Education As Customer Service

So I've received my first complaint of the new term. Evidently now announcing deadlines in class and on the assignment and actually enforcing them is seen as unfair.

What was most amusing about the complaint, though, was the student's not-so-implied threat that if I was going to continue to have deadlines and, you know, actually enforce them, that my course might not be the ideal course for them. And I quote:

if this semester is going to be like this i dont
think i can take this class. i have lacrosse 90 percent of my time this
semester and i only have the time to do things like homework when they
fit into this schedule i have decided for myself

When I worked in banking this was my favorite threat from customers: if you're going to charge me for bouncing my check, I'm going to take my money and run. And just like most of those banking customers, when I'd offer to mail them the check for their remaining funds, this student quickly rethought the decision.

Here's the thing about this customer service metaphor that I see missed - usually by students, sometimes by faculty (think about your last Senate meeting), and all too often by staff and administrators: it doesn't mean there shouldn't be standards. And it doesn't mean that students or their parents get to set those standards.

Failed Systems and Systems of Failure

There's Socialism and Communism and Capitalism
said Neal,
and there's Feminism and Hedonism,
          and there's Catholicism and Bipedalism and Consumerism,

but I think Narcissism is the system
that means the most to me...
- from Tony Hoagland, "What Narcissism Means to Me"

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Like much of the country, they're predicting ridiculously cold temperatures here. Radiating "orphan," at least six people have stopped me in the last two days to warn me of the temperatures and to tell me to keep warm as though this weren't an intuitive behavior to a boy from Texas.

As ever, I am amused at how the cold and the snow changes things. It's come to serve as the key idea in much of what I don't understand living here. There are peculiar rules here that run counter to what you've learned about living in the snow elsewhere. For example:

snow + hazard lights on a car = ability to park anywhere you want

or

snow + 4 wheel drive = no need for extra distance between driving vehicles

or

snow + sports = no need for clothing

It's very strange how the snow trumps common sense. Today, I watched one car unload in that "not parking space" next to handicapped spaces, and another car pull in, turn its hazards on, and break out the cell phone to have a conference. This only seems to happen when it snows.

I'm tempted, each time I see it, to simply walk over the car as it blocks that space or to find a bat and break out their headlights.

---

My roommate has scored an on-campus interview.

In the notification, the committee chair mentioned that they remembered him as a student, and this sparked an entire evening's scavenger hunt to determine just when and how this person knew him because he was convinced he had to say something back about how he remembered them, too.

I suggested going vague but affable: "I hope you just remember the better moments." No.

I suggested avoidance and deflection: "I'm looking forward to catching up with you and meeting the department." No.

I suggested embarrassed honesty, clever trickery, vapid flattery. No. No. No. I ran out of adjectives. I ran out of interest. I ran out of the room. This morning there was a knock on my office door.

"I think he made a mistake," he said. "I don't think he knew me. I'm just going to accept."

All I could do was nod, thinking of how much preparation time had been lost searching through year books and transcripts and departmental web sites. Committees, be careful what you say. The tensions are high this year.

---

I've been struggling to finish a syllabus, wanting an assignment that might generate something students could put in a portfolio. Some courses, I am concluding, simply are not meant for this type of idea. Or maybe some professors aren't geared up for it. The thought of having to force this to something that I don't do myself and so wouldn't know quite so well how to judge anyway just didn't make sense.

But I'd been hearing and reading hither and yon about the need to try and help students relate things to real world job possibilities. We're student-centered, I heard. Students are consumers, someone wrote, and must be treated as such: give them what they want.

Hooey.

My class will be worth the trip because it's going to make them think of something in a way the business world doesn't. And it isn't exactly a commonly mentioned point of view anywhere else either.

Employers, here's what you can expect: a well-researched argument that considers the unpopular opinion. That's my contribution. Thank you. Bye bye.

Or Maybe I Woke Up on the Right Side of the Same Old Bed

The drive to campus this morning was blissful.

Last night, watching election results with colleagues, we compared our estimates of how many of our students voted. I extolled the virtues of my students, confident that at least 60 percent of them voted. And when I polled my first class, I happily found my guess was low. I gave them some praise - I didn't care who they voted for, I said, but I was proud of them for voting. Blissfully, I walked back to my office and prepared for the next class of the day.

Coming down the stairs on the way to my second class, I ran into my Dean who was beaming and asked, "Are you elated? I'm elated. I cried this morning when I listened to that speech again. I want to write all my professors who ever taught me any Civil Rights history. Aren't you elated?"

My Dean is effusive normally, but this was an entirely other level. This was Dean enthusiasm turned up to 11. And I was right there with her. I told her about my students voting, and that I felt like this is this generation's Kennedy moment. That I finally had an answer for a moment of history that I'd always remember that wasn't negative.

Then the conversation turned serious.

"It's a shame about what happened," she said.

Confused, I asked.

"About the graffiti," she said, with a sigh.

I didn't know about any graffiti, but it turns out someone on campus scrawled some ugly racial comments around campus. At least one piece of it was in an indelible form and required sand blasting to be removed, letting us know that Obama equals a racial slur. And in my second class, a student mentioned that there was evidently a Facebook stats flame war between Democrat and Republican student supporters.

