Real Problems and Smoke Screens

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Discussions of the for profit online education industry can be irritating, not because the sector is unjustly criticized, but because the for-profit sector’s problems are too often discussed as if they were in no way related to broader economic problems. (See this piece, as well as the comments, for some examples.) Too often, problems in the for-profit system seem like a smoke screen for the education system at large.

The internet, and the for-profit higher education system were born in the same era of lax to no government regulation in the United States. Facebook and Twitter and the University of Phoenix all took root in a certain kind of laissez-faire capitalism. That lack of government control, most would argue, is one reason why the internet is such an important economic force. Anarchy is risky but dynamic.

Too often the emerging for-profit online education sector has fudged graduation rates and used high pressure sales tactics, to cite only the most obvious examples, in order to try to ensure its viability. These are real problems but they are also the sort of thing you find when regulations are weak; none of the internet era companies are entirely free of these problems. It’s not just the private sector, either.

This lack of regulation has distorted almost every aspect of our economic and cultural lives. I’d like to see the debates over for-profit online education use what I call a Frontline standard (the PBS documentary series). You can only understand the sorts of problems discussed in, “College, Inc.” in other words, if you also understand the sorts of problems discussed in “Money and March Madness.”

Posted in: Economics, Professional

Agnotological Power

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I don’t know how I missed it, but I just stumbled across a word that describes a phenomena that I find both fascinating and repugnant: agnotology, “is the study of culturally-induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data.” It’s not just the right, as Doug Henwood has documented, it’s taken root in so-called alternative media, too.

A certain segment of the right– if that’s the word– rejects evolution, denies global warming, and believes that Obama was born and raised in Kenya. On the left– if that’s the word– we have 911 conspiracies, vaccine paranoia, and all sorts of quack medicine. Our nuts don’t seem to have the national credibility that right-wing nuts seem to have. I suppose the reasons for this difference vary.

A few racists believe almost anything about a black President. A few politicians are promoting these ideas simply because they generate headlines and endure them to their base. It’s the kind of thing that drives teachers batty, I think, simply because we hold so tightly to the old adage, “free your mind, and your ass will follow.” As it turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s not always true.

I think this phenomena has to begin to inform teaching, particularly the teaching of critical thinking. Why has conservative thinking– supposedly the realm of the middle-aged and older– grown so profoundly irrational? It’s entirely likely, as I said, that many of these people are good critical thinkers, in the sense of being able to buy a car or run a business or otherwise keep their lives in order.

It’s hard to imagine what sort of education system could possible inculcate a reasonable skepticism into American culture, one that would be cautious about political authority without falling into wild speculation, if not paranoia. The pedagogical dilemma: there’s a sucker born every minute. The real political genius of our age, apparently, is Gary Dahl, inventor of the pet rock.

Posted in: Economics, Miscellaneous, Professional, Writing

How Not to Change

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I’ve said before that I think the electronic textbook is both inevitable and desirable. In the long run, I think collaboratively run Wiki’s make the most sense for college learning, because they are flexible, collaborative, and cheap.  They create dramatically collaborative models– symbols, really– of knowledge production. These new textbooks would signal a profound shift away from old models of intellectual property that continue to hinder both the production and the democratization of knowledge. It’s a tool with enormous potential.

Access can be tailored to need or to pedagogical or even national style. Some teachers might make editing the textbook a part of their curriculum; some not.  Wikis can be modified and maintained, creating local or regional iterations of the textbook; or, if necessary, abandoned and relaunched at the start of each session. The textbook ceases to be an object and become a network of evolving knowledge. All that is well and good. What worries, me, however, is that, as in other industries, new technologies will promote disenfranchisement rather than power.

That’s what I thought as I was reading, “Early Finding of Cal State U. E-Textbook Study: Terms Matter.”  It’s an instructive example. We should  survey students about their preferences, but if 2/3’s of them are either neutral or unhappy about the technology, then I think it makes sense to develop some sort of hybrid strategy, combing print and digital technologies, at least for the near term. E-books, and my “dream Wiki” need to be easily printable in an attractive format. We just don’t know yet if digital is the future or a cognitive style or, perhaps more likely, both.


Posted in: Composition, Professional, Writing

The Department of “While Rome Burns”

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There’s quite a lot of discussion about crisis in my book, both in terms of the two historical crises (the Great Depression and World War II) that had such a profound effect on the teaching of English, and in terms of the contemporary crisis, which I argue is less about pedagogy than it is about institutional power. Academics have allowed others to control our professional lives.

There’s not a fundamental crisis in funding, or in the market for English majors, or the use of part time labor, or the rising costs of tuition. (See this “Redesigning Today’s Graduate Classroom” for a recent example of these misconceptions.) The crisis is symptomatic of working people in academia who no longer believe in the power of organizing together towards collective goals.

The attacks on unions in Wisconsin should be instructive to academics. The budget crisis wasn’t caused by the unions, and it won’t be solved by breaking their power. The attacks on the unions is about trying to shift power away from democratic control so that money and capital can be moved out of the public sphere and into private hands. It’s simply a redistribution of wealth.

Markets are not natural phenomena; they are shaped by more or less explicit policy decisions. We can’t reshape the market for liberal arts graduate students simply by teaching them differently. We have to seize control of the mechanisms of policy and create a market that suits our goals. The only way to do that is to organized ourselves into unions. Right now, the rest is fiddling.

Posted in: Professional, Union, Writing