March 27, 2014--We Can Never Go Back to Before

In response to a number of recent blogs in which I wrote about our public education system, guest blogger Sharon has a number of interesting perceptions and recommendations--

The March 25 blog, "Chem Lab," brought to mind my reaction to a sound byte I recently heard. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel briefly stated his goal is to make sure that every child in Chicago is college ready.

I'm not sure that's the right goal, unless he also meant community college and even then . . .

Here I cite an observation from a long-time teacher in Maine who from her experience concluded that most of the kids she encountered were just "average." Yes, there were kids who wanted help figuring out how they might be the first ones in their family to go to college, but unlike the hyper-competitive era we now live in, most of these kids aspirations and aptitudes were more modest.

So I thought, wouldn't a better goal for the Mayor and other leaders be to prepare these children for skills that would make them ready for the realities of today's job market?

And for some (many) this doesn't mean a B.A. with graduate school to follow. The cost alone is increasingly prohibitive.

Of course the larger challenge is to remove the "second best" stigma, a perception that I admit I've been guilty of.

Senior year of high school I chose not to take physics or calculus and instead took fashion design and merchandising courses and guiltily, since I was an academic track kid, made off with the top awards in both areas at graduation. In those days NYC high schools had academic, commercial and general tracks.

I really loved those classes, although no more than history, but a lot more than math and science. I got applications for FIT and Parsons but at 16, I got the message from friends and teachers that this would waste my academic promise and didn't apply.

But after a B.A. and graduate education in history, there were few openings for history professors then and for the next 20 years. Although still an advocate for a liberal arts education, given the economic realities of today (my first apartment's rent was $235 a month so paying back my loans wasn't tough) I wonder if my career path would have been clearer if I had completed the other applications and was accepted.

Relating training and education with employability and quality of life, I've encountered many small business owners: car repair, salon owners, restauranteurs, contractors, etc. living very comfortable lives without college degrees.

Yet I was especially surprised to read recently the comments of a young German woman noting that her college-bound friends didn't get why she would want to participate in a factory-based apprenticeship. These long-existing successful programs in Germany are now being considered in the U.S. as a possible answer to the skills gap and unemployment. Yet even in Germany peer and perhaps parental pushback exists.

Although I think the unequal deployment of resources is wrong morally and philosophically, sadly I think even if you could wave a magic wand and bring all facilities up to code, I don't believe it would change much. Not unlike the impact of technology and globalization on the economy, these forces too have made our traditional education structures obsolete. Many on the right and left are still thinking (or wishing) we could go back to before, at least the parts that seemed to work.

Instead of applying limited resources to buildings maybe there needs to be more channels for access and financial support to rescue kids from under-performing schools who do want to go to college and beyond as early as possible. I've seen a few very gifted and privileged kids who fell behind out of boredom when they were sent to schools with under-achieving children.

This brings to mind my last year of high school and my first and only experience with a teacher who couldn't control the class, who didn't want to be there, the shape of the things to come. I learned nothing. And this in a public school that produced senators and a Supreme Court justice. A few years later, but before metal detectors, kids were afraid to go to the bathroom.

Perhaps opportunity of access and a better fit for aspiration, drive, and ability would provide better results, rather than zip code and financial support. Danger and disruption to learning not only take place in failing schools. Bullying takes place in schools where kids have every advantage--one child was threatened that his house would be burned down if he told. Other children have told me they want to avoid a hyper-competitive atmosphere where there are a few suicides each year. The difference between them and the kids at Roosevelt is their parents can more easily remove them from the situation.

One of the reasons charter schools are popular is parents and students who care enough see them not only as a way out of their struggling public schools but a refuge from the scary kids who go there who are impeding their children’s progress and safety.

Creating a pathway for teachers who can spot and rescue the academically inclined kids and another for those who may not be so inclined, but are motivated and teachable, and getting them into more appropriate schools might be a start. It’s such a waste that bullies in better equipped schools get to squander their advantages while others have to enter lotteries to get their motivated kids into a better situation.