A colleague reported later that a student in one of his classes said, "I'm tired of watching black people crying on TV just because a black man was elected President."

And another said a student told him of the graffiti, "It's just people expressing an opinion. What's the big deal?"

I've got some perspective on all this now, though for most of the evening, I and many of my colleagues were at wit's end. Evidently, we felt, we've failed in some truly fundamental way, not because of votes but because of a failure of empathy. It took me awhile to gain the perspective that my Dean had, able to keep that elation in the harsh light of our own campus events. Certainly, this election signaled that we've come a lot of metaphorical miles. But the morning after served as a reminder that we've got miles to go.

Singing for your supper...

A lot of you have probably read the article on Inside Higher Ed about Marshall University accepting a gift that carried a stipulation that a particular book be taught. To talk about it as a question of academic freedom ("academic freedom means you don't have to teach the book") is a bit shortsighted since what the contract for the gift does is essentially put a price tag on that freedom. Honestly, this shouldn't be surprising - there have been plenty of in-roads that are not only well-paved but well-trod - that would lead a donor to think this would be fair game.

On one hand, the increasing professionalization of higher education has given plenty of cause for other institutions to feel like they could dictate curriculum. And I want to be clear that we can't just talk about this in terms of business, which would be the first logical jumping off point from the article. As an institution, higher education is increasingly dependent on the will of outside benefactors. Take a stroll through any campus and look at everything that's got a plaque on it. In virtually every case, the money that bought that plaque and that helped procure that space came with stipulations. When you're dependent upon the kindness of strangers, you can't be surprised when one of them makes you perform a bit.

Obviously, there are strategies for dealing like things with a gift that requires you to teach a particular view. First, don't take it. But if you do, you don't have to teach it the way they want. Want to talk about Ayn Rand and The Wealth of Nations? Well, you can talk about all the ways those things don't really fit the world we live in quite so well as people would like us to believe. But the larger strategy has to be finding a better way to fund higher education.

The Rules of Academic Engagement

You know, sometimes I wish blogs could have subtitles. Or that when academic bloggers wrote, they gave their posts titles the way they title their papers. And in the interest of humor and familiarity, I decided to take up the challenge myself and make try a post that draws on the conventions of one form of academic communication to talk about another form.

[Addendum: Be warned, this isn't a blog post. It's a commitment. And as you may have learned, that means once you start reading it, you cannot stop. ]

That said, if this post was a journal article, it would be titled thusly:

Advice for Soon-to-be-Gumdrops Who've Been Following The Happy Gumdrop Dustup and Who Haven't Yet Killed Themselves/Their Senior Advisers or Completely Abandoned This Career Path: A Meta-Analysis

It's a long standing truism of academia (typically attributed to Kissinger) that the reason academic politics are so vicious is because the stakes are so small. Certainly we've seen some evidence of just how vicious they can be recently. Among the posts of lurkers in various places, of soon-to-be Gumdrops, and amongst those of us already in this particular set of trenches, the whole episode has raised serious doubts. But even so, there are some lessons to be taken from this whole hullabaloo. If nothing else, realize that the academic community, just like your family, is, shall we say, quirky at least.

Part of why I invoke Kissinger's quote - though I think he's wrong about the stakes - is that what you've just seen is the academic equivalent of guerrilla warfare. And while Kissinger didn't exactly know how to get us out of those situations, he did ultimately learn that the danger of guerrilla warfare was that the rules which were evident weren't the rules that should best be followed.

So, knowing the rules, you can begin to develop strategies to circumvent them. I'll be using the Happy Gumdrop Dustup as a means of both explaining the seeming rules of conflict management within academic society and strategies which may be of use by would-be gumdrops and gumdrop collaborators in helping circumvent these problems. For a concise history of the dustup, here is a useful reference.

If you look at the discourse so far, you'll see a few rules very clearly in evidence. Sadly, I'd like to say that these things just happen here, but having sat through faculty meetings at three different institutions (as Gumdrops go, I'm getting stale), served on a variety of committees at two, worked on organizational boards, and played at faculty poker nights, I can say that this isn't the only time I've seen this¹

It must be stressed that while this behavior is more common than we might like, it is far from the norm. What triggers the behavior is up for debate, and its worth noting that a close reading shows some interesting metaphorical trends and is grounds for further inquiry.²

Rule 1: Give No Quarter

Kissinger says academic fights are vicious because the stakes are small. I say they're vicious because they are our equivalent of bare-knuckle boxing. Proving we're right is sport - and for some, it's a blood sport. And in blood sports, you must ALWAYS fight to win, not to compromise. ³

Strategy and Analysis:
This rule, in fact, suggests, the first and most important strategy to dealing with this sort of situation. Unlike the metaphorical cage match we are comparing this to, no one in fact is locking the metaphorical cage. You are free to step out at anytime, whether this be the debate or some larger situation, such as a job.

Along similar lines, you must be careful not to mistake the proposed solutions - which are often either/or solutions - with the full range of possible solutions. Most of your colleagues, when not in the heat of the battle themselves will recognize this (and the good ones will do this even if in the midst).

