Category Archives: Culture

Why Abilify is a Good Metaphor for Our Current Congress and President

You’re probably familiar with Abilify commercials if you watch television. The ad campaign features an animated character who claims that Abilify makes her “feel better.” Of course, an animated character can’t feel anything, use a “real” drug, such as aripiprazole, or improve because of its use. Nevertheless, drug companies, I assume, think it’s fine to pay millions for this.

Furthermore, animated characters can’t really be depressed, therefore the assertion of the advertisement is beyond bizarre and should be judged false advertisement. Most prescription commercials fall into this category, as the people in them claiming to have benefitted from the drugs are actors, actors who are on multiple other drug commercials, but not actually “on” the medication. For an actor, who doesn’t suffer from chronic pain, to play the role of someone who benefitted from the use of a drug as a means of validating the benefits of drugs, is pure falsehood.

This is a good metaphor for debt ceiling analytics. The real problem was avoided for purposes of carnival, and our president and congress people floated an animated character, who, in the end “cannot feel better.”

A Brief Look at Austerity Fever (Irony)

The Hartford Courant’s editorial writers are demonstrating a touch of Austerity Fever (some call it Austerity Irony), meaning they’re suffering from the typical beware of getting what you ask for disease, which is the new course not just of American political forces but also European.

Utilities pay the salaries of the 14 employees who will be laid off, so DEEP won’t save much, if any, money, while consumers will get worse service. That doesn’t sound like a consumer-friendly trade-off.

About 45,000 customers of companies supplying electricity, natural gas, water and telecommunications called the consumer services unit during 2010. Obviously, there needs to be a consumer sounding board, information center and dispute resolution center in the new superagency. The old one has done a good job.

Why and What College?

Luis Menand on the idea of college. Via Mark Bernstein. Menand writes

When he is not taking on trends in modern thought, Professor X is shrewd about the reasons it’s hard to teach underprepared students how to write. “I have come to think,” he says, “that the two most crucial ingredients in the mysterious mix that makes a good writer may be (1) having read enough throughout a lifetime to have internalized the rhythms of the written word, and (2) refining the ability to mimic those rhythms.” This makes sense. If you read a lot of sentences, then you start to think in sentences, and if you think in sentences, then you can write sentences, because you know what a sentence sounds like. Someone who has reached the age of eighteen or twenty and has never been a reader is not going to become a writer in fifteen weeks. On the other hand, it’s not a bad thing for such a person to see what caring about “things that probably aren’t that exciting to most people” looks like. A lot of teaching is modelling.

Yet Another Thing to Get Out

Obama also said yesterday that “compromise has become a dirty word.” While compromise may indeed be a dirty word, like saying “shit” or “fuck” in church, such a statement reflects a misinterpretation of the problem.

It’s “reality” that’s become a dirty word. If, indeed, the Republicans and Democrats wanted to alleviate the burden of the Medicare/deficit ratio, they would concentrate on fixing health care system costs which contribute to Medicare costs. The CBO numbers on Total US health care spending and Medicare spending are interesting to this point.

Obama, Fuzzy Numbers, and Electioneering

These CBO projections have been going about some. They show that Barack Obama’s reference, in his speech last night, to a trillion dollar deficit projection was dishonest.

Currently we’re suffering from the consequences of perpetual electioneering. The narrative John Boehner is pushing is no better than Obama’s. The theme of spending and the contributions of SS and Medicare to the deficit are pure bunk and serve only to advance election agendas. I’m sure John Boehner’s aware of the housing crash and the cost of our so-called wars. He could simply come out and say: I disagree with Social Security and Medicare as government run programs. They’re cost may be worth it. But I disagree with them. At least this would be honest. However, such a position is not good for getting elected. This is the equivalent of a dealership that decides to put the real cost of an automobile on the window of showroom vehicles.

Anybody who has any gifts of strategy could have advised Republicans about how to manage their affairs after 2008. Simple: allow no Obama policy to see the light of day so that come 2012 they could argue his ineffectiveness. This is classic. The idea is that if Republicans supported an Obama initiative and it showed any evidence of success, then this would make success in future elections impossible, thus the irony of resistance. Strategically this makes perfect sense. But what’s good for elections is not good for voters, as even those who disagree with Medicare benefit from it, and even those who might have disagreed with a larger stimulus, most likely would have benefitted from projected employment opportunities.

