The Help
Rosetta E. Ross has written a provocative self-described “rant” in Religion Dispatches about why she will not see the film The Help. Unlike her, I have not read the book but have seen the film. And, unlike her, I am white and thus have had a very different experience in a nation in which “we breathe racist air,” as my black classmate in seminary at the Episcopal Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley so eloquently put it.
In my classes at the university where I teach, I often challenge my students to consider the question I was presented in seminary: Cui bono? Good for whom? And at whose expense? That is the question Ross has raised. And she has concluded that this book and film are good for whites who come to experience their full humanity by the instrumental means of their black “help.” Sadly, there is much to be said for that response. But it hardly exhausts the possibilities.
I am one of the many white children of The Help. I was raised by a black nanny named Henrietta who came to our home when I was 8 and helped raise my brother, sister and I to adulthood. While the children listening attentively to their black mother figures in the film well represents our own relationship with our nanny, the stereotypes of their white employers do not reflect our home. My own hard working mother was a clerk in a rural federal agency who did not have time for the Junior League nor much interest in such vagaries. If anything, she and her Help worked as a team and on her deathbed my mother bespoke her gratitude to Henrietta saying , “I don’t know what I would have done without her.”
What the film, set in the 1950s in Jackson, MS, does not well portray is the role that many of our black nannies played in the coming to consciousness of a generation of white children. As Ross suggests, we did discover the dignity of our nannies, their humanity and our own humanity in that process. But we also discovered much more than that.
I learned what cognitive dissonance meant long before I read Leon Festinger’s work on the subject in grad school. In a time of desegregation when fear ruled the day and self-serving constructions of the other ruled most white minds, Henrietta was a living refutation of the common wisdom about black people in our little farm town in Central Florida. While the stereotypes warned us that black people were lazy, Henrietta worked harder than anyone I knew. While the stereotype said black people were stupid, Henrietta was a source of wisdom about the world of which my siblings and I are beneficiaries to this day. And while the stereotype said never trust black people, my family entrusted to her without hesitation our most cherished family member, our baby sister, and Henrietta guarded her with her life just as she would have her own children who had long since grown to adulthood.
The living example of a dignified, wise and loving human being whose very existence exposed the falsehood of what our racist society had taught us had a powerful effect on many white southern children in the 1960s. Over time many of us came to realize that not only had we been taught lies, we had been taught pernicious, soul-draining lies. The people we had relied upon to be arbiters of the real world had spun for us a web of misanthropy threatening to choke the life out of that world. It was precisely our experience of The Help that set many of us on a lifelong journey of coming to grips with that legacy.
Coping with cognitive dissonance presents people with several options. The common choices are denial and rationalization, attempting to make the facts fit the deeply held fictions. The harder path is recognition that one’s beliefs have been erroneous, rejecting the falsehood, accounting for the harm caused by it and making a change of direction in one’s life path. In theological terms, we call that repentance.
For myself and I would guess for many of my generation of white southern children The Help was not so much the instrumental means of white self-actualization as they were agents of consciousness - if not conversion. Through their lives, we learned about the evils of racism and, even more threatening for many white people, the reality of our own white privilege. And through their love and wisdom, many of us accepted the calling to enter into a lifetime of confronting those forces in ourselves and our culture which would deny any human being their dignity even at the cost of our own comfort.
For those lessons, I am grateful. Like my mother, I don’t know what I would have done with them. Indeed, I have long known that I will be in the debt of The Help for the rest of my life.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
It’s Just Not Any Fun Any More
In today’s Inside Higher Ed, Dr. Lewis Margolis, an associate professor of maternal and child health at the Gillings School of Global Public Health of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, lays out a lament against the ongoing corruption evident in big-time college sports, ending his jeremiad with these words:
How many scandals will it take for faculty members and other university leaders to recognize that Division I intercollegiate football and basketball have damaged these institutions, which are fundamental to a vibrant democracy and thriving economy? To my faculty colleagues and the Division I presidents, I say that we close our Division I football programs, that we punt, that we officially drop the ball. I say that we stop paying the exorbitant costs of coaches and ever more elaborate facilities. I say that we proudly assert that Division I football is simply no longer compatible with the missions of great universities. We admit that it is not possible to engage in education, research and service while enmeshed in the murky and distorted world of Division I football and basketball. Let’s redirect our talents and energies to building great universities, universities known for the critical thinking of graduates, the scholarly inquiry of faculty, and the many contributions that flow to our nation and the world from those core functions.
No doubt Dr. Margolis will be persona non grata at Tarheel U for awhile but his comments evoked a number of voices from academia in agreement. Here are my comments in response:
I find myself in sad agreement with Dr. Margolis. As a child of the South, I cut my eye teeth on college football. One of my most vivid memories as a child was watching my father listening to a transistor radio, losing his mind when his alma mater and later mine, the University of Florida, upset the then-number one Crimson Tide of Alabama. Thereafter, I was hooked.
But the college football of today is a very different animal from that of the early 1960s. The linkage with multiple television venues and the money such connections represents has changed college sports into one more weapon of mass distraction euphemistically known as entertainment and one more corporate means of extracting money from consumers in search of identities. Gone are the days of actual alumni and prospective students crowding bookstores prior to games on campus to buy tee shirts with the college seal. Today, working class teens from Mexico City to Maine wear tee shirts extolling the virtues of [your college name here], most of whom identify themselves as “diehard” fans of their chosen teams, many of whom have no prayer of ever attending any college anywhere. Gone are the days when students waited excitedly all week for their weekends of revelry and rivalry. Today universities cancel classes and clear campus parking lots of their paid tenants so townies with spending money can come to campus on weeknights to party on the newly replanted sod of malls patrolled by campus police. Gone are the days when cartoon characters such as Sammy Seminole and the Alley Gator graced tee shirts no one took particularly seriously. In their place ever vigilant university attorney corps stand ready to sue evil foes such as the local Episcopal campus ministries when they dare to infringe copyright with cutesy logos like “Epis-go-noles.”