It's worth noting in the Gumdrop brouhaha that the arguing got loudest when people asserted these rights - whether in the right to leave a job or the right to leave (or to be asked to leave) a conversation. Arguments always require participants, and those who love to argue know very well how to try and gain them.

Rule 2: Choose Your Weapons But Don't Show It

In the academic dust-up, the chief weapons are definitions. This is a rule you should have learned in graduate school, where we've learned to cite our sources and clearly explain not just our definitions but why we've chosen them.

The academic dust-up, however, takes this rule and inverts it. In combat, after all, showing your strength is to expose your weakness. Offering up a definition is to allow the opposition to disarm you. So you must do your best to use your definitions stealthily, only revealing them as the briefest slashes of logic - enough to draw blood but untouchable.

Strategy and Analysis:
In any situation where you're being intentionally left in the dark, your goal becomes to try and gather information yourself. In the heated academic knuckle-duster, this is akin to dancing just out of reach while you study. Ask questions. Ask them different ways. Put the definitions themselves through their paces.

Just as importantly, be clear in yours. One place you can do this is in the academic interview. When I went through my first round of interviews as I was coming out of my program ABD, the fear of not having a job (and hence not having funding which would lead to not being able to finish the dissertation which swallowed the spider to catch the fly...) presented the temptation to try and be whatever a job wanted me to be. Resist this urge. In an interview, in your interactions with colleagues, be yourself. If there is a problem - and sometimes there will be - take it for the sign it is (and only for the sign it is).

The most interesting example of this from the Gumdrop debate was a member of the senior faculty camp who was upset that mentoring and invitations to dinner and invitations to dinner didn't net a junior faculty member's continued presence in the department. As a member of the gumdrop camp, I never would have imagined that a colleague's invitation to dinner(s) would equate to anything but some conversation and collegiality. Honestly, would any of us go to dinner with anyone if we knew it meant the possibility of shackling ourselves to their image of how we should behave for the next year of our lives? Sometimes a steak should just be a steak (or a veggie burger for my West Coast friends). Failing that, at least make sure if your dinner comes with a cost, that you actually put a bill out there. My assumption- and I think a reasonable one - was that the last time I had to put out because you bought me dinner was at the interview.

One of the truly distressing moments in the Gumdrops debate was that there was little attempt to define the problem. Reading between the lines of the debate, there were at least two different things happening. On one side, the junior faculty at the start of the debate didn't actually fit the definition being offered by seniors at the end. None were of the "one and done" variety being decried for taking a job and then leaving. Moreover, many of the faculty lumped into the Gumdrops actually fit a more senior role. Part of the underlying struggle shifted in the midst to trying to clarify what was actually meant by "junior faculty" because there were a substantial number of people in the middle (if only the early stages of it) of their careers.

Rule 3: Control the Terrain

Notice in the discourse of the academic dust-up how often one side or the other assumes that their context is every one's context. One thing Sun-Tzu has taught is that he who controls the battleground controls the battle. This is particularly true in the battle over meaning, where the clearest way to control the battle is to know the terrain better than anyone else. Begin by making them come to you and never, ever concede that there could be another possibility.

For example, while even recent studies show there is marked difference in how academics of different generations view their careers, including what they were and weren't satisfied with, this was largely left out of the debate.

Strategy and Analysis:
Most academic debates become about the context of the people involved. Sadly, as seen in the Gumdrop debate, there is no certain to guarantee that even when you offer a context for yourself that anyone will pay attention to it. But be sure you know yourself well enough to know not only what you want but why you want it.

One of the frustrations expressed by the "senior faculty" was ultimately that they couldn't understand why junior faculty didn't love their department/university/city as much as they did. While this is largely their failure of imagination, there are things you can do to try and prevent this problem in your own relations. First, ask questions about the things that matter to you. Almost invariably with the academic interview, there is not only time set aside for your questions but some time set aside for a tour (this may simply be a lift from the airport). This is your moment to begin to mark out and determine whether this is the place for you or not.

Rule 4: There are Two Kinds of Intelligence - Use Them Both

You know you are intelligent; that's how you got here. Rely on that. But don't be afraid to find intelligence about your opponent and to take advantage. If this means referencing some unfortunate behavior or some unthinking disclosure to gain advantage, you must do it. To some, this would equate to dirty fighting, but in any blood sport, you can't be afraid to press your advantages and take advantage of tactical errors

Strategy and Analysis:
This was one of the most unfortunate moments of the dust-up and probably the most distressing. That members on both sides began to strike out in highly personal ways on the road to trying to make their point. Honestly, it's pretty embarrassing imagining students or colleagues or donors somehow chancing on these moments. And that's the question I've been asking myself today: how would this look to someone not in the midst of it.

I would also imagine, having read some of the more vitriolic moments, that there's a temptation by bloggers involved to stop entirely. Charitably, I'll say that this wasn't an attempt at an actual chilling effect on the parts of the posters who felt the need to resort to attempts at using personal details about members of the blogging community as a means of bolstering their arguments. I'm not personally convinced of that. From the standpoint of those who have benefited from others blogs, I certainly hope this won't be the consequence.

