Good News, Maybe
We’re haunted by a reactionary Republican party; it’s “reactionary” in a specific sense, too, unwilling to posit any ideas other than to resist the Democratic majority. No push to privatize Social Security or the public schools, not even a ‘balance the budget’ neurosis to push. All we got were Tea-bagging flash in the pans. I didn’t buy Reagan, either, but it’s hard to take Palin seriously.
So it’s impossible to see any mainstream political idea as unambiguously good news. Even if you are one of the 30 plus million slated to be helped with health care, the news is mixed. You have to wait, for one thing (hoping that you don’t get ill or die) and who knows what bureaucratic maze awaits anyone attempting to take advantage of the new laws. It’s three steps forward, and then two steps back.
Still, the idea that we might be able to take 87 billion away from banker-middle-men-confidence artists is very good news indeed. That’s just what Mr. Duncan, the current Secretary of Education, plans to do over the course of the next year or more. Apparently, even a lot of Wall Street Journal types see this as a good idea (“Banks Don’t Belong in the Student Loan Business“). That may be the best news of all.
Nostalgia
It’s hard to get nostalgic about a time when Jim Crow was still in force, abortion was illegal, and the Vietnam war seemed to be spawning mini-civil wars all over the West. And whatever was best about the 1960s was as much hype as reality; working people and the poor were certainly no better off. But I am almost nostalgic when I read a piece like, “Why Do Students Drop Out? Because They Must Work at Jobs Too.” Is it possible to be nostalgic for an idea that never really became real?
It was a privilege of a small group of the middle to upper middle class, mostly white, but for a moment in the U.S. we seemed to have created the seed of a very good way of life. (Maybe it was or wasn’t environmentally sustainable, but it was a start.) You could raise a family on the salary of a single person. (Usually the man, but in theory it could have been anyone). And when your kids got old enough you sent them to a school (usually a state school) and they spent four years, perhaps more, at college.
None of it was in any way perfect; not even close. But it was a good idea and as long as wages were high enough and education cheap enough (or subsidized enough) it was workable. More and more, though, the idea seems utterly lost. We all assume that it takes the income of at least two people to support a family; the cost of education has become a burden that many of us carry, via loans, through much of our adult life. Few seem even aware of this idea, or seed of an idea anymore…
In distance education this long decline has created an opportunity that is as much potential as dilemma. There are lots of people who still have that dream of education, but who gave up the dream of taking four years off (or five) to pursue it long ago. (Maybe they never thought such a thing was possible.) I can provide classes for them. But, as the study suggests, taking these classes, and working, and all the rest of it, makes it more likely that they won’t finish their degrees.
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Get my book at Southern Illinois University Press, Amazon, or Powell's Books.
The C.C.C.C webpage, A Taste for Language: Literacy, Class, and English Studies includes a short podcast interview with me along with links to these reviews:
... by Victor Villanueva in CCC 62.4 (June 2011)
... by Chanon Adsanatham in Teaching English in the Two-Year College 38.3 (March 2011)
... by Scott McLemee in Inside Higher Education (17 Feb 2010)Note: you need to be a member of NCTE, and a subscriber to the relevant journal, to read the reviews by Villanueva and Adsanatham; the review by McLemee is available to the general public.