A friend of mine who attended a public university in Florida which recently was featured in USA Today for its new practice of hiring professional marketers to boost slumping football tickets sales has summed it up well: “It used to be fun. It’s not any fun anymore.” Indeed, college sports has become a serious business to which most universities have now become subsidiaries. As such, perhaps the universities should come clean, end the pretense, rent the facilities to these semi-professional teams and cut them loose from their blood-sucking hold on universities. With big sports teams honestly functioning as the independent businesses they truly are, universities can perhaps get back to their supposed business of education and leave the business of marketing schlock and mindless entertainment to the corporate interests.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In today’s Inside Higher Ed, Dr. Lewis Margolis, an associate professor of maternal and child health at the Gillings School of Global Public Health of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, lays out a lament against the ongoing corruption evident in big-time college sports, ending his jeremiad with these words:
How many scandals will it take for faculty members and other university leaders to recognize that Division I intercollegiate football and basketball have damaged these institutions, which are fundamental to a vibrant democracy and thriving economy? To my faculty colleagues and the Division I presidents, I say that we close our Division I football programs, that we punt, that we officially drop the ball. I say that we stop paying the exorbitant costs of coaches and ever more elaborate facilities. I say that we proudly assert that Division I football is simply no longer compatible with the missions of great universities. We admit that it is not possible to engage in education, research and service while enmeshed in the murky and distorted world of Division I football and basketball. Let’s redirect our talents and energies to building great universities, universities known for the critical thinking of graduates, the scholarly inquiry of faculty, and the many contributions that flow to our nation and the world from those core functions.
No doubt Dr. Margolis will be persona non grata at Tarheel U for awhile but his comments evoked a number of voices from academia in agreement. Here are my comments in response:
I find myself in sad agreement with Dr. Margolis. As a child of the South, I cut my eye teeth on college football. One of my most vivid memories as a child was watching my father listening to a transistor radio, losing his mind when his alma mater and later mine, the University of Florida, upset the then-number one Crimson Tide of Alabama. Thereafter, I was hooked.
But the college football of today is a very different animal from that of the early 1960s. The linkage with multiple television venues and the money such connections represents has changed college sports into one more weapon of mass distraction euphemistically known as entertainment and one more corporate means of extracting money from consumers in search of identities. Gone are the days of actual alumni and prospective students crowding bookstores prior to games on campus to buy tee shirts with the college seal. Today, working class teens from Mexico City to Maine wear tee shirts extolling the virtues of [your college name here], most of whom identify themselves as “diehard” fans of their chosen teams, many of whom have no prayer of ever attending any college anywhere. Gone are the days when students waited excitedly all week for their weekends of revelry and rivalry. Today universities cancel classes and clear campus parking lots of their paid tenants so townies with spending money can come to campus on weeknights to party on the newly replanted sod of malls patrolled by campus police. Gone are the days when cartoon characters such as Sammy Seminole and the Alley Gator graced tee shirts no one took particularly seriously. In their place ever vigilant university attorney corps stand ready to sue evil foes such as the local Episcopal campus ministries when they dare to infringe copyright with cutesy logos like “Epis-go-noles.”
A friend of mine who attended a public university in Florida which recently was featured in USA Today for its new practice of hiring professional marketers to boost slumping football tickets sales has summed it up well: “It used to be fun. It’s not any fun anymore.” Indeed, college sports has become a serious business to which most universities have now become subsidiaries. As such, perhaps the universities should come clean, end the pretense, rent the facilities to these semi-professional teams and cut them loose from their blood-sucking hold on universities. With big sports teams honestly functioning as the independent businesses they truly are, universities can perhaps get back to their supposed business of education and leave the business of marketing schlock and mindless entertainment to the corporate interests.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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, August 15, 2011
Brasilian Knightmare
I have always found that international travel stimulates my dreaming. I have a fairly active dream life to begin with and generally can remember at least one of my dreams each morning. Sometimes I write them down, other days I muse over them throughout the day. As a student of Jungian deep psychology, I have long known that our dreams have important messages for us. And on international trips, they dream machine seems to go into overdrive.
The second week I was in Brasil on my recent Fulbright trip, I had a vivid and disturbing dream. I dreamt I was attending the board of trustees meeting at the university where I teach. I was making a case before the board for the general education courses we offer, a case which concluded with the plea, “Can’t we even pretend like these courses still mean anything?” At that point the chairman of the board, a figure I presumed to be the university president, simply shook his head and said, “No, we can’t.” At that point in the dream, I realized that my work at the university was not valued and that I no longer had a real place there as an educator. I got up from the table, left the board room and went down to the parking lot to find my car to leave. But when I arrived at the lot, my car was gone. The next thing I knew I was awakening to the simulated cock crowing alarm on my new IPad2.
By the time of the dream,I had already discussed the conditions of my work with several of my fellow Fulbright educators. I had told them about the increasing administrative service instructors are required to carry, about the assessments we are forced to administer, about the search committee I had just chaired, all this while teaching up to four different college courses a semester. Many were shocked at the work load I described and even more shocked at the pay scale we offer our instructors, including the $30K/year the successful candidate for the four year visiting line (which required Ph.D. in hand and experience teaching in two different disciplines) will be receiving. Most of them immediately described the situation as exploitative. One woman colleague from the SUNY system said simply, “You need a new job.”
But, as a colleague at UCF notes, it’s precisely folks like me, those of us who cannot simply pull up stakes and move to a new job in a new place, who allow the university the latitude to exploit its academic staff. In my case, I’m a captive market. My options are limited if I leave the university. It would be very difficult to leave behind my husband’s secure job across town, our investment in a home we rebuilt after a hurricane destroyed it, our local family ties and my own five generations of roots here. And there are a lot of folks like me teaching at the university, many as non-tenured instructors, even more as slave wage adjuncts. And so in my dream when I arrive at the parking lot to leave, it’s not surprising that my car is no longer there. It’s also not surprising that, as my colleague from SUNY quickly interpreted it, “You feel trapped.”
Over the past few months, I have been thinking more and more about retirement. I turn 58 in just a couple of weeks and could retire at 62. I might even have my last round of student loans paid off by then. I have thought a lot about what I will do once retired. I suspect I will continue to adjunct at the university and probably at the local community college, my former employer, as well. I would like to keep a foot in the classroom, even as my hopes for any kind of meaningful experience of actual teaching have long since disappeared. In their place has come the reality of the corporate factory into which most universities and community colleges have devolved and their waves of consumers formerly known as students. Fortunately, there are also the occasional little gems of actual students who remind me that there are still people who value actual educations.
The reality is that I really don’t want to stop teaching, I simply want to be able to actually teach again. I want the chance to reach and inspire students who actually care about learning, to rattle their cages and prompt them to think critically and creatively about their own lives and the world which they will soon lead. I want to spend my time developing ideas and lesson plans, not slaving over mind-numbing bureaucratic trivia. I want to work at a college which cares more about their students making sense of the world they will inherit than the dollars and cents of their bottom line, an imperative which shines through everything the university does. Which is why the news that arrived from the campus news service a week after my dream was so disturbing.