But the bigger point here is that you've got to be prepared to own up to what you say and you've got be prepared that it might be used against you. This sort of thing doesn't happen just in the blogosphere, though it is (in my experience) much more common here. A recent Chronicle column (which I cannot find at the moment) suggested that new faculty should guard their secrets. That's not bad advice, though again, you mustn't be so guarded that you miss connections or somehow misrepresent yourself.

One of the secrets to negotiating any group dynamic - and take this form someone who's survived corporate America and is now navigating the Ivory Tower - is that spending more time listening than speaking will usually tell you all you need to know about your colleagues and your campus. As Gumdrops (or Gumdrops-to-be), spend those first moments of service listening - while we value your input we also understand that it can be overwhelming to be thrown onto the Curriculum Committee or Strategic Planning or whatever - and so we expect you'll be a little quiet. That's your chance to feel out where things stand and whether you've made the right choice or not.

Conclusions

There are a few important conclusions that I think can be made here.

The most important one is that those of us who blog and respond to blogs are only one segment of the faculty you're going to meet. The very fact that we're here and posting suggests something about us and how we deal with problems. We're a vocal minority, and should be interpreted as such. Recognize, too, that we use anonymity in productive and unproductive ways, and that same feature may well have been used against some of us in the community.

Secondly, though, I think you'll see that part of what really underlies the problem here isn't so much a generational thing (though that might be something of an intervening variable) but one of communication itself. By and large, those "senior faculty" who complained were really talking about how they felt deceived and used, a set of feelings the Gumdrops also feel but for very different reasons. My generalization of it is that for "senior faculty," it's about trying to foster relationships that fail, and for "junior faculty" it's about how relationships are set up to fail in the current structure. Those questions aren't going away anytime soon.

Third, I hope it's recognized that most (if not all - I couldn't say for sure) the "junior faculty" all did more than a little to give their jobs a chance. Taking that time to get to know the place and the people is certainly worthwhile, but that doesn't mean you have to stay. I've been advised by more than a few senior faculty (I know them and their credentials, so no quotes for them) who've advised me that even in the second year it's acceptable, but the third year may be seen as more preferable.

Finally, I hope that while the waters here seem treacherous and uncharted, that it's realized that most people really do want to work with you and see you advance in your career in a way that works for you, not just for them.

[Addendum: What? You're still here? Well, alright, have some footnotes then.]

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<sub>1: Please note, however, while this implies that such academic guerrilla warfare is more common than just this thread, it does not imply that it is ubiquitous.

2: There are a few interesting patterns here. The question of academic vocation is often tied to a series of very particular metaphors. The first is of academia as a calling. Outside of academia, this use of languages often carries with it a particular religious connotation. The extreme version of this, in both academia and religious callings, becomes a form of zealotry or fanaticism. The second metaphor has attempts to speak of the academic career in relationship (typically marriage) terms. In this formation, questions of abandonment, and infidelity become metaphors for behaviors by faculty in relation to each other, to structural agents, and to institutions. Both often carry with them implicit power dynamics that suggest peculiar (and often disturbing) implications.</sub>

3: This rule suggests certain corollaries:

C1) First, the more marginal you feel your research/teaching is in relation to another variable (your colleague's research, the university's goals, the funding you receive, etc), the more likely to view to go the bloodsport route.

C2) The more marginal you feel someone else's research/teaching is in relation to another variable, the more likely to go the bloodsport route.

C3) The longer the pre-fight, the bloodier the match.

This "Bright Gumdrop Unicorn" is about solutions not just problems

Continuing the thought process about junior faculty looking for other jobs (that began here, and continued here, and summed up nicely as a sort of Hotel Californication by Maggie May, and today blew up with this Rate Your Students post and the beginnings of the responses),
here are a few thoughts that I'd like to see addressed. And at the end, a proposed solution.

Having followed the posts, it's interesting to hear that "senior faculty" (by the way, if "junior faculty" get painted as a single brush, so do you, gramps - this post is going to take the same tone I'm seeing from the "senior faculty" in hopes that by speaking their forked tongue language, they'll get the point a bit better) really are as insular as Abe Simpson. First, because it seems they can no longer distinguish between reasons for leaving. In none of the posts above that brought this up has anyone given any indication they're doing a one year and out situation, and yet this seems to be the assumption made by the "senior faculty" posting in response. Second, because they can't quite imagine that people don't love everything the same way they do, they seem to take someone doing typical job things - trying to find positions that fit better, pay better, etc. - as some sort of personal affront. It's great that you love your town, your university, your country, your 7 pm bedtime after "Matlock" is over, but honestly, hegemon, that doesn't mean everyone has to.

If we're not happy, if we're far from the things we care about, if we're not getting what we need then we have two choices: we can wait for you to finish your victory cabbage, your 40 mile walks through the snow with no shoes, and your stories about how FDR beat Superman in a footrace and help us fix it , or we can do something to fix it ourselves. From the posts thus far, the choice is obvious. And if that's the way we feel, why do you want us there anyway? If we're as selfish and egotistical, why cry when we leave? Wait - that would mean you'd have to teach those intro courses you hate, serve on more committees, do more research, reprep old lectures, stop peddling your cars with your feet and enter the modern world.

