Writing a Collective Manifesto on Higher Education

Written by admin on January 9th, 2012

This past semester I had a chance to participate in something unique–a graduate level class in the Humanities that included a lot of group work toward creating a collective document on the goals of higher education as an institution. Now, in more technical- and science-related fields, group work at the graduate level is normal. However, in the liberal arts, it is the individual scholar with his/her individual tome that is lauded, valued, accoladed, and tenured.

Thus, when our professor opted to break out of this mold, the six of us in the class weren’t really sure what to do or how to do it, but with his masterful guidance through texts such as the Open Society, the Sociology of Intellectual Life, and Enemies of Promise: Publishing, Perishing, and the Eclipse of Scholarship (see the bibliography below for a sampling of texts we drew from collectively and individually), we figured out how to work together not only for presentations, but also in order to create this collective vision. See, we can, too, do group work at the graduate or scholar level in the humanities!

I have to say, I think we did a bang up job. Our manifesto brings the institution of higher education back to a focus on teaching (wow, what an odd concept that teaching and learning should be an unusual main focus for a school) as well as the need for democratic principles to be instilled in students at the university level should democracy as we know it or, maybe even better, as we envision it could be, to survive much less thrive.

With all that said, I present to you, the collective manifesto. Click here >>>>>

or paste the following url into your browser:  http://tccai.wikidot.com/collective-manifesto

 

 

Bibliography

Fuller, Steve. The Sociology of Intellectual Life. Themes and Contestations in Contemporary Academic Inquiry. Jim Collier, 2011. Web. 30 Oct. 2011.

Gutting, Gary. Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.

Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print.

Nussbaum, Martha C. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2010. Print.

Popper, Karl R. The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato. Vol. 1. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1966. Print

——. The Open Society and Its Enemies: The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath. Vol. 2. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1966. Print.

Stone, Deborah A. Policy Paradox: the Art of Political Decision Making. New York: Norton, 2001. Print.

Waters, Lindsay. Enemies of Promise: Publishing, Perishing, and the Eclipse of Scholarship. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm P, 2004. Print.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

More on the goals of higher ed….

Written by admin on October 16th, 2011

Just presented at a graduate student conference here at Virginia Tech, see Outside Authority. My presentation here (outside of my usual research interests)>>>

In brief, though, now at VT in one of my classes, we have been examining the purpose of the university as a site for knowledge production and knowledge mediation, and, the growth of the ethic of commerce or commodification across university disciplines. Further, we have spent considerable time examining what a humanities education means, what its goal is, how the models of research in the sciences have crept into the humanities and across society as the acceptable modes of inquiry, and how the humanities have become subservient to the modes of inquiry and interests of science and technology. Yesterday, at the conference above, we were quite lucky to have the plenary given by Dr. Zachary Schrag and also here>>> examining the role of the IRB in causing social scientists and humanists to subject their work (interviews they will conduct, for example) to the same type of review as biomedical researchers (who may do medical experiments with subjects–quite a different task and goal from that of the oral historian, for example). Along with having read his book on this subject for the class above, it was also inspiring to learn of the changes actually now being considered with the IRB due to Schrag’s work and the work of other critics.

This fits in quite well with a quote I have been mulling over as potentially part of how I see the goal of academia:

The academic’s job in a free society is to serve the public culture by asking the questions the public does not want to ask, by investigating the subjects it cannot or will not investigate, by accommodating the voices it fails or refuses to
accommodate. Academics need to look to the world to see what kind of teaching and thinking needs to be done, and how they
might better organize themselves to do it; but they need to ignore the world’s insistence that they reproduce its self-image.

