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General Education and Turf Wars

The National Endowment for the Humanities begin their booklet “50 Hours: A Core Curriculum for College Students” with a quote by Mark Van Doren from Liberal Education: “The one intolerable thing in education is the absence of ntellectual design.” I find this ironic in that the curriculum outlined in the booklet and the process used by most institutions to arrive at their general education is a process of turf wars. I find almost nothing intellectual in turf wars. In turf wars, the largest, most powerful departments will win almost every time.

I remember the process of redesigning the general education at one institution. At this institution the general education was listed as 48 hours. As we surveyed the faculty, it was their over-whelming conclusion that 48 hours was too large. Why? Because this didn’t give students enough room to complete a degree in many disciplines within the normal four-year path to a degree of 120 hours. How is this possible? Many majors specified courses in other disciplines as requirements within their discipline. When you counted these courses and the required prerequisites for these courses, the total number of required hours for the average major was well over 90 hours. For example, the psychology major required a course in statistics. But the mathematics department required a course in Fundamentals of Mathematics as a prerequisite for statistics which was different from the general education course that was entitled Quantitative Reasoning. Thus the typical psychology major had to take 9 hours of courses from the mathematics department. In another area, the psychology major required a two semester sequence in anatomy and physiology (8 hours since these were lab courses), but the biology department required a 4-hour prerequisite to these courses that was entitled Introduction to Human Science that was different from the 4-hour lab science general education requirement entitled Introduction to Life Science. Thus, a psychology major would graduate with 16 hours of biology courses. How could the mathematics and biology departments have this much effect on psychology requirements? Because the courses in question were in their turf and they were the best judges of what was needed.

You should have heard the cries of distress and the weeping and wailing when I strongly suggested that we cut back the average number of required hours by 20 hours. I was decimating majors. Graduates would never get into graduate schools. So where did the faculty find hours to cut? They agreed to limit the number of hours required for a major to 78 unless there was an outside accrediting agency requiring more. Although, in the first survey of the faculty they said that students needed more foreign languages, then they cut out entirely the general education 9 hour requirement in a foreign language, but added a new 3-hour course in cross-cultural communications. They cut the 12-hour requirement of sequences in both United States and World Civilization and added a new 4-hour required course in Western Civilization. How could the faculty make these changes? The Foreign Language Department and the History Departments were not members of large enough voting blocs to get the votes they needed to stay in as part of the general education.

These days were out and out turf wars. Intellect and intelligence were not very visible anywhere. It was a matter of who had the votes or what treaties you could make to get the votes. Who said there is no politics in education?

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Facing My Mortality

This recent post http://findingstrengthtostandagain.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/the-evolution-of-normal/
on Finding Stength to Stand Again was most timely for me. I have had a bumpy six weeks. During this time, I have had to face my own mortality. I don’t mean physical death. I know that until Christ returns, everyone must die physically. I saw my father and mother die. I am not looking forward to death, but I am not afraid of death. Since a decision I made as a child, I know where I will spend eternity.
On a two-week trip to visit the kids and grandkids at the end of July, I developed pneumonia and spent four days in a hospital. Because of the cough associated with the pneumonia I had to sleep sitting up in a chair for five weeks. Last week I was finally able to email the grandkids that Pop Pop was now able to sleep in a ‘big boy bed’ After returning home I spent nine hours one day in tests and interviews with a new doctor. At the conclusion of the day, the new doctor told us that it appears that my brain has been “permanently” damaged by the turmor, surgery and seizures. THe doctor was particularly drawn to my description of how I thought after the tbi’s as opposed to prior to them. Prior to the tbi’s I would immediately concentrate on a sequential, systemic or deductive analysis of a situation. After the tbi’s I found myself thinking metaphorically or drawing word pictures of the situation. The doctor told me that I should not expect to be able to think analytically, sequentially or deductively at the same level that I did before the tbi’s. This hit me hard. I know our bodies decay and deteriorate, but my mind was my life for 40 years in the academy.I found it curious to realize that 5 years ago, I was more accepting of the word that my knees were shot and that I would never run and jump like I did playing basketball 5 to 10 hours a week for for 50 years.
Instead of having a giant pity party for my loss, following the exxample of Finding Strength to Stand Again, I looked for alternative approaches. I went out and found that I could use a stationary recumbent bicycle without pain in my knees. I threw myself at that outlet and in three months racked up over 2,000 miles without physically moving one inch.
With this new loss, the doctor tried to be helpful by suggesting that since he and others thought that I could still tell stories well that I concentrate on story telling rather than trying to produce academic documents that weren’t up to the standards requried in the academy. I am still trying to wrap my arms around this. All of my plans for making a difference in higher education seem to be thwarted. If I can’t communicate with the academy in the language it uses how can I expect to make a difference. I will just write my stories and see what happens.

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The Cat Came Back

     During the past two weeks, I engaged in an all-out war with my blogs, and the blogs won. During part of that time, I suffered from partial writer’s block. I had several decent ideas to start postings. However, as I approached the halfway point in those postings, I would get another idea and the posting would take off in a different direction. When I reviewed the revised posting the opening didn’t quite
fit with the new conclusion, so it was back to the drawing board.