Most importantly, recognize that you've got more than a little blame in this, old folks. You've perpetuated a system. You've done job hires the way they've always been done, you've hired junior faculty out from under other departments and been glad to have them. You've passed off the duties you don't want to the person at the wrong end of the career ladder. So change how you hire, change who you hire, or hush up and relax - I'm sure "Lawrence Welk" will be on soon, and then you can take your naps and dream of shooing kids off your lawn.

And you know what? I know why you want me to stay. I've just spent parts of several days watching your poor argumentation - name calling, castigation, the need to resort to profanity and sad stereotypes - to bolster your points. I've seen your weak logic, your reliance on strawmen arguments, your inability to think critically about the system you're in, and your strange assumptions that everything is either/or. The whole point of this post, after all, is designed as both argument against and satire of how you "senior faculty" are coming across. You need me to teach you critical thinking as badly as your students do from the sounds of it. Just because I'm looking for a new job doesn't mean I don't appreciate and want to help students, that I don't like the university, or that I voted against social security or whatever it is that's really got your Depends in a wad.

Oh, and that solution: for all of you more curmudgeonly-than-thous who think junior faculty shouldn't leave one job to go to another, put that in your ads. If you really think that badly of someone trying to find a situtation that is good for them and good for the school and their students, own it. You write the job ads. Because I can tell you, if that's your attitude, I don't want to work with you anyway, you narrowminded, judgemental, sanctimonious windbags.

Big noise in the sky

So here in the land of nodding off, there's big storms tonight, and big things in the air. The afternoon was spent in a two and a half hour department meeting that attempted to map out the next five years of the program course-wise as we shift from our current teaching load to a more realistic one (except that there's not a coherent explanation of how sections currently taught will be dealt with university-wide). It was, in spite of being hella long, a good meeting.

I like this department. I want to carry it in my pocket to someplace I'd like to live. But I like this department. As a model of how things can run, this place isn't bad (see above about long meetings). There are big dreams that are a bit frustrating, but there's a level of respect and consideration that has been sometimes lacking in previous departments.

And tonight I got a proposal off for a book chapter which, as such things go, feels like one of the best and most coherent proposals I've written in ages.

And now there's a wicked thunderstorm which I've missed for years. Today's been good.

Blame Canada

For a little bit, after I'd complained in a previous post on the blog and with friends about the low pay of faculty members, I began to think I was off my nut. Years of swallowing the rhetoric of a pure market economy had me a little dazed. If I wasn't making good money and couldn't afford to rent an apartment as a new faculty member because I was saddled with debt, wasn't that my problem? How could I even think that the market might be weighted unfairly.

"Time to move on to other issues," I thought. I almost faltered.

Until I saw this article about assistance to new professors working at Canadian universities. Briefly, momentarily, I'm given hope. Now I see that it's possible that an employer recognizes all those costs and actually wants to help. What an interesting model helping with housing suggests to American universities. Here's something small schools might try to think about when they're wondering about the third year bleed of good faculty who've been there but won't stay.

Now if I could only get a job in Canada....

Check, please...

Back to the education beat: this article in the New York Times detailing the rapid growth of the fee sends a pretty interesting warning to colleges and to students. Anyone who has been in school in the last decade has been victim to the university created fee (yes, it's more apparent at publicly supported schools, but don't mistake easy visibility as a symptom).

It's good to hear that students striking back. Transparency wouldn't be a bad idea here. Imagine going out to dinner and finding a $1 chair fee tacked on to the bill. But as a solution, that doesn't go far enough. The increasing privatization of education seems to have not only turned down this road years ago but to have strapped a brick to the gas pedal. Consider the evidence together: financial aid scandals where schools are taking money to steer students towards high cost private loans, a sort of payola scandal to help with high -cost study-abroad programs, and renewed distress at ever growing fees.

I'm reminded of those discussions and charts that show what funds for the war could have done if spent on other things (here's one if you're curious). While I don't want to mire this down in that discussion, all of these symptomatic financial problems beg the question: what would happen if we Valued (capital V intentional) education the way we all say we do during election years?fin

Teachers who make a difference

Fair warning: this post could also be titled "One More Reason I Should Get Out of Here" or, after reading my last post, "Nothing Goes Up That Does Not Come Down".

So yesterday, I was out hobnobbing with other faculty around a field throwing things to each other. And during a break, we did what faculty often do: we began to talk about students in classes, comparing notes, horror stories, and the all-too-rare success story. Somebody was telling us about a student who from day one of his very difficult class - and I say this with a twinge of envy: I want my class to be as difficult as his is reputed to be - just got it. The student could offer a good definition off the top of her head, could argue a point, and most importantly, felt not one iota of shame for being smart and liking it.

Incidentally, feminist friends, this is the next mission. Body image aside, let's start to deal with the fear of being seen as smart.

It was at this point that another faculty member chimed in.

"You've got to shut that down," he laughed. And we weren't - or at least I wasn't - quite sure what he meant.

"You've got to shut that down," he repeated. "I had a student once who had their hand up at every question. They answered them all, 10 for 10, perfectly correct. So I said to him 'Man, you've got to get a social life.'"

Awkward laughter and a bit of stunned silence.

