Twitter, Educaton, and Planned Obsolescence

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Going forward, the impetus for organizing political change will emerge from regular citizens using the new communication tools to accomplish specific goals. Charismatic leaders will cease to perform the function that they have in the past. With such leaders removed from the equation, countless waves of change will compete and create unique actions, forming brief ad hoc social networking alliances and achieving very specific goals. The usual activist interventions, like feet-in-the street events planned by established coalitions, will continue to decline in influence.

It’s time the old Left began using Obama’s youth tools. In terms of process, the old Left has become conservative. The Obama Democrats, by using powerful democratizing youth tools, have in effect become the Left.

In a way similar to how Gorbachev was the transition to the break-up of the Soviet Union, Obama will be the transitional leader making possible the arrival of the new wave: highly integrated citizen involvement, organized anarchy, a global community of peers.

The Two Lefts, and a Tidal Wave of Change, Andrew Lehman

As someone who has been involved with the internet since it’s modern inception in the early 1990s this sort of Utopian sentiment sets off alarms for at least two reasons. First, despite it’s historical references it’s a remarkably a-historical analysis rooted a very common and very ill-advised technological determinism. One clue is the reference to the end of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev is the perfect Jeopardy-question of faux history, a Soviet leader widely enough known to be a legitimate part of a game show. It’s truthiness in historical analysis. This is the third or fourth wave of Utopian wish-fulfillment associated with the internet. Every time I hear it I remember that the Wright brothers were convinced that the airplane would make war impossible.

The second reason, is that, for good or ill, the very same political economy that brought us the pet rock has brought us Twitter and Face Book and all of the rest. This sort of analysis, in other words, cannot see the forest for the trees; it has little or no sense of historical perspective, and it doesn’t offer even rudimentary distinctions. It’s history without an inside.

Whatever position you take on Wikipedia, it comes from a very different impulse than, say, My Space, which is largely commercial. Apple Computer is a large corporation; Mozilla is not. These tensions are quietly tearing the wired world apart. In fact, I think the social momentum right now, despite Obama’s achievement (Dean’s innovations refined and focused) is more centrifugal than centripetal.

There is a kind of magical thinking that wants to find a way to instantly reverse the impact of thirty years of conservative destruction of the social commons. The funding and philosophy of the school system, to name only one example, has been fundamentally damaged. It’s not an exaggeration to say it’s crumbling as we speak. Social networking will not replace this sort of community.

Our first historical task as progressive educators, I think, is to begin to separate out the technological chaff from the wheat; the effective tools from the latest fads, and start drawing firm lines, even as we acknowledge that they will need to be re-negotiated on a regular basis. Not everything that happens is good; not ever new tool is useful in the classroom.

Teaching critical thinking, in this context, should mean teaching students that commercial culture is by definition a push towards profit over people; that education seeks to expand humanized culture, the reign of people over things. It’s possible to use the master’s tools against the master, but it does not happen automatically or easily.

Posted in: Economics, Language, Professional, Writing

A Holiday Gift for the Rest of Us

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After Obama picked many centrist, conventional Democrats—and even Republicans—to his Cabinet, his choice for labor secretary is refreshing. Hilda Solis is a progressive with a will to fight and to work with grassroots labor, environmental and immigrant worker movements.

Labor leaders across the board applauded the appointment of Solis, who serves on the board of American Rights at Work, a labor-founded but more broadly based advocacy group. Her ties to labor are deep, going back to at least her state senate days, when she also became a crusader for environmental justice.

In These Times, David Moberg, December 18, 2008

I keep thinking about all of these claims and counter claims about Obama’s cabinet and administrative choices and what they signal for the future of progressive politics. A lot of this speculation seems all tangled up in the identity and cultural politics that, for good or ill, Obama seems determined to muddle up.

Most of what eventually happens will depend very much on Obama’s ability to convince a group of very differently minded people to work together. The open question, of course, is to what end. I think progressives ought to skip these debates altogether. It’s all media hype anyway.

Instead, I think we need to focus on a few specific changes that have the greatest potential for a multiplier effect. That’s why Hilda Solis seems like a real holiday gift. I think the Employee Free Choice act, which Solis surely supports, is out best bet to create a powerful movement that isn’t dependent on Obama.

I would love to see the numbers of people without health care reduced to a few million; I want true national heath care even more. I think a green economic program is great; even better would a rebirth of railroads. If Obama manages the first, and we have a stronger labor movement, we can get the second too.

Posted in: Economics, Online Places, Writing

Hope, Shoes, and Inertia

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On all of this, the Bush administration has gone out of its way to lend a hand to Obama’s transition team and, in the process, help institutionalize the imperial transition itself. Like the new money arrangements pioneered in the 2008 elections, it surely will remain part of the political landscape for the foreseeable future. From such developments in our world, it seems, there’s never any turning back.