To wit:
UCF will host a weekday football game (vs. the University of Tulsa) on Thursday, Nov. 3, at Bright House Networks Stadium. This nationally televised game is scheduled to kick off at 8 p.m. and will showcase the UCF campus, academics, and athletics to the country. UCF's game day schedule and policies for the Nov. 3 game will be virtually identical to those successfully implemented during last season's inaugural weekday game on campus. We encourage you to keep the following schedule and policy specifics in mind as you develop plans for your fall 2011 classes.
The East Orlando campus and university offices in the Research Park will close for normal operations at 12:30 p.m. in order to allow adequate preparation time to support game day activities….Staff members, faculty members and students will be able to park in most campus parking lots and garages throughout the day. All of the Blue and Red Zone parking areas will be available as per normal procedures on a first-come, first-served basis, and Garage B will be available for specifically authorized individuals conducting official university business. However, Gold Zone parking lots and garages (those closest to Bright House Networks Stadium) will be restricted to vehicles displaying official Golden Knights Club or UCF Athletics Association parking passes starting at 1:00 p.m.Gold Zone parking areas include all parking lots and garages located north of Gemini Boulevard North (with the exception of Garage E and Garage G), plus Garage C, Garage D, and parking lots C1, C2, D1 and D2. Unauthorized vehicles in these areas will be subject to towing starting at 1 p.m.
As usual, the university simply announced these changes. It had chosen to cancel classes to host the local townies who want to come out to campus to tailgate (translation: get drunk on a work night) before the game on the beautiful grassy mall whose sod the university has just spent all summer (and an unknown amount of scarce dollars) for them to frolic upon. For those of us who actually park in those lots by the buildings where we work, we will need to move our cars or risk being towed, paying the towing and storage fee and the ticket the university will add as insult to injury. This is the same university faculty which has already paid $300/year for the opportunity to compete with students for parking spaces that largely do not exist after about 9:30 AM.
For the most part this kind of event is simply annoying. Instructors will have to give up a class day in afternoon and evening classes to accommodate the greed-driven machinery of corporate collegiate sports and deal with the truancy in morning classes such events always encourage among students. They’ll have to take the time to go move their vehicles to the other side of campus to accommodate townies pouring onto campus for a weeknight of hedonism, Then there is the joy of picking one’s way though the vomit, urine and defecation in stairwells and across minefields of garbage the day after.
On the other hand, any additional opportunity to leave behind our driven work lives to celebrate life is never a bad thing. No doubt, many overworked faculty and staff will welcome the afternoon and evening off. It goes without saying that students will be overjoyed. I certainly would have been as an undergraduate at the University of Florida.
But, what kinds of metalessons do these events teach those students, ostensibly the primary purposes for universities in the first place? And what message do they send the faculty and staff whose work as educators is clearly seen as peripheral to semi-professional collegiate sports and the money they supposedly generate? If we take the announcement seriously, this event suggests that image (showcasing the UCF campus, academics, and athletics to the country) and money (no doubt ESPN gave the athletics department a good chunk of change to provide the nation a little entertainment on a Thursday night) are the most important considerations in running a university. Concern for education, much less the faculty and staff of the university, are clearly secondary to such these corporate imperatives. And if the university teaches that metalesson by its example, why should we be surprised when our students evidence the same values?
“Can’t we even pretend like these courses still mean anything?” Apparently, that’s a luxury universities have decided they no longer have.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I have always found that international travel stimulates my dreaming. I have a fairly active dream life to begin with and generally can remember at least one of my dreams each morning. Sometimes I write them down, other days I muse over them throughout the day. As a student of Jungian deep psychology, I have long known that our dreams have important messages for us. And on international trips, they dream machine seems to go into overdrive.
The second week I was in Brasil on my recent Fulbright trip, I had a vivid and disturbing dream. I dreamt I was attending the board of trustees meeting at the university where I teach. I was making a case before the board for the general education courses we offer, a case which concluded with the plea, “Can’t we even pretend like these courses still mean anything?” At that point the chairman of the board, a figure I presumed to be the university president, simply shook his head and said, “No, we can’t.” At that point in the dream, I realized that my work at the university was not valued and that I no longer had a real place there as an educator. I got up from the table, left the board room and went down to the parking lot to find my car to leave. But when I arrived at the lot, my car was gone. The next thing I knew I was awakening to the simulated cock crowing alarm on my new IPad2.
By the time of the dream,I had already discussed the conditions of my work with several of my fellow Fulbright educators. I had told them about the increasing administrative service instructors are required to carry, about the assessments we are forced to administer, about the search committee I had just chaired, all this while teaching up to four different college courses a semester. Many were shocked at the work load I described and even more shocked at the pay scale we offer our instructors, including the $30K/year the successful candidate for the four year visiting line (which required Ph.D. in hand and experience teaching in two different disciplines) will be receiving. Most of them immediately described the situation as exploitative. One woman colleague from the SUNY system said simply, “You need a new job.”
But, as a colleague at UCF notes, it’s precisely folks like me, those of us who cannot simply pull up stakes and move to a new job in a new place, who allow the university the latitude to exploit its academic staff. In my case, I’m a captive market. My options are limited if I leave the university. It would be very difficult to leave behind my husband’s secure job across town, our investment in a home we rebuilt after a hurricane destroyed it, our local family ties and my own five generations of roots here. And there are a lot of folks like me teaching at the university, many as non-tenured instructors, even more as slave wage adjuncts. And so in my dream when I arrive at the parking lot to leave, it’s not surprising that my car is no longer there. It’s also not surprising that, as my colleague from SUNY quickly interpreted it, “You feel trapped.”
Over the past few months, I have been thinking more and more about retirement. I turn 58 in just a couple of weeks and could retire at 62. I might even have my last round of student loans paid off by then. I have thought a lot about what I will do once retired. I suspect I will continue to adjunct at the university and probably at the local community college, my former employer, as well. I would like to keep a foot in the classroom, even as my hopes for any kind of meaningful experience of actual teaching have long since disappeared. In their place has come the reality of the corporate factory into which most universities and community colleges have devolved and their waves of consumers formerly known as students. Fortunately, there are also the occasional little gems of actual students who remind me that there are still people who value actual educations.
The reality is that I really don’t want to stop teaching, I simply want to be able to actually teach again. I want the chance to reach and inspire students who actually care about learning, to rattle their cages and prompt them to think critically and creatively about their own lives and the world which they will soon lead. I want to spend my time developing ideas and lesson plans, not slaving over mind-numbing bureaucratic trivia. I want to work at a college which cares more about their students making sense of the world they will inherit than the dollars and cents of their bottom line, an imperative which shines through everything the university does. Which is why the news that arrived from the campus news service a week after my dream was so disturbing.
