The Virtues of Online "education?"
A recent report from the US Department of Education which analyzed studies of online education, blended classes and face-to-face (F2F) courses concluded that online courses provided better results than F2F and blended provided the most benefit of all. There are a lot of problems with the study but, not terribly surprising, the key element in student success in any of the formats tended to be the amount of time spent on the course. Imagine that.
A vigorous discussion has ensued on the Inside Higher Education site on this study. Here are my comments from this morning:
Having taught totally online, blended and F2F courses for the last seven years, I have a few observations:
1. Creating college courses and curricula based upon student convenience is profoundly misguided. Convenience is largely a consumer concern. Commitment is a pedagogical concern. That shows up in the not terribly surprising finding that time committed to class was the primary factor in student success. Of course, that is true regardless of the format.
2. Institutional economic imperatives provide a poor basis for pedagogy. That universities overload their student bodies with more bodies than they can actually house in classrooms and staff with instructors does not provide a compelling reason to simply dump those students into online sections to insure they can actually graduate.
3. Some students are more appropriate for online courses than others. Students who succeed have good time management skills and a healthy respect for deadlines. That, of course, is true for any format of class but it’s particularly imperative for online courses. Upper division students tend to do better than first term freshmen (though they generally complain more, often because they have delayed taking a lower division general education requirement they didn’t want to take in the first place until the end of their college careers).
4. Some classes are more appropriate for online presentation than others. Classes with heavy visual content such as art and humanities require enormous download time. If convenience has become the recruiting tool for online classes, the disconnect with time needed for downloading materials quickly becomes problematic. Similarly with literature classes and philosophy courses with large .pdf files for reading. Quiz driven math courses and computer programming classes which generally draw students with many of the skills being developed therein are much more appropriate for online presentation.
5. It has not been my observation that online discussions tend to produce much of substance and rarely approaches the vitality of F2F discussions. One place such an approach may be superior is with introverted students who tend not to speak out in class discussions. Indeed, introverts may find online formats less threatening generally. But small group discussions in F2F classes can readily accomplish the same thing.
6. Having taught in all three formats, I would rank them this way in terms of educational soundness: 1. blended, 2. F2F, 3. totally online. That ranking would change slightly if class size exceeds 40-50 students. In the case of classes with more than 50 students, I would rank F2F last because of the lack of ability to know students and the potential for behavioral problems increasingly marking undergraduate populations today.
7. Online classes best serve adults struggling to gain a college education but unable to leave their work to attend full-time, often because of family concerns. They also serve students who must be away from campus for a semester, often the summer semester. Finally, they serve the needs of students who cannot get classes they want in person (e.g., Latin courses in high school) and are willing to do whatever they can to gain those courses. They are least useful to surface learning frat boys who simply don’t want to brave their hangovers to attend class and strategic learning degree seekers who want to get college over as quickly as possible to go out into what their limited conception of a “real world” where money is made. Of course, in neither of those cases is education the primary concern, it is simply the means to another end, much like much of online education tends to be, sadly.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Laptops in Classrooms - Duties to the Whole Body
At the Inside Higher Ed website, a discussion is occurring over whether professors should ban laptops in their classrooms, a practice that I have long employed in my own classes. Here are some basic considerations that I think underlie this discussion:
1. Education is by definition an engaged activity, not a passive consumer product. The concern about laptop usage is a concern about the obligation of engagement, a proper concern for a college instructor and students. It is ultimately not about the entitlements of students.
2. Notions that students must be provided with recorded lectures so they can take notes outside class (and what are the chances that will happen?) so they can surf the web while in the class seems to beg the question as to why they should come to class in the first place. If they must compulsively engage in distracting activities while purportedly trying to learn, why not simply take an online class where there are no real expectations of student engagement in the first place?
3. It is not the duty of the instructor to capture and hold the student’s attention. That’s entertainment. Colleges such as mine with three major theme parks right down the road can never compete with the entertainment industry. Rather, it is the duty of the instructor to prepare for and direct the class. It is the student’s duty to engage the class, a factor that regularly gets lost in this discussion. Universitas means the whole body, all parties engaged with mutual duties to the whole body, not provision of consumer goods and services by a seller to a buyer.
4. There is no entitlement to the use of any form of technology any time and place individuals want to use it. This is a lesson in delayed gratification as well as consideration for and obligations to others. Anyone who cannot go 50 minutes without playing with their electronic toys has a real problem.
5. As a substitute for laptop note taking, why not simply provide students with outlines at the course website that they can download prior to class and complete during the lecture? That way they don’t have to write down every word and the outline indicates what the lecturer thinks is important. Again, the obligation here lies with the student.
6. Similarly, why not provide students with documents such as film reviews and group presentation evaluations prior to class online and make the student responsible for downloading them and bringing them to class? This saves departments money on copying and inculcates a notion of the student’s obligation to the whole body in the process.
7. I’m a recovering lawyer and I teach a class on the philosophy of law. I find nothing in the Constitution that guarantees the right to use any form of technology in the classroom. Indeed, if anything, the requirement that students be fully attentive in class is a real life lesson in constitutionally permissible regulations of time, place and manner which our courts have recognized since the Constitution was created.
8. I also find nothing oppressive in requiring students to be present, prepared and attentive during class. Indeed, I find the unwillingness to require this a failure of duty on the part of the instructor. Universities teach many things both explicitly and implicitly. Teaching students by praxis that they have no duties to anyone other than themselves is a moral failure in my view and bodes poorly for the future of our society as a whole.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
At the Inside Higher Ed website, a discussion is occurring over whether professors should ban laptops in their classrooms, a practice that I have long employed in my own classes. Here are some basic considerations that I think underlie this discussion:
1. Education is by definition an engaged activity, not a passive consumer product. The concern about laptop usage is a concern about the obligation of engagement, a proper concern for a college instructor and students. It is ultimately not about the entitlements of students.
2. Notions that students must be provided with recorded lectures so they can take notes outside class (and what are the chances that will happen?) so they can surf the web while in the class seems to beg the question as to why they should come to class in the first place. If they must compulsively engage in distracting activities while purportedly trying to learn, why not simply take an online class where there are no real expectations of student engagement in the first place?
3. It is not the duty of the instructor to capture and hold the student’s attention. That’s entertainment. Colleges such as mine with three major theme parks right down the road can never compete with the entertainment industry. Rather, it is the duty of the instructor to prepare for and direct the class. It is the student’s duty to engage the class, a factor that regularly gets lost in this discussion. Universitas means the whole body, all parties engaged with mutual duties to the whole body, not provision of consumer goods and services by a seller to a buyer.
