twenty or thirty years ago.  Unless the students are writing about something historical, there is little need to remind the reader that they have returned to the current era.  But the here and now must be proclaimed, usually early in the essay.

Then there’s a third little nuance, juxtaposed oddly against the first; it is the fear of bias.  Not as prevalent as the first two habits of non-mind, I’ve had many talks with students who are afraid they are bringing their biases into their writing.  This fear is expressed in quick conversations, usually at the end of class or during a rare office visit.  They bring in their opinion papers and want to know how they can write without bias.  Alas… isn’t that the purpose of an opinion paper?  I explain to them how bias is like going to a ball game and rooting for their favorite team, about how everyone has bias, and about how it is their right as  a human being to have an opinion and to proclaim it as logically and coherently as they can.  Yet, the timidity of doppelganger group-think holds them in its spell.  They have opinions, they just don’t want to be opinionated.

Some of this is just habit, a writer’s stylistic fingernail chewing – like the struggle to not use second-person pronouns in formal essays.  I suspect, however, there are deeper causes.  I see these three problems as a subtle and nuanced blend of existentialism and an over developed sense of self-awareness couched in a depleted mattress of, 'This doesn't really matter', coupled with a bouquet of the gold-standard, non-contextualized doggerel-jargon-doctrine, “Judge not.”  (Maybe John 7:24 doesn’t fit so neatly on a bumper-sticker).

My question:  where are the current, bold young writers and independent minds, unafraid to throw their cards, face-up, on the table?  This neck of the woods isn’t producing many.  Mild compliance and vague timidity may be necessary to maintain the current direction; just as smooth edges fit into slots better than sharp corners.   But, this approach will do little towards finding unique thinking.  And maybe unique thinking is what we need.

Generation Touch-Screen

Those who can use technology have an advantage over those who cannot use technology.  That’s obvious.  For some time this has been explained as another example of the haves vs. the have-nots.  The divide caused by a lack of access to early exposure, training, and opportunities (predicated on financial / social mechanisms such as positive parenting and school district educational offerings).  I see this in the classroom.

Every semester, approximately 8% (yes, I keep purely anecdotal, statistics on all sorts of things) of my students do not know how to do simple computer-based activities such as using a word-processing program like MS Word, navigating to a folder on a network drive, or saving and then retrieving a document on that same network drive.  On the other end of the bell-curve are those students who are uber-proficient.  Once in a while someone brings in a laptop or tablet and adds the classroom printer to their device, via wireless routing magic.  Please don’t tell anyone as this is against college policy.  I give these examples merely to demonstrate the haves vs. the have-nots.

My guess is, we are nearing a point where there is going to be a split in the traditional two-cell dichotomy.  In a few years a third type of student is going to emerge and this student will be stuck somewhere in the middle of the computer-skills illiterate and the computer-skills proficient.  These students will represent the touch-screen generation.

Most tablets, cell-phones, and newer laptops and desktops have touch-screen options.  If all one does with technology is consume media (movies, books, music, videos, and web-related social networking) ala the Kindle for example, there is no need to learn about network drives or files or how to type a cogent sentence.  There will be those who know very little, those who can navigate visual user-interfaces to see what they want to see, and those who sit bored as I try to help the others.

For educators, this poses philosophical and practical challenges.

The touch-screen and the icon (like the little picture of the trash can; the recycle bin on the computer screen) hearken back to the pictographic form of written communication.  For the previous fifteen centuries or so, mankind has favored script-based communication for recording information and for passing that information forwards, with deep roots in math, language, and history.  As a comparison, the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics were pictographic while the ancient Sumerian cuneiform represented the more script-based written language.  Of course, this is not a hard and fast rule because throughout history one can find examples of pictographs.  Consider the relatively recent and universally understood lady with a skirt verses the man in trousers on many public restroom doors.  Nevertheless, it has been impossible for many, many years to write one’s doctoral thesis using such symbols.

The question arises, can knowledge be created, organized, presented, rearranged, and moved forward using a less than script-based paradigm?  How can a student express their own thoughts and ideas on a subject when they are lacking in basic scripted language skills?  I’m not saying it can't be done.  Go learn ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics before telling me otherwise.

