Drank the Kool-Aid

Galiliean science has screwed us again.

The University of California, and other institutions of higher education in this country have put themselves in a bind over the past couple of generations, by paying lip service to the idea of education as a birth-right (when we can't even keep people fed, clothed, and healthy). The problem is, while faculty and administrators have bent themselves into pretzels defending this concept, the rest of society has not followed suit, leaving them high and dry and out of money, power, and influence:

""Privatization" is a crowd-pleasing nostrum for public officials seeking to shed the budgetary cost of programs and services that they nevertheless know to be a public responsibility. It has a cheap but bright surface allure, like a fresh coat of whitewash."

The only people defending the idea that higher education is for everyone are the people who should know better. Taxpayers certainly don't want to foot the bill, hell, they don't want to pay for adequate K-12, so why would they imagine covering a B.A.? Politicians realize this, that is why they play political football with the system. Parents don't care, or they'd encourage their kids to do better in high school. Kids don't care, they think of it as an extension of the same, with little or no responsibility, cost, or impact on their future.

We have gotten away from any kind of meritocracy in this country. The rules are unclear and subject to change at any time. There is no consistent reward for excellence.

But now we have the chance to change that. We (those of us in higher education) need to seize this moment to revitalize ourselves - accept the things we cannot change - scale down the mission of the UC/CSU systems, and pick a path and stick to it.

Oxbridge Model

"Part of its role is to provide a gilt-edged education to all qualified Californians, blind to their financial need. "UC can survive as an institution by increasing its tuition," comments Wellman. "Can it survive and serve its public mission? I'm not sure about that."

Either return to the concept of the university as it has traditionally existed, a center for learning and theory and research, open to a very few talented scholars, with no more programs (Calworks, EOPs, blah blah blah), you either 'get it' and 'show it' or you don't. Qualification exams for entrance, kick people out at the least failure, make graduating mean something. Make it free, but only for the rigorous few.

University of Phoenix Model

"An important subtext is that the public systems have been too long insulated from the real world, with inflated staffs and salaries. It wouldn't kill them to become more subject to market forces, the argument goes."

OR, conversely, ditch all the antiquated classes in philosophy and rhetoric and russian literature, keeping only those courses that can demonstrate direct and immediate career relevance. Revamp the curriculum and objectives to reflect this. Strict vocational tracks, no electives, deep training in specialized fields, and charge up the wazoo for the privilege. Maybe have employers sponsor programs, as they already do, just more overtly. The Monsanto Department of Agronomy, the Ford Department of Engineering, The Phillip-Morris Department of Botany, and so on.

You can't always get what you want, California, so you're going to have to decide what you need.

Wrong answer

Here we go again. In the above linked article, Slate reviews a study that suggests people who 'buy green' may then turn around and be less altruistic elsewhere, positing a CAUSAL connection (Slate's interpretation, not necessarily the researcher's conclusion) rather than a merely correlative one:

"In an experiment, participants were randomly assigned to select items they wanted to buy in one of two online stores. One store sold predominantly green products, the other mostly conventional items. Then, in a supposedly unrelated game, all of the participants were allocated $6, to share as they saw fit with an anonymous (and unbeknownst to them, imaginary) recipient. Subjects who had chosen items from the green store coughed up less money, on average, than their counterparts."

Clearly, the idea is that 'buying green' provides one with license to act like a jerk in other areas of one's life - a premise explored richly in South Park's 'Smug Alert' episode. As in the last posting, I would turn the set-up on its head and ask rather, 'is there some sort of cultural messaging that provides us with a delimited amount of 'charity' in a given scenario' (day, year, what have you) and that, having done that much, in ANY area of one's life, allows us license to misbehave in others?

Do I buy permission to behave badly by behaving well? The article suggests we do, in a sort of moral bargaining process. This makes sense psychologically, internally, but as an anthropologist, I have to ask, where do we learn this? How are limits set? Under what conditions is this acceptable, and when is it reprehensible? There must be on-going modelling by agents of enculturation to produce such a sophisticated behavioral elaboration.