(Louis Menand)

Posted in Creativity, education on and on..., Tech and Society | No Responses »

Addendum to my Chin Up post

Written by admin on May 24th, 2011

A Christian liberal arts college in Kentucky is now offering some regular courses in Spanish, not just Spanish language or literature. Read more here >>>>

Posted in Creativity, education on and on... | No Responses »
Tags: , ,

Why STEM majors switch to English & How I would make all PhD Students take Pedagogy 101

Written by admin on May 22nd, 2011

I found this report from CNN illuminating. Here are some key points to consider about STEM teaching and learning as it now stands here in the US:

from ww.cnn.com/2011/US/05/17/education.stem.graduation/index.html?hpt=C1

 

  • STEM professors foster competition rather than collaboration. Rather than trying to keep students in their classes, they push toward having the ones that can’t cut it, drop out
  • Students enter unprepared by high school classes and their college classes are sink or swim, so they sink
  • STEM professors are rewarded on their research rather than teaching abilities, so, their teaching is often sub par
  • There is a divide in the American psyche that science is not for everyone (see my earlier post about reaching across the aisle to STEM… and that in many other countries this is just not the case. Even artists take and are expected to do well in math.)
  • Schools admit more science students than they expect to graduate and do not teach students to support each other
  • Little mentorship is available in STEM

I will dwell a moment on the teaching bit. When I worked in Hollywood, I got a chance to see directors do their work. I was flabbergasted by how complex, demanding, crazy-making, and expensive directing is. When you watch a film or TV show and you think it is bad, the first words out are “I could do that or I could do better.” Being up close in Hollywood, I know that is just not the case. Just because you witness it does not mean you can do it. Not unlike teaching. Everyone has been to school, so, everyone thinks they know how to teach. Academics have spent most if not all of their lives in some kind of school…teaching is just something you absorb, right? Or, it’s a gift that you naturally have from getting your PhD. Or, the fact that you got a PhD makes you so brilliant and your students should just be lucky to be in the room with you, that you don’t really have to do any hard thinking about pedagogy or put much thought into the how of what you you are teaching, just the what.

I taught someone something for 13 years. I have taught everyone from K – graduate school. My master’s in pedagogy from the New School was KEY to why I did not suck and suck bad as a teacher. My many years of professional development in trainings required on-the-job and in subsequent graduate programs, including reflection on my practice, were the reasons I didn’t just “not suck” but actually was effective. My point is being a good teacher, whether K or of doctoral students is not just magic. I won every single minute of being an effective educational practitioner through knowing learning theory in and out, reading a lot of the best practice and research, working to make that practice and research work in my classrooms, and slugging away at hours upon hours of differentiating the learning and the material. Why then would anyone think they’d be naturally adept at something that everyone else needs training in? No one is that brilliant or attuned naturally. And as much mud is slung at K – 12 teachers in our society, no, people in the academy are not that much more brilliant. K – 12 teachers are not trained in teaching methodologies because they are too stupid to know better. Last but not least, even if there is such a thing as a “natural teacher,” which I have yet to encounter, for what it was worth, a couple times a year administrators sat in on my classes and then gave me feedback on what they saw, what was working and what could improve. I also had constant feedback from students because either they were getting to the goals or they weren’t. My job was then not to complain about the “weren’ts.” My job was to get them there, too, from wherever they are. So if what I was doing wasn’t working, I went searching to try something else.

What I do know, and what I have learned, is that good teaching, whether K or graduate school, is not as different in process as you think. Research shows deep subject experience matters…. but also deep experience and reflection on teaching and learning. Also, knowing where you want to go and how to get there….. Teachers are masters at thinking backwards from a goal. A good teacher does not state a goal and begin to plan from step A to B how to get there.  A good teacher states a goal, and works backwards from the last step before the goal back to the first step.

In life I have often encountered people who want something big, but have no idea or no commitment to all the little steps it takes to get that something big. Maybe even the start is strong, but then everything peters out. The advantage at working back from the end is that each step along the way is considered. The end steps are already envisioned and activated, so that the finish can be as strong as the start. It is not enough as a teacher to be a cheerleader at the beginning or be the one to yell, “Get ready, get set, go!”  The real mark of an effective teacher is the management of all the little tasks and the guidance of the process, not just pointing students in the direction of a product and saying, “Now go do that. You figure it out.”  Does that mean babying students? Absolutely not. It means also guiding and monitoring when students are ready to achieve on their own and being able to recognize that readiness. It is also starting with them and their knowledge where they are (and assessing that before moving forward) rather than where with where you are.