It reminds me of the world imagined by Hermann Hesse in his 1943 book Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game).  The protagonist of this book, Joseph Knecht, rises to fame by playing a knowledge game wherein all fields of study, to a very granular level, are represented by glass beads and the players of the game receive accolades by rearranging them in new and wonderful ways.  As a side note, Hesse seems to have envisioned something similar to the internet, at least as best as a writer in 1943 could have done it.

Are the touch-screeners reaching out in a new way or have they devolved into something that is going to hurt them academically?  In the short term, the answer is probably.  But in the long-term, say ten years from now, I’m not so sure.

On a more practical level, what’s the role of the educator in all this?  Obviously, those who are technology illiterate will remain so, and should be given opportunities to learn how to do these things.  And those who love technology will continue to excel in that field, often as a natural outgrowth of their other passions.  But, what of those who know only the touch-screen?

The classes I teach focus on other matters, though I do offer to help those learners who need a crash course in how to create, save, and retrieve a file.  But these mechanical skills are a means to an end.  What I’m curious about is whether or not the touch-screen offers a new means to the same end.

Presently, the technology allowing for a more image-based knowledge articulation isn’t widely available on an accessible scale.  Today, my hands are tied, as are those of all educators.  We will be stuck making the same offers for the same type of help for those who have grown up in touch-screen land.  Yet, increasingly, students will arrive looking for a continuation of what they know best; accessing information in a visually intuitive fashion, while still relying heavily on technology.

Group Work Trifecta

My students hate group work.  Ha ha ha…  That's why I, hee hee hee… assign group projects.  And not just any group project, <tears down cheeks / clutching belly> but group writing-projects requiring research.  I have to move on, my sides are aching.  Chuckle, chuckle…

It is wonderful to hear the wailing, the gnashing of teeth, the lamentations, and to see my reflection in the gall-filled eyes of those imposed upon to interact with other human beings, outside of class, on homework.

What follows are three common complaints about group work. 

We all have different schedules and it's hard getting together outside of class.  I know.  If only someone, someday, would invent a device allowing people to communicate over long distances at any time of the day.  If only someone would create a way to send other people documents in almost real-time.  And, this is far-fetched, but wouldn’t it be really Kurzweil if we could send images and talkin’ moving-pictures to one another?  I hear tell there’s a thing called a telephone built on a network of wires.  Maybe the invento-ologists could play off of that and come up with something.  Until then there’s always smoke signals, or maybe just rhythmically beat on hollow logs in the forest and hope the other team members will hear.

(Insert name here) didn’t do anything.  Yep, (insert name here) was a real turd on this one.  I wonder where (insert name here) learned to be like that?  I mean, what organization out there just passes people up the academic ladder, even when they don’t do their fair share?  And, speaking of victimization, wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to break the cycle of abuse?  I mean, what might a group of three people do to help their fourth group member understand how laziness is no longer going to fly?  Might have to talk to (insert name here) and let that person know you know they aren’t doing anything.  And I, as much as the next person, want everyone to like me and to be very popular and to never, ever, never, hurt anybody’s widdle bitty feewings.  If that means sacrificing a grade, so be it.  Because, heck, after this class, me and (insert name here) are going to be best buds.  Maybe we can even sit together when we have to retake this class.

It’s not fair we get the same grade.  Remember the Titanic?  Everybody on the Titanic received the same grade.  Remember the Little Big Horn?  Everybody in the Seventh Cavalry received the same grade.  Remember Border’s Books?  Everybody at Border’s received the same grade.  Please write a 5,000 word personal-reflection essay on the role of fairness and reality.

Reaching Out

Here's me being satirical on someone else's blog:

http://adjunct.chronicle.com/memo-from-the-desk-of-the-director-of-adjunct-development/

The blog is part of a larger project concerned with Adjunct employment at colleges and universities across the country.  It's called the Adjunct Project and would be a good thing not just for adjuncts to read, but for anyone in college or sending a kid to college.  Did you know, for example, the majority (like over 75%) of instructors at colleges are NOT full time and that adjuncts make a fraction (like, about a third) of what full time employees make?  Yet tuition costs go up yearly.  Things that make you go hmmmmm.....