Foxes and henhouses

The most pointless report ever tells us that college students drop out due to "low money and high stress."

Well, no shit Sherlock.

The article is full of gems like this:

“The conventional wisdom is that students leave school because they aren’t willing to work hard and aren’t really interested in more education,” said Jean Johnson, executive vice president of Public Agenda. “What we found was almost precisely the opposite. Most work and go to school at the same time, and most are not getting financial help from their families or the system itself.”

Most of my students work and go to school. With all that we do as a society to make college affordable, and actually, we do quite a lot, it is still expensive for a lot of people. I get that. We could have a philosophical discussion about whether or not we should extend free public education all the way through a BA, and what that would would mean in terms of changing social structures (or not) or economic opportunities (or not).

But that is not what the report is doing. They are asking students, essentially, "so why did you drop out?" Dropping out is assumed to be a rupture, a failure, of the process and system of education. So, in essence, they are asking them why THEY failed. Now who answers that sort of thing honestly? They may not even know why they dropped out, and in any case it is irrelevant, because the question should not be, 'why did these guys drop out?' but rather, 'why do students with the same situation NOT drop out?'

Classic rookie mistake. This is EXACTLY the kind of thing ethnography excels at, and surveys suck at. Surveys (and focus groups) lack context. Meine gute, if you have Gates Foundation money, couldn't you have poke around a bit? Ask, oh, I don't know, their professors? Look at their transcripts? Talk with friends and family?

Instead, we get patronizing and outdated stuff like:

For many students today, the experience of “going to college” is a far cry from that of the stereotypical “Joe College” so often seen in the movies and on television. For these students, the balancing act is not between going to class and attending football games and frat parties; it’s more likely between going to class and punching a clock in order to pay the rent. Theirs is a dilemma that relatively few government or higher education programs readily address.

What? You mean like Pell Grants, Stafford loans, EOPs, Calworks, on and on and on? Do they realize that many students just show up, take the money, and drop the classes, not understanding that they will have to pay it back?

Who are they addressing anyway? Taxpayers? Policymakers? 'Cause from the tone of it, they seem to THINK that they are addressing higher education. Honey, I know what my students face, and you don't know the half of it. But let me give you a little story to illustrate my point.

One day, a girl staggers into class, late for an exam. She is limping and bruised. Turns out, she rolled her father's Ford F 150 and totalled it on the way to class - but she came anyway. Meanwhile, I stepped outside to toss a piece of paper away (yeah, no wastebaskets in the classrooms, no money for them) and lo and behold there was one of my students chatting away with some dude. So I ask her (dryly) if she was planning on joining us shortly for the exam, and this was her answer, "Um, yeah, so no, I have a dental appointment scheduled for later today so I don't feel up to it."

I believe I pointed her classmate out to her and told her to get her ass in the seat. But come ON. Don't tell me, or the hardworking students who DO persevere and make it through, that there is no difference in behavior! That is insulting to all of us. And their conclusion is completely bassackwards:

“If you try to leave a cellphone system, they almost won’t let you leave, and I just wonder if there’s something we need to think about in higher education,” she said. “We need a system where, if someone is struggling, if professors notice that somebody is missing a lot of classes, if someone doesn’t early register, they immediately go to student-life services, and someone reaches out.”

No! Students often have depressing and/or horrific issues that they need to deal with, like stalking, abuse, jail-time, divorce, childcare, chronic or debilitating illness, the same as anyone else. The last thing they need to be doing at that point is worrying about their grade in biology! I spend a chunk of time every day listening and responding to student concerns, and pointing them in the direction of resources - do you know how much training we receive in this sort of thing? How many memos and flyers fill our mailboxes from the tutoring center, the literacy center, the childcare center, the DSPS?

Now, I would understand if, say, this report were addressed to an elite consortium of private East Coast colleges, facing new student demographics (returning students) or issues (higher rates of mentally ill students); but they deliberately are including two-year campuses in this report, and many of their examples are drawn from that student population.