Which makes Obama’s factual error stand out even more. He’s fully aware of the CBO numbers but chose to make a willful gaffe, revealing the insidious nature of electioneering. I think he’s been wrong all along to be lost following the scent red herrings. To promote them himself is yet more disappointment to this voter.

A Note on Economics and Policy

I’ve been reading lots of John Taylor recently. But a couple of issues come to mind in some of his recent post that perplex me, as we’ve been talking a lot in my writing course about standards of evaluation and evidence. In this post on renewing principles, he writes:

With strong economic growth and control of government spending the budget moved into balance. As the 21st century began many hoped that applying these same principles to education and health care would create greater opportunities and better lives for all Americans.

But economic policy went in a different direction. Some public officials found the limited government approach to be a disadvantage; they wanted to do more—whether to tame further the business cycle or increase homeownership.

There are a couple of gaps that need development here: who are the “many” who were hoping, and the same issues goes to “public officials,” which seems to over-simplify. Where do recents wars factor into economics here? What other factors are at play in Taylor’s analysis?

In another post on effectiveness of the stimulus, Taylor writes:

As early as the summer of 2009 it was clear that ARRA was not working as intended, as John Cogan, Volker Wieland and I reported. Research since then has uncovered the reasons why. One reason is that very large stimulus grants to the states did not go to infrastructure spending as intended, and that’s what Ned Gramlich found out about Keynesian stimulus packages thirty years ago. (links in original)

So why not try a stimulus with requirements that the money go to effective application. This doesn’t seem to be a critique of ARRA, but a problem with application. I’m interested in clarification.

Post-semester Impressions and Questions

It’s that time again for a semester review.

I come out of this semester with certain typical impressions of my courses and the people in them. I also come out with lots of questions.

Firstly, every semester is interesting and different. There are some things that are always the same. I always meet interesting people, and they’re always different. The students in my courses always impress me with their individual stories, struggles, and successes. In this vein, I’m particularly proud of certain students who met minimum requirements after struggles and, on the other end of the spectrum, people who kept to a habit of excellence, the kind of excellence that would be judged so at any college in the country. Some of my students, who are very good, maintained a certain inconsistency in their work that I hope they will try to overcome: it comes with discipline and concentration on the matter at hand (yes, I think weddings should be put off till after the work is done). Sometimes this can be difficult at a college where people are often seeking to get the gen eds out of the way and don’t feel challenged by a specialty.

Secondly, the question of bad habits is more interesting than good habits when it comes to thinking about necessary adjustments for the future. In many cases this semester I was left scratching my head at behaviors that seem more inherent to childhood than to college contexts. Most noticeable was the problem of attendance and the cliche email request: “Did I miss anything important?” I had students who missed a month’s worth of classroom sessions, where, yes, much of importance happened. Unfortunately, once something is missed it’s almost impossible to gain back. In addition, bad attendance records mar in-class work, as I depend upon a frisky crowd to get the juices going. A college classroom is a place where people are supposed to gather to engage the world; this engagement is the most important part of college, in my view. The other paradigm is the Einstein one, where an absent student might indeed pass a course by submitting a portfolio of writing that does meet the requirements. But in this model, Einstein was engaging the world intensely. I often found this semester that because of in-attendance, I simply could not conduct several class sessions because content was unavailable or students had not prepared.

Another issue has to do with the myth of hard work. Some people in my courses still think that simply working through the problem is enough. The question here has to do with “how much is learned through the work.” One thing that people learn in college is their threshold for difficulty and that time and work are subjective. Some people might need several months to grasp a concept or to demonstrate their understanding of relationship between argument and paragraph, while others will be able to develop their concepts only to worry about the strength of their understanding and the depth of their knowledge.

College is difficult. But it’s not difficult just because. Here’s an example. Most humans are storytellers and storymakers. Much of our relations throughout the day demonstrate the depth of storytelling as a means of framing our presence to others. “What did you do today?” and “Why do you want that?” are basic schema. But, this doesn’t mean that people grasp storytelling elements objectively with any ease. Some people may feel that articulating an argument is easy. But, I would argue that this is the equivalent of saying: “Sure, just point and shoot and you’ll have a fabulous photograph.” No, to do something well takes much time and effort. And if everyone is an excellent photographer, as a friend of mine once said, then every photographer is average.