Anyway, thanks Josh for accepting my satire.

Commodious Accommodation

Dear Suzy;

As my work group’s designated Value Added College Adjunct Nomenclature Trainer, I feel you will have the knowledge and expertise to help with the following question.

My question is, “How I may do my part to help make sure the students are having a successful and hygienic restroom experience?”

I realize the majority of the students do just fine.  But, every day, there is some splashing on the rims, floors, and walls adjacent to the toilets and urinals.  Some just can’t seem to hit the spot, if you know what I mean.  What can I do to help these young men have a better chance of reaching their goals?

Sincerely; 

Carl Everguy

Adjunct Restroom Hygiene Facilitator

###

Dear Carl;

I commend your concern for our at-risk students and appreciate your forthright and ‘take responsibility’ proactivity regarding the issue.  As you know, changing generations mean changing priorities and different norms of behavior from the past.  I appreciate your willingness to go the extra mile for the young people who simply experience life differently than the ‘old pedagogical order’.  It is important for us to change so that they do not have to.  Without your attitude, many might fall between the cracks.  And at the end of the day, filling cracks is what is important.

My Six-Sigma research team reinforces your initial diagnosis.  A majority of students know about and successfully utilize restroom equipment every day.  It is, however, a sad commentary on our culture that some just assume everyone will respond similarly when confronted with what may be an unfamiliar experience.  As you know, our students represent a vast diversity of economic, learning, sexual, and ethno-orientations.  I don’t have to tell you how the Anglo-centric stances of the past may not be suitable for everyone.   A few suggestions are in order.

First, your task-group of RHFs may want to post instructional signs above the toilets and urinals.  I would use graphics with a limited amount of text to account for those who are reading-challenged.  Focus on recommended ranges, stances, and other proper techniques.

Another option might be to install wider urine acceptance units to help facilitate the spectrum of aiming diversities.  If you choose to pursue this option you need to fill out the following state-mandated forms:  porcelain_enlargement_request.doc, RHF_work_load_enlargement.doc, business_case_funding.doc, workplace_at_risk.doc, ethno_facili_blab.doc, and OSHA_form_184_restrooms_a12_99x.doc.

Finally, our sister college in Connecticut is implementing a new program in the form of Diversity Restroom Facilitators.  This adjunct work-enhancement opportunity enables the volunteers adopting the new work-load to be eligible for a .025% increase in their pay, bringing their rate of compensation up to nearly 27.8% of their full-time counterparts.  The dif personnel, as they are referred to, assist the students in achieving their unique goals.  This can be in the form of personal coaching or, as necessity dictates, the holding of the gender-specific waste water discharge appendage, at least for the initial stages of the program, until they can learn to do it for themselves.

I hope you and your fellow RHFers give serious consideration to the last option, as I am very excited about the possibilities.

Again, I so very much appreciate your desire to help our college meet the unique challenges presented by the student body.  After all, isn’t that what the college experience is all about?

Regards;

Suzy Busibodi

V.A.C.A.N.T. Committee Representative

Solipsism - We're There

My students don’t know who Alfred E. Neuman is.  This is painful for me because I cut my literary teeth on Mad Magazine.

For solace, I make them do a web search and cite their source, along with a list of other things they should be familiar with.  There are reasons for this exercise.  First, it helps them understand the need to cite their sources.  It’s also a good way to build a ‘Works Cited’ page according to MLA standards, and, finally, it illustrates ‘seek and destroy research’ (not to be confused with other types of research).  That sound good, doesn’t it?

Secretly, it’s just me keeping Alfred E. Neuman out there, lurking, in their brains.

On Saturday I went to Wal-Mart.  A man my age should know better, but I needed beans and I needed a ream of paper.  Ergo, says I, where can I go to buy both things while making one stop?  Thus, cogito ergo Wal-Mart.