Finally, I thought I had one of the battles won and I attempted to post GAZING INTO THE ABYSS Since I said “I thought,” you probably have guessed that I was wrong. The blog won again. In my first attempt to publish a particular posting, I uploaded a word document to the blog. When I previewed the posting before publishing it, I found several errors. One of the errors was the inclusion of an extra word, which happened to be the word “that.” So I tried to edit the posting on the wordpress.com site. When I thought I had all the corrections made, I published the posting. However, when I checked the blog, I was dismayed to find two identical postings, both of which were incorrect and contained the superfluous “that.”

I deleted one of the incorrect versions and edited the other one before hitting the publish button. I was even more dismayed when I checked the blog and found three identical, but incorrect versions had been published. My next mode of attack was to delete all three of the incorrect versions and upload a correct Word document version. When I checked the blog, I found that only one copy of the posting had been published. However, it was the still the incorrect version. One more attempt and I believe I got it right: GAZING INTO THE ABYSS. 

All the fussing with the different versions and the “that” which kept coming back reminded me of a folk song that I remembered from the mid 60’s. “The Cat Came Back” was sung by the New Christie Minstrels in their 1963 album “Tell Tall Tales!” By the time the New Christie Minstrels recorded their version of the song, it was already 70 years old and had a history of repeated appearances.

 Everyone that sang the song seemed to have their own lyrics. These lyrics illustrate “purrfectly” the lesson of the song:

Stanza 1

Now Old Mr.
Johnson had troubles of his own.

He had a yellow
cat that wouldn’t leave his home.

He tried and he
tried to give the cat away.

He gave to a man
going far, far away.

Chorus

But the cat came
back ’cause he wouldn’t stay away.

He was sitting
on the porch the very next day.

Stanza 2

Now, old Mr.
Johnson had troubles of his own.

He had a yellow
cat that wouldn’t leave his home!

A special plan
with deception was the key.

One little
cat—how hard could it be?

Chorus

But the cat came
back. We thought he was a goner,

But the cat came
back, he just wouldn’t stay away.

 

     I apologize to all of you who remember this tune because now you won’t be able to get it out of your head. It will be back tomorrow. It just won’t stay away.

For those of you too young to remember 1963, or old enough but can’t or don’t want to remember it, here is an award-winning animated short feature based on the song <http://www.nfb.ca/film/the-cat-came-back/>. Once you hear the song, the tune will be there to stay with you. It just won’t go away.

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Gazing into the Abyss

I will admit it. I’m a fan of the TV show Criminal Minds. I know the show illustrates the seamier side of life. I don’t watch the show reveling in those things. The two things that I enjoy most about the show are: 1) the challenge of trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together along with the FBI agents in figuring out who the Unsub is and what is actually going on; and 2) the philosophical quote(s) that are sometimes thrown in during the show, and the ones that always occur at the end of the show as the agents debrief about the case. The following quote is one of the throw-ins. At one point, Agent Reid says “When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.” When I tried to track down this quote I found it was part of a longer quote from Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”

The whole quote is “Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster. When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.” Most commentators suggest that Nietzsche was trying to say that if you spend too much time with evil, you will fall into evil.

I would like to suggest another possibility for those of us living with aphasia, epilepsy, and Parkinson’s, or for those who serve as our caregivers. Spending too much time concentrating on what has been taken away, can draw us deeper into the abyss of negativity and depression. I know from personal experience how easy it is to get frustrated when I can’t do things that I could previously do almost without effort. When that happens I have to shift gears and listen to the other voice that says but look at what you can do. You are a person. You are alive. You still have so much to offer others. One of the most important things we can do is to stand on the edge of that abyss and warn others so that they can avoid falling into it.

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Teamwork is Critical: Learning with and from Others

One of the blessings of my current physical situation  has been the opportunity to nventory anbooks on the d catalogue more than forty years of  collected files and academy. While working full-time I never had  the time to review all the files and books that I was collecting. These files  and books were just piling up in my university offices and in my home offices  and the storage areas of our homes. I had some idea of fwhat I possessed, but I  didn’t know for sure. This led to duplication of files and  books. As I have discovered  these duplicates, I have given them to individuals who can ake good use of  them.

However, the process of inventorying and cataloguing  has also created a problem. In Chinese philosophy, this dichotomy, where  opposite but complementary items form a complete whole, is known as yin and yang. The same situation is  viewed by some people as a problem and by others as an opportunity. A modern western  idiom attempting to express this is the question, “Do you see the glass as  half-full, or half-empty?” I must admit that as I have inventoried and  catalogued my collection of files and books, I have experienced both feelings.  At times I am elated at the long hidden jewels of ideas and thoughts that I am  finding in my files and books. As I consider these ideas I am easily distracted  and start trying to track down more about the given topic. I find myself  creating more files to add to my already abundant collection. When I try to  return to where I was when I was distracted, I can’t find my place or I can’t get back into the flow of things. I am pleased that I have been reintroduced to  many ideas that I had abandoned. However, I am frustrated that I can’t excavate  around these ideas more fully. I am almost convinced that a life-time of  thinking will take a second lifetime to explicate it.