To wit:
UCF will host a weekday football game (vs. the University of Tulsa) on Thursday, Nov. 3, at Bright House Networks Stadium. This nationally televised game is scheduled to kick off at 8 p.m. and will showcase the UCF campus, academics, and athletics to the country. UCF's game day schedule and policies for the Nov. 3 game will be virtually identical to those successfully implemented during last season's inaugural weekday game on campus. We encourage you to keep the following schedule and policy specifics in mind as you develop plans for your fall 2011 classes.
The East Orlando campus and university offices in the Research Park will close for normal operations at 12:30 p.m. in order to allow adequate preparation time to support game day activities….Staff members, faculty members and students will be able to park in most campus parking lots and garages throughout the day. All of the Blue and Red Zone parking areas will be available as per normal procedures on a first-come, first-served basis, and Garage B will be available for specifically authorized individuals conducting official university business. However, Gold Zone parking lots and garages (those closest to Bright House Networks Stadium) will be restricted to vehicles displaying official Golden Knights Club or UCF Athletics Association parking passes starting at 1:00 p.m.Gold Zone parking areas include all parking lots and garages located north of Gemini Boulevard North (with the exception of Garage E and Garage G), plus Garage C, Garage D, and parking lots C1, C2, D1 and D2. Unauthorized vehicles in these areas will be subject to towing starting at 1 p.m.
As usual, the university simply announced these changes. It had chosen to cancel classes to host the local townies who want to come out to campus to tailgate (translation: get drunk on a work night) before the game on the beautiful grassy mall whose sod the university has just spent all summer (and an unknown amount of scarce dollars) for them to frolic upon. For those of us who actually park in those lots by the buildings where we work, we will need to move our cars or risk being towed, paying the towing and storage fee and the ticket the university will add as insult to injury. This is the same university faculty which has already paid $300/year for the opportunity to compete with students for parking spaces that largely do not exist after about 9:30 AM.
For the most part this kind of event is simply annoying. Instructors will have to give up a class day in afternoon and evening classes to accommodate the greed-driven machinery of corporate collegiate sports and deal with the truancy in morning classes such events always encourage among students. They’ll have to take the time to go move their vehicles to the other side of campus to accommodate townies pouring onto campus for a weeknight of hedonism, Then there is the joy of picking one’s way though the vomit, urine and defecation in stairwells and across minefields of garbage the day after.
On the other hand, any additional opportunity to leave behind our driven work lives to celebrate life is never a bad thing. No doubt, many overworked faculty and staff will welcome the afternoon and evening off. It goes without saying that students will be overjoyed. I certainly would have been as an undergraduate at the University of Florida.
But, what kinds of metalessons do these events teach those students, ostensibly the primary purposes for universities in the first place? And what message do they send the faculty and staff whose work as educators is clearly seen as peripheral to semi-professional collegiate sports and the money they supposedly generate? If we take the announcement seriously, this event suggests that image (showcasing the UCF campus, academics, and athletics to the country) and money (no doubt ESPN gave the athletics department a good chunk of change to provide the nation a little entertainment on a Thursday night) are the most important considerations in running a university. Concern for education, much less the faculty and staff of the university, are clearly secondary to such these corporate imperatives. And if the university teaches that metalesson by its example, why should we be surprised when our students evidence the same values?
“Can’t we even pretend like these courses still mean anything?” Apparently, that’s a luxury universities have decided they no longer have.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Such a Pity!
I snuck onto campus last weekend under the cover of darkness to pick up my new textbooks (one for each of the four different classes I am teaching this fall) and check my mailbox. It’s taken me most of this week to recover from my six weeks in South America, much of it trying to overcome a nasty respiratory infection I battled off and on the last three weeks of the trip. And it’ll certainly take me the next two weeks to get my classes ready to roll for the fall. I’m trying to be as scarce as possible for as long as possible just to catch my breath and prepare myself for the mad dash this fall promises to be.
In my mailbox were the student evaluations for the spring term. Of my 13 upper division Philosophy of Law students, 11 managed to find the online site to complete their evaluations, 89% of whom gave their instructor an overall assessment of excellent. That really doesn’t surprise me much. That group of students was one of my favorite classes of all times, I love teaching the philosophy of law and my evaluations are consistently good from philosophy of law sections, many of which are loaded with would-be attorneys happy to be taught by a recovering lawyer.
And then there was the section of world religions taught at the honors college. Of the 15 students in the course, only 9 of them found their way to the online site. Not surprisingly, the ratings were not nearly as good. I had inherited that class from another instructor whose reputation for being relatively undemanding is fairly widespread. And I found out less than 24 hours before the first class meeting that I would be taking it instead. After a night of frantic planning, I showed up the next day to the shock of a class expecting someone else. Perhaps it’s an understatement to say we got off to a rocky start and it never really got any better.
I suppose if I really took the opinions of undergrad honors college students seriously, my ego might be a bit dented by their low ratings. Only 11% of the honors class rated my teaching excellent, the same as those rating it poor. But it was the comments which were truly mean spirited, quite in keeping with the maturity level I observed in that class. I was particularly struck by the response to the question which inquired as to “your reaction to the method of evaluating your mastery of the course.” One student responded: “Instructor lacked the skills essential to teach.”
Gee, what a pity. What a real shame that this student had to endure an instructor who has attained an outstanding evaluation from his department and college each of the last eight years. What a major downer to be taught by one of only 10 winners of the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award campus wide last year, the highest award the university confers on its teaching staff. And what an absolute pity that this poor student had to endure a Fulbright scholar teaching this class! What was the Honors College thinking?
That the comments say much more about the student than the instructor largely goes without saying. I mean seriously, what the hell does a college sophomore actually know about collegiate level pedagogy worth hearing to begin with? It’s also hardly surprising that this is the tenor of commentary when the university’s evaluations of teaching have devolved to the mindless consumer satisfaction questions posed these students: What did you like most about this course? What did you like least? And, would you like to add a flavor to that double mocha soy latte? What a joke!
What’s an even greater pity is that the students in the Honors College who clearly failed to take advantage of an excellent teacher with a life experience unmatched by most instructors they’ll ever encounter have no idea that it’s their loss. Worse yet, they have no idea how poorly they are seen by many of the faculty who teach them. The common perceptions of honors students among the Fulbright scholars with whom I spent the past summer were pretty uncomplimentary: inordinately entitled, constant whining, pain in the ass to teach, avoid at all costs. For many of my colleagues on the trip this summer, teaching honors students is seen as a hardship post, not a perk.