I fight my way through the angry cart riders, the fussy shelf re-stockers (why they restock shelves on Saturday afternoon I know not), the screaming children, and the mothers desperately ignoring the screaming children; some stereotypes are born of reasoned observations.

I find the beans.  Been there, done that – neural pathway in place.  Then I navigate to the electronics and look for printer paper.  Not finding any, I ask one of the friendly workers, “Do you sell reams of paper.”  She gives me a look.  I think she thought I said something vulgar.  We stare at one another a moment and she dashes around a corner, without a word.  And I’m like, “Ok…”

But all is not lost because in a moment she returns with a manager.  He says, “What did you ask her for?”

And I ask, “Where are your reams of paper?”

He too gives me a look, though his is born of confusion.  But eureka, like Diogenes, I find an honest man!  Diogenes was the guy who noted that since we have two ears and one tongue, we should listen twice as much as we speak.  He asks, “What’s that?”

I answer, “Typing paper,” to which he points me in the right direction, and I am on my way, pondering the unique situation of finding two people in a row, one older than myself and one younger, neither of whom knows what a ream of paper is.

Now, can’t fault someone for what they don’t know.  That’s just ignorance and I’m as ignorant as the next fella.  I know about my interests, nothing more and quite a bit less.  Say, if I were interested in famous U-Boat captains or extinct forms of algae, by golly, I’d learn about it.

But what can be faulted is a lack of interest in just about anything.  This is about frame of reference.  My mistake was, I assumed everybody knows what a ream of paper is.  Lesson learned: don’t talk about reams when assuming (there’s an off-color joke in there somewhere).

And my students who do not know who Alfred E. Newman is also do not know who the mayor of their hometown is.  Some of them do not know who Joe Biden is.  As I age I struggle for relevant references.  When I talk about iambic pentameter’s presence in some of Eminem’s lyrics, little lights sometimes flicker.  And sometimes, they don’t know who Eminem is.

We’ve got to ask ourselves what are we interested in?  And what are we doing about it?  For example, if people are not interested in the fact that the President of the United States wants to use drones to target and kill United States citizens without a trial, who do we have to blame when such powers are granted to him?  It’s little things like that keeping me up at night.

What happened to that little kid (and we were all that little kid) who asks how and why about four dozen times a day?  Ever notice how little kids want to know everything?  And then, they pop out of the public school system and don’t have interests in anything?  It’s like a meat-grinder for our innate curiosity.  Where does it go?

Hydrogen-2-Oh

There were two fish.  It was morning and they were swimming along.  From the other side of the lake comes an older fish.  He nods to the youngsters.  Asks, “How’s the water?” and swims away before either of them can answer.

One of the young fish turns to the other and asks, “Who was that?” 

The other young fish says, “I don’t know.  And what’s water?”

This is the parable of education.  It’s like being able to drive to a location without being able to give accurate directions on how to get there.  Education is being made aware of things that were there all along.  And being aware of things isn’t going to hurt.  Instruction, on the other hand, is when someone shows how something is done.  The young fish swimming already swim.  They don’t need instruction on that.  Maybe their form could benefit from some coaching.  I don’t know.  But either way, I do like education.  Formal helps.

In the snobbish snobbery of literary academe, some writers are lifted up, while others are sniffed upon.  Case in point, Jack London; he was a cool writer who knew how to tell stories.  Yet, he was self-taught (sniff, downward glance along the nostril plain).  London was no James Joyce, they say.  How about this:  No duh!  James Joyce was James Joyce and it would be weird if Jack London were also James Joyce; different fish, same water dip-wad!  I’m waiting for Stephen King to make it in the Literahuture Anthologies.

Then there’s this jibe:  those who can, do and those who can’t teach.  There is some truth to that.  It probably depends on the area.  Math teachers…  they can do math, and howdy.  But history teachers?  How, exactly, does one do history?  I like history more than math.  I know more history than math and yet the math is more doable.  History has been done and even re-enactors are making new history.   Strange, huh?