So why do they drop out?

In my opinion the number one reason is that they are completely underprepared for the reality that college is different from high school, that it IS in fact, optional, and not only optional, but competitive.

No matter what insane scheme you come up with, there will always be a finite number of classes, with a finite number of slots (online or in the classroom, which is even more delimiting). There are hours professors prefer to teach, and guess what, like the rest of our culture, weekends and nights are not high on our list. Since 75% of the classes are already taught by adjuncts, that means that only the newest and most desperate of us will take those sections. Some professors and some subjects will be more popular than others, and those slots will fill up. You are always going to be competing for time, attention, money, grades, what have you.

But a bunch of students arrive straight from high school, sit down, stare bovinely at the front of the class, and simply refuse to do any work. Really, refuse to read. Ask them. Even the ones who, in the end, pull it together, cram and get through, will admit to not doing the reading. Come take a class with me, listen to how much effort I put in to getting them to read and interact with the material. All of the resources I provide or point them toward, how many times during the semester I talk with them about their grade, and they just won't do it.

You can lead a horse.

Lest you think I am callous, I went the two-year route prior to four-year, and I worked full-time in a demanding professional job that required travel all through my undergraduate years. Most students just are not given the upfront information as to how much work they will need to do at a minimum. They hear, 12 credit hours, and think all they need to do is show up. Hell, if they did, most of them would at least pass.

I think that the folks behind this report DID have a 'joe college' experience, and are shocked, shocked I tell you at the realities for most folks. What they didn't do was attend a state institution these days. THEY have some image of the professoriate as a tweedy, clubby Paper Tiger bunch of assholes who pop in for a lecture and pop out again, not giving a crap about students' personal issues, or complex pedagogical concerns.

Ha!

Man, I wish they'd been there in the class with the bag lady with the black zionist obsession. Or the former drug addict with the scrambled brain who really wanted to be a paramedic. And they passed my classes!

The main thing we can do to strengthen college through-put in this country is to strengthen high school education, keeping students engaged in their education. We also need a discussion as to the role of advanced secondary and higher education in the face of a changing world. We don't even need to spend more money studying it, what we need to do is to allow for experimentation and playfulness back into the system. Fewer credit hours and more experiences. Higher expectations, and clearer messaging. Less metrics and more heart.

Permaculture, Weatherization, and Heifer International

In the link above, the Los Angeles Times documents the former gangbangers of the Homeboys Industries as they travel to help and inspire youth in South Alabama. They are shocked by what they encounter, referring to it as 'a Third World country.'

One of the things that struck is that, we do not offer these folks similar food aid to that offered in development packages - the opportunity to feed themselves. This is especially striking, since Heifer International is also based in the south (iin Arkansas, though for a second I thought I recalled them being in Alabama).

Instead, we see video of kids wandering through a blasted landscape, barefoot, poking at detritus with sticks, until presumably they are old enough and bored enough to get a foot in the door of a criminal enterprise. I think we just are culturally blinded to the idea that people could grow their own food here in the United States - it seems just weird to think that those kids could be collecting eggs or milking cows in the ghetto.

Now, let's take a moment to look outside the box. In several recent posts, I have linked to articles about the prevalence of food stamp usage in the United States, particularly for children. Food stamps don't stretch easily to buy fresh fruits and vegetables and real dairy (as opposed to Boing Boing's beloved Dairy Drink). Backyard chickens and small veggie plots would go a long way towards redressing this failure, especially critical as prices for those commodities are expected to rise 3-4% in the coming year.

Even better (and less available to random targeted destruction by vandals) would be permaculture, where food-bearing plants are woven into the entire landscape (funny thought, a landscape implies human shaping, and the ones we see in the video are anything but).

