Disappointing Mindset

[Author's note:  If you are a college freshman or the parent of one, here is a pretty good blog entry on setting up your freshman year/college career. It came from last year, and it's something I'll dig up in three years. I was struck by the candor and the good advice from the entry. Somebody hire that girl!]

Sent my kids to their first day of school. Sent my wife to her first day of school with kids. While this has become one of the most high-pressure times of the year in our family, it is also the beginning of my favorite season. School is new again. Bands are getting new music. Second (third, etc.) chances start now. The high school quarterback from last year enters his freshman year of college with three children and a scholarship. Everybody's undefeated and walks into their classes with a perfect score. Everyone is dressed in their #1 outfit and ready to go.

Not sure about that skirt my daughter wore to her first day as a sophomore, but you pick your battles. I just took the third-to-last of the ritual first day of school pictures. Kept the shot waist-up.

Beloit College has made a name for itself by producing an important list each August. The list is designed to make college professors aware of just whom they are teaching. Often, teachers (professors) see the knowledge base as stagnant; thus, they teach in similar fashion. But kids change. Young adults change. While most professors have owned cd's at one point or another, most of their incoming students have not. Digital learning is a necessity to reach students from this new era. Each year, the new freshman class comes with some eye-opening revelations. Among things professors should know about these newbies:

• Women have never been too old to have children.


• They’ve always gone to school with Mohammed and Jesus.


• Grown-ups have always been arguing about health care policy.


• Charter schools have always been an alternative.


• They’re the first generation to grow up hearing about the dangerous overuse of antibiotics.


• As they’ve grown up on websites and cell phones, adult experts have constantly fretted about their alleged deficits of empathy and concentration.


• Public schools have always made space available for advertising.

But this year, the list seems more about the fascination with what happened in the 1990's. The authors seem to forget that these are 18-year-olds. Among the almost bizarre entries:

• Fidel Castro’s daughter and granddaughter have always lived in the United States.


• Andy Warhol is a museum in Pittsburgh.


• John Wayne Bobbitt has always slept with one eye open.


• Japan has always been importing rice.

In general, I can say that no, no they don't know these things. You do, beloved authors (who shall remain nameless in this blog). The fact that something happened in the 1990's does not mean they remember it. It doesn't mean they ever knew it. It probably didn't shape their lives.

Until now, I did not realize that more Americans traveled to South America than Europe. But it really doesn't matter to me, and I know it doesn't to them. At least to the vast majority of them.

The list used to be direct; it used to focus on things professors should know about their incoming students. While all of the facts are interesting, not every fact is worthwhile. Unfortunately, many of these facts aren't worth knowing. Others, which do matter, were left off. They've only known three presidents. They've never seen the U.S. seriously threatened by another country. "Made in China" describes almost half their belongings. But many things they own were designed here, manufactured in multiple other countries, and then shipped back. Yes, this Toyota was made in America. You can't go to the doctor without an insurance card. It's getting hotter.

How about this? Most incoming freshmen do not recognize the picture on the top of this entry.

Those are some entries that would keep professors aware. This list is more than an academic exercise. It is useful. It informs teaching. Research that informs this level of teaching is precious little. My hope is that it stays focused on informing professors (and not researchers) when my kids are part of those incoming classes.

Best of luck, classes of the future! I'm counting on you all to bail me out.

It Figures.

And now? The Aggies can't even leave. Yet. Doesn't matter. They're as good as gone when the SEC figures out who else they can poach. My first guess is N.C. State, another alienated school needing cash. I'm told there is a school there to complement their athletic program. If only there were a COLLEGE lockout. Oh, yeah. They don't actually pay players outside of tuition and fees. Another blog for a later time.

I'd Leave, Too!

OK, gotta discuss this. The highest paid state employee in all of Texas is...



Nope.



How about Giuseppe N. Colasurdo, M.D.--President of The University of Texas Health Science Center?

...not even close.



Yep! Mack Brown. Head football coach of the University of Texas. He makes $5,161,500 per year from sales tax.



No. This man does not sell car insurance where new customers saved an average of 44%. Mike Sherman is the head coach at Texas A & M. He makes $2,200,000. Still ridiculous, but you get the point.

After moving from the ridiculous to the near-criminal, the University of Texas athletic (read: football) department has actually found a way to damage itself, and do it in a way that couldn't happen from anywhere outside the "40 acres." Texas A & M University is leaving the Big 12 Conference. That leaves a 9-team "Big 12" with a questionable future. It could be the end of the third largest football rivalry (116 games).

UT deserves the migraine. Not just as a football team, but as an institution.