I try to stress to my students that degrees of learning come with degrees of responsibility and awareness of ethics. We can see this today in the Mississippi basin region where learning has been applied and continues to impact everyone. Blowing the levee requires a great deal of knowledge. Not everyone needs to have that specific knowledge, though, but those who do have a tremendous responsibility. Is the control of water sound, ethical, and wise? That’s being debated. In literature, we would call this a theme. We must know what a theme is, find them, and then understand them not just in literature but in the work of engineering corps.

Humans have derived massive systems and technologies. Are they hard? They are complex, and understanding this complexity requires lots of work. So, yes, college should be hard. I have a story that illustrates my view on the question authority:

When the doctor needs expert advice on what to grill, he asks Joe the Butcher. But who does Joe the Butcher ask for advice when he cuts his thumb off with the meat slicer? They are, in my mind, dependent on each other.

As an ability-based thinker, I consider how my examinations, paper assignments, and classroom pedagogy shape what people think about in their efforts to learn. I’ve learned a lot about this in my efforts at the guitar. I’ve been practicing the instrument for a few weeks over a year and am still mystified by the mechanics, the structure of music, and the shape of my body. It’s been lots of hard work but I still can’t really play the guitar and song that I started playing many months ago still give me headaches. I ask several questions: shouldn’t I be better by know? Shouldn’t I be able to press a simple C note easier with my 1st finger? These are complex questions. I don’t have good answers. I keep practicing because I want to learn to play the guitar not because someone else wants me to. But I do know that I will never be as adept as many of my students and friends who play. That’s not the point. One thing I know is that this doesn’t make me less of a human being (though I may feel that way).

This is a significant lesson that has nothing to with grades. It goes to the notion of determinism and the system of ethics we work with in institutions that are “deterministic” in nature. Consider A, who is a student in new media. Let’s also consider B, also a student in new media. B, after several weeks, drops the course because this or that concept is difficult to grasp. Maybe he’s new to the media arts. Why doesn’t really matter. In culture, B would be judged as “dumb” versus A, who turns in her stuff and it works just fine. Why “dumb?” Let’s change the context and go back to 5th grade, where I remember a certain student, B, having to do the 5th grade again, requiring an entire year of retake (did he need the whole year again; yes, according to the cause/effect rules). As kids, we thought B was “dumb.” We might not have known that B was building a timemachine in his backyard and thus had no time to learn spelling. Maybe B had to take care of a sick parent. We, of course, only saw B through the institutional (our view of childhood was partly shaped by school) lens. Every time a student leaps to their death because of bad grades or whatever reason, they are working in an established system not outside of it. I’ve learned over the years that rebels exist just as much as believers do inside existing systems. What defines, for example, an atheist?

Culturally and socially, we struggle with human character and ability and have a habit of judgement that is unnecessary to creative solutions to problems. Some students may be disinclined to the kinds of things college covers in its complex spectra. Some students may require more or less time to learn. But our system is fixed and inflexible where it does not need to be so. In our search for ordered passage up the ladder to “jobs” and “careers,” we’ve perhaps not thought hard enough about how other kinds of creativity can be fostered. We will be reading more on the graduation bubble.

I wish my students luck, especially those who are struggling with the requirements. Now I have to think about certain adjustments. The thinking continues.

A Few Weekend Notes

1. We need rain.

2. Too much detail work is making my eyes hurt. (Better note: Pages is best for creating pdfs.)

3. Paying close attention to union and state deal, helpless to do anything else.

4. Made bbq chicken. It was very good.

5. Readying myself for the last assessment go round and a week of prep for the summer.

6. Gearing for 100 Days.

7. Summer work looks like: book making, poetry writing, revising pedagogies for writing courses as I am stymied, writing software in rails, and doing some test teaching and gardening.

On the James Tate Case: well, not really

Connecticut has this weird issue with students in high school, rules, and processes. The latest is Shelton High student James Tate and the case of the Sign and the Prom. Others include, of course, Doninger v. Niehoff.

What’s running here is the easy story arc, apparently made for national television and Youtube. A man buys a hat to impress the boss. Unfortunately, the company has a no hat policy. The boss is indeed impressed with the hat, then says, “But you’re fired, Hank.”