4. There is no entitlement to the use of any form of technology any time and place individuals want to use it. This is a lesson in delayed gratification as well as consideration for and obligations to others. Anyone who cannot go 50 minutes without playing with their electronic toys has a real problem.
5. As a substitute for laptop note taking, why not simply provide students with outlines at the course website that they can download prior to class and complete during the lecture? That way they don’t have to write down every word and the outline indicates what the lecturer thinks is important. Again, the obligation here lies with the student.
6. Similarly, why not provide students with documents such as film reviews and group presentation evaluations prior to class online and make the student responsible for downloading them and bringing them to class? This saves departments money on copying and inculcates a notion of the student’s obligation to the whole body in the process.
7. I’m a recovering lawyer and I teach a class on the philosophy of law. I find nothing in the Constitution that guarantees the right to use any form of technology in the classroom. Indeed, if anything, the requirement that students be fully attentive in class is a real life lesson in constitutionally permissible regulations of time, place and manner which our courts have recognized since the Constitution was created.
8. I also find nothing oppressive in requiring students to be present, prepared and attentive during class. Indeed, I find the unwillingness to require this a failure of duty on the part of the instructor. Universities teach many things both explicitly and implicitly. Teaching students by praxis that they have no duties to anyone other than themselves is a moral failure in my view and bodes poorly for the future of our society as a whole.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
THE BUSINESS OF COLLEGE SPORTS:
Falling Out of Love with Football
On our departmental discussion list we are currently discussing an article in Inside Higher Ed that reports the vast majority of college athletics programs – including ours at UCF – are money losers. One report suggests that
[i]f we subtract this allocation [of student fees, direct institutional and governmental support] from the total revenue average, we find that the average I-A athletic department generated $27.9 million in revenue in 2004-05. This means that without the institutional and government subsidies, the average department ran a deficit of $6.67 million. Put differently, 95 of the 117 I-A schools lost money on their intercollegiate athletic programs when subsidies are excluded.
- Andrew Zimbalist, “College athletic budgets are bulging but their profits
are slim to none,” Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal,
(June 18, 2007), 26.
My main argument is that college sports has become a business supported by student fees and tax moneys at a time when colleges can ill afford such a luxury. I am not opposed to sports per se, I do have problems with taxpayer subsidy of extra curricular entertainment activities that suck the lifeblood out of colleges and universities already starved for sufficient operating funds by socially irresponsible legislatures.
As a part of my argument, I lay out a bit of my personal history with sports. To wit:
So why do I care? Indulge me a moment.
Much of my life I have been a big football fan. One of my fondest memories from my childhood was watching my father nearly lose his mind as we cleared the land on which our house was built all the while listening on a transistor radio to the University of Florida Gators upset the Alabama Crimson Tide (then #1 in the nation) in 1963. Later that fall I attended my first UF game with my dad (who met my mother at UF). I was hooked. And thus began a long period of being a consummate Gator fan.
In 1991 I moved to California to attend seminary. On opening game day at Berkeley, the Golden Bears were playing the San Jose State Spartans. It was a bloodbath. When the cannon celebrating UC touchdowns had gone off for a third time over at Memorial Stadium in the first quarter, we knew the game was over. And so I headed out to the campus to the library figuring it would be a good time to get into the stacks with all the students (and alums) getting all liquored up over at the stadium.
What I found shocked this product of SEC football schools. The library was full that Saturday afternoon. Students were studying, oblvious to the goings on over at Memorial Stadium. And when I left the library to go over to Telegraph Avenue, the main shopping street leading south to Oakland from Berkeley, the coffee shops were full of students studying and discussing... gulp.... class materials. All of a sudden I had this incredible sense of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz in which she remarks to her dog, "I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto." Indeed, years later while working on my dissertation, when I tried the same gambit at UF on a Saturday during its football season, the library was closed. Cue Dorothy/Toto/Kansas reprise.
What began to become clear to me that day in Berkeley was something I never learned at the University of Florida in either undergrad or law school - that state universities did not exist for the purpose of fielding sports teams and entertaining drunken alumni. The reality in California was that most people there recognized football for what it is - a game played by teenage boys. Any notions of honor/shame or locus of one's identity are projected onto that game by those who construct it as such.
I have come to believe that public universities should not be in the business of entertaining people, whether it's our own students or the general public. That includes expensive, revenue draining sports programs and it includes daytime performances of Sesame Street and night time carnivals with ice rinks and ferris wheels. The purpose of the university is to educate the public. When it is doing that job even adequately, which is clearly NOT the case right now, then we can begin to talk about extra curricular activities. Moreover, when sports programs pay their own way, do not conflict with legitimate university functions and can be accomodated by the university's schedule, no one will question them. But that is not what is happening now.
Further disenchantment with college football occurred when I returned to Florida from California to complete my Ph.D. at Florida State. Having been a lifelong Gator fan, the first born of two UF grads who ultimately produced three UF grads (and one renegade who also attained a doctorate from FSU), I was immediately suspect in Tallahassee. People were rude- even nasty- to me on a regular basis upon discovering my deep, dark secret. And that rudeness was not confined to Seminole fans. My family began to treat me differently. My sister said that she didn't admit to her friends that I actually attended FSU. My friends from undergrad and law school at UF began to pummel me with emails imploring me to be the good Gator fan they had always known.
That experience drove the nail through the coffin lid for me and college sports. All that vitriol over boys (and girls, in sports outside football) playing games! I have come to the point where I generally don't watch much football on TV and rarely attend a game (for the record, I attended three games with the students from the Episcopal Chapel at FSU when I was assistant chaplain there and I have attended two games at UCF since I have been here). I find being confined to a chair for three hour of bubba speak and obnoxious car and beer ads a violation of the 8th Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. I almost always turn off the local news after weather to avoid the sports segment with its litanies of sports from high schools to the local [your corporate logo here] professional sports team.
