Twitter Fascists

\ Leave a Comment \ by

Critical thinking is at the center of education, and critical thinking is a complicated, often uncomfortable process. It’s often very emotional, for one thing, but it can’t just be emotional, it also has to involve careful reasoning. And you have to get used to the idea that it’s open-ended. You can be certain you understand one thing today and then tomorrow a bit of new information, or an event that you can’t help but respond to emotionally, changes your ideas.

The recent surge of reactionary thinking- reflected in the O’Donnell primary win in Delaware–has roots in social networking and in anti-intellectualism. Karl Rove may not like what’s happening in his party, but it’s clearly a descendant of his long campaign to remove all critical thinking from the political process. He and his ilk have successfully convinced a certain segment of the population that anything that contradicts the party line is by definition wrong.

Rove’s the establishment now and as resented as the rest of the bums. If everything that contradicts your feelings is wrong, as he taught so well, the only thing you can rely on to help you make decisions is other people who feel the same way. That’s the reactionary echo chamber of fascist thinking. Twitter and Ning and other social networking software allow these random resentments and angers to find a whole new resonance and amplification.

Posted in: Language, Miscellaneous, Writing

Class Dismissed

\ Leave a Comment \ by

I was happy to see a new survey/study of student writing practices released this week, called “Revisualizing Composition: Mapping the Writing Lives of First Year College Students.” It’s always good to have new information, and it’s especially refreshing to see such a wide range of institutions included, ranging from research and Ph.D. granting schools to community colleges. I have to say, though, that I found the initial findings disappointing.

First, there seems to be nothing new here: blogs and web writing are less popular than they were; texting on phones is up; students see academic writing as important, etc. There are a few ideas that might be worth exploring. Why has social networking, for example, had so little impact on students’ appreciation of collaboration? Why do institutions that grant Master’s degrees have more students that write often in so many genres?

Second, the study’s methodology section reproduces the U.S. blindness to class; it mentions gender and ethnicity but not familial income, parental education levels, or other indicators of socio-economic status. They did little to correlate technology use or writing habits with, say, the relative costs of an education at these differing institutions. Given the economic ranger of institutions, and the growing evidence of class divisions in the U.S., it’s a striking omission.

Posted in: Composition, Professional, Writing

The Regulatory Ecosystem

\ Leave a Comment \ by

I can understand the cliche business fear about regulation and red tape, although in my experience private rather than government red tape is much more of an issue. I don’t have a small business, of course. Still, I suspect that in many if not most cases the hassles of dealing with the government pale beside the hassles of dealing with ordinary commercial firms, particularly the large ones.

So I think that regulation is in general a good thing. It’s how we got all sorts of benefits, from the weekend to the end of child labor to seat belts and ever higher (if still too low) gas mileage. The right has done everything in its power, of course, to make regulations seem by definition illegitimate. That means that there have been almost no regulatory oversight in for-profit higher education.

Actually, there’s too little regulatory oversight in public higher education either, in everything from labor policy to tuition to nepotism. That’s another story. A regulatory system, in any case, is more than simply a set of rules and laws and guidelines. An effective regulatory system has to have teeth, too, in the forms of fines and, maybe especially in the U.S., lawsuits.

So as the Congressional hearings begin to suggest something of the regulatory system being proposed for for-profit higher education, it’s good to see that the rest of the regulatory ecosystem is beginning to come alive too. The website needs a face-lift, but “Higher Education Issues” is a great place to watch the emerging legal action both for students as well as faculty.

Posted in: Professional, Writing

Rebuilding Academia

\ Leave a Comment \ by

Every year the Chronicle of Higher Education seems more attention to give the issues around academic employment, especially the use of contingent and non-tenure track faculty (“Adjuncts Gather to Discuss Tactics in Campaign for Equity”). It reminds me of the slow 30 year slog it took for global climate change to reach a place in mainstream media. Mainstream education media has taken a similar slow path to putting the our labor issues on its agenda. Tenure isn’t coming back, but we could build a better system if we were given the tools.

Unfortunately, it might take another decade or more to get our government, even our now liberal administration and congress, to begin to raise alarms about the dissolution of the tenure system. The Chronicle’s reporting on the president’s speech about education reports only that he’s going to talk about initiatives to reform the student loan system (“President to Tout Achievements in Higher-Education Policy”). Those were great changes, but I wish he would also talk about the need to reform the labor laws to make union organizing easier.

Posted in: Professional, Uncategorized, Writing