The "vital connections between education and the public good"

"This brew--oversimplification of civic engagement, idealization of the expert, fragmentation of knowledge, emphasis on technical mastery, neutrality as a condition of academic integrity-is toxic when it comes to pursuing the vital connections between education and the public good, between intellectual integrity and human freedom..." - Liz Coleman

It has been a long and rather hectic week already and it is only Wednesday - but for me, this is a kind of weekend, back in VT after a week on the road.  And what is on my mind tonight, is an assortment of debris. It is hard to know if there is a "theme."  But here goes...

H and I are back in our respective classrooms. He loves to perform as he has said... loves to teach..loves to talk to large groups. I never feel at ease entering the classroom, whether with ten or two hundred students, but by the time I leave, I usually feel that there has been a good conversation with some learning goals met. It's too bad that I can't reduce the stage fright with that acknowledgement. Certainly, there have been some classes that were abysmal, but the percentages remain on my side.

So this semester's classes began as most do - with the introductions and the syllabus review - mostly a getting-to-know-you session in which everyone gauges everyone else. Will this group be animated or taciturn, smart or stultifying?  They gauge whether I am likely to be easy or hard, interesting or deadly boring. The second session is where the work really begins. This semester however, one group of students is beginning their second semester in "my" classroom. It is an odd experience to not have the introductions again--one that full time faculty in mainstream institutions take for granted. 

As I start out though, there have been more than a few glitches...some have been unsettling. Some have made me wonder how education became a business product rather than an exercise of the mind, an opportunity to make change--in the student and in the society.

I am a great believer in the power of liberal education though I am not sure that I would have used those words three or more years ago. I believe that liberal education can go a long way toward making social change and social justice. But I also believe that it is crucial as a training ground for what is called "critical thinking." I ask students to compare and contrast authors who are writing on related topics. I ask them to find the common themes in articles and essays that seem dissimilar. I ask them what is wrong with the author's premise and what they will take away as lessons for their lives --both personal and professional. I ask them to think about what they know and what they believe and what they value. It can help them figure out when someone in power is lying to them or merely coloring the truth. It can help them understand that others think differently than they do, and that difference, as Martha Stewart would say, "is a good thing." In fact, it can help them understand that they actually have independent thoughts, something for which many of them have not been rewarded in the educational system as it has evolved.

But the dirty little secret is that increasingly the students I meet, neither know how to do that, nor want to. Increasingly many (though not all), are looking for a certification that will allow them to make more money on the job. And that is based in pragmatic skills of memorization and replication. Perhaps that is because the schools where I have been teaching for the past decade, see "training young people" for the work force as their mandate. They see students as professionals or apprentices who are getting the training that will make them more effective employees. I see them as students who happen to be professionals, getting an education that will help them make a more sustainable planet, a more humane work or living space, or a space that will help people learn or heal. It makes for some very uncomfortable mismatches in learning goals.

I am a member of an organization I respect -- Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility. They are committed to equity and social responsibility in the workplace and in the community. They are planning a conference and as members, we were asked to consider the role of education. One emailed response after another suggested that we need to prepare students for the work force. And that makes me cranky. 

I had a student who complained that we were trying to make "little Renaissance men" rather than giving him the skills he needs to improve his job status. He reminded me in the first week that he was "a consumer" and this was not meeting his needs for what he bought with his tuition money. He ended the semester disappointed with all three of his teachers.

So I have come up against the deeply unsatisfying nature of the education system that I have been part of for decades. 

I tell students that they have the chance to learn and think.  And I am aware of how many have no opportunity to do this--in this country or elsewhere.

They want an education that teaches them to "do".  They want the old fashioned American dream of upward mobility in a time of broken careers, broken dreams and broken lives.

But why would it be different when a class is framed around what is posted in the catalog whether or not that is accurate--or appropriate - or effective for the content. A faculty member is told not to spend time answering students' emails or phone calls if that exceeds the amount of time allotted to the course by Union contract.

Nor does this apply only to the students we teach.

A close friend sent me several emails over the past few days, encouraging us to apply for full time teaching positions at a local college. She thought they might find H and I a valuable resource based on our training and our knowledge. She knows something of our work histories. 

I reminded her of the old story about the neurologist who is talking to the novelist. The neurologist says to the writer, “You know when I retire, I am going to write the great American novel.” And the writer pauses and says,  “And I think I will take up neurosurgery.”  

We are grateful for the support of our friends and colleagues, but these days, University and College education is not a place for critical thinking for either students or faculty (in most places). Academia promotes those who show a nearly monomaniacal career-focus. The rhetoric about interdisciplinary curricula is not supported in the hiring that I have seen. Despite the rhetoric about an economic downturn driving students toward colleges as the job market dried up, there are fewer students filling the seats. Faculty members have to take on the fundamental courses in their disciplines as well as the advanced classes in their areas of interest. And many need to teach the "General Education" classes that provide students with the basic critical thinking skills that they didn't get in high school. Or worse, they have to embed lessons on showing up for class, and turning off their PDAs during class, with lessons on plagiarism. New prospective faculty need to guarantee when they apply for a teaching position, that they can raise the money for their own salary as well as cover the research assistantships of their graduate students, by bringing in grants.

Without an act of god, it is more than a little unlikely that either of us, trained in the most interdisciplinary of fields, would be hired for full time faculty positions where we would have to do what is called "skills training," teaching Clinical Psych and GIS and statistics and physics. Forget about the nature of Environmental Theory or John Stilgoe's class at Harvard which rejects the use of a syllabus or pre-determined readings (mandated now by Federal edict so students can assess how much their textbooks will cost before they register). Stilgoe urges his students to go outside and observe; to see what catches their eye. He writes in his book Outside Lies Magic of the manner in which the color of smoke from a chimney against the sky identifies what is being burned - oil or wood. He looks at the way newly mown grass shows patterns of human use. These are small details but they teach students to get outside of their textbooks and engage the world they live in. That is something that matters to critical thinking - and sutainability and social justice. As long as we are concentrated on the costs of our textbooks, we have little concern about who can afford to be educated.

It is more than a little unlikely that two people who never fit the mold, moving from graduate school to assistant professor to associate professor, to tenure, would pass muster. As people who have been in academia long enough to have qualified for senior professorships and well-funded retirements, both of us find ourselves battling with our own work histories, squeezing them like lemons to make from them something akin to lemonade.


And sometimes that feels anything but sweet.