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Category Archives: Autobiographical
Educated Denial
All professors-- especially if you've been teaching for a while-- love to pontificate on learning and on higher education. I certainly can't throw stones in that glass house. I am continually amazed, though, that so many avoid the white elephant: the almost total destruction of a secure employment system in U.S. Higher Education. It makes all of the professors' ideas seem disingenuous.
Sometimes, as with Joel Shatzky's piece in the Huffington Post, it's only a question of not acknowledging reality ( "Educating for Democracy: What Makes Students Want to Learn?" ). Shatzky is also incorrect when he uses Bourdieu's terminology (it's embodied not social capital) and I think he makes the common mistake of reducing adult motivation to economics....
Also posted in Professional, Union Comments closed
Schooling Proprietary Education
I continue to watch the ongoing news about my industry-- proprietary education, this week via the New America Foundation's education bolg-- and I continue to be alarmed, not because the proposed reforms are so untenable-- the reforms are probably weaker than they need to be-- but because the industry continues to undermine its own credibility by being so alarmist ("Taking a Page from the Tea Party'). There's nothing specific about the for-profit sector's resistance to stricter regulation; it seems to be a common theme in every area of the U.S. economy.
Perhaps I can be accused of wishful thinking, but it seems to me that the era of wildly unregulated capitalism is coming to a loud, complaining, reckless stop....
Also posted in Professional, Writing Comments closed
Reform or Revolution
I keep reading more and more bad news about the proprietary education sector-- where I work-- and feeling worse and worse about what I do every day or, at least, my working conditions. So far my school has not been singled out, but much of the problems that arise come from the commercial pressures of our current capitalist ("greed is good") epoch. Real estate, banks, education, medicine: the market's made a mess of it all.
So I don't think that any of the for profits are going to escape untouched. This week, it's a piece describing the unscrupulous use of incentives to drive admissions. Ironically, this has the public universities a little worried too, because it could put...
Also posted in Professional, Union Comments closed
The Persistence of Idiocy
I just drove from Louisiana to my home in Illinois; it took about 14 hours, divided over two days. It's not too bad of a drive but it's all on the Interstate system-- it saves a lot of time-- and so it's exhausting, but not just physically. I find long drives on the Interstate, especially that stretch on I 10 between Baton Rouge and Lake Charles, emotionally trying if not spiritually depleting.
Stupidity-- sheer, crude idiocy-- is so common on the highway that it eats away at my faith in the human race and in the future. I can' t figure what it is they need to learn. Hour after hour I watch people pull up to within inches...
Also posted in Economics, Professional Comments closed
Goodbye Cynthia
[caption id="attachment_2731" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Cynthia Lack, 1956-2010"]
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My older sister, Cynthia Mary Watkins Lack, died this morning at about 9 AM. My heart is broken.
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My older sister, Cynthia Mary Watkins Lack, died this morning at about 9 AM. My heart is broken.
Posted in Autobiographical Comments closed
Learning Consumerism