Now, to take a swerve, Jon Stewart was making fun of Obama's trip canard about 'weatherization' the other day, and it was funny, because it made Obama seem like pretty much any other clueless boss. But if you see the houses in the video, you get the concept. Now imagine what economic change we could create if folks made gardens where blasted heath used to lie?

Kids could go to school with full stomachs, and adequate minerals and vegetables. People could even grow herbal medicines if you are into that. Plants could be a part of the weatherization, home construction, even defensive measures.

The sky is the limit.

Brother Gore Explains it All for you

Gawd, it is all so freaking obvious, how the man has the patience to continue countering the wacko climate change deniers is beyond me. Imagine if it were a modern-day Christopher Columbus.

"Hey, guess what, the earth is not flat."

"Duh huh, yes it is."

"We have photos from space, data from satellites, mathematical modeling, and first hand accounts. I've BEEN there, dude."

"I don't believe anything you tell me, I only believe what God told me."

I mean, there really isn't anything that will satisfy these people, and that is not why they have skin in the game. We will not persuade them, or their ilk. Just manuever around them, and get 'er done.

Reporter waves fists and yells, "I'm old!"

I am always intrigued by the decisions made behind the scenes at both the New York Time and the Los Angeles Times as to which articles will have reader comments or not. Particularly head-scratching are the ones where someone throws out an opinion as to the zeitgeist, but leaves no room for response - a response which would ethnographically be at least as enlightening as the gauntlet being thrown down.

"I like that the current president gets out of the bubble, that he enjoys a burger, and is willing to walk back into the White House with a greasy go-bag for the staff. I’m not sure being able to watch it all unfold is good for his presidency."

No, instead, David Carr, who apparently remembers the Kennedys (yikes) prefers the mystique of Ronald Reagan dining out at Le Cirque, his visit captured by the journal of Andy Warhol. Even his terming the Bush White House, "an Imperial Palace" makes it sound waaaaayyyyy classier than it actually was. Did they even ever have a state dinner?

Instead, he feels that the use of decent websites (gasp) and Facebook (shudder) when not even by the president, makes them guilty of TMI. OMG, and he didn't even mention Obama's (and pretty much half of congresses) use of Twitter. Perhaps David Carr has not heard of it yet.

As less crotchety heads point out, "the administration is experimenting in a different age of communication and has solid demographic reasons for communicating early and often on a variety of platforms." Yes, in other words, there are folks out there who don't long for pillbox hats and white gloves who might actually enjoy hearing, on a regular basis, how the president is doing his JOB.

'Cause in the end, that is what it is, kabuki performance aside, it is a J-O-B. And if you want to be with me, you'd better post it on the W-E-B.

Another out-dated bogeyman

Update: Slate uses the Hardee's Monster Thickburger as metaphor here in a new article on the possible death of the drive-thru.
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You know how articles about food used to always measure things in terms of Big Macs, as if that was the most decadent item anyone could imagine heeedlessly wolfing down? It was always, 'the equivalent of two Big Macs here,' or 'the same as a Big Mac, fries, and a coke' there. Morgan Spurlock made his reputation attacking McDonald's, gaining nearly 25 pounds (why do I feel liek a Quarter Pounder pun lies just out of reach) and vomiting on camera. Fun film.

But then along came such monstrosities as the 1420 kcal Hardee's Monster Thickburger, and the Big Mac, little over a third of the size at 540 calories, became positively dainty. Now, that clearly says more about us as consumers than it does about the objective nutritional value of the food (disclosure, I love Big Macs) but one thing is for sure, the Big Mac as a measuring stick of caloric intensity has become superannuated.

Now, along comes this article, which points out that the Danes, who are hosting the climate talks, and pride themselves on their green credentials, may actually be some of the worst offenders in Europe. Highlights include their dependence upon coal power:

"Wind furnishes about 20% of the electricity supply -- an impressive proportion compared with other nations, but actually less than what many Danes think is the case."There are many myths about Denmark," Lidegaard said. "Yes, we have a lot of wind [power], and we are good at that. But it's still very, very little compared with coal.""