I have this mean and evil plan that if one day I am a university professor and I get to advise graduate students, each and every one will have to take at least one pedagogy class with those education major dummies they complain about encountering in some of their subject matter classes. I think I will make my doctoral students take elementary school pedagogy, where how we learn as children is really broken down, and where each teacher has to devise clear learning objectives for each task. Working backwards from my end goal, the objective here would be for my students to become humble about what it means to teach, to have reverence for being able to do so and for those people who commit to it and it only as a profession, and to get a wake up call that their subject matter brilliance isn’t enough. Being a good teacher is also something that is earned… something worked for. I would want my doctoral students to become aware of themselves as educators and also aware of the responsibilities of teaching. Last but not least, elementary school pedagogy is often kick ass with experiential learning, differentiated learning, individualized learning, and meeting students where they are. Sounds like the CNN article above is saying that STEM in higher education could use a healthy dose of that.

 

Posted in Creativity, education on and on..., Tech and Society, Uncategorized | No Responses »
Tags: , , ,

Michael Shuman & the Small-Mart Revolution

Written by admin on May 13th, 2011

You can’t know everyone and about everybody… I first heard of Michael Shuman at UK’s Appalachian Center‘s presentation this March at the Appalachian Studies Conference on growing a local economy in Kentucky. Now that my semester is winding down, I had time to learn more. I am very excited and motivated by his ideas, which he has condensed into this list below. I also listened to a great podcast on why focusing on local economies  is the key to strengthening not only America’s economy, security, and prosperity but these same three things in communities around the world.

Listen to a Michael Shuman podcast here>>>>

 

The list below is from: http://www.livingeconomies.org/node/513#comment-48

20 Measures for a Successful Local Living Economy

Thu, 03/31/2011 – 12:23

By Michael H. Shuman, Research & Economic Development Director, BALLE

This list elaborates what broadly could be measured to determine whether a community is progressing toward Local Living Economy goals.  Admittedly, some of these indicators would be harder to construct than others, but none are beyond the measuring capabilities of most local governments.

  1. Local Ownership – What percentage of jobs in the local economy are in locally owned businesses?
  2. Self-Reliance – To what extent is the community self-reliant, especially in the basics of food, shelter, energy, and water.
  3. Socially Responsible Business — To what extent are businesses present across all sectors of the local economy that are achieving high levels of triple-bottom-line success?
  4. Youth – What’s the probability that young people stay in your community once they are graduated from high school (or return to the community after college)? A related question:  What’s the likelihood that a young person can have fun in your community without breaking the law?
  5. Schools – What’s the probability that members of every age group in your community are increasing the amount of time they spend learning this year, compared to last year.
  6. Entrepreneurship – What’s the likelihood that an entrepreneur in your community, especially a young person, can find the capital, technical assistance, mentorship, and other support that makes it possible for him or her form a small business that he/she is passionate about?
  7. Relationships – What’s the likelihood that every resident knows the names of everyone on his or her block, and that the block throws block parties?
  8. Arts – To what extent are artists, writers, musicians, and other cultural creative drawn to live in your community?
  9. Safety Net – What’s the probability that the poorest members of the community find adequate food, shelter, and health care.
  10. Diversity – To what extent does your community have a rich diversity of races, ethnicities, ages, religions, and political viewpoints.
  11. Aging – To what extent has the concept of retirement been abolished and replaced by seniors embracing new personal and community missions as they age?
  12. Volunteerism – What’s the probability that a resident has run for office, worked for a government program, or volunteered for a community initiative or an act of civic governance?
  13. Sustainability – What’s the degree to which your community meets its needs, present and future, without impairing the ability of other communities to meet their needs, present and future?
  14. Investment – What’s the percentage of your residents’ retirement savings that’s invested in local business?
  15. Tourism – The degree to which outsiders come to visit in part because they regard you as a model community?
  16. Walkability – What percentage of your residents can find most of what they need – for work, school, purchasing, and play – within a 10 minute walk from home?  What percent of people living in your community work there?
  17. Subsidies – To what extent is every penny of city money linked to business development is invested exclusively in locally owned business?
  18. 10% Shift – What percent of your community’s purchasing decisions – including those of consumers, businesses, and procurement agencies – are going to local goods and services?
  19. Celebrations – To what extent are your conferences (like this one) places where solutions to once hopeless problems are shared and celebrated?
  20. Global Self-reliance – To what extent are you sharing your best practices in achieving all of the above with other communities globally?  How much time and money are you spending to help other communities worldwide to achieve the level of self-reliance you seek for yourself?