Ignoring the omnipresent consumerist demand for distraction and diversion through sports is always possible with a little work. But when the obsession with sports begins to affect aspects of this world that actually are important - like education - remaining silent is not an option. I am hardly opposed to having fun on either side of the podium at the university. What I oppose is funding a sports program which has lost its sense of its proper place at the university - an extra-curricular activity which supports the purpose of the university, educating the public - and not yet another manifestation of the consumer distraction industry known as entertainment.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Falling Out of Love with Football
On our departmental discussion list we are currently discussing an article in Inside Higher Ed that reports the vast majority of college athletics programs – including ours at UCF – are money losers. One report suggests that
[i]f we subtract this allocation [of student fees, direct institutional and governmental support] from the total revenue average, we find that the average I-A athletic department generated $27.9 million in revenue in 2004-05. This means that without the institutional and government subsidies, the average department ran a deficit of $6.67 million. Put differently, 95 of the 117 I-A schools lost money on their intercollegiate athletic programs when subsidies are excluded.
- Andrew Zimbalist, “College athletic budgets are bulging but their profits
are slim to none,” Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal,
(June 18, 2007), 26.
My main argument is that college sports has become a business supported by student fees and tax moneys at a time when colleges can ill afford such a luxury. I am not opposed to sports per se, I do have problems with taxpayer subsidy of extra curricular entertainment activities that suck the lifeblood out of colleges and universities already starved for sufficient operating funds by socially irresponsible legislatures.
As a part of my argument, I lay out a bit of my personal history with sports. To wit:
So why do I care? Indulge me a moment.
Much of my life I have been a big football fan. One of my fondest memories from my childhood was watching my father nearly lose his mind as we cleared the land on which our house was built all the while listening on a transistor radio to the University of Florida Gators upset the Alabama Crimson Tide (then #1 in the nation) in 1963. Later that fall I attended my first UF game with my dad (who met my mother at UF). I was hooked. And thus began a long period of being a consummate Gator fan.
In 1991 I moved to California to attend seminary. On opening game day at Berkeley, the Golden Bears were playing the San Jose State Spartans. It was a bloodbath. When the cannon celebrating UC touchdowns had gone off for a third time over at Memorial Stadium in the first quarter, we knew the game was over. And so I headed out to the campus to the library figuring it would be a good time to get into the stacks with all the students (and alums) getting all liquored up over at the stadium.
What I found shocked this product of SEC football schools. The library was full that Saturday afternoon. Students were studying, oblvious to the goings on over at Memorial Stadium. And when I left the library to go over to Telegraph Avenue, the main shopping street leading south to Oakland from Berkeley, the coffee shops were full of students studying and discussing... gulp.... class materials. All of a sudden I had this incredible sense of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz in which she remarks to her dog, "I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto." Indeed, years later while working on my dissertation, when I tried the same gambit at UF on a Saturday during its football season, the library was closed. Cue Dorothy/Toto/Kansas reprise.
What began to become clear to me that day in Berkeley was something I never learned at the University of Florida in either undergrad or law school - that state universities did not exist for the purpose of fielding sports teams and entertaining drunken alumni. The reality in California was that most people there recognized football for what it is - a game played by teenage boys. Any notions of honor/shame or locus of one's identity are projected onto that game by those who construct it as such.
I have come to believe that public universities should not be in the business of entertaining people, whether it's our own students or the general public. That includes expensive, revenue draining sports programs and it includes daytime performances of Sesame Street and night time carnivals with ice rinks and ferris wheels. The purpose of the university is to educate the public. When it is doing that job even adequately, which is clearly NOT the case right now, then we can begin to talk about extra curricular activities. Moreover, when sports programs pay their own way, do not conflict with legitimate university functions and can be accomodated by the university's schedule, no one will question them. But that is not what is happening now.
Further disenchantment with college football occurred when I returned to Florida from California to complete my Ph.D. at Florida State. Having been a lifelong Gator fan, the first born of two UF grads who ultimately produced three UF grads (and one renegade who also attained a doctorate from FSU), I was immediately suspect in Tallahassee. People were rude- even nasty- to me on a regular basis upon discovering my deep, dark secret. And that rudeness was not confined to Seminole fans. My family began to treat me differently. My sister said that she didn't admit to her friends that I actually attended FSU. My friends from undergrad and law school at UF began to pummel me with emails imploring me to be the good Gator fan they had always known.
That experience drove the nail through the coffin lid for me and college sports. All that vitriol over boys (and girls, in sports outside football) playing games! I have come to the point where I generally don't watch much football on TV and rarely attend a game (for the record, I attended three games with the students from the Episcopal Chapel at FSU when I was assistant chaplain there and I have attended two games at UCF since I have been here). I find being confined to a chair for three hour of bubba speak and obnoxious car and beer ads a violation of the 8th Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. I almost always turn off the local news after weather to avoid the sports segment with its litanies of sports from high schools to the local [your corporate logo here] professional sports team.
Ignoring the omnipresent consumerist demand for distraction and diversion through sports is always possible with a little work. But when the obsession with sports begins to affect aspects of this world that actually are important - like education - remaining silent is not an option. I am hardly opposed to having fun on either side of the podium at the university. What I oppose is funding a sports program which has lost its sense of its proper place at the university - an extra-curricular activity which supports the purpose of the university, educating the public - and not yet another manifestation of the consumer distraction industry known as entertainment.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
An Unexpected Apologia for Pentecostalism
A friend of mine sent me an email exchange in which he and some friends in the Unitarian-Universalist tradition are talking about religion. The exchange ends with this comment from my friend’s dialogue partner about finding ways to laugh at tragedy. He said, “The pain you feel when watching holy rollers emote over Jesus. You could choose to make their antics a comedy and laugh at the drama. Ha!”
Now, I’m hardly a defender of Protestant Pentecostal religion even as I find it fascinating from an academic perspective. I have come to understand the cultural roots of this phenomenon (which in part gave rise to the Great Awakenings in America and the Methodist tradition in which I was raised). And I also recognize the class dimensions which inform this approach to religion, class dimensions I do not share. But, I find little in this approach to religion that appeals to me personally.
Yet, something in this comment troubled me. While I have passed up few opportunities to make fun of a wide range of Christian practices in my lifetime, I have also come to recognize the level of condescension that often informs such “humor” revealing the aggressive wish fulfillment aspects that Freud spoke about. And so, I decided to think out loud about what in this post troubled me. Here is what I came up with:
Hi Guys:
My brother is a Pentecostal. We have very little to say to each other about religion. Indeed, we scrupulously avoid the subject in order to spend time together.
I’d describe my own spirituality as mystic and catholic (though NOT Roman). I’m a universalist at heart and historically have found Creation Spirituality of folks like Matthew Fox and the liberation theology of folks like Oscar Romero and the Boffe brothers of Brazil informative of my religious life.
