Job Markets and Political Money

My Twitter feeds are pouring with woes about peoples’ hard luck on the job market. Yet other sources are reporting on big money being dumped into political campaigns. The irony of this is sad.

Shades of Grey and Other Entertainment Adventures

I’ve been having issues with E.L. James’s novel Fifty Shades of Grey. I’ve been cheating with it, that is, skipping even the juicy parts. I fear that I’ll miss the pay off, as this is foreshadowed in the Steele/Grey interaction. I’m afraid I’ll be leaving it at about 40 some odd percent on the Kindle. Maybe I’ll finger through it at moments of boredom.

We also finished the final House episode. The story goes semi-full circle with the “I can change” bit. It was okay. I found the hour lead up somewhat silly and bothersome. It strikes me that both stories are odd externalizations, the first a throwback, the second, a sort of strange, myopic self-indulgence that doesn’t know when to end itself. Maybe there’s a point to that.

I have no issue with the first as a potentially political book. I find it dull and syntactically, contextually vapid.

Success in College? Still Open for Debate

This Q and A from Nick Pandolfo has me scratching what hair I have left after a recent visit with a mirror and trimmers. The subject is a recent study on college success. Dan Chambliss says

The goal of this was to find how colleges or universities could have relatively resource-neutral, reliably effective interventions that really help students in a big way. In other words, how can you do stuff that you know you can do, that you know will make a positive difference, but you don’t have to turn the world upside down or have a big capital campaign and spend a lot of money.

A response to the question of solutions is:

It’s all about people, not programs. Colleges spend a huge amount of time and effort worrying will they have writing-intensive programs or a freshman seminar program or if a major is set up right or if their curriculum is done this way or that – all the kind of stuff about the content and information for kids and students. That’s not where it’s at.

This is where “it’s at” when you are constructing a program. The curricular points are somewhat important and don’t always go to the idea of “success.” The question may be: what’s the best way to teach heart transplants? How people feel about this may not be high on the list.

I agree, however, about the significance of human contact. But this is awfully random to generalize. I can remember those critical conversations I had in school. But these had nothing to do with the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of programs or the decisions people made about teaching methods and goals.

On Learning and Connecticut’s SB40

If Connecticut’s governor signs the S.B. 40 legislation, I fear we’ll be taking steps out of semi-lit and into even darker rooms. It’s hard to say whether a piece of legislation is a backward step, as the course that legislation is meant to adjust may not have been progressive in the first place. The latest public writing about this comes from Jaggar, Bailey, and Hughes in the Hartford Courant. The author’s state their claim in the third paragraph

Overall, we applaud Connecticut’s efforts to rethink its system of remedial education. Nationally, as many as 60 percent of community college students take at least one remedial class, and only around a quarter of these go on to complete a credential. It is essential that states focus on developing policies that will help colleges achieve better results. Given the paucity of knowledge about what works for remedial students, however, Connecticut’s bill is too inflexible.

There’s a subtle charge in this paragraph: that the promoters of the law are either misreading the evidence about “remedial” education or they’ve gone a tad bit too far in the intent

To allow all students open access to entry level courses in a college level program and prohibit public institutions of higher education from forcing any student to enroll in a remedial course.

Section 1.c of the act reads thusly

(c) Not later than the start of the fall semester of 2014 and for each semester thereafter, if a public institution of higher education determines, by use of multiple commonly accepted measures of skill level, that a student is below the skill level required for success in college level work, the public institution of higher education shall offer such student the opportunity to participate in an intensive college readiness program before the start of the next semester. Such student shall complete such intensive college readiness program prior to receiving embedded remedial support, as provided in subsection (b) of this section. The Board of Regents for Higher Education, in consultation with Connecticut’s P-20 Council and the faculty advisory committee to the Board of Regents for Higher Education, shall develop options for an intensive college readiness program.

Section 1.b goes like this

(b) Not later than the start of the fall semester of 2014 and for each semester thereafter, if a public institution of higher education determines, by use of multiple commonly accepted measures of skill level, that a student is likely to succeed in college level work with supplemental support, the public institution of higher education shall offer such student remedial support that is embedded with the corresponding entry level course in a college level program. Such embedded support shall be offered during the same semester as and in conjunction with the entry level course for purposes of providing the student with supplemental support in the entry level course.

It’s tough understand with also including Section 1.d

(d) Not later than the start of the fall semester of 2014 and for each semester thereafter, no public institution of higher education shall offer any remedial support, including remedial courses, that is not embedded with the corresponding entry level course, as required pursuant to subsection (b) of this section, or offered as part of an intensive college readiness program, except such institution may offer a student a maximum of one semester of remedial support that is not embedded, provided (1) such support is intended to advance such student toward earning a degree, and (2) the program of remedial support is approved by the Board of Regents for Higher Education.

If the above appears easy to understand, then please send me something on a get-well card.

It would seem to me easier to simply ask colleges to review the effectiveness of their systems and to do some innovation, where they see the need. Colleges by their nature have, after all, a vested interest in their students’ success. The above three section parts are very difficult to parse in regards to “why this is a solution.” At the college, my colleagues have strained themselves crazy over the years trying to figure out how to make access smoother and prep student to accomplish their goals. They are not disregarding under preparedness. Indeed, they understand under preparedness very well. And they don’t want to trick students into forking over their’s or the taxpayers’ money just to line their own or their institutions’ pockets, which are always empty but for the little puffs of lint. These are some of the hardest working people I know.