 

 

Posted in Creativity, education on and on..., Tech and Society | No Responses »
Tags: , , ,

Future of Education

Written by admin on May 13th, 2011

My post on Stony Brook’s blog Students First!

By Crystal Allene Cook

I was a presenter during the Defining the Future of Public Higher Education Conference. I want to again thank the kind folks that invited me to participate and the organizers.

I just watched Ralph Nader’s presentation. I don’t think he and Rachel Tillman are saying different things. I think he is laying out some of specific tenets of her broader call.

From his speech at Stony Brook I made note of the educational solutions Nader put forth as potential new models of education:

A focus on citizenship skills/practical citizen experience

A focus on ethics

These seemed to be the two overarching themes of where education may play a role in change for a host of other issues from student debt to health care to contracts, etc. Nader cites these two focuses as the pillars for education in a healthy democracy.

Nader also advised people (by which he, in this speech, means “Americans”), to get involved civically, and he listed the places where they can do that. These places ran from neighborhood and community to region to state to nation to world.

Here is where my thinking has, over the last two years, begun to change radically (for me), with respect to place, and, I will say a few reasons why I think what I have come up with is important.

My civic-mindedness led me to a mostly (20-year at this point) career in education and social issues. I have worked at most of the levels that Nader names: locally, nationally, and even internationally. However, I want to put forth a caveat on my “local” work. Though at one time I worked in NYC, Los Angeles, and abroad, I did not commit long-term to those communities.

My sense of self as an American and even my privilege as an American means that I am mobile. If I don’t like the situation where I am and I have the cash or contacts to go somewhere else, I can. This is a strength of being in the US—if I find the small town where I am from intolerant or I can’t find work where I am—I can leave. I am not tied to the land or to a landlord. I can even move to another country if I have the resources to.

This is in direct contrast to students or people protesting or organizing in many other countries. Wherever they are is where they are. Leaving is not easy, and if they could, where would they go? Furthermore, there may be no cultural incentive to go. Family is not just their nuclear unit, but their extended family, or maybe even their town.

Many students in higher education in other countries attend institutions of higher education in their own communities. In the US, this is often not the case. It is especially not the case for many working class students, because often no colleges or universities are located in their communities. Thus, students from out-of-town may work for gains for students on campus, and they may, for a while, go out into the “local” community to work while they are in college. However, four years later, often students are gone not only from the university, but also from the community that surrounds the university.

Further, being mobile is an accepted facet of life for many Americans once they get into the larger world of work. We go where we find a job, and our “community” and our identity is tied in with that job, or with our nuclear family, because, really, we are not committed long-term to the place where we are; economics may encourage us to move. Our job may re-locate us, or, our place of business may leave the US entirely, leaving us to find work outside of our community.

I came to Stony Brook as a Ph.D. student last August to begin to learn about the role of technology and education in communities in economic decline, like the urban Appalachian town I am originally from. However, in my time of reflection, I have learned that for me, the commitment I am looking to make is in the region with which I am most concerned.

This is not an easy decision. I am doing this at the end of 20+ years of living outside the region of my birth. Along the way, I could have also chosen to commit long-term to any of the other places I lived, but I didn’t.

The re-commitment to the region where I am from is also due to good fortune, in that I am able to pick up my graduate studies at Virginia Tech, and, through luck, my husband gets to re-start the land stewardship/farm project he began in North Carolina in the 1990s. Whereas his focus is on local food production and local manufacturing of products, mine is mostly on local education and technologies to strengthen democracy and self-determination in local communities.