One of the dangers when an academic picks up a book or  an article is the temptation to scan it. Whenever I start to scan a book or an  article, I find it almost impossible to put it down. It happened again and  again as I went through my books and files. At one point, I came across a  somewhat dated book with the intriguing title of Rural Development and Higher  Education: the Linking of Community and Method, published by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. While  I have been laid up, I have been reading and thinking about the development of American Higher Education. Recently, I was reading about the effect that the Morrill Acts and the establishment of Land Grant Colleges had on the overall development of rural America. My curiosity got the better of me, and I started  scanning the Kellogg book. I was trapped. Soon I found myself reading the last  chapter which was a summary of the nine Kellogg funded projects that were outlined in the book. The first section of this chapter was entitled, “Learning from others.” It began with a great story about “a city fellow who bought a thriving farm that had a new brood of baby chicks. A week later all the chicks were dead.” At this point the city fellow went to the neighboring farmer to find out what had happened and if there was anything he could do to prevent  this from happening again when he bought some new chicks. The neighbor in all  innocence asked the city fellow, “What did you feed them?” The city fellow was shocked and he stammered, “Feed them. I thought the old hen nursed them.”

The conclusion of this story is obvious. If you don’t  know what you’re doing, it can be very dangerous to make faulty assumptions. In  the setting of this book, the authors continued by suggesting that university faculty can’t hope to deal successfully with rural development if they presuppose full knowledge of the local needs, wants, and conditions of any given  location and any given group of people. This led to the standard operating procedure within all Kellogg funded  projects of forming a citizens’ advisory committee at the very beginning of the  project. Everyone was constantly reminded that “Teamwork is critical.”

In higher education this is not only true when we are  working on projects outside the institution, such as rural, urban, or  industrial development. It is also true when we are working on a project inside  the institution with our own students. How easy is it to assume we know what people  need and what they already know? We can save a lot of time by just plowing in  and developing assistance programs for them. Why should we ask students what they need? How absurd, they are only students! How many colleges and universities have set up student assistance  programs to help students and find these programs don’t address the needs of  their students?

Today almost everyone gives lip service to the adage  that cooperation is the best policy. People know that generally you’ll get  better results if you involve other people, seek their advice and help, early  in a process. People are more willing to help and accept change if they have  ownership in the process.

If teamwork was the most important lesson that the  Kellogg Foundation learned from these projects, there was one more lesson that  was a close second. This second lesson was that every project needs a project  director who possesses the appearance of neutrality, “the statesmanship of a  Disraeli, the leadership abilities of a wagon master, the selflessness of a  missionary, and the energies of a long-distance runner.” These are great  lessons for any organization to learn and master.

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Students Are Paid To Not Attend College

The Chronicle of Higher Education posted an e-version of an article written by Ben WIeder, entitled Thiel Fellowship Pays 24 Talented Students $100,000 Not to Attend College. The Thiel in the title is Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal. The $100,000 Fellowships are meant to encourage 24 very talented students to spend two years developing their business ideas instead.  The whole idea has created a stir in higher education circles.

The whole article may be found at http://chronicle.com/article/Thiel-Fellowship-Pays-24/127622/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

One of the fellowship winners highlighted in the article is Jim Danielson, who was an electrical-engineering student at Purdue. Mr Danielson is quoted as saying he “learned more about his field on his own than in the classroom.”

This comment from Mr. Daniels  reminded me of a portion of Mike Rose’s story, that he tells in his autobiographic book “Lives on the Boundary.” Mr. Rose’s related an incident from his graduate education in creative writing when he became overwhelmed with hour after hours, day after days of studying in the UCLA library, reading essay after essay about the poems they were reading in class. He finally gathered up all his courage and went to see the chairman of the creative writing program. Mr. Rose told the chair that we was learning more about the poems they were reading and studying in class by writing his own poetry. The chair shook his head,smiled and said in effect, “That’s not the way we study poetry here.”  Some institutions will permit and encourage students to learn by doing, others do everything they can to discourage that type of learning activity.

I find this ironic since Aristotle said all free men should be educated in the three forms of knowledge, theorica, poeises and praxis. Theorica was the reflective contemplation of knowledge received through all of our senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching); poeises was the production of objects of value (such as writing poems or painting a picture–poeises is the word from which we get our word poetry); praxis was learning by doing (praxis is the word from which we get our word practice – More than once people have said the only way to learn to teach is to teach, and that you really never learn medicine until you practice medicine.) It seems that poeises and praxis are both learning by doing. What’s the difference? I believe the primary difference is that the goal of poeises is to produce a product of value. It is to create an inanimate object of value; while the goal of praxis to enable the individual to affect changes in people whether oneself or others.

In many of our institutions, particularly liberal arts institutions, the primary, if not the only emphasis, seems to be on theorica. We also tend to restrict our sensory intake to seeing and hearing.  In Ancient Greece, the full orbed theorica was held up as the pinnacle of knowledge. However, beyond a rudimentary introduction to it, further study in  it  was reserved only for superior students, the best of the best. Does this have any implications for our higher education system of today?