Being a Southerner, I have a very strong protective sense about my families, both biological and my family of choice. Having been raised for a good part of my childhood in the woods of Central Florida (Bushnell, Sumter County) where the cattle and citrus we raised shared space with deer, owls and bobcats under sheltering live oaks and palmetto and pine forest scrub (part of which we cleared to build our home), I have a strong connection to nature. My parents were both public servants, my father a teacher and my mother a clerk in a USDA loan agency for local farmers. My parents modeled hard work, duties to others and respect for all sorts and conditions of human beings (to quote the Book of Common Prayer). These factors would play a major role in determining my own spiritual path as an adult.
My brother was born with a partial cleft palate. He endured five operations prior to his fifth birthday. They left him with a nasality in his speech that is noticeable and which makes him difficult to understand at times. His young life in the redneck farm community where my father had been born and to which we were decamped (from Clearwater) when I was mid first grade was a living hell. He was constantly mocked and picked on. My only fights in elementary school were vain attempts to protect my younger brother from his redneck tormenters.
By late high school he had gotten into alcohol and drugs and was probably in danger of becoming an addict. Then in community college he encountered a Pentecostal church and was, by his description, delivered of his demons. For awhile he was a Jesus Freak with hair down to his ass, a dashiki and an electric guitar in hand, up on the stage of the services in the corrugated steel buildings with names like “Liberty” and “Bible believing” churches. Forty years later, he is a bit more mellow, has had his comeuppance on the gay issue when his oldest child came out last year and moved away to San Francisco, and has become a rather vanilla suburbanite computer programmer in Winter Park.
Frankly, if I had to choose between the addictions, I’d take the more benign choice of religion than the destructive path of addiction on which he was headed in 1972. I’d like to think that there are other options but I don’t think he sees any. And, given the options he sees, he probably chose the more benign.
What my brother has taught me over the years is that spiritual paths depend largely – perhaps almost exclusively – on the needs brought to bear on those paths. My own needs regarding spirituality are for openness, tentativeness, appreciation of mystery and symbols. My tests suggest that while my left and right brain activities are fairly balanced, that makes me much more right brained than most men (not surprising given that I am bisexual and live with my partner of 37 years).
My profession into the Third Order of the Society of St. Francis (Anglican) reflects my creation and social justice orientations and my ordination to the Episcopal priesthood, an order that I cherish even as I do not serve in a parish or make my living under the thumb of the institutional church, reflects my value of language and music but more importantly the symbols of catholic worship. While I value community, I also value autonomy. I don’t worry much about the next world but I am highly focused on making this one as just as possible. Those are some of the needs I bring to bear on my spiritual path.
Not only would my brother not understand those needs, they would no doubt frighten him. For my brother, religion is about security. It’s about an experiential sense that one is affirmed by G-d, a sense gained through charismatic prayer and Pentecostal worship coupled with rigid Calvinist dogma. The perceived need for affirmation and justification before a judging, punishing god reflects the cruel world my brother has encountered where one is judged by appearances, judgments that often reveal their makers as shallow by the gifted intellect and technical skills my brother commands. Where my concerns are for justice in this world and respect for every aspect of the good Creation, my brother’s concerns are for justification before a harsh deity who clearly tests his flock through hardships, demanding human sacrifice in the forms of moralistic asceticism and tightly maintained tribal boundaries separating the elect from the sea of damned around them. The freedom and tentativeness my own path requires would not provide my brother nearly enough security to meet the needs he brings to bear on his own spiritual path. His religion would stifle, suffocate and ultimately destroy my very spirit. My religion would revive the panic and insecurity of a life my brother left behind in that small town long ago, a possibility he would find anathema.
In all honesty, I find little about my brother’s religious approach appealing. I do not understand it existentially and I would find it untenable as a matter of course. I never attend services at my brother’s church and I don’t invite him to the rare events I attend at Episcopal churches. But even if I have found I cannot respect his religion per se, I have learned to respect the needs that give rise to such a religion and thereby to understand what appeal it holds for him and the many like him.
Sadly, that street runs only one way. I’m sure my brother and many like him would gladly impose their religion, either directly or indirectly through measures like the homophobic Proposition 2 in Florida and Proposition 8 in California in the 2008 elections, if given the chance. And I watch sadly as his oldest child in San Francisco has systematically cut most contact with his family here in Florida.
The Hindu traditions have long asserted that there are many paths but one destination. I strongly resonate with that notion and assume that, whatever that destination might be, my brother and I will both end up there, perhaps much to his surprise. While I have worked long and hard to understand my brother, his spiritual path and the needs that give rise to its particular expression, I am hardly beyond making jokes about an expression of religion I find alien and, when I am being honest with myself, rather stupid. Even so, I have come to believe that respect for the right to believe as one sees fit includes respect for the right to express those beliefs so long as they do not impact others adversely. When the line between Montesquieu’s proverbial swinging arm and the nose of his neighbor's nose is crossed, that becomes an entirely different matter.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A friend of mine sent me an email exchange in which he and some friends in the Unitarian-Universalist tradition are talking about religion. The exchange ends with this comment from my friend’s dialogue partner about finding ways to laugh at tragedy. He said, “The pain you feel when watching holy rollers emote over Jesus. You could choose to make their antics a comedy and laugh at the drama. Ha!”
Now, I’m hardly a defender of Protestant Pentecostal religion even as I find it fascinating from an academic perspective. I have come to understand the cultural roots of this phenomenon (which in part gave rise to the Great Awakenings in America and the Methodist tradition in which I was raised). And I also recognize the class dimensions which inform this approach to religion, class dimensions I do not share. But, I find little in this approach to religion that appeals to me personally.
Yet, something in this comment troubled me. While I have passed up few opportunities to make fun of a wide range of Christian practices in my lifetime, I have also come to recognize the level of condescension that often informs such “humor” revealing the aggressive wish fulfillment aspects that Freud spoke about. And so, I decided to think out loud about what in this post troubled me. Here is what I came up with:
Hi Guys:
My brother is a Pentecostal. We have very little to say to each other about religion. Indeed, we scrupulously avoid the subject in order to spend time together.
I’d describe my own spirituality as mystic and catholic (though NOT Roman). I’m a universalist at heart and historically have found Creation Spirituality of folks like Matthew Fox and the liberation theology of folks like Oscar Romero and the Boffe brothers of Brazil informative of my religious life.