Unlike previous decisions in our lives about place, this time my husband and I are talking about sticking with where we are moving for the long-term, for the long haul. Here are some reasons for this, for us:

•            Community is the #1 factor in democratic movements. Last fall I spent a lot of time reading through the academic literature on what makes people decide to participate in civic life and in protests. I looked at MMI (mobile phone, mobile web, and internet) and its role in protests in S. Korea, Ukraine, and even in Iran. It was not MMI that brought people to protest; it was the fact that the people coming to protest had been encouraged to do so by a friend or a family member. MMI only facilitated easier and faster communication among close, long-term community members. Ralph Nader in his speech mentioned the protestors in Greensboro, NC at the lunch counter. Malcolm Gladwell did a great article on them and on that in the New Yorker (last fall) that focused on the necessity of the close relationship those young men had. They were close friends. They had built trust. They had common roots before they had an extraordinary place in history.

•            Rootlessness breeds disconnectedness from people and places. If I make no long-term stake in the people or place around me then the people around me have no reason to make a long-term stake in me. However, as human beings we are programmed for connection and affiliation. Thus, if I am rootless, I will be connected to the things that I can take with me that go with me anywhere: my phone, the web, my computer, chain stores, celebrities (pop culture), my car, my money, my brands, what’s on TV, etc. Maybe my nuclear family (children and spouse). If I am lucky then I might be connected to an ideology or to ideals. However, with time, I have learned that for me an ideology and ideals only get me so far without rooting them in real people in real time or in a real place. It seems only to make most sense for that to be a long-term commitment.

•            Stuff. We (my husband and I) are tired of not having more control over where the stuff in our lives comes from and how it was made.  In our society, it is difficult not to be a consumer, but we are trying to figure out how to personally be less destructive forces as consumers.  We are starting with our immediate selves and our immediate environments: our food, our clothes, our sources of energy, the soil from which life comes, how we treat each other and the people around us. Again, we are very fortunate to be able to move to a place that allows us more control over the stuff of our lives. We want to depend less on far-away sources or someone else’s specialized know-how for our stuff. At the same time, we want to share our resources and our know-how with our community, over its many generations (those current and those future).

Thus, there are many important reasons (community, close relationships, furthering democracy, creating connection with people and place rather than stuff or even noble ideas, our patterns as consumers of stuff) linked to why we feel the need to get really focused on the local in our lives.

So, to both Rachel’s and Ralph’s points, what would an educational philosophy be if it focused on the ethics and the civic participation that Nader pointed out, but if much of the focus really were local? Not that foreign aid and foreign policy are not important. I am also not advocating isolationism. However, what if the first main focus in education were the sustainability and resilience of the local (people and place)? How would that change education from K – higher ed? How would that change not only communities of learners, but also communities?

Some people are doing some of this through place-based learning. I thought their principles were worth a look with respect to this conversation. Their focus is on place-based learning as a means through which to teach stewardship of the environment, but I think that a lot of what is listed here also comes into play around civic participation, and, is worth considering or re-thinking with respect to higher ed.

Promise of Place

http://www.promiseofplace.org/what_is_pbe/principles_of_place_based_education

I look forward to more discussion, and, to being your colleague based out of the mid-South.

Crystal Allene Cook
Doctoral Student, Science and Technology Studies
crystalacook@vt.edu

What Do We Need to Know, discussion group:

http://www.facebook.com/ – !/home.php?sk=group_200116696678939&ap=1

www.whatdoweneedtoknow.com

www.weareallfarmers.org

Posted in Creativity, education on and on..., Tech and Society | No Responses »
Tags: , , , ,

Chin up, Humanities, and reach across the aisle to STEM!

Written by admin on May 5th, 2011

Every now and again I am sure that just about anyone runs into a line of thought that leaves that person flabbergasted. Though I have spent considerable time engaged in thoughts about the Heart of Darkness in us all, the nature of evil, what each of us is capable of in extreme circumstances, etc., I had, until recently, been reasonably protected from hostility about the humanities. What do I mean by “hostility”? I mean, people questioning the validity of a PhD in English, or why have an English Department at a university at all, or denigrating the idea of anyone needing to be a specialist in Proust.

Maybe until recently I have been horribly, terribly naive, which would not be the first time. But here are some things I think I do know.