The “bad guy” in the “true” story is headmaster Beth Smith, who now has the full weight of the mayor and other state legislators against her. Even an alderperson has something to say on the matter

Shelton Alderman John Finn said Wednesday that Tate has “done nothing wrong” and that he thinks Smith will “lose a lot of respect over this.”

Of course, in the Hank story above we learn later in his story that the aforementioned rule may not be a rule just a “practice,” which leaves wiggle room, because the rule only applied to hats with brims. The world erupts, The Boss is now in a situation where face will be lost. The truth of it all will be sorted out sometime in the future.

And, of course, students will continue to graduate from high school with deficiencies in expected ability, but at least love lives on, legislators with “write a law,” and everyone will live happier ever after.

What is a Sensible Education Policy?

Reading the paper this morning was somewhat frustrating and dismaying. This year, Connecticut will see perhaps some of the deepest cuts to public education in a long while. Some people see this as either sensible or just the way things must be.

I disagree. Schools will shrink; higher education institutions will be required to cut services and programs; many graduates in education will be unable to fill those spaces left by retirees.

The opposite should be the case. If the current system of education remains (this is a qualifier) then more recourses should be provided to schools; programs and services of higher education should be expanded, and, not only should retiree positions be filled, current gaps in teaching resources should grow to meet demand. This all sounds counterintuitive, of course. There’s a budget crisis, after all; the economy has tanked; thousands of people can’t find work.

However, will diminishing the system solve the above problems? Will, as Brian Clemow argues in this article, cutting union bargaining power solve the problems that tax payers face (assuming that government employees are not tax payers), which is the language of divide and conquer? Unfortunately, we won’t know this from reading the article, which amounts to little more than a complaint that union members just happen to be energetic voters.

Private sector unions are active in politics, too. However, their influence is much less, in part because only about one in 10 workers belong to a union, while all but a handful of state and local government employees in Connecticut are unionized.

More important, private sector employees don’t have a say in who becomes the CEO or board chairman of their company. Public sector employees do, in effect, and this has resulted in their obtaining benefits that the average taxpayer can only dream about.

Interesting enough, Clemow never steps back and asks whether private sector workers should have a voice in “who becomes the CEO.” That 50,000 workers control who “becomes CEO” is strained logic for obvious, arithmetic reasons. In addition, the author provides zero evidence to prove a cause and effect relationship between control of elected officials and benefits. He may want to believe this, but wanting doesn’t make it so. It’s also unclear from the article from whence the unions will get “billions in wages and benefits to avoid layoffs . . .” Which brings me back to my original point.

It is indeed possible to find the saving Clemow wants. A more progressive tax code might be a start, as I’ve argued before, or some acknowledgment of the housing bubble and healthcare costs. Another scenario might be to simple divorce control of educational services from government’s role. Yes, the government might simply legislate the responsibility of educating the citizenry from its responsibility, just as it might legislate away the requirement of a balanced budget or taxes on yoga.

Come Fall 2011, no schools. Thus no burden on the taxpayer.

Of course, people will say: “Come on. That’s extreme. That’s not what we mean.”

My question will be, “Well, what do you mean then?”

It may be that the entrepreneurs will show up ready to purchase all the buildings and the neglected equipment and open up shop, hiring out-of-work ex-government employees and many faculty and staff from private schools and colleges (most people don’t have the time to do this and teaching human beings the art of learning is not easy, as most parents and fiction writers know). What they will quickly find is that their business plans don’t add up and that the per-pupil cost of education at the moment is actually an understatement not just of dreams and fantasies but of “reality.” We could always try this and assess whether the forecasts were honest accountings.

Rather, I would suggest that if solid education is the goal then we should strive to do the best job possible not the job we currently do, which is working for high ideals on a fraying shoe string. This would require, however, some rethinking:

1. Sufficient staffing and resources
2. Raising the expectations of teaching degrees
3. Rethinking the “grade system”
4. Integrating schools into the hum and beat of their communities so that they are less schoolish and more bent toward creative problem solving and learning
5. Rethink managerial elitism, expertise, and hierarchies

I may be wrong, but my theory is that the more robust the learning (rather than technical schooling), the more beneficial the system is to society. But maybe I’m wrong.