"He got up and left the class, and never came back. Never saw him again." And he was beaming proudly. Proudly! He thought he'd done a good thing. Why is it that if a dog craps on my carpet, I can smack it, but when a colleague does it, we're forced to be polite? I can only hope he recognized the sarcasm and bitterness in my voice when I said "Yes, teachers who make a difference" and walked away to get some water.

Argh.

More on relgion and education

A little follow-up to the article referenced in "Heresy 101?". This one details the fate of the principal of a minischool in NYC that would teach some courses in Arabic in addition to courses on Muslim culture. Here's an excellent example of a reactionary reaction to the attempted marriage of education and religion, though at least from reports I've seen so far, this attempt seemed fairly sensible.

And now it's Miller time...

Today I got to dig in a bit more deeply with classes. Part of that was a sort of improptu manifesto on education and its merits to a group of mostly freshmen. I explained to them a bit about my own educational background - I was the first person in my family to get a degree. I'm the only one with a graduate degree. I did it on student loans and a whim. It was that sort of deal.

And part of what I told them - maybe I should have held over the "Heresy 101" title - was that I believe in Education the way some people feel about Religion. Now note - and I'm sure most of them didn't get this impression - I didn't pick out a particular religion. I didn't compare education to any savior, philosopher, or writer of a tome that attracts tons of Hollywood money. Instead, I told them something personal. Education, I told them, has brought me more than tons of debt, and even if that were it, then every dollar I'll be paying back till my 70s was worth it. That feeling, I said, is what I hope to help them come away with four years from now. I told them that what you get out of education is about what you're willing to risk. I said that they're only going to get out what they put into it. And that to get the most out of it, they have to confront things they don't like, things they fear, things nobody thought they'd ever possibly care about. You have to be okay with being wrong sometimes. I told them I'm not out to shock them or convert them. They don't have to agree with me because, among other things, I'm wrong almost as often as I'm right. I told them going to college to get a job is like going to the pool to only play in the shallow end. I told them I hoped they'd find some way to enjoy their education, and that I'd help them if I could.

It was, I think, the best lecture I've ever given, and I barely said a thing about the subject at hand. It was one of those moments where I felt like if they took even one thing I said out of the lecture, I'll have succeeded for the entire term.

Heresy 101?

Remember that faculty breakfast and dog and pony show? Well there was more to it. One other interesting point in the recent faculty breakfast and cattle show was the address by the university president Without giving too much away, the University president is among other things, a fairly good natured person, concerned with faculty ideas (or at least that's the sense I get based on his regular invitations to take faculty and students to lunch or dinner), and a Catholic priest. And in his address to the incoming and old faculty, he did something not so surprising, all things considered: he suggested that it wouldn't be a bad idea for faculty to begin classes with a moment of prayer.

Now this prompted all the usual responses:

• you can't make us pray, we take public money
• you don't have to pray, you can have a moment of silence
• we're at an institution with a religious bent - and with a priest as president - so you can't really be surprised at this
• etc, etc, etc.
  

Part of the president's point was that it wouldn't be strange to ask one part of a university to support another part of the university's mission. My thought, choked down as so many of them have to be considering my own views on religion, was "Great. I'll pray at the start of class when you spend 5 minutes at the beginning of each mass talking about proper grammar and punctuation."

But in the interest of charity, Christian or otherwise, I want to try and avoid the usual negative rant that this might inspire. After all, in some ways the sort of debate discussed in this New York Times article becomes so strangely polarizing as to be useless. So instead, let me set the stage with a bit of background.

Like many people I know, I've got a distrust of religion that's deep and glaring. I'm not comfortable saying it is because I'm liberal - I think it would be interesting to see what a liberal religious movement would be capable of politically. I've even debated tackling a book that would play with some of those ideas. And I don't think it's because I'm well-educated. I know plenty of well educated people who have some strong faith or other.

The roots of my distrust that I'm willing to point to come from direct experience with religion. I spent some time in a middle school affiliated and run by members of a particular religion, and the experiences there were more than enough to make me shudder at all manner of things. It's because of my time there that I don't trust big groups clapping at the same time. It's because of my time there that I feel a little nervous any time a large group of people does anything in unison. And there are later experiences that have only deepened this distrust. And I would be remiss to ignore that I do feel like I benefited from being dragged to church as a child when the choice was still my parents. There were moral lessons that I take from there that I think were quite valuable. And there were communal lessons as well.

But sniping aside, there's a big question that wouldn't hurt to play with. Let's assume for a moment religion isn't going away. Not here, not in the larger culture. If that's the case, sooner or later, those of us who are liberal, well-educated folks are going to have to offer some notion of how to integrate religion of all varieties into education (in the same way that I think the left must sooner or later claim some religious space as well).

Part of the difficulty seems to be the assumption that the only way to be sensitive to religious beliefs is to facilitate religious practice. Why is it that the notion of appropriateness of timing seems to fly out the window in the American context (perhaps it does this elsewhere, but I couldn't say)?

I suppose, as a colleague of mine noted, we could do simple things to bridge the gap. In his case, it was designing a syllabus that was so frightening even non-believers would hope for divine mercy. That's one solution.

Education on the clock...