Beyond all the push for 21st century communications skills touted as a precondition for hiring by big corps, etc., in the modern age, or maybe, in any age, without strong communication skills coupled with strong skills to sort through information and discern what is useful, valid, and what is bunk, a person is left less able to defend a position, or, him/herself. Now, here I must confess that I ended up with a BA in History rather than a BA in English or another language in college… but the last time I checked, history really was in the humanities. Further, it was my deep preparation in textual analysis of literature that prepared me to learn how to conduct a historical analysis (to transfer learning from one field to another), which prepared me how to analyze the fine details and the larger picture of a situation, how to research, how to think critically, etc.

Thus, I am flabbergasted that those skills are not seen as a useful contribution to anyone’s education, whether or not that person ends up a humanities major.

However, after being in and around mostly people from the sciences this past year, here is where I want to put some strong words out to my fellow folks with mostly humanities backgrounds:

1. Nope. Academia is not a safe place for you anymore either,  my artist, writer, or polyglot friend. These programs are being cut at many universities. I am guessing they are not coming back.

2. The feeling is not mutual.

I have heard many an American with a humanities background talk about how difficult and tedious math or science had been for them and thus, how much they hated it. Among the same set from Europe, for example, or Asia, I have yet to hear of artists/writers/etc. complain about not being able to do math or hating math (but, I have not surveyed everyone– this is just my amateur take). In those countries and cultures, my guess is that learning is not binary–everyone is expected to be able to do science and math–why wouldn’t they? Then, why, in our culture, are people broken down, at an early age, into people who can do humanities stuff, and people who can do math/science stuff, and ne’er the twain shall meet?

However, by the same token, I want to put the word out there to the humanities folks to start reaching across the aisle, fast and furiously, first! My liberal arts education allows me to see how liberal arts fits into science and math, and vice versa. Regardless of field, communications skills are necessary.However, though fiction and poetry have become central features in my life, and I am a much richer person and analyst, and hell, maybe a more informed citizen, for having studied cultural history, I can’t expect everyone to develop those appreciations and loves that I have.

Yet!! In an educated society, everyone has to read. Everyone has to write.  The classics and core curriculum discussions of the early 90s have long ceased (of a need for a literature common to us all). The Science Technology Engineering and Math (or Medical, depending on whom you ask) people have won–that is where the gov’t spending is, where industry growth is, where academia growth is. Luckily, for the foreseeable future, even those folks have to read, write, communicate, analyze, etc. The humanities folks are up to the task of teaching and imparting those skills. But here is where the humanities folks need to cross the aisle.

The folks in the Humanities need to show that reading, writing, communicating, analyzing doesn’t only have to be fiction, poetry, or political/cultural history. The bulk of what most people receiving college educations will read or will need to read include:

academic articles

nonfiction texts

periodicals

critical analyses

The bulk of what they will need to write will include:

academic articles

nonfiction texts

presentations

critical analyses

 

My word of advice, then, is, my fellow writer, artist, polyglot instructor friends– you need to figure out fast, furiously, and first, how to incorporate these elements into your teaching, and, to go out of your way again and again to show how these elements contribute to the building of all students into critical thinkers, writers, communicators, etc.

Here are some short thought exercises to demonstrate.

French and German programs are being cut on many college campuses. Imagine if French and German programs also included curricula on scientific articles in those two languages, the history of these two cultures’ immense contribution to technology and science, and/or how to write academic articles in those languages? I know. I know. Maybe you just don’t wanna. The departments have long been built around the study of literature. But, if in reaching across the aisle to STEM meant keeping the department alive, would that be enough of an incentive to give something like this a try?

Similarly, English and art departments can reach across the aisle to incorporate readings, writing, thinking, and design related to STEM. Art is a natural background for anyone interested in manufacturing, product development, civil engineering, etc. to have.

Last but not least, a ready fit exists between history and STEM. NYU communications professor Neil Postman argued in his text Technopoly for a mandatory inclusion of the history of a field in the undergraduate major of any field. He asserted that the deep knowledge of a history of a field is key for understanding the way to move forward in said field. On that note, the innovation literature points to depth of knowledge as a key factor in innovative competitive advantage with respect to R & D (research and development) departments. Many history departments offer specialists on the history of the Industrial Revolution, Labor History, or of women and work, etc. It is not a far leap to take to include classes in the History of Biology, the History of Engineering, the History of Math, the History of Manufacturing, the History of Technology, etc. and potentially not have to stretch far to find competent instructors in history willing to create curriculum around such subjects.