Being a Southerner, I have a very strong protective sense about my families, both biological and my family of choice. Having been raised for a good part of my childhood in the woods of Central Florida (Bushnell, Sumter County) where the cattle and citrus we raised shared space with deer, owls and bobcats under sheltering live oaks and palmetto and pine forest scrub (part of which we cleared to build our home), I have a strong connection to nature. My parents were both public servants, my father a teacher and my mother a clerk in a USDA loan agency for local farmers. My parents modeled hard work, duties to others and respect for all sorts and conditions of human beings (to quote the Book of Common Prayer). These factors would play a major role in determining my own spiritual path as an adult.
My brother was born with a partial cleft palate. He endured five operations prior to his fifth birthday. They left him with a nasality in his speech that is noticeable and which makes him difficult to understand at times. His young life in the redneck farm community where my father had been born and to which we were decamped (from Clearwater) when I was mid first grade was a living hell. He was constantly mocked and picked on. My only fights in elementary school were vain attempts to protect my younger brother from his redneck tormenters.
By late high school he had gotten into alcohol and drugs and was probably in danger of becoming an addict. Then in community college he encountered a Pentecostal church and was, by his description, delivered of his demons. For awhile he was a Jesus Freak with hair down to his ass, a dashiki and an electric guitar in hand, up on the stage of the services in the corrugated steel buildings with names like “Liberty” and “Bible believing” churches. Forty years later, he is a bit more mellow, has had his comeuppance on the gay issue when his oldest child came out last year and moved away to San Francisco, and has become a rather vanilla suburbanite computer programmer in Winter Park.
Frankly, if I had to choose between the addictions, I’d take the more benign choice of religion than the destructive path of addiction on which he was headed in 1972. I’d like to think that there are other options but I don’t think he sees any. And, given the options he sees, he probably chose the more benign.
What my brother has taught me over the years is that spiritual paths depend largely – perhaps almost exclusively – on the needs brought to bear on those paths. My own needs regarding spirituality are for openness, tentativeness, appreciation of mystery and symbols. My tests suggest that while my left and right brain activities are fairly balanced, that makes me much more right brained than most men (not surprising given that I am bisexual and live with my partner of 37 years).
My profession into the Third Order of the Society of St. Francis (Anglican) reflects my creation and social justice orientations and my ordination to the Episcopal priesthood, an order that I cherish even as I do not serve in a parish or make my living under the thumb of the institutional church, reflects my value of language and music but more importantly the symbols of catholic worship. While I value community, I also value autonomy. I don’t worry much about the next world but I am highly focused on making this one as just as possible. Those are some of the needs I bring to bear on my spiritual path.
Not only would my brother not understand those needs, they would no doubt frighten him. For my brother, religion is about security. It’s about an experiential sense that one is affirmed by G-d, a sense gained through charismatic prayer and Pentecostal worship coupled with rigid Calvinist dogma. The perceived need for affirmation and justification before a judging, punishing god reflects the cruel world my brother has encountered where one is judged by appearances, judgments that often reveal their makers as shallow by the gifted intellect and technical skills my brother commands. Where my concerns are for justice in this world and respect for every aspect of the good Creation, my brother’s concerns are for justification before a harsh deity who clearly tests his flock through hardships, demanding human sacrifice in the forms of moralistic asceticism and tightly maintained tribal boundaries separating the elect from the sea of damned around them. The freedom and tentativeness my own path requires would not provide my brother nearly enough security to meet the needs he brings to bear on his own spiritual path. His religion would stifle, suffocate and ultimately destroy my very spirit. My religion would revive the panic and insecurity of a life my brother left behind in that small town long ago, a possibility he would find anathema.
In all honesty, I find little about my brother’s religious approach appealing. I do not understand it existentially and I would find it untenable as a matter of course. I never attend services at my brother’s church and I don’t invite him to the rare events I attend at Episcopal churches. But even if I have found I cannot respect his religion per se, I have learned to respect the needs that give rise to such a religion and thereby to understand what appeal it holds for him and the many like him.
Sadly, that street runs only one way. I’m sure my brother and many like him would gladly impose their religion, either directly or indirectly through measures like the homophobic Proposition 2 in Florida and Proposition 8 in California in the 2008 elections, if given the chance. And I watch sadly as his oldest child in San Francisco has systematically cut most contact with his family here in Florida.
The Hindu traditions have long asserted that there are many paths but one destination. I strongly resonate with that notion and assume that, whatever that destination might be, my brother and I will both end up there, perhaps much to his surprise. While I have worked long and hard to understand my brother, his spiritual path and the needs that give rise to its particular expression, I am hardly beyond making jokes about an expression of religion I find alien and, when I am being honest with myself, rather stupid. Even so, I have come to believe that respect for the right to believe as one sees fit includes respect for the right to express those beliefs so long as they do not impact others adversely. When the line between Montesquieu’s proverbial swinging arm and the nose of his neighbor's nose is crossed, that becomes an entirely different matter.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Monday, March 08, 2010
Teach ‘em while they’re young….
Teach, your children well
Their father's hell
Did slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's
The one you'll know by.
Don't you ever ask them why
If they told you, you would die
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Teach Your Children (1969)
The little boy was probably about a year old. He sat in the high chair at Jason’s Deli and threw whatever food he could get into his hands at whatever targets he could hit, as one year old children tend to do. His parents ooohed and aaaahed over him and his older sister, herself a ripe old age of perhaps 5, hovered around his most bald head, kissing it and trying to get her little brother to say something intelligible.
What caught my attention was his shirt. It was a red t-shirt with the inscription “LADIES MAN” (sic). The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.
It’s bad enough that children are being taught to misspell words. I’m assuming the t-shirt creator meant “Ladies’ man,” possessive case. And, no doubt, this little boy will have ample opportunity when he is older to avoid that mistake (though if my undergrads are any indication, he probably won’t). But the more subtle (perhaps to parents, unconscious) message is the socially constructed gender role the shirt purveys. It suggests this little boy not only likely will but should grow up to become the promiscuous young adult male our patriarchal culture with its double standard regarding sexuality expects. And my immediate reaction was simply, “Why would that be a good idea?”
Note, the parents clearly anticipate their baby boy will grow up to identify himself as heterosexually oriented. Frankly, I just can’t imagine any parent, knowing their child would end up identifying as gay or lesbian, decking them out in clothing suggesting that they should not only be sexually active but perhaps even hyperactive. Given the obsession of most heterosexists and homophobes with what queers do in bed, that's higly unlikely. Of course, the chances are only 3 percent to 11 percent at most, depending upon the study one accepts as definitive, that the little boy will end up identifying as gay. And, given his parent’s clearly expressed expectations, he probably wouldn’t be terribly swift to inform them that their expectations won’t be met.
