Category Archives: Language

A colleague sent me a link to this New York Times piece (“Debunking the Myths of the Telecommute“) about telecommuting. It’s an interesting comparison to my own working-at-home teaching. There are a lot of similarities: the writer and I both use lists, and we both try to respond to our colleagues and bosses promptly. There are some real differences too. I don’t care if my neighbors see me walking around in shorts and a t-shirt all day (my pajamas) and I don’t begin the day by taking a shower, exactly as if I were going into an office. I might do that, though, if I didn’t live alone.

My days are structured by meals and exercise and errands. Sometimes I do take a day or an afternoon off to do something with my partner, Elise; mostly, though, we’re together nights and weekends. In between, I write, and most of the writing I do is to students and, less often, colleagues. That might be the single most important characteristic of the work I do: I teach writing, and most of the time, I communicate in writing. I also think that as an academic, my working style is more like the author’s experiences in the software industry, although I have no flip flops.

She’s right, too, when she emphasizes the need for self-discipline and a kind of internalized accountability. I’m not my own boss, by any means, but since the boss can’t come strolling by my cubicle, I have to police my own working habits. No doubt that’s one reason the writer takes that shower each morning. It’s the rituals that give work substance and reality. Capitalism has always depended on those rituals to give accumulation the air of natural inevitability. Educated workers, too, can decorate their working lives with status nick nacks, corner offices and the like.

What happens if all of that dissipated into the individual or family house? An Edmonds.com executive has status and power; online faculty less so. I think, though, that capitalism would loose something profoundly important if the majority of us didn’t have to go through these daily working life rituals. At this point, no doubt, those of us doing it are more or less self-selected for our internalized authority. Academics in particular are used to working on their own without rocking the boat. Theoretically, though, the pool of telecommuters could grow large enough to pose a real challenge to business as usual.

Doug Henwood has a great interview with Diane Ravitch about her new book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.” (I am once again catching up on podcasts.) Ravitch basically repeats what’s more or less common sense among people who study education: it’s not bad teachers, or the unions, or not teaching the basics that’s so damaging to public education. It’s the inequity, stupid.

A school’s potential impact on a child’s learning is dependent on certain preconditions. If you are poor, not well fed, don’t have good medical care, etc. you won’t do very well. Duh. Of course, what’s so horrific is that instead of dealing with the inequity that’s at the root of the problems in the public schools, we push for more testing, claim that certain schools are failing and privatize them, negotiate contracts that would make it easier to fire teachers, etc.

Anything and everything but injustice. Injustice is hard. Sadly, nothing’s changed with the Obama administration. I was also reading about the Khan Academy, which creates free tutoring videos for K-12 students, in all sorts of subject. They’ll help certain students and I hope teachers use them. It’s got me thinking about technology, class, and autodidacts. I admire the effort, of course, but it’s a classic American response to a social problem.

Short of the autodidact contingent, whose numbers might be growing, this sort of liberalism is much less than it seems. In the end, it reminds me that most public school teachers routinely buy their own basic supplies; that music and arts programs are decimated while football thrives; that school’s serve junk food for lunch every day, despite the epidemic of obesity. Good educational tools are always welcome, but you can’t fight these sorts of battles one student at a time.