And with increasing income inequality where a few people own five houses and many can't even afford rent, I return to a comment made by Steven Zwerling’s dad, "What does happiness have to do with anything?"

We may have come to the end of a brief golden period where many of us sought careers that would be satisfying and not just a means to provide food, clothing and shelter. Maybe future generations who aren't technology whizzes for now will need to refocus on education and training commensurate with their potential before they have the luxury of a career path to happiness. And society needs a way to identify the children who can and want education and or training and make sure they are not penalized by where they live.

Thinking everyone wants to or can succeed on a path to college or better circumstances for all is thinking for another time. And what will become of the bullies and disaffected? There's a job waiting for them on Wall Street . . . .

December 18, 2013--Professing

Having been one at a number of institutions, from up-close observation, professors are not among my favorite professionals. For the most part, I prefer dentists.

Professors--tenured professors--have about the best job in the history of the world.

With what other kind of work can one make a very comfortable living with generous benefits, work two to three days a week, eight or at most nine months a year, and have frequent vacations? Almost as many as members of Congress. And then every few years have sabbaticals, which for a half to a full year offer full or half salary with no classroom or other university responsibilities. And, perhaps best of all, with tenure a professor can work until he or she drops and in no way be let go. Even for demonstrable incompetence or lack of research and publications.

And with all of this, professors are often among the world's most prolific whiners. About their university responsibilities (many would like to be paid, and paid more, for doing even less); about university politics (usually much to do about nothing or at most very little); about their colleagues and administrators; and about much that goes on in the world.

Criticizing and complaining they are very good at, but doing something about it is another matter.

So I was not surprised when a day or two ago, the American Studies Association, with about 5,000 professors as members, voted by a two-to-one margin to boycott Israeli academic institutions to protest Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

This means they will oppose academic exchange programs and Israeli professors will no longer be welcome as ASA members; invited to ASA-sponsored events; or, if the ASA has anything to do about it, be allowed to have sabbaticals in the U.S.

Next month, the much larger and more influential Modern Language Association will vote to ask the State Department to criticize Israel for allegedly barring American professors from going to Gaza or the West Bank when invited by Palestinian institutions.

The boycott is the first the ASA has ever instituted and what the MLA is calling for is equally unprecedented. They have not seen fit to take similar action in regard to Russian or Chinese academic institutions even though those governments curtail basic freedoms for almost all of their citizens. They did not call for the boycott of South African institutions during the Apartheid years. They are apparently OK with Iranian, Egyptian, Cuban, Venezuelan, Saudi Arabian, and Pakistani academic institutions though basic freedoms are severely restricted in these and, sadly, many other countries.

The fundamental case in favor of lifetime employment--tenure--is to protect academic freedom. To make professors impervious to arbitrary or ideological retribution when they express their contrarian views. So it is more than a little ironic that the ASA, for which one of its principals is the protection of freedom of thought and scholarly activity, would so blatantly, for ideological reasons, take such a censorious position.

The good news is that the major higher education organization in the United States, the American Association of University Professors opposes the boycott, saying that it makes little sense to focus on Israeli universities where criticism of government policy often originates.

Even Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas opposes the boycott. He said that it is inappropriate, as the ASA did, to compare Israel to Apartheid in South Africa. Further--

We are neighbors of Israel, we have agreements with israel, we are not asking anyone to boycott products of Israel.

But members of the ASA do not perceive any contradictions in their position. One member said that--

People who truly believe in academic freedom would realize protesting the blatant and systemic denial of academic freedom to Palestinians, which coupled with material deprivation of a staggering scale, far out ways concerns we in the West might have about our own rather privileged academic freedoms.

I am having trouble figuring out why we in the West who have the privilege of academic freedom should be immunized from the consequences of denying it to others.

I may have once been a professor, but I need help from other professors to help me understand and parse this tortured tangle of rationalization.