My experience with students at the honors college has caused me to question the value, perhaps even the validity, of honors colleges generally. This is not to say that they are doing nothing right. The students I have most enjoyed working with have been students in the Honors in the Major program, students outside the honors college, with none of the perks and little of the attitude that goes with them. These are kids, often from working class backgrounds, who are genuinely seeking to engage in some serious scholarship and fight their way up the paths to recognition and reward that students in honors programs find already greased for them and take for granted. They are as rewarding to teach as the majority of the students in the honors program are insufferable. And to the credit of the honors program, it makes it possible for these outsiders to earn their day in the sun.
Sadly, what I experience more often than not with students actually enrolled in the honors program is largely a group of strategic learners obsessed with grades but just as determined to avoid real learning at all costs. Clearly there are some exceptions, students I have known and loved and would go to the end of the earth to help them on their way. These are true scholars I have come to cherish as friends and future colleagues. But, sadly, the average student in honors classes is lazy, prone to whining and operates out of a sense of inordinate entitlement that is completely inexplicable.
What makes it most frustrating is that it is precisely the students who in theory are the most capable of thinking and producing good quality work who often turn out to be the most resistant to doing so. They are more prone to use their intellect for quibbling over points on quizzes and complaining about work load than seriously engaging the ideas presented them. And when their lackluster efforts fail to produce the As they see as their birthright, they quickly blame their teachers, as the half-witted comments above evidence.
I’d like to think that perhaps this fall will be better. I am structuring my grading such that students can see what will be expected of them for an A, B or C and they can choose up front which they’ll seek knowing how much work each will entail. I’m hoping this strategy will appeal to their professional middle class fetish for choice and their overachiever obsessions with grades. At the same time I hope to make them responsible for their own choices and accountable for their performances. In all honesty, I’m not terribly optimistic. But, then, hope springs eternal, even for us poor instructors assigned to honors programs whose undergraduate experts in higher education pedagogy have authoritatively determined to lack the skills essential to teach.
Socrates wept.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I snuck onto campus last weekend under the cover of darkness to pick up my new textbooks (one for each of the four different classes I am teaching this fall) and check my mailbox. It’s taken me most of this week to recover from my six weeks in South America, much of it trying to overcome a nasty respiratory infection I battled off and on the last three weeks of the trip. And it’ll certainly take me the next two weeks to get my classes ready to roll for the fall. I’m trying to be as scarce as possible for as long as possible just to catch my breath and prepare myself for the mad dash this fall promises to be.
In my mailbox were the student evaluations for the spring term. Of my 13 upper division Philosophy of Law students, 11 managed to find the online site to complete their evaluations, 89% of whom gave their instructor an overall assessment of excellent. That really doesn’t surprise me much. That group of students was one of my favorite classes of all times, I love teaching the philosophy of law and my evaluations are consistently good from philosophy of law sections, many of which are loaded with would-be attorneys happy to be taught by a recovering lawyer.
And then there was the section of world religions taught at the honors college. Of the 15 students in the course, only 9 of them found their way to the online site. Not surprisingly, the ratings were not nearly as good. I had inherited that class from another instructor whose reputation for being relatively undemanding is fairly widespread. And I found out less than 24 hours before the first class meeting that I would be taking it instead. After a night of frantic planning, I showed up the next day to the shock of a class expecting someone else. Perhaps it’s an understatement to say we got off to a rocky start and it never really got any better.
I suppose if I really took the opinions of undergrad honors college students seriously, my ego might be a bit dented by their low ratings. Only 11% of the honors class rated my teaching excellent, the same as those rating it poor. But it was the comments which were truly mean spirited, quite in keeping with the maturity level I observed in that class. I was particularly struck by the response to the question which inquired as to “your reaction to the method of evaluating your mastery of the course.” One student responded: “Instructor lacked the skills essential to teach.”
Gee, what a pity. What a real shame that this student had to endure an instructor who has attained an outstanding evaluation from his department and college each of the last eight years. What a major downer to be taught by one of only 10 winners of the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award campus wide last year, the highest award the university confers on its teaching staff. And what an absolute pity that this poor student had to endure a Fulbright scholar teaching this class! What was the Honors College thinking?
That the comments say much more about the student than the instructor largely goes without saying. I mean seriously, what the hell does a college sophomore actually know about collegiate level pedagogy worth hearing to begin with? It’s also hardly surprising that this is the tenor of commentary when the university’s evaluations of teaching have devolved to the mindless consumer satisfaction questions posed these students: What did you like most about this course? What did you like least? And, would you like to add a flavor to that double mocha soy latte? What a joke!
What’s an even greater pity is that the students in the Honors College who clearly failed to take advantage of an excellent teacher with a life experience unmatched by most instructors they’ll ever encounter have no idea that it’s their loss. Worse yet, they have no idea how poorly they are seen by many of the faculty who teach them. The common perceptions of honors students among the Fulbright scholars with whom I spent the past summer were pretty uncomplimentary: inordinately entitled, constant whining, pain in the ass to teach, avoid at all costs. For many of my colleagues on the trip this summer, teaching honors students is seen as a hardship post, not a perk.
My experience with students at the honors college has caused me to question the value, perhaps even the validity, of honors colleges generally. This is not to say that they are doing nothing right. The students I have most enjoyed working with have been students in the Honors in the Major program, students outside the honors college, with none of the perks and little of the attitude that goes with them. These are kids, often from working class backgrounds, who are genuinely seeking to engage in some serious scholarship and fight their way up the paths to recognition and reward that students in honors programs find already greased for them and take for granted. They are as rewarding to teach as the majority of the students in the honors program are insufferable. And to the credit of the honors program, it makes it possible for these outsiders to earn their day in the sun.
Sadly, what I experience more often than not with students actually enrolled in the honors program is largely a group of strategic learners obsessed with grades but just as determined to avoid real learning at all costs. Clearly there are some exceptions, students I have known and loved and would go to the end of the earth to help them on their way. These are true scholars I have come to cherish as friends and future colleagues. But, sadly, the average student in honors classes is lazy, prone to whining and operates out of a sense of inordinate entitlement that is completely inexplicable.
What makes it most frustrating is that it is precisely the students who in theory are the most capable of thinking and producing good quality work who often turn out to be the most resistant to doing so. They are more prone to use their intellect for quibbling over points on quizzes and complaining about work load than seriously engaging the ideas presented them. And when their lackluster efforts fail to produce the As they see as their birthright, they quickly blame their teachers, as the half-witted comments above evidence.