I can hear the criticism coming my way for suggesting that what Liberal Arts already offers is somehow not good enough. I am not saying that at all. I am saying that folks in Liberal Arts have more to offer a wider academic community than they are currently being given credit for. Further, in my small amount of time in the sciences and tech field, I have heard people genuinely perplexed about what the humanities has to offer any more in terms of professional and academic relevance, AND in 2011 I  have witnessed one of the languages I minored in at college (German) get cut entirely from many universities under budget duress.

Taking people’s actions and thoughts at face value, the message I have been getting is clear: Humanities is not relevant like it used to be. I could argue till I’m blue in the face about how every American should read Faulkner or Morrison or be exposed to the root of the English language (German) or really understand the history of our country and the world, but, I may be arguing with myself, and, other people already like me–I would be preaching to the converted.

The way to make new converts is to bring them a message they have not yet heard in a way that meets them where they are. That is supposed to be part of what we teach in the humanities. Communication skills, persuasive reading and writing, new trains of thought, new paradigms, paradigm shifts, re-imagining the future, bridging fields, is what we are supposed to be about in Liberal Arts. If we can’t change and advocate for ourselves, then maybe we ARE no longer relevant.

Moreover, I want to take a moment for how I was personally done a disservice by the American binary of being good in Liberal Arts or good at STEM. As a kid, I loved science. I unfortunately had a terrible science education from the seventh grade forward (but a solid education in my English classes). My junior high school science teacher talked non-stop about his football playing son and cheer-leading daughter; we did no science the whole year. My subsequent teachers were inexperienced, at best. I had one lab my entire secondary school experience. My dad was on top of things at least enough to order Omni and Discover for me– that is where I learned initially what I know about science. In college, I was hungry to take a science class–BUT, I knew I could not compete in College Biology with the pre-med majors. So, for twenty years, I stayed far, far away (Okay, not totally true. I did teach Life Science for a year at a junior high and I taught science for two years as part of an elementary curriculum. But I had to relearn high school science on my own in order to be able to do that. I know now that my teaching would have been greatly improved by more higher ed. classes in science and math.).

If the STEM folks are as serious as they claim about getting more Americans involved in science and technology, they, too, have to reach across the aisle to the students in Liberal Arts that have a lot to contribute to scientific thought and knowledge, but may have been discouraged by ill-prepared teachers or by binary thinking. Introductory classes in science and math should also be made available and required at Liberal Arts schools that focus on the non-STEM major or potential major.  You also should get some people capable of bridging the binary to reach out. Do not just send your math PhD students to teach Math for Dummies to the artists. The STEM folks also need to learn how art is relevant to their endeavors, and how to reach humanities students where they are, and to search for areas of commonality between STEM and Liberal Arts as starting points.

In the last year, I have come back to an enthusiasm for science and technology that I had more than twenty years ago. My life has become much richer since taking on learning more about science and technology; truly, it is as if a veil has been lifted and much of the activity of the modern world makes more sense to me. I am simultaneously more aware and more able to be critical (and to support my criticisms) of this modern world. I am examining how technology through the ages has shaped human thought in each age, shaped what it has meant to be human, and shaped especially how we as humans communicate. In short, with no writing (a technology), I would not be a writer. With no keyboard (technology), I would not be the writer I am. Now, with no internet (technology), I may have never published a book. With no internet, I certainly wouldn’t have become a multimedia (technology) creator. Technology has impacted what I write as fiction, even what fiction is.

Thus, in every respect, any more, as creative practitioners, thought practitioners, academics, or employees, we in Liberal Arts can no longer afford to be STEM-ignorant or immune.

 

 

Posted in Creativity, education on and on..., Tech and Society | No Responses »
Tags: , ,

VOTE on What We Need to Know!

Written by admin on February 26th, 2011

It’s real simple.

Most of the information streaming non-stop at us is filtered by someone else making a decision about what we ought to know. Education agencies and schools decide for us what we need to know. Of course, their take is not neutral: usually it is some blend of learning and developmental theory and some kind of input from industry about projections for the types of knowledge needed by the future workforce.