There’s nothing strange about all this, of course, if you’re already inside this system. It seems, in fact, too obvious to mention. After all, what president wouldn’t move into the political/governmental house he’s inheriting as efficiently and fully as possible?

The unprecedented size of this imperial pre-presidency, however, signals something else: that what is to come — quite aside from the specific policies adopted by a future Obama administration – will be yet another imperial presidency. (And, by the way, those who expect Congress to suddenly become the player it hasn’t been, wielding power long ceded, are as likely to be disappointed as those who expect a Hillary Clinton State Department renaissance under the budgetary shadow of the Pentagon.)

On January 20th, Barack Obama will be more prepared than any president in recent history to move in and, as everyone now likes to write, “hit the ground running.” But that ground — the bloated executive and the vast national security apparatus that goes with it (as well as the U.S. military garrisons that dot the planet), all further engorged by George W., Dick, and pals — is anything but fertile when it comes to “change.”

Tom Engelhardt, December 08, 2008

I have to admit that I almost– almost– felt sorry for our almost gone and not-to-be-missed president when I saw that shoe toss in Baghdad. He’s been reduced from the most powerful man on earth to a hapless, pathetic clown. It’s an almost too convenient metaphor for his legacy. Sabotage has a shoe-origin, too.

I imagine many people share the shoe tosser’s angry, frustrated exasperation. The thing about a presidency is that it has a certain inertia– it keeps going in the direction it been pushed for a long time, even after a decision to change course. That’s why so many of Obama’s fellow travelers have become so skeptical so quickly.

Given this imperial momentum, in other words, tossing a few shoes might well be a good choice. I am not sure, though, that I am ready to declare disappointment. For one thing, I want to keep my expectations reasonable. A president is just a president, not a revolution, and so there are limits to the sorts of change we can expect.

On the other hand, there’s a Nixon in China scenario here that I think is being ignored. It’s long been recognized that only Nixon could have gone to China; anyone else would have been called a communist sympathizer. We might optimistically hope for the same thing in the Obama administration.

Perhaps only Clinton– known for her Hawkish predilections– can credibly lead a State Department-focused foreign policy. Perhaps only Tom Dashel– as pragmatic as they come– could create a visionary transformation of health care. Perhaps this motley collection of Republicans and Washington insiders can make change work.

Posted in: Economics, Language

What a Class Barrier Looks Like

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Students who start California community colleges as first-time students hoping to get a certificate, a degree, or transfer to the four-year college sector have only small chances of success: approximately one in four degree seekers beginning community college in 1999-2000 completed their program in six years (Moore and Shulock, 2007, p. 7). And the prospects are worse for those who start in pre-collegiate courses. These students may not even get to the transfer-level courses in those fields, much less actually graduate or transfer. According to the Center for Student Success, “Only one-quarter of students initially enrolling in a reading fundamentals course in community college ever enroll in a transfer-level English class, and only 10 percent of students beginning in a basic math course ever enroll in a transferable math course” (2005, cited in Moore and Shulock, 2007, p. 12).

Indeed, most of our SPECC colleges cite a figure of around 10 percent who move successfully from the lowest level precollegiate course to a transfer level course. Beyond dimming students’ outlook for completion, the inability to successfully complete the most basic level courses also has tremendous implications for literacy and numeracy more generally. Although the SPECC campuses focused on pre-collegiate programs for this project, it is clear that all programs, including technical and vocational programs, benefit when their students are able to read well, communicate clearly in writing, and handle basic calculations.

Listening to Students About Learning, Andrea Conklin Bueschel

As the cliche goes, we don’t talk about class in the U.S. because we believe that everyone is equal. Or, at least, everyone is given an equal chance to succeed or fail on their own merits. It has never worked that way, of course, because all sorts of things can give you an advantage, big or small.

Our main conduit of opportunity, and so in many senses the source of the great fog obscuring our social and economic system, has long been post-secondary education. There’s nothing false in the idea; people with college degrees make much more money than people who don’t. It’s that simple.

What’s less obvious is the way that our post-secondary education system, with it’s complicated hierarchies and multiple points of entry, is also a barrier. The number cited in this California study are remarkable. As many as 90% of the students who enter community colleges never take transferable classes.

That’s only a measure of success insofar as we define success in terms of a four year degree. That may not be true in every case, of course. But it is still a good indication of the strength of a class barrier. What’s the solution, according to the authors? Listen to the teachers and students.

Posted in: Composition, Economics, Language, Professional, Writing