I’d like to think that perhaps this fall will be better. I am structuring my grading such that students can see what will be expected of them for an A, B or C and they can choose up front which they’ll seek knowing how much work each will entail. I’m hoping this strategy will appeal to their professional middle class fetish for choice and their overachiever obsessions with grades. At the same time I hope to make them responsible for their own choices and accountable for their performances. In all honesty, I’m not terribly optimistic. But, then, hope springs eternal, even for us poor instructors assigned to honors programs whose undergraduate experts in higher education pedagogy have authoritatively determined to lack the skills essential to teach.
Socrates wept.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
America, Irrationality and the Irony of Turned Tables
While it was more than a little nervous making to watch the Tea Partiers playing chicken with a national default from overseas in South America (Will our money still be worth what it’s worth today? Will FAA shut down and will that affect our ability to fly home on time? Will the problems we’re causing nations around the world mean we have to endure abuse as convenient targets for anti-American sentiment?), my sister, nephew and I managed to get home just as the default avoiding deal was signed in Washington. But the damage had already been done.
The Clarin, Argentina’s largest daily, a self-described (debatably) centrist paper, had this to say about America’s costly game of chicken:
"After weeks of irrationality (Congress) began to put the national interests over the interests of the parties. Even though it is too early to say who has been the winners and the losers in this negotiation, there is no doubt that the loser is the country. The image of the United States has deteriorated enormously thought the whole world. If the accord is approved as predicted, the United States will not fall into default and will continue paying its debts. But the political default has already taken place." - Ana Baron, Washington correspondent, "Obama announces an accord to avoid default on the debt" Clarin, 1 August 2011, p. 24.
From this American’s perspective, Baron has it pretty well nailed. Who can trust a borrower who sends out conflicting signals about the willingness to pay its bills? And who can respect a nation whose political process threatens to imperil the financial welfare of most of the world? Irrational, indeed.
What was particularly amusing was arriving home to word that China, America’s largest lender, had deemed it necessary to lecture America on its irresponsible ways with other peoples’ money. In a commentary carried by the state-run Xinhua News Agency, Beijing responded to the S&P decision by saying:
"The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone," Xinhua said. It said the rating cut would be followed by more "devastating credit rating cuts" and global financial turbulence if the U.S. fails to learn to "live within its means." "China, the largest creditor of the world’s sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets," it said. Xinhua said the U.S. must slash its "gigantic military expenditure and bloated social welfare costs" and accept international supervision over U.S. dollar issues.
- Alexa Oleson, “China tells U.S. to get over ‘addiction to debt’, Beijing: Credit rating cut just the start” Chronicle-Herald.CA online source published Aug.7, 2011, found at http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/1257158.html, Aug. 10, 2011.
While it’s not terribly comforting to hear one’s major debt holder responding in such a manner, the likelihood of China calling in its loans anytime soon is small. Moreover, as a friend of mine whose husband is from Taiwan noted, this is little more than China doing a little opportunistic grandstanding. Surely we Americans can recognize that given our own habit of patronizing the rest of the world since WWII.
But what is most ironic to this frequent traveler in the third world, particularly in Latin America, was the terms of the Chinese demands. Beijing demanded that the US slash its “gigantic military expenditure and bloated social welfare costs.” Such terms are hardly original to the Chinese. While cuts in military expenditures have rarely been demanded in Latin American countries (indeed, just the opposite), the IMF and World Bank have regularly not only demanded that social welfare programs be slashed as a condition of their loans, they have imposed draconian “structural adjustment” plans to insure that such occurs. The targets of such cuts have inevitably been education, health care, housing and infrastructure, areas of expenditures which were meager to begin with and which deleteriously impacted the most vulnerable of third world citizens least capable of defending themselves.
This “Washington Consensus” as it has been termed is almost uniformly loathed throughout Latin America and has prompted nations from Brasil to Bolivia to reject new IMF loans and to refuse to meet their conditions on old loans. Indeed, in both Brasil and Argentina, many people were more than happy to tell me on my recent visits there that it was precisely the point that their nations got off the IMF toxic gravy train that their countries began to rise from the muck of underdevelopment. Another irony, no doubt.
America is getting a little taste of its own medicine from the Chinese. And while we are able to ignore it for the time being, the future does not bode well for America vis-Ã -vis the rest of the world financially. Indeed, one of the reasons Brasil and Argentina did not suffer as deeply as Europe and China in the first round of Mr. Bush’s Depression in 2008 is simply because they had already stopped doing a lot of business with the Yanks upon whom they had formerly been highly dependent. Not surprisingly, this was the source of a great deal of pride in the conversations I held with cab drivers and friends in Argentina coupled with rhetorical inquiries about why we Americans can’t figure this out.
Maybe we should take the Chinese advice a little more seriously. Both Argentina and Brasil ended large expenditures on their militaries in the mid-1980s. In Brasil, it was due to the failure of the military dictatorship and its reliance on loans with major strings attached to insure a productive economy, a path that caused all of Brasil, military included, to confront the reality that their current path was not working. In Argentina, the testosterones on steroids machismo that led Argentines into an ill-advised war with the UK over the Malvinas resulted in a massive defeat, a major loss of life of young servicemen, most of them teenagers, and a huge debt to pay for that fiasco. Both nations simply woke up one morning in the mid-80s, had a Larsen cow moment (Grass! We’ve been eating grass the whole time!) and said, “No more!” They reduced their militaries to a minimal status, began to spend on infrastructure, health and educational services and both countries began to rise from the ashes to become players in world politics and economics today.
My primary question in going to Brasil for my Fulbright trip (details coming!) was simply, “What could we learn from Brasil?” I think we’ve come upon an immediate and obvious answer here. Lyndon Johnson, G-d rest his sorry Texas hide, was simply wrong about this. We cannot have both guns and butter. Indeed, given our failure to realize that earlier, we may not be able to have either for awhile until we’re out of the debtor’s prison in which two invasions of Iraq, an invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and our insistence upon being the king-maker in the Middle East – all the while subsidizing the wealthy so they don’t have to pay taxes - have already imprisoned us.
If the American empire collapses, it will simply be because the American people simply stopped paying attention to the reality of the world in which we live. The answer to my question upon departure is simple – we could learn a lot and it could actually save our nation. The question I bring back from my sojourn in the rising second world is simply whether we will acknowledge the lessons which they have provided us, lessons which stare us in the face, or ignore them to our peril. Frankly, given the "irrationality" we all watched from Argentina last week, I’m not terribly encouraged about what I suspect the answer will be.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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/
fmailto: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.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
While it was more than a little nervous making to watch the Tea Partiers playing chicken with a national default from overseas in South America (Will our money still be worth what it’s worth today? Will FAA shut down and will that affect our ability to fly home on time? Will the problems we’re causing nations around the world mean we have to endure abuse as convenient targets for anti-American sentiment?), my sister, nephew and I managed to get home just as the default avoiding deal was signed in Washington. But the damage had already been done.