Getting back to writing… amongst my esteemed peers in the English Department, there are a number who venture seldom from the email / Facebook / twitter realms of putting their thoughts into a document.  Yet, they teach writing.  When was the last time you wrote a research paper with sources cited and a bibliography?  Uh, like freakin’ never ago?!

Sometimes these professors get all snotty with their students and run ‘em down for being’ eegnert and stuff.  That’s a lack of empathy is what that is.

What follows is my own horn.  I will now toot it.  Every semester I write one of the assignments with the classes.  This semester I’m going to write a paper with my Composition 1 students and another with my Composition 2 students.  It gives me cred and great examples to show on the projector.  Plus, I learn stuff.  As they struggle, I struggle.  We hold hands and sing ‘Michael Row Your Boat Ashore,’ when finished.  The horn is being put away now.

Let’s say a person wants to be a writer.  The challenge is this:

A) Go into six figures of debt and get one of them there MFAs with an emphasis on Creative Writing, or

B) Lock yourself in a room for three years and write for three hours, every day

Which person will know more about how to write and which person will know the nomenclature of how to talk about writing?  Who will have written more?  The room-locker-inner will write circles around the stolid scribe with the letters after the name.   But, <nose sniffing> we’re talking quality versus quantity.

Hey – how about this literature boy – how about writing stuff people want to read as opposed to writing stuff people are forced to read to get the three credit hours?  If the hidden classics didn’t suck so bad they wouldn’t be hidden, now would they?

There’s this kid in one of my classes.  He says he wants to be a game designer.  So I ask him, “What kind of games are you designing now?”  He looks at me like my left ear just fell off and landed in his cookie-jar sized Mountain Dew coolie cup with a sickening green-ear splash.  I know, right?  And I’m like, “No, really, what are you doing now to design games?”  And he’s all like, “I, uh… <breathes through mouth> uh… I’m going to school.”

And therein lay the lie.  Since when does a person need a couple of letters after his name before he can try something he says he wants to do?

How about this – instead of wearing a two-hundred dollar pair of athletic shoes that are never used for athletics (trust me on this one), and instead of having the latest version of the latest iteration of the next generation cellphone, and instead of plopping down sixty-dollars on the next cool video game every two weeks for your bleeding-edge system with the ear phones and micro-plug-in with your buds until four o’clock in the morning three times a week (all on mommy’s dime anyway), why not get yourself one of them there integrated development environments and learn how to use it?  Go design a video game, dude!  Don’t need a diploma for that.  Don’t need it!  AND (the earth might crack open on this one) – it is possible to work on developing skills and go to college at the same time!  Save me the little boy talk about devoting yourself to your studies.  Pu-FREAKING-leeeeeze…

First time out of the box, said young fella might not create a very decent game.  But he will have created one and learned scads and scads so that, as his academic career evolves, he’ll be in a better position to continue.

About a hundred years ago I was responsible for hiring and firing people.  I met many people who had the diploma but who didn’t know how to do anything but talk about their diploma.

If you want to swim, swim.  Don't need to know water is comprised of two hydrogen molecules bound via polar covalent to one oxygen molecule.  I mean, on Jeopardy that might be handy or it might be something you are interested in.  That's cool.  But for swimming, a person doesn't need to know that.

The Crystal Ball of Community College Success

Class begins Monday.  I'm reviewing the three rosters I have been granted:  Composition 1, Composition 2, and Introduction to Literature (they threw the adjunct a bone).  There are fifty-four unique names on the rosters.  I know from previous experience that one third of those students will not make it to midterm.  And no, it's not because I am a horrible, mean, hateful hater of a teacher.  My midterm rate is just slightly better than the college average.  So there.

Most of those eighteen students will not bother to formally drop.  They will just disappear.  No good-by, no fond farewell, no lingering stares as they turn and walk inevitably into the fogbanks of time.  Alas…  The small, mean, and terrible part of me wishes, since they are going anyway, they would leave as soon as possible.  It would save a lot of time and I could use that energy for the thirty-six students who will remain.