On the other hand, given his 89% chances at the least of being heterosexual, why would a pre-cast gender role as what is essentially a sexual predator be appropriate? Remember, his multiple matings will be require the daughters of someone, perhaps a daughter much like their own. I wonder if they would find it acceptable for their daughter to simply be seen as the raw material needed for a “LADIES MAN” to prove his sexuality to himself and to his family and culture, over and over again.
No doubt, the inverse of this situation would immediately be seen for what it is. Let’s say that rather than the one year old boy being dressed in clothing suggesting he must grow into a teenage horn dog on the prowl, why not dress his five year old sister in a tee-shirt that read “Gentlemen’s Lady.” Perhaps she could go to “gentlemen’s clubs” and appear in “gentlemen’s magazines.” What’s good for the gander is good for the goose, right?
It is highly unlikely that a little boy who grows up to live into expectations of family and society of being a “LADIES MAN” will ever be called nasty names like slut, whore, prostitute and some other even more dehumanizing names I can’t bring myself to write here, even if their behavior merits such. But the chances are nearly 100% that should his older sister ever attempt to live into the same role, different gender, she will find herself called all those names and worse. Indeed, the chances that she will be physically assaulted, even murdered, will skyrocket if she tries it. Anytime human beings complete the sentence that begins “Just a _________,” the destructive possibilities facing the now dehumanized object are limitless.
I doubt these children’s parents ever thought about any of this. But I think every parent of any child should.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Teach, your children well
Their father's hell
Did slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's
The one you'll know by.
Don't you ever ask them why
If they told you, you would die
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Teach Your Children (1969)
The little boy was probably about a year old. He sat in the high chair at Jason’s Deli and threw whatever food he could get into his hands at whatever targets he could hit, as one year old children tend to do. His parents ooohed and aaaahed over him and his older sister, herself a ripe old age of perhaps 5, hovered around his most bald head, kissing it and trying to get her little brother to say something intelligible.
What caught my attention was his shirt. It was a red t-shirt with the inscription “LADIES MAN” (sic). The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.
It’s bad enough that children are being taught to misspell words. I’m assuming the t-shirt creator meant “Ladies’ man,” possessive case. And, no doubt, this little boy will have ample opportunity when he is older to avoid that mistake (though if my undergrads are any indication, he probably won’t). But the more subtle (perhaps to parents, unconscious) message is the socially constructed gender role the shirt purveys. It suggests this little boy not only likely will but should grow up to become the promiscuous young adult male our patriarchal culture with its double standard regarding sexuality expects. And my immediate reaction was simply, “Why would that be a good idea?”
Note, the parents clearly anticipate their baby boy will grow up to identify himself as heterosexually oriented. Frankly, I just can’t imagine any parent, knowing their child would end up identifying as gay or lesbian, decking them out in clothing suggesting that they should not only be sexually active but perhaps even hyperactive. Given the obsession of most heterosexists and homophobes with what queers do in bed, that's higly unlikely. Of course, the chances are only 3 percent to 11 percent at most, depending upon the study one accepts as definitive, that the little boy will end up identifying as gay. And, given his parent’s clearly expressed expectations, he probably wouldn’t be terribly swift to inform them that their expectations won’t be met.
On the other hand, given his 89% chances at the least of being heterosexual, why would a pre-cast gender role as what is essentially a sexual predator be appropriate? Remember, his multiple matings will be require the daughters of someone, perhaps a daughter much like their own. I wonder if they would find it acceptable for their daughter to simply be seen as the raw material needed for a “LADIES MAN” to prove his sexuality to himself and to his family and culture, over and over again.
No doubt, the inverse of this situation would immediately be seen for what it is. Let’s say that rather than the one year old boy being dressed in clothing suggesting he must grow into a teenage horn dog on the prowl, why not dress his five year old sister in a tee-shirt that read “Gentlemen’s Lady.” Perhaps she could go to “gentlemen’s clubs” and appear in “gentlemen’s magazines.” What’s good for the gander is good for the goose, right?
It is highly unlikely that a little boy who grows up to live into expectations of family and society of being a “LADIES MAN” will ever be called nasty names like slut, whore, prostitute and some other even more dehumanizing names I can’t bring myself to write here, even if their behavior merits such. But the chances are nearly 100% that should his older sister ever attempt to live into the same role, different gender, she will find herself called all those names and worse. Indeed, the chances that she will be physically assaulted, even murdered, will skyrocket if she tries it. Anytime human beings complete the sentence that begins “Just a _________,” the destructive possibilities facing the now dehumanized object are limitless.
I doubt these children’s parents ever thought about any of this. But I think every parent of any child should.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Saturday, March 06, 2010
The Day the Music Died
My friend made an observation the other day that has prompted me to think a good bit about Whither, Humanity. He said, “People have stopped making music. What they’re doing today is producing entertainment.”
This comment arose in the course of discussing the resurrection of The Who for the Super Bowl halftime show, I had remarked that the ongoing need to find pre-1980s musical talent for that event suggests the decline in music since the wide open musical explosion of the 1960s. While I recognize the somewhat self-serving nature of that assertion being a boomer, I also think it takes little critical skill in music to distinguish the harmonic and lyrical qualities of “Let It Be” and the recent love ballad, “My Life Would Suck Without You.”
My friend’s observation is truly striking when one examines the content and medium of today’s music. From hip hop to electronic music with its distortion of human voices, the focus tends to be on effect. How glib repetition of words, even nonsense syllables, punctuated by percussion and occasional musical accompaniment, came to be called music is beyond me. Don’t get me wrong. I admit to being entertained by the dance music one hears in clubs. And the percussion/special effects driven recordings that accompany everything from television spectaculars to the endless consumer advertising which attend them can be titillating the first 400 times one hears them.
What seems to be missing is content. Occasionally one finds the provocative lyric today such as “What if God were one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home.” (Joan Osbourne, One of Us, 1995) But for the most part, most of today’s lyrics are empty as the melodies, many of them recycled from earlier composers. They don’t call us to wake up, to become conscious, to take action:
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
(Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth, 1966)
Rather, they are designed to distract us, to numb us, to divert us. They are designed to insure disengaged solipsism as we walk down the streets, plugged in, tuned out, turned on, dropped out. Music is for actively engaged listeners if not performers. Entertainment is for passive consumers.