The Clarin, Argentina’s largest daily, a self-described (debatably) centrist paper, had this to say about America’s costly game of chicken:
"After weeks of irrationality (Congress) began to put the national interests over the interests of the parties. Even though it is too early to say who has been the winners and the losers in this negotiation, there is no doubt that the loser is the country. The image of the United States has deteriorated enormously thought the whole world. If the accord is approved as predicted, the United States will not fall into default and will continue paying its debts. But the political default has already taken place." - Ana Baron, Washington correspondent, "Obama announces an accord to avoid default on the debt" Clarin, 1 August 2011, p. 24.
From this American’s perspective, Baron has it pretty well nailed. Who can trust a borrower who sends out conflicting signals about the willingness to pay its bills? And who can respect a nation whose political process threatens to imperil the financial welfare of most of the world? Irrational, indeed.
What was particularly amusing was arriving home to word that China, America’s largest lender, had deemed it necessary to lecture America on its irresponsible ways with other peoples’ money. In a commentary carried by the state-run Xinhua News Agency, Beijing responded to the S&P decision by saying:
"The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone," Xinhua said. It said the rating cut would be followed by more "devastating credit rating cuts" and global financial turbulence if the U.S. fails to learn to "live within its means." "China, the largest creditor of the world’s sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets," it said. Xinhua said the U.S. must slash its "gigantic military expenditure and bloated social welfare costs" and accept international supervision over U.S. dollar issues.
- Alexa Oleson, “China tells U.S. to get over ‘addiction to debt’, Beijing: Credit rating cut just the start” Chronicle-Herald.CA online source published Aug.7, 2011, found at http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/1257158.html, Aug. 10, 2011.
While it’s not terribly comforting to hear one’s major debt holder responding in such a manner, the likelihood of China calling in its loans anytime soon is small. Moreover, as a friend of mine whose husband is from Taiwan noted, this is little more than China doing a little opportunistic grandstanding. Surely we Americans can recognize that given our own habit of patronizing the rest of the world since WWII.
But what is most ironic to this frequent traveler in the third world, particularly in Latin America, was the terms of the Chinese demands. Beijing demanded that the US slash its “gigantic military expenditure and bloated social welfare costs.” Such terms are hardly original to the Chinese. While cuts in military expenditures have rarely been demanded in Latin American countries (indeed, just the opposite), the IMF and World Bank have regularly not only demanded that social welfare programs be slashed as a condition of their loans, they have imposed draconian “structural adjustment” plans to insure that such occurs. The targets of such cuts have inevitably been education, health care, housing and infrastructure, areas of expenditures which were meager to begin with and which deleteriously impacted the most vulnerable of third world citizens least capable of defending themselves.
This “Washington Consensus” as it has been termed is almost uniformly loathed throughout Latin America and has prompted nations from Brasil to Bolivia to reject new IMF loans and to refuse to meet their conditions on old loans. Indeed, in both Brasil and Argentina, many people were more than happy to tell me on my recent visits there that it was precisely the point that their nations got off the IMF toxic gravy train that their countries began to rise from the muck of underdevelopment. Another irony, no doubt.
America is getting a little taste of its own medicine from the Chinese. And while we are able to ignore it for the time being, the future does not bode well for America vis-Ã -vis the rest of the world financially. Indeed, one of the reasons Brasil and Argentina did not suffer as deeply as Europe and China in the first round of Mr. Bush’s Depression in 2008 is simply because they had already stopped doing a lot of business with the Yanks upon whom they had formerly been highly dependent. Not surprisingly, this was the source of a great deal of pride in the conversations I held with cab drivers and friends in Argentina coupled with rhetorical inquiries about why we Americans can’t figure this out.
Maybe we should take the Chinese advice a little more seriously. Both Argentina and Brasil ended large expenditures on their militaries in the mid-1980s. In Brasil, it was due to the failure of the military dictatorship and its reliance on loans with major strings attached to insure a productive economy, a path that caused all of Brasil, military included, to confront the reality that their current path was not working. In Argentina, the testosterones on steroids machismo that led Argentines into an ill-advised war with the UK over the Malvinas resulted in a massive defeat, a major loss of life of young servicemen, most of them teenagers, and a huge debt to pay for that fiasco. Both nations simply woke up one morning in the mid-80s, had a Larsen cow moment (Grass! We’ve been eating grass the whole time!) and said, “No more!” They reduced their militaries to a minimal status, began to spend on infrastructure, health and educational services and both countries began to rise from the ashes to become players in world politics and economics today.
My primary question in going to Brasil for my Fulbright trip (details coming!) was simply, “What could we learn from Brasil?” I think we’ve come upon an immediate and obvious answer here. Lyndon Johnson, G-d rest his sorry Texas hide, was simply wrong about this. We cannot have both guns and butter. Indeed, given our failure to realize that earlier, we may not be able to have either for awhile until we’re out of the debtor’s prison in which two invasions of Iraq, an invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and our insistence upon being the king-maker in the Middle East – all the while subsidizing the wealthy so they don’t have to pay taxes - have already imprisoned us.
If the American empire collapses, it will simply be because the American people simply stopped paying attention to the reality of the world in which we live. The answer to my question upon departure is simple – we could learn a lot and it could actually save our nation. The question I bring back from my sojourn in the rising second world is simply whether we will acknowledge the lessons which they have provided us, lessons which stare us in the face, or ignore them to our peril. Frankly, given the "irrationality" we all watched from Argentina last week, I’m not terribly encouraged about what I suspect the answer will be.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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/
fmailto: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, August 08, 2011
Choice, Consumerism and Education
One of the many online services to which I subscribe is eschool news. It’s predominately a propaganda site for the deadly duo of corporate imperatives and technocrats that increasingly dominate higher education. I read the items there because it gives me insights as to how the folks driving academia these days (some might say directly into the ground) are thinking about various aspects of education. Occasionally they run a story worth serious consideration.
Today’s edition brought a rather encouraging article which allowed teachers to respond to what the article called the Ten Myths about Teaching as well as a rather mindless consumerist piece entitled The Five Things Students Say They Want From Education.
Frankly, I was shocked to see the first article on a site which habitually bashes teachers unions and sings the praises of technology in education. But the second article quickly reassured me that eschool news had not become too serious about education, offering up a rather thoughtless consumerist, corporate interest polemic with the usual business model fetishized construction of choice cast strictly in individual consumerist terms. While I don’t know that my response will actually be published there, I offer it below for whomever might actually read and consider my views on the subjects raised.