The problem is that students are enrolling in college underprepared for the work, and so, what is a college to do? More students who are underprepared are enrolling in college, and, so, what is a college to do? This is why a quarter of students in the above mentioned group either drop out or otherwise don’t complete. Because they are underprepared. A larger issue has to do with the requirement of universal higher ed, but that’s a different story.

It’s certainly not unreasonable to ask colleges and universities to evaluate their entrance requirements. Do the tests measure what they’re meant to measure? Are freshman courses too difficult or too strict in their standards? We could ask hundreds of questions. A significant issue about which to wonder has to do with the legitimate concerns of people working in academic and professional disciplines.

The reader may ask, why are so many students underprepared? And for the umpteenth time the response will be the same: testing obsession, grade inflation, curriculum mismatch, the simple arithmetic of bodies, the need to reform cores as cooperative communities, the tectonics of technological ecology, and, most significantly, struggling communities of people. How about a year or a few years off to grow up a little for college bound students? My metaphor has always been “Aristotle in the 9th grade.” Maybe someone else has a better name. But I hope the general point is clear. I’d bet that if general knowledge tests were de-emphasized, then students who actually want to go to college would be a little better prepared or less tired when they get there.

But, then again, when I was a kid, I didn’t want to learn any of the stuff my teachers wanted me to know. I wanted to read my own books, play in the band, and goof off.

Ultimately, I would argue that the legislature in this regard is ignoring the reality of the totality of education in the state and is looking for an easy out, an easy target that will play act as a solution.

The Free Bible Plan

I like the idea of the free bible plan. Indeed, people’s lack of knowledge about religion is a real hindrance to my teaching in British Literature. Historical and cultural literacy is just as important as science and numerical knowing. Whether people “believe” is not an issue. That should be left to someone’s place of worship or la famalia.

The issue should be about free and open inquiry into all rationale ideas, not just those the school board thinks are salient.

On the Question of Evil

I was brought up in the Catholic Church in the diocese of El Paso Texas. We did Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Sundays and all the religious holidays. We did the Advent Wreath, early morning Christmas mass. I was a curious altar boy as none of the robes fit.

In this context, evil was defined as sin, as a cause, and as a reduction point. We were all sinners and had to avoid sin at all costs or Hell would flag at us after dying. There were also evil people in the world. That’s an exaggeration. We grew up with the typical cast of characters: Christ, the Devil, the Holy Spirit, and Mary and Pilot and Judas. First Communions came. We got our missals (I lost mine and still kick myself for it). But I also grew up surrounded by stories of World War II and the Holocaust. My nightmares were filled with images of being lost deep in Nazi Germany. I grew up with the language of fascism and communism, all the scares of the 50s and 60s. But the neighborhood was also nicely multicultural. So much so that we never really took on the language of race or ethnicity. We knew everyone by their names. The Enemy was defined as “anyone we didn’t know.”

In Anglo-Saxon cultures, the word evil was attributed to bad behavior. They could be seen as synonymous and thus syncretically meshed well into the growing spread of Christianity out of the historical periods.

A list could certainly be drafted providing all the senses of the term evil. Evil as cause, however, or as adjective or as philosophical quandary, as in the “problem of evil,” or as a noun all need qualification beyond those attributions and formulae.

At some point, Hitler and Komisarjevsky lost their sense of empathy, their ability to see others as human within the universe of humanity. The better formal educators I had about this question of empathy were Borowski, Baldwin, Garcia Marquez, and numerous other poets, even Roddenberry. Borowski didn’t have answers to causality. But he had a powerful sense of irony.

I really don’t think my ideas about evil are all that interesting. To me, the notions it evokes are just irrelevant.

On Almost Being Done with Firefox and Moving to Chrome

The latest version of Firefox is loading ads above search results, which confuses the search priority and has led to my clicking on ads rather than results. Chrome doesn’t do this. If something doesn’t change, I’ll have to switch to Chrome after being a long time Firefox user and fan.

The Cost of Higher Education

While I agree with the Hartford Courant in this editorial that the cost of a Community College education is a reasonable alternative, its other points are naive. The editors could read up on the economics of higher ed and find that even expensive colleges are still relatively cheap for the “real” outlay. Housing, technology, physical plants, salaries for people who do actual work, and all the other stuff that goes into the modern college costs a hell of a lot. If everyone sought the reasonable alternative, the reasonable alternative would have to “ask for more money to expand.”

The article also provides no evidence showing that students are “startled” at the price of their loans once they’ve graduated.

The editorial supplies this weird statement: “These debts drain money from the economy because it isn’t spent on goods and services that would help create more jobs.”

We could therefore make the argument that all college debt should be forgiven, as this would benefit the economy and be a boon for jobs. Fine by me.

It would seem from the article that the Hartford Courant would be advocating immediate health care reform as a means of assisting states with their budgets. Fine by me, too. The Courant editorial staff should be well aware that millions of dollars have been subtracted from our budgets and additional responsibilities added to the work load. To, therefore, argue about costs is irresponsible.