Speaking of which, of those who complete the courses, approximately twenty-seven percent will receive a grade of either an 'F' or a 'D'.  Math is hard, but I think that means nine or ten of them will have to retake the course.  This leaves the intrepid twenty-five students who pass.  Less than half of those currently enrolled in my courses are not going to make it.  I know that before day one.  This is slightly better than those who charged the Union line on the final day of Gettysburg, but not by much.

Being that I teach at a community college, I see all types.  There are those who have fallen from a 'real' university and find themselves in my classes.  There are those from the 'wrong' parts of the city who never, but for a state-initiative, thought to find themselves in college in the first place.  There are those with wise parents who send their progeny to save money on the first two years.  There are those returners, close to, or perhaps older than, my own age. And, about once every three semesters I have a student who doesn't appear to understand where he or she is at all.

And what I teach, it is not mind-bending.  We're not splicing cranial nerves or charting asymptotic relationships.  It's reading and writing and talking, with a little jargon and testing thrown in.  That's it.  And less than half will pass.

The predictive element in their lives (and mine) is whether or not a student will show up and do the work.  That's it.  There is no other secret.  <Yodavoice> You either do, or do not.  There is no try </Yodavoice>.

And that is what we all face.  I have goals for 2013.  They are not impossible.  Trust me.  If you knew me you would not doubt this.  But the question remains, will I show up and do the work?

Those Doggone Kids

For fourteen years I worked in the IT industry.  I started as a technical writer, went on to software testing and then as a manager of a help-desk.  Later, as a consultant I worked with Fortune 500 companies, mostly in the Midwest, though I managed to get to the west coast a time or two.  When the office downsized I was a practice manager with a dozen direct reports.  After that, I did some independent work in the field but the bubble had popped and soon after I found a teaching position at a community college here in Central Illinois.  I’ve been there nearly six years.

I say from experience there is something wrong with our public schools.  For example (and there are many examples), a little child, say six or seven years old, wants to know everything.  ‘Why’ is always on their lips.  Their desire to know and to see how things work, to determine why things are the way they are becomes incessant a times.  Then, twelve years of public schooling later, that same child has been drained of innate curiosity.  The ones who arrive in my classes don’t want to know anything.  That’s a broad brush stroke but almost without exception it is true.  The next time you talk with a nineteen or a twenty year old ask them what they are curious about, what they want to discover, or what’s going on in the intellectual parts of their brains.  If you are an employer think about why the new hire demonstrates so little initiative.

We say we live in the information age.  The internet allows us to teach ourselves ancient Greek or how to change brake pads.  We can learn basic wiring or how network routers work.  This costs as much as an internet hookup.  Most of the accumulated knowledge of mankind resides at the tips or our fingers.  But when I ask the recent high school graduates, “What do you want to write about?” there’s only a blank stare.  Early in the semester we spend two full class sessions to create a list of five topics they want to investigate.  Some students can’t come up with three.  What happens to curiosity? 

I am not saying there are classes on how to not want to learn, but there is something endemic about public education that teaches this lesson and it teaches it well.  This is one symptom of many.

It is equally fascinating how few basic writing skills the students possess.  The community college offers an array of developmental reading and writing and science and math courses for those lacking the necessary skills to succeed at the college level.  And of the students who test into English Composition, not developmental, a full one third have difficultly writing a complete, coherent paragraph free of basic usage errors.

These students have been through twelve years of schooling.  That’s over a decade of their lives.  They study and practice writing in one form or another each of those years.  They graduate high school, are awarded diplomas representing academic accomplishment; they meet the minimum educational standards set by the state of Illinois and some of them cannot write a complete sentence.  Some cannot recognize a variable in basic algebraic terms.  Illinois is not unique.  This is another symptom.

At this point we will, I suppose, mobilize the usual way.  When someone has the audacity to mention things like these, people run for their preferred trench.  Teachers jump into the educator trenches, administrators to theirs.  Parents go to the defensive heights of their encampment and the students who bother to be concerned to theirs.  And from these positions we fight it out and talk of school reform and who does what and where is the money and so on and so forth.  The groups are suspicious of one another, have been for some time.  This seems how we approach problems these days.  When there is something wrong we run to the friendly group and attack the others.  The tribal meme works well for warfare but does little for progress and solving shared problems, but at least it occupies our time.

