Louis CK is the John the Baptist of our Revolution

This video has made the rounds and it got me thinking. If this guy, Peter Beinart, is correct, we are on the verge of the next progressive wave in our history. It’s a happy thought for a nice Fall Monday morning. The last one– in the 20’s and 30’s– got us the 40 hour work week, social security, the FDIC, and cheap, accessible higher education, among other things. I am hoping that this time we get a national health care and pension system, cheap or free higher education, student debt relief, and a strong link between productivity and wages, among other things. If it happens, Louis CK will be our John the Baptist.

Good News and Bad

I don’t read enough. I don’t have time; maybe I can sneak in 500 or 1000 words over breakfast. (I haven’t been writing either.) I do listen to good podcasts when I work out and one of the best is from Doug Henwood. I’ve been reading his Left Business Observer for about 15 years or so. Henwood has a radio show too, “Behind the News” or sometimes “Almost Behind the News”, which is sent out as a podcast. That’s what I was listening to this morning– everyone should listen to it– and the interview with Steve Horn pointed me to a piece about the Chicago public schools that I think needs to be more widely read. There is good and bad news coming out of the Windy City.

The bad news is that the Obama administration, Horn shows, has deep ties to the architects of school privatization. The Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, was, of course, an Obama aide; Emanuel has been closing down public schools right and left and firing teachers just as quickly. The goal seems transparent: there is a lot of money to be made in for-profit schools staffed by poorly paid teachers. This is what has happened in the college system more generally. Even in the public universities cheap labor is at the heart of the institutional model. There is some good news though, as this piece in the Nation suggests, Chicagoans are fighting back and in some cases winning. Maybe our long lost progressive movement can be reborn.

Foundations

In the UC system, lecturers represented by UC-AFT (University Council of the American Federation of Teachers) have a clear pathway to job security with relatively high pay and full benefits (including pensions). These teachers also at times have a strong role in departmental governance and curricular development and have their academic freedom protected. Although, there is still plenty of room for improvement, at one of the largest public university system in the country, activism and organization have led to a model that should and can be replicated throughout the United States.

An Existing Just Model for Non-Tenure-Track Faculty” Bob Samuels

Every once in a while, I like to remind myself that the it is possible to clean up the mess that’s been made of my profession. I think the old system– full-time employment and benefits– made a lot of sense and was by far the most effective model for learning and research. Keep it simple. I think the best solution is to go back to that system; if nothing else, no system worth pursuing is going to be any less expensive. That may be a lost dream.

In a sense, then, we are fighting against a perceived symbolic enemy, the tenured professor, who many (administrators, right-wing economists) believe is by definition complacent if not ineffective and who’s employment security makes it nearly impossible for schools to adjust to changing conditions. In effect, Samuels wants to make an end-run around the boogie-man through a new kind of job, with equivalent but different forms of pay and security.

We accept the final defeat of tenure, in other words, in exchange for getting back much of what we lost: relative employment security, fairly good pay, a pension, protections for academic freedom of speech. It’s an attractive idea, not only as a way forward, but also as a foundation on which to build an entirely new, non-exploitative system. It’s a model that works, after all, only if adjuncts have a union to fight for their interests.

Sound as Earthquakes and the Solar System

Here’s some good news, in the form of a definitive statement on climate change from the American Meteorological Association. It is good news and not old news, of course, because the disinformation campaign has been so extensive. Still, after weeks of horrible, violent weather, it’s good to be reminded of the ongoing dangers we face. There’s no chance of responding effectively to climate change without this sort of scientific push-back and students need to be educated early and often. The AMA’s review of the climate change science is here.

The Next-Generation Science Standards (NGSS) developed in collaboration with 26 states and several scientific organizations is a transformative set of guidelines for teaching science in the United States. For the first time, climate change is recommended as a core concept for U.S. science curricula, including an emphasis on anthropogenic or “human-caused” effects. As an association of scientists and science-based professionals, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) affirms the inclusion of climate change in the NGSS. Climate change science is firmly rooted in peer-reviewed scientific literature; as science, it is as sound as other NGSS subjects such as earthquakes and the solar system.

Climate Science is Core to Science Education” adopted by the AMS Executive Committee, 23 May 2013