I'd never thought about it before reading this article from the New York Times, but education in America serves, as much as anything, as a sort of calendar marking time. I didn't think about it when, as an undergrad, I mentioned to my interim advisor that I didn't have a plan for my electives - at least not a plan that he'd agree involved any forethought. Instead, I told him, I was going to take the courses that sounded interesting. This was clearly a foolish, wasteful idea in his eyes: the sign of a student set to drift along through college and probably not even make it out.

Why did I do it? In high school, I'd been assured by guidance counselors, by well-meaning teachers, even by friends with the same concerns that college was to be different from high school: we'd all get to do what we were interested in, not what the state or school board or our parents told us we needed. No more Calculus if I didn't want it, no more Government and Economics. College was about my desires. And though college wasn't the land of milk, honey and free academic choices I'd been promised it wasn't so far from it either. And so, I spent electives on things like World Literature courses, a First Amendment law course, a Jazz history course, even a feminist theory course (not because I thought I'd meet chicks there, either). When it was time to graduate, my school only allowed you to have one minor. But I'd jumped around enough without ever abandoning my major to have had five.

A lot of the same thought drives my views on education today. I'm happier because I got to explore. I even wound up taking more of those pesky Government and Economics courses than my high school career (largely spent drawing pictures of my Econ teacher in various embarrassing costumes) would have suggested. Along the way, I learned not just about cultural anthropology, not just about media history, or even about the practice of experimental psychology but also about smart decision making, about how differently people I thought I understood viewed the world, and even a bit about where I needed to be in the world. It was, as college is often assumed to be, my first real taste of freedom.

But it also took me five years and a summer session to graduate, and today I've got the student loan debt that reflects that particular desire. Even looking at that debt didn't spur me to this new thought: education is a form of Taylorism (if you're not sure what that means, see the definition offered here). What my first advisor had been trying to tell me was that taking longer than four years in college intentionally was a waste of time. It was unproductive.

What that article made me think about was a sort of cultural norm about when we become adults and what it means to be an adult in this society (look: a term from my cultural anthropology course!). At the end of high school, we assume people become adults: they're ready to make decisions, to serve their country, to pay taxes, etc, etc. But most importantly, they're ready to contribute in the most basic way: by getting a job. And if you're not ready to get a job, then the only excuse is to go to college. Why? So that when you're done, you can get a better job (huh - that course in sociological theory doesn't seem so crazy now...).

These are assumptions, of course (okay, so that logic course did pay some dividends). And perhaps unfortunately, we've normalized them - we've made rules based on those assumptions. And the modern academic system is built around them - it even penalizes "bad" decision making. A college education is assumed to take four years. If it takes more, you can find your access to financial aid diminished, you're guaranteed to have to answer in interviews why it took you so long to get out, and you may even take a hit to your reputation with friends and family ("Oh, you know he just drifted about awhile. I always thought he had more direction...").

But what if, as the New York Times article suggests about high school, a longer time spent in college might offer a different set of benefits than simple productivity?

Just a few days ago, I was in advising a student, and I found myself making the assumption for them that they need to be done in four years. And the student, not surprisingly for someone just entering college after years of having older authorities pass down unexplained proclamations, accepted it. Maybe I should have asked what she wanted to get out of her college career? Was she in it for a job? Or was their something more? And if she answered that she wanted something more than the quickest route to a slightly better job, how would the system have to work differently?

As I prepare for the first week of classes, I think I may have just hit on the first essay for my freshmen. I'll let you know how they answer.

Son of Shameless Self-Promotion

So this morning, I attended the annual welcome back faculty breakfast where we get to briefly gawk at new faculty who're made to pirouette while the higher-ups get attempt to use their vitas as part of a comedy routine. Meanwhile, while we - the entrenched, bored, on-our-best behavior old faculty - stuff our faces with free cafeteria food (I am increasingly convinced there is nothing more enticing to academics than the notion of a free lunch). Also this is where the University president traditionally exhorts us to some grand "moral" goal (the quotes are there because I don't necessarily equate the morals the president espouses with my own). And over the last two years, they've also started introducing us to the university's new marketing plan. That's right, kids, greasy bacon and academic commercials!

Oddly enough, most of us don't ever think about how universities market themselves. I'd imagine if you wanted to sell a university, you'd have to choose the best way to reach your ideal demographic. You'd probably edit your information to appeal to a 19 year old. Or maybe you'd even suggest, in addition to the official information, that someone try to figure a way to make the kids who're already at your university make their own commercials.

First, you target them, then you infect them. Viral marketing has come to the university.

Pause a moment and think about what that would look like. Would it say much about education, amidst all those fast edits and off-center camera angles? Would you even want to? Ever search for your university's name on YouTube? Could be worth looking at whatever turns up.

Off to the races?

Just for the sake of completion, I should mention that today I let both my Dean and department chair know that I'm planning to apply for jobs this school year. I'm hoping that both will contribute a letter of reference for me - of course, if they for some reason say no, then I'm in a bit of a quandary.