To wit:
There are a lot of unexamined presumptions in this article. Here’s one:
"And while it’s important to note what businesses would like to see in their future employees, at the end of the day it really comes down to the students themselves."
This seems to presume that schools are somehow driven by business imperatives. Why would that be so? Why would we presume that the imperatives of educational institutions are somehow synonymous with those of corporations narrowly defined by concern for profit? Might education entail a much broader set of imperatives? Might future citizens need to learn about a broader set of concerns?
This also seems to presume that students are consumers who, like at Disney’s Magic Kingdom, may not always be right but they’re always the guest. Why would that be so? Why would we presume that students necessarily know what needs to be taught in schools and colleges? Do we presume that patients know how their surgery should be conducted prior to visiting their physicians? Moreover, do schools have no more concerns than satisfying individual customers? Are there no larger imperatives that drive public education, such as insuring an educated public for purposes of citizenship in an increasingly diverse society?
Here’s another:
“The one thing that students want most in school can be summed up in one word: Choice.”
The ability to choose is one of the privileges of human beings that reflect a respect for human dignity. Informed choice is generally a component of a healthy society. But choice considered as an ultimate value, regardless of whether it is informed or not, is misguided and potentially dangerous.
Most students choose subjects that they know will offer them little challenge. The verbally gifted student might well avoid the math classes they need to function in a technologically sophisticated culture. And most future STEM majors will avoid anything that requires them to express their thought in written or verbal form like the plague. Most students will not take foreign languages unless required to do so even as the internet and international business has rendered national boundaries and cultural barriers increasingly meaningless.
A high school sophomore might want nothing but cake to eat at lunch time. But that doesn’t mean school cafeterias should be made unquestioning satisfiers of such thoughtless choice.
Finally, this one:
“Most often heard from students: ‘Why do I need to know this?’”
It’s a fair question. Teachers and professors should be able to offer some explanation as to why they teach what they teach in the manner in which they teach it. If nothing else, this question ought to prompt mindfulness among educators as to their daily enterprise.
On the other hand, the question presumes that the student raising it will necessarily be able to comprehend and appreciate the answer. In fact, far too often, without life experience to know first hand why math skills, foreign languages and the ability to express oneself effectively if not eloquently are important, students often cannot appreciate the answers they are given and simply dismiss the class as a burden imposed upon them.
The reality is that the enterprise of education is poorly served when reductionist thought is used to consider it. Student desires are not the final word in education, they are simply one of the many considerations. Similarly, business imperatives are not the ultimate values for educational
curricula and pedagogy, they are simply one of the many values brought to bear upon the educational process. Students are one segment of our culture. Business is one segment of our society. Their interests are important but they do not subsume the rest of the culture and society
of which they are a part. And we serve our students poorly when we operate out of such indefensible presumptions.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
One of the many online services to which I subscribe is eschool news. It’s predominately a propaganda site for the deadly duo of corporate imperatives and technocrats that increasingly dominate higher education. I read the items there because it gives me insights as to how the folks driving academia these days (some might say directly into the ground) are thinking about various aspects of education. Occasionally they run a story worth serious consideration.
Today’s edition brought a rather encouraging article which allowed teachers to respond to what the article called the Ten Myths about Teaching as well as a rather mindless consumerist piece entitled The Five Things Students Say They Want From Education.
Frankly, I was shocked to see the first article on a site which habitually bashes teachers unions and sings the praises of technology in education. But the second article quickly reassured me that eschool news had not become too serious about education, offering up a rather thoughtless consumerist, corporate interest polemic with the usual business model fetishized construction of choice cast strictly in individual consumerist terms. While I don’t know that my response will actually be published there, I offer it below for whomever might actually read and consider my views on the subjects raised.
To wit:
There are a lot of unexamined presumptions in this article. Here’s one:
"And while it’s important to note what businesses would like to see in their future employees, at the end of the day it really comes down to the students themselves."
This seems to presume that schools are somehow driven by business imperatives. Why would that be so? Why would we presume that the imperatives of educational institutions are somehow synonymous with those of corporations narrowly defined by concern for profit? Might education entail a much broader set of imperatives? Might future citizens need to learn about a broader set of concerns?
This also seems to presume that students are consumers who, like at Disney’s Magic Kingdom, may not always be right but they’re always the guest. Why would that be so? Why would we presume that students necessarily know what needs to be taught in schools and colleges? Do we presume that patients know how their surgery should be conducted prior to visiting their physicians? Moreover, do schools have no more concerns than satisfying individual customers? Are there no larger imperatives that drive public education, such as insuring an educated public for purposes of citizenship in an increasingly diverse society?
Here’s another:
“The one thing that students want most in school can be summed up in one word: Choice.”
The ability to choose is one of the privileges of human beings that reflect a respect for human dignity. Informed choice is generally a component of a healthy society. But choice considered as an ultimate value, regardless of whether it is informed or not, is misguided and potentially dangerous.
Most students choose subjects that they know will offer them little challenge. The verbally gifted student might well avoid the math classes they need to function in a technologically sophisticated culture. And most future STEM majors will avoid anything that requires them to express their thought in written or verbal form like the plague. Most students will not take foreign languages unless required to do so even as the internet and international business has rendered national boundaries and cultural barriers increasingly meaningless.
A high school sophomore might want nothing but cake to eat at lunch time. But that doesn’t mean school cafeterias should be made unquestioning satisfiers of such thoughtless choice.
Finally, this one:
“Most often heard from students: ‘Why do I need to know this?’”
It’s a fair question. Teachers and professors should be able to offer some explanation as to why they teach what they teach in the manner in which they teach it. If nothing else, this question ought to prompt mindfulness among educators as to their daily enterprise.
On the other hand, the question presumes that the student raising it will necessarily be able to comprehend and appreciate the answer. In fact, far too often, without life experience to know first hand why math skills, foreign languages and the ability to express oneself effectively if not eloquently are important, students often cannot appreciate the answers they are given and simply dismiss the class as a burden imposed upon them.
The reality is that the enterprise of education is poorly served when reductionist thought is used to consider it. Student desires are not the final word in education, they are simply one of the many considerations. Similarly, business imperatives are not the ultimate values for educational
curricula and pedagogy, they are simply one of the many values brought to bear upon the educational process. Students are one segment of our culture. Business is one segment of our society. Their interests are important but they do not subsume the rest of the culture and society
of which they are a part. And we serve our students poorly when we operate out of such indefensible presumptions.
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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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