Fugazi – Waiting Room
The End of the Fact as We Know It
Like a lot of writing teachers, I use Anita Garland’s essay, “Let’s Really Reform Our Schools” in my class. I like it because while it proposes something no on can argue with– better schools– it does so in a way that is rhetorically quite dubious. It’s basically a Fox News kind of argument, in which one group– “we”– is pitched against another: the “they” or “them.”
Even worse, the “we” or “us” is a very vague group of people “who only want the best for our children” (who wouldn’t want to be a part of that group?) and the “they” are both the so-called trouble makers (students who don’t want to be in school) and teachers, administrators, and policy makers who emphasize extracurricular activities over what Garland defines as academia.
In a nutshell, Garlands solution sounds simple: end the prom and minimize sports and other extracurricular activities, make attendance voluntary, and kick out the kids who don’t want to learn. It’s a mean-spirited, ugly set of ideas couched in a disingenuous populism. What I find fascinating is that my students seem unaffected by the essay’s scapegoating tendency or its complete lack of facts.
I can’t fault Garland for these strategies; they are a part of our cultural heritage. We all, to one extent or the other, create enemies in our arguments and too often we neglect facts. At times, we don’t need or want objectivity. Still, informed readers need to be able to understand that these sorts of arguments have strict limits. They don’t include the facts we need to make good decisions.
Garland’s style of argument has been carried to the extreme in Republican rhetoric over the so-called debt crisis. A certain amount of cheer leading is all part of the process. We need some reference to the facts, too. Even worst, what’s was once a Republican strategy has now become the political norm– the Democrats as just as guilty. Where are the facts on the size and history of the debt?
Nearsighted Reform
If you listen in on academic discussions– online, in electronic lists, and conferences– you quickly see the ways that proprietary education has become a kind of stand in for the ongoing problems in U.S.higher education. The destruction of tenure, rising tuition, student debt, less access for working class and poor to educational capital. These are all problems endemic to our system but too often it sounds as if proprietary education invented all of them.
The dangers of this shortsightedness is reflected in the ongoing response to new regulations designed to “rein in” proprietary education. As it turns out– no one should be surprised by this– it’s not just the for-profits that have been given a free regulatory ride (“As Costs of New Rule Are Felt, Colleges Rethink Online Course Offerings in Other States“). The public schools have flaunted regulations too and the shift to the new regulations is going to be expensive for everyone.
We don’t need rules to “rein in” proprietary education and we certainly don’t need a nightmare regulatory scenario– parallel to the history of the credit card industry–in which states “compete” to be the higher education friendly state” and so on. We need a federal system that addresses problems shared by public and for-profits alike: the availability of affordable, online education for working class people and the poor, the over reliance on loans, the loss of full-time positions and tenure.
June Carter Cash– “Wildwood Flower”