Last year I did a very small job search, mostly in hopes of landing someplace near my aging parents. And there was some oddness with my department chair over the matter of reference letters. It wound up being something of a semantic game: "You asked if I'd be willing to write a letter; you didn't actually ask if I would write one." that ultimately worked out, but that gave me a scare about the whole process. For a moment, it felt like my battleship was in a wading pool and someone just dropped a torpedo in the water with it. My career - where I lived, what I did, and all the things that extend from that: happiness, a social life, health - could be tanked because I forgot to say "Mother, may I?"

Life in academia carries with it a continuing sense of indebtedness in a way that I've never experienced as acutely anywhere else, even in my several years in the kiss-ass or die corporate banking area. Obviously there's intellectual indebtedness - that's why we cite things so religiously. And certainly I owe a lot to the various faculty and colleagues who've asked me to read something, who've challenged what I asked them to read, who argued with me over drinks at the bar on Thursday nights. But it goes beyond that. Having done both hiring in both and firing in the corporate world, I remember all too well how references worked there. When I was at the bank, checking references was essentially limited to calling an employer and asking "Did Person X work there?" There can be all sorts of legal hassles if they try to tell you that Person X was a bad employee, plus most people find someone who isn't going to hang them anyway.

In academia, the reference can be everything. You don't have to look far to find someone in academia who owes their career (or their lack of it) to the person who chaired their dissertation committee. When I first looked for an academic job, one of the interviews I had owes no small debt to the friendship between my undergraduate advisor and someone working at the school in question. Academics aren't afraid to call someone they know where you worked and asked for all the dirt. And they're not afraid to share with anyone and everyone who'll listen.

Increasingly (at least in my experience) potential employers want detailed reference letters at the outset of an application process. It used to be - or so I'm told - fairly common to just list contact information, and if an employer wanted more details, they'd contact references. But in the years I've been jumping from place to place and job to job, the majority have wanted letters.

Where this really becomes problematic is when you're casting a wide net. My first year of job searching, when I was A.B.D., I applied to 108 jobs. Imagine if even a quarter of them wanted a full letter (and I'm fairly certain it was more than that). Now imagine that you've somehow done someone wrong (or that they think you have).

Scary, huh?

So presently, there are four jobs out that I'm interested in. The theory is that since I've got a couple of publications and a book contract plus good teaching evaluations, that this is my best year to jump to a new ship. I'll keep you posted how it goes.

Wish me luck.

No more teachers' dirty looks?

I'm thinking about quitting my job.

This morning one of my students confided in me. She said, fumbling for words, that she's wrestling with the things most of us wrestle with - family issues, big questions of life, how to balance desire and duty. Her monsters were, to be fair, bigger than most. On her arms are the scars of someone who's cut themselves or been cut in the distant past. She's witnessed things no one should, and she's coming out the other side. Facing the end of her time at a university must feel like - as it did for so many of us - looking down into a big blackness we never before imagined.

Like most of my students - honestly, like most students (myself included) - she isn't particularly brilliant. But she is amazingly talented, and it is her work ethic that sets her apart and that will push her on to brilliant things. And I do believe - and I told her so - that she will go on to those brilliant things. I told her that some selfishness is warranted - sometimes you have to do what's best for you so later you can do what's best for someone else. I told her that I'd juggled the same questions about whether to even get an advanced degree or to simply find some quiet middle management job so I could tend to the calamities of my own family. Maybe it helped.

This isn't why I'm thinking about quitting my job.

I tell you this story because it is moments like this that are the best part of my job: not when a student is struggling, not when I can tell them that they're going to be amazing. It is the moment where a connection is made that makes this job worthwhile. Teaching is a bit like standing at the crossroads and hoping a car will pass your way at just the right speed to see you waving. It isn't about making the car stop, though sometimes it does. It isn't about making the car change directions though that happens sometimes, too. Most days, teaching is just about helping someone to notice the things outside of their own car.

Seen from that perspective, which sounds pretty good I think, it might be hard to see why I'm thinking about quitting my job. So why then?

Here's the story. I'm 35 years old. I'm going into my fourth year of teaching at a small university somewhere in America. I get to discuss big ideas and controversial notions on an almost daily basis. I get to ask questions, and watch people go past that crossroads, stop, look around, check the map, change directions and change themselves on a regular if not daily basis. There are worse lives to lead.

But I'm 35 years old. I'm looking for a roommate because I can't afford my bills let alone the loans it took to get the education to get the job that allows me to do these things. The job pays, as many university teaching jobs do, just a little more than I might make as a middle manager at a call center or a small bank. Each Christmas as my students depart, I spend my first day of vacation balancing my checkbook to decide whether I can spare the few hundred dollars it would cost me to go see my own family. I've spent the last two holidays in my ramshackle bachelor apartment with my dog, re-reading old favorites and assuring my aging parents that I'll be home next year, I promise. Sometimes we open presents over the phone. Sometimes there aren't any because it doesn't seem right if I can't get them much that they should get me something.

Now I haven't said I'm a particularly good teacher. That a student confided in me at the beginning of this entry doesn't tell you much, really. But the thing is, I'm not alone. I know more than a few people in the same job with the same problem. And at least one of us is bound to be good in the classroom even if I'm not. And more than a few of them are having similar thoughts.

It makes me wonder if any one is thinking about whether the idea that you get what you pay for might apply to education.