Their generation of waste (though much of it seems to be gardening waste? does that even count?):

"The Danes tossed out 1,762 pounds of garbage per person in 2007, the latest year for which EU-wide statistics are available. That's more than the Dutch (1,386 pounds), the Brits (1,258) and the French (1,190); a lot more than the Greeks (986); and double the Lithuanians (880). It even surpasses the Americans (1,690 pounds), who are often held up as the boogeyman of heedless, needless consumption. By the numbers, Denmark is one of the most wasteful -- in both senses of the term -- societies in the world."

And most shocking of all, the fact that they consume significantly more meat per capita than, wait for it, Americans! Home of the Big Mac and the Hardee's Thickburger, universally held up as the most wasteful, consumer-oriented, piggish society since Rome in the age of Caligula and Nero:

"In 2002, the last year of the study, the average Dane consumed a whopping 321 pounds of meat -- nearly a pound a day. For Americans, the figure was 275 pounds."

Now, do I not think Americans are wasteful? Well, I still consider a Big Mac and indulgence, and far from an everyday occurrence. So too the fact that, in some areas, using statistical models, some other people somewhere are more wasteful than we are. What I think this truly points out is the distortions that can appear when comparing a large heterogenous society to a smaller, more homogenous one.

For one thing, the huge disparities between rich and poor in the US may have something to do with a lower overall meat consumption average - two of my students the other day (both adults, with families) were happy their financial aid had come in, allowing them the luxury of 75 cent tacos at Bakers! We have recently covered here the phenomenon that one in four American children, and one in eight Americans overall, are currently being fed through food stamps. When even Wall Streeters become alarmed, you know we are in trouble!

For another, we are much more diverse in terms of worldview, foodways, and religious practices - Jews and Muslims abhorring pork, Hindus avoiding beef, sundry vegans, vegetarians, ovo-lactarians, pescatarians, fruititarians, macrobiotic/raw advocates...will push down our meat consumption average. Denmark, folks forget, is basically the Iowa of Europe. Just like Iowa is a red state that has some blue bastions - Denmark is not solely Copenhagen. Nationalism and anti-immigrant feelings run high, and have for at least the past ten years:

"Bubbling for years, the resentment against foreigners has found expression in the success of the far-right, not only in Austria, but throughout Europe. A wake-up call to ruling socialist elitists, Europeans have propped up governments that are marching to the beat of the anti-immigrant drum...Once a welcoming multicultural haven, Denmark's voters have given the Danish People's Party its fourth consecutive hike in voting share, making it the third largest party in Europe."

Oops. Danes have a few persistent myths about themselves that they like to carry around. One is that they all speak English, and do so better than anyone else in Europe. This is not true, though many speak English decently, far better than Americans speak Danish, the best speakers of English in Europe are the Dutch, an even tinier, more cosmopolitan people, that also have had their share of nationalist struggles of late. Another myth is that they are not colonial masters. Greenland would beg to differ.

This is a lot like the women's movement in Germany when I first arrived in the mid 1980s. They talked a big game, positioning themselves as more advanced than the United States, but at the same time it was simply seen as an acknowledged fact that a woman could not advance to a vice presidency at the Raifeissenbank, or get abortions.

This is what happens when folks buy their own press. I'd say, if pressed, that despite the patriotic rah-rah of the Bush year, most Americans would admit to being heavier than average, more familiar with the location of the nearest Hometown Buffet than they'd like, not the greatest at turning off lights when they leave the room, not totally behind all this recycling hoo-hah. Yet, we might want to take a moment to look back and acknowledge that, BECAUSE we are a multi-cultural and diverse society, we have made some serious Green progress. That is the true lesson of tolerance:

Take it away Mr. Garrison:

"Tolerant, but not stupid! Look, just because you have to tolerate something doesn't mean you have to approve of it! ..."Tolerate" means you're just putting up with it! You tolerate a crying child sitting next to you on the airplane or, or you tolerate a bad cold. It can still piss you off!"