As I understand it, forced (or mandatory if the word forced makes you wince) public schooling as we think of it has been around since shortly after the Civil War.  I’m not certain of the specific dates but dropping literacy rates shows when it really began.  We are dealing with mature, well protected systems.  There’s a lot at stake and here I am not talking about the students.  There are vested interests all around, jobs and titles and positions and, dare I say, entitlements.  That’s why people get protective and suspicious.  We can talk all day about doing things for the children, but be honest enough to admit there are other influences involved and some of these influences take precedence.  Systems like to preserve themselves.

Here is a question:  how can significant percentages of students attend school for twelve years, be granted a diploma representing academic accomplishment, and yet remain mostly innumerate, very close to illiterate, and in possession of few skills with which to feed themselves, while at the same time possessing no interests other than a vague notion that they have to go to college to obtain the fabled, ‘good job’?

Now please, in answering this question, don’t start shooting in the direction of the other trenches.  Don’t devolve into merit pay or teachers’ unions or funding or parental involvement or how kids are these days or use any of the other rhetorical ammunition we typically fire.  The answer is more than these things.  All that is really about protecting what is already in place.

What’s happening has been happening so long we don’t dare mention it and the answers are uncomfortably close.  We have these unique markers called fingerprints.  We are individuals.  We come from unique families and from unique hometowns, different communities and different influences.  Yet how do we ‘do’ school?  It comes from on high, does it not?  The individual student is to fit into a pre-cut slot of the educational system.  He or she is a little piece and is placed at a young age into a great old machine; placed via testing and class rankings and competency scores and hundreds of other subtle positioning mechanisms.  Twelve years later the student is spit out the other side.

Students learn to obey buzzers and bells.  The seven rules for walking down the hall are enshrined on the walls and random bits of information are presented to them in increments of forty minutes if everyone behaves.  If it is a favorite class about something a student really starts to enjoy it’s too bad because time is up and they have to change the channel and go to the next thing.  When a student reads too fast they are warned not to read ahead.  If a student reads too slowly they receive a nice life-long label.  They march through the system, highly regulated for years and are then told go to college and continue to figure out what they want to do with their lives.  When, truthfully, interest in anything relevant was drummed from them a long time ago.

Schooling is not tailored for the individual.  It is tailored for the school.  Schooling is not fit for the neighborhood, the larger community, or even the hometown. Instead, it comes from above.  It is the state mandate which, in turn, receives pedagogy from an even higher authority – the Federal Government.  But what would someone in Springfield or in Washington DC know about what students need in a place like this?  Ask that question too loudly and you will never become a superintendent.

Imagine if this particular apple cart were purposely tipped.  Think of the layers upon layers of regulators who make decisions for children living hundreds or perhaps a thousand miles away.  Whatever else would they do to otherwise feed themselves if they could not mandate and regulate and measure results they, themselves, handed down as important enough to mandate and regulate and measure?  Do we appreciate the billions of dollars made by the text book industry each year and how that industry might have a vested interest in keeping the current system in place?  There is, I am told, a similar industry devoted to standardized testing.  That word should draw our concern.  Whose standards are being tested?  And why?  The point is that there are hundreds of suppliers dependent on keeping things the same and they employ lobbyists and influencers who work from the halls of Congress all the way to the local school board.   Look and you will see them.  They system runs the students through the system that is fueled by the costs incurred to run the system.

With a broader perspective we need to ask:  are things done that are beneficial for the students or for the powers running the schooling?  It is one thing to be educated.  It is another to be schooled.

There is a different way to do it.  It’s out there, somewhere.  Maybe we can’t imagine it fully because we’re products of that system. Maybe too much energy is used sniping at one another.  Maybe we’re bailing water on a sinking ship and don’t have the time.  But what we have isn’t working.  The system is preserving itself and is as healthy as ever.  The end results, however, look to be more by-product than product.