Since the 1960s we increasingly have traded engagement requiring music making and appreciation for mindless entertainment cranked out for disengaged consumers. This trend mirrors our change from citizens to consumers, the withering of public institutions and the ever increasing perceived need to numb the resulting pain.
So what is lost when music makers become entertained consumers? One thing is a sense of our legacy as human beings and as members of specific cultures. That lesson came home for me with a vengeance this week.
When I was in elementary school, music was a part of our curriculum. We learned to sing songs that marked our culture from “America the Beautiful” to “The Bridge at Avignon” to “A Bicycle Built for Two.” We learned about the cultures that produced those songs and for those of us who went on to participate in bands, orchestras and choirs, those early days of elementary school music provided a foundation for both our appreciation for music as well as our musical literacy as adults.
This week we were studying the Gilded Age in my Humanistic Traditions II course. The text used the song “Bird in a Gilded Cage” as an illustration for its material on the polarization of society undergoing transformation from industrial capitalism. I had found a clip of the song on the internet and a painting from a Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which illustrated the concept. I was sure this would be an interesting development of this song for students who had learned it in childhood.
So, I asked them, “How many of you sang this in elementary school?” No hands. “How many of you have even heard of this song.” Again, no hands. Gulp.
This song represents a fairly important chunk of American history and development. My students are completely unaware of it. They are the legacy of “streamlined” curricula that long ago eliminated music from elementary curricula along with art and, in some cases (outside the South, that is) physical education in favor of test taking skills and content. But at what cost?
What does a society that no longer values its musical, artistic, and thus cultural history look like?
Might it be the tyranny of the now our historically amnesiac students now evidence in their quick retorts that a given event occurred before they were born (and thus have no importance to their lives)? Might it be a society that no longer makes music, preferring to be entertained into passive unconsciousness by electronic noises and glib arrangements of words punctuated by percussion? Is such a life truly worth living? Perhaps more importantly, is such a culture truly worth preserving?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My friend made an observation the other day that has prompted me to think a good bit about Whither, Humanity. He said, “People have stopped making music. What they’re doing today is producing entertainment.”
This comment arose in the course of discussing the resurrection of The Who for the Super Bowl halftime show, I had remarked that the ongoing need to find pre-1980s musical talent for that event suggests the decline in music since the wide open musical explosion of the 1960s. While I recognize the somewhat self-serving nature of that assertion being a boomer, I also think it takes little critical skill in music to distinguish the harmonic and lyrical qualities of “Let It Be” and the recent love ballad, “My Life Would Suck Without You.”
My friend’s observation is truly striking when one examines the content and medium of today’s music. From hip hop to electronic music with its distortion of human voices, the focus tends to be on effect. How glib repetition of words, even nonsense syllables, punctuated by percussion and occasional musical accompaniment, came to be called music is beyond me. Don’t get me wrong. I admit to being entertained by the dance music one hears in clubs. And the percussion/special effects driven recordings that accompany everything from television spectaculars to the endless consumer advertising which attend them can be titillating the first 400 times one hears them.
What seems to be missing is content. Occasionally one finds the provocative lyric today such as “What if God were one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home.” (Joan Osbourne, One of Us, 1995) But for the most part, most of today’s lyrics are empty as the melodies, many of them recycled from earlier composers. They don’t call us to wake up, to become conscious, to take action:
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
(Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth, 1966)
Rather, they are designed to distract us, to numb us, to divert us. They are designed to insure disengaged solipsism as we walk down the streets, plugged in, tuned out, turned on, dropped out. Music is for actively engaged listeners if not performers. Entertainment is for passive consumers.
Since the 1960s we increasingly have traded engagement requiring music making and appreciation for mindless entertainment cranked out for disengaged consumers. This trend mirrors our change from citizens to consumers, the withering of public institutions and the ever increasing perceived need to numb the resulting pain.
So what is lost when music makers become entertained consumers? One thing is a sense of our legacy as human beings and as members of specific cultures. That lesson came home for me with a vengeance this week.
When I was in elementary school, music was a part of our curriculum. We learned to sing songs that marked our culture from “America the Beautiful” to “The Bridge at Avignon” to “A Bicycle Built for Two.” We learned about the cultures that produced those songs and for those of us who went on to participate in bands, orchestras and choirs, those early days of elementary school music provided a foundation for both our appreciation for music as well as our musical literacy as adults.
This week we were studying the Gilded Age in my Humanistic Traditions II course. The text used the song “Bird in a Gilded Cage” as an illustration for its material on the polarization of society undergoing transformation from industrial capitalism. I had found a clip of the song on the internet and a painting from a Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which illustrated the concept. I was sure this would be an interesting development of this song for students who had learned it in childhood.
So, I asked them, “How many of you sang this in elementary school?” No hands. “How many of you have even heard of this song.” Again, no hands. Gulp.
This song represents a fairly important chunk of American history and development. My students are completely unaware of it. They are the legacy of “streamlined” curricula that long ago eliminated music from elementary curricula along with art and, in some cases (outside the South, that is) physical education in favor of test taking skills and content. But at what cost?
What does a society that no longer values its musical, artistic, and thus cultural history look like?
Might it be the tyranny of the now our historically amnesiac students now evidence in their quick retorts that a given event occurred before they were born (and thus have no importance to their lives)? Might it be a society that no longer makes music, preferring to be entertained into passive unconsciousness by electronic noises and glib arrangements of words punctuated by percussion? Is such a life truly worth living? Perhaps more importantly, is such a culture truly worth preserving?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Busywork” - Yet Another Shared Conversation (but not by choice)
The young man came out of the library already mid-conversation. Far be it from anyone to actually wait until they are outside a public space to conduct their personal business. “Talk all the time!” the telecommunications corporation ads command us. And G-d forbid we should fail to be good (= mindless) consumers. Who cares who else is required to share that experience with us?
“I’ve got all this busy work,” he said, continuing with a list of said busy work: “Homework. Quizzes. Tests.” He then summarized his experience as a university student with “Man, I am actually having to work.”
Imagine that. Coming to a university and actually being required to work. What is this world coming to?
Of course, the reference to “busy work” suggests yet another student who has failed to fully comprehend the difference between middle school and college. Public school teachers have a vested interest in keeping their students busy. From my experience as a middle school teacher, I know that students who got finished early or frustrated and quit before the rest of the class finished their work were prime candidates for disruptive talking, spit wad throwing and note passing. (Perhaps today they’d simply shoot their teacher) Multiply this potential for disruption by the ever growing class sizes (I regularly had more than 30 seventh graders in my classes when I taught middle school in the 1970s) and you have an ongoing serious potential discipline problem on your hands. Busy work is, sadly, a necessary evil in the world of mixed ability and overloaded public schools classrooms.