But, what do YOU think we need to know?  In short, if you look back over your life or imagine your life going forward, what kind of knowledge or skill would have made your life journey, or that of the people around you, easier? What knowledge would make your life (going forward) easier?

I am serious. I want to know.  Click on the link below to take a survey. Of the ideas already listed, you can choose as many as you want.  And, you can even add your own ideas (they will appear after being screened for spam):

http://www.allourideas.org/whatdoweneedtoknow

My hope is for this survey to go far and wide, to as many people and places as possible.  It may actually help me shape the direction of some of my doctoral work.  I would also like to hear comments, if you have any, about how certain knowledge might make your life easier. Feel free to post below (it’ll show once it’s been screened).

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Research Interests A-Plenty

Written by admin on February 26th, 2011

Ah, the ways of a full-time doctoral student.  I have been writing and reading a-plenty, but just not on this blog. However, my research interests have been taking shape.  Here they are:

  • to examine the goals of education and to produce new thinking and models
  • to produce models for education  in deindustrialized areas/ economies in decline
  • to study history and human behavior through the prism of technology
  • to think hard about the role of technology in our society from a larger, global, mythic standpoint
  • to work on issues affecting Appalachia and my native West Virginia, in particular
  • to teach teachers, to reflect on pedagogy; to unveil the larger meanings and workings of technology; to teach how to teach about technology
  • to incorporate multimedia story-telling in research and pedagogy (and the teaching of teachers)
  • to bridge knowledge communities, especially technical communities and other communities (fine arts, liberal arts, formal AND informal learners)
  • to work on issues affecting food/farm… as a first line in food security and economic security, especially in economies of decline


Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »

Barefoot Colleges… and us?

Written by admin on September 11th, 2010

It’s been and still is a journey trying to get to the root of what plagues my mind and my heart when my mind and heart are being plagued. The process has been a cat and mouse game between the surface and the core: I imagine layers of velvet curtains, rich reds, maroons, so great to touch that they become what I think I am looking for, rather than what is behind them.

First, I was enchanted by digital media and the promise it holds. Next, I was caught up in the answer being in restructuring education from the bottom up (that might still be the curtain I like best). Now, I am digging through tools and technology.

Maybe what you want to know is my question? Still working that out, too. Nonetheless, I think it is a series something like this:

  • In a specific small deindustrialized community (like any number of them in southern West Virginia), what traditional and advanced technology capabilities do community members need (and to control) for that community to survive and to thrive?

  • What would be proposed potential changes in the understanding, acquisition, and use of previously established traditional and advanced technologies in a specific small deindustrialized community toward more control over their own and their communities’ destinies? What is a ranked battery of potential technological innovations that would meet the needs in a specific small deindustrialized community (like any number of them in southern West Virginia) to survive and to thrive? How could the most optimal be created and piloted?

  • What are the changes in technology and society policy from grassroots to local to federal needed for small deindustrialized communities to survive and to thrive?

The Barefoot Colleges have taken on the above questions and produced results and answers in the developing world.  What hybrid of this model would work in the context of our society? Here are the tenets, from their website, of their approach, which also defines what they do (belief and practice come together):

http://www.barefootcollege.org/abo_approach.asp

Gandhi’s central belief was that the knowledge, skills and wisdom found in villages should be used for its development before getting skills from outside.

Gandhi believed that sophisticated technology should be used in rural India, but it should be in the hands and in control of the poor communities so that they are not dependent or exploited.

Gandhi once said that there is a difference between Literacy and Education.

Gandhi believed in the equality of women.

What would be applicable to life in a deindustrialized American “village” today? What collective technical and survival knowledge do people still have? Who possesses it and what could they teach the rest of us? How do you get advanced technologies for surviving and thriving into the control of people in a small deindustrialized American “village”? How should the knowledge be imparted? Who are the people that need the knowledge most and are most willing to impart it to others? How could people be trained to innovate amongst themselves, in technology, but also in sharing knowledge and skills?

Posted in Tech and Society | No Responses »
Tags: , , , , , ,

« Older Entries