But homework has never been busy work, even in public schools. Homework is about preparation for class. Quizzes and tests are some of the means used to determine if said preparation was actually engaged and, if so, how effective it was. The fact so many students can’t tell the difference between preparation for class and in-class busywork suggests one of many reasons why relying much on students to evaluate teaching at any level is problematic on a good day.
Perhaps more to the point for my cell-phone conversation sharing undergrad, why would students presume that college instructors feel the need to keep their students busy outside class? Indeed, what business is it of ours what students do outside of class at all? What is our business, however, is what students do once in our classes. Homework which requires students to read and prepare for class is one of the means by which instructors insure they don’t stand in front of classes and talk to themselves for an hour.
I guess the most obvious question, though, is this: Why would anyone come to a university, knowing that the enterprise of such institutions is the process of becoming, if not an educated human being, at least a well trained worker drone and then expect not to be required to complete at least a modicum of work while there? What were they expecting to happen there? And why?
There are a number of studies indicating that the average high school student is accustomed to spending less than an hour per day preparing for all of their classes. Similarly, a number of studies indicate that the time spent reading by high school students has steadily declined over the last couple of decades of image driven computer usage. Have we not created false expectations in our students by our practice?
On the other hand, at what point do we say to college students that the expectation that they will read, prepare and attend class on time is what is required of adults? Imagine the lawyer who comes to court late without his court files and without reading the case he’s about to argue. Would his litany decrying the oppression of “busywork” punctuated with “you know” and “like” provide him a reprieve from a contempt of court citation?
Perhaps recognition of the need for more responsibility in the form of reading, preparing and class attendance and less self-focused activity in cell phone usage, texting, facebook and computer games (and a lot less complaining) is the actual lesson students must learn in the universities today. A variant of that certainly was the lesson I had to learn as a student and at times it was not easy. No doubt it is a bitter lesson for those coming to college for the meal plan, the hotel style dorm rooms, the football games and the parties – the aspects with which more and more universities are selling themselves these days. And no doubt that the resentment over unmet expectations will be turned on the instructors who actually ARE doing their jobs and requiring their students to come to class prepared.
Perhaps an evaluation which provides useful information to instructors might actually ask questions like “Did this course require you to read the material for class? Did the course require you to actually prepare for class before attending it? Did the course require you to engage the material once in class?” The answers to those questions might actually provide instructors something worth knowing. Because, ultimately, whether a student sees ordinary college class requirements as oppressive “busywork” or not is simply not terribly useful information. Save the consumerist “What did you like best about this course” for the online slam books.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The young man came out of the library already mid-conversation. Far be it from anyone to actually wait until they are outside a public space to conduct their personal business. “Talk all the time!” the telecommunications corporation ads command us. And G-d forbid we should fail to be good (= mindless) consumers. Who cares who else is required to share that experience with us?
“I’ve got all this busy work,” he said, continuing with a list of said busy work: “Homework. Quizzes. Tests.” He then summarized his experience as a university student with “Man, I am actually having to work.”
Imagine that. Coming to a university and actually being required to work. What is this world coming to?
Of course, the reference to “busy work” suggests yet another student who has failed to fully comprehend the difference between middle school and college. Public school teachers have a vested interest in keeping their students busy. From my experience as a middle school teacher, I know that students who got finished early or frustrated and quit before the rest of the class finished their work were prime candidates for disruptive talking, spit wad throwing and note passing. (Perhaps today they’d simply shoot their teacher) Multiply this potential for disruption by the ever growing class sizes (I regularly had more than 30 seventh graders in my classes when I taught middle school in the 1970s) and you have an ongoing serious potential discipline problem on your hands. Busy work is, sadly, a necessary evil in the world of mixed ability and overloaded public schools classrooms.
But homework has never been busy work, even in public schools. Homework is about preparation for class. Quizzes and tests are some of the means used to determine if said preparation was actually engaged and, if so, how effective it was. The fact so many students can’t tell the difference between preparation for class and in-class busywork suggests one of many reasons why relying much on students to evaluate teaching at any level is problematic on a good day.
Perhaps more to the point for my cell-phone conversation sharing undergrad, why would students presume that college instructors feel the need to keep their students busy outside class? Indeed, what business is it of ours what students do outside of class at all? What is our business, however, is what students do once in our classes. Homework which requires students to read and prepare for class is one of the means by which instructors insure they don’t stand in front of classes and talk to themselves for an hour.
I guess the most obvious question, though, is this: Why would anyone come to a university, knowing that the enterprise of such institutions is the process of becoming, if not an educated human being, at least a well trained worker drone and then expect not to be required to complete at least a modicum of work while there? What were they expecting to happen there? And why?
There are a number of studies indicating that the average high school student is accustomed to spending less than an hour per day preparing for all of their classes. Similarly, a number of studies indicate that the time spent reading by high school students has steadily declined over the last couple of decades of image driven computer usage. Have we not created false expectations in our students by our practice?
On the other hand, at what point do we say to college students that the expectation that they will read, prepare and attend class on time is what is required of adults? Imagine the lawyer who comes to court late without his court files and without reading the case he’s about to argue. Would his litany decrying the oppression of “busywork” punctuated with “you know” and “like” provide him a reprieve from a contempt of court citation?
Perhaps recognition of the need for more responsibility in the form of reading, preparing and class attendance and less self-focused activity in cell phone usage, texting, facebook and computer games (and a lot less complaining) is the actual lesson students must learn in the universities today. A variant of that certainly was the lesson I had to learn as a student and at times it was not easy. No doubt it is a bitter lesson for those coming to college for the meal plan, the hotel style dorm rooms, the football games and the parties – the aspects with which more and more universities are selling themselves these days. And no doubt that the resentment over unmet expectations will be turned on the instructors who actually ARE doing their jobs and requiring their students to come to class prepared.
Perhaps an evaluation which provides useful information to instructors might actually ask questions like “Did this course require you to read the material for class? Did the course require you to actually prepare for class before attending it? Did the course require you to engage the material once in class?” The answers to those questions might actually provide instructors something worth knowing. Because, ultimately, whether a student sees ordinary college class requirements as oppressive “busywork” or not is simply not terribly useful information. Save the consumerist “What did you like best about this course” for the online slam books.
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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
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