You can't start your own network, build in multiple unfair advantages (in a college setting!), and expect your local rival to stick around to start every season three to five major steps behind you in money, recruiting and success. A & M left because UT made them leave. If the Big 12 folds, it's on Texas. UT needs to go independent if they're going to act this way.

I'm sure I'll go off when the "Field of 64" gets announced in March, but there was a time when athletics served a purpose on campuses. They weren't money-making machines to feed on themselves. They were a way to entertain students on weekends, bring the student body together to bond, offer the athletically gifted a chance to improve their minds, meet people from other campuses through friendly rivalries.

Now? Well, none of that money from UT football is going to the foreign language faculty, let's just say that.

This is why liberal arts colleges tend to play Division III football or just ignore the sport altogether. The Williams-Amherst rivalry clocks in at 124 games. But it's not about football, per se, so you probably don't know about it. The biggest? Lehigh and Lafayette have played 145 games! Who cares?

The people that matter: the students, alumni, staff, community members. There are no "T-shirt" Lafayette fans. Their pride is in their school, not their team.

Schools are ranked many inaccurate ways: the size of the endowment, the area of the country, graduates from 25 years ago...but this one program takes the cake. I like to ask the question, "Name one thing about the state of Nebraska other than the Cornhusker football program." The most common answer? "Their basketball program." Cute. Especially since the basketball team up there rarely gives reason for attention.

Nebraska has other colleges and universities. I attended one. One without a huge endowment. One with a good football program at times that served its intended purpose. The same can be said regarding hundreds of other campuses. It was a terrific experience. Every grammatical error in this blog is intended. I learned stuff, and the athletic teams provided excitement, entertainment and pride in a strong school that wasn't home to the Cornhuskers.

You know, some of these football teams actually have schools associated with them...

Back in the Day...

Sometimes you need to look back a little to understand just how forward we all are. I once read an article in The Onion, where I get all my news, that spoke about Google renaming itself "The Google" to appeal to the aged. It's all well and good to make fun of older folk for not fully understanding the web, and I become frustrated when people get downright angry about having to deal with all this "technology" stuff.

That's where this video comes in.

Picture yourself on the set of Lou Grant, which depicted life at a major Los Angeles newspaper in the 70's. What was it like...doing all of this by hand? You begin to wonder how they pulled anything off, at all! Of course, technology just replaces people in this case, and thousands have lost jobs to computers in every major work sector. Still, it's good to take a step back and see where we were. We're trying to decide whether to jump from Facebook to Google +. At one point, there was a jump from a typewriter to a computer that seems laughable by today's standards. Check it out. Props to UCF for exposing journalism students to their past--directly.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27130824]

 

Head + Sand = Marginal

photo from wallygrom (very busy at work)

Again, it all seems to start in Texas.

That's why Molly Ivins called the Texas legislature the National Laboratory for Bad Ideas.

Bad ideas migrate up (and in this case, east). Congress wants to think about opening the floodgates to get everybody teaching. Senate Bill 1250 is set to fund "teacher academies," where those who have earned bachelor's degrees can become teachers without the hassle of further college coursework. The new plan would streamline the process, making it possible for working professionals (and currently-unemployed amateurs) to start handling teaching duties more quickly.

Academy teachers would not need any advanced degree, nor would they need to pursue scholarly research. If you can hire a teacher-trainer who didn't plunk down $20,000 for a graduate degree and pay your new hire less, then I guess the need for colleges of education is...

Oh, yeah. One more thing: the academies wouldn't need to be accredited.

Things would be different if there were a shortage, but there isn't one. Teacher layoffs are now an accepted part of the educational landscape. Further, there was never really a shortage of teachers--there was a shortage of those who were properly certified that were willing to teach. As early as 2000, Missouri had more than twice as many people certified to teach as they did teachers.

Academia jumped into the fray. They wrote a letter. The letter was, "signed by the American Council on Education, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, among others."

The worst part of this is that most academics figure that this should (or will!) take care of matters. They have spoken. They are experts. People will listen. A key issue with the academic world is that it fails to listen to anything across the street from a campus, let alone thousands of miles away. But decisions are being made, and this one will hurt if it comes to pass. Teachers unions have been fighting these "academy" training programs on the basis of professionalism, but academics have always been content to look the other way in disgust and call it good.

It's a Senate bill. It ends with a zero. It's on paper, and it is scheduled for a hearing. The past year or so, the bill went from an idea to a means of destruction. The response? A letter. Nobody will organize. Nobody got involved until it was too late. So nobody's listening. Now it's just a matter of political will, and that doesn't bode well for a group of people that find themselves above such matters.

This is a perfect example of the ivory tower. At one point, alternative certification was abnormal. After all, you'd have to drop what you were doing and get licensed. Today, that's not the case. Instead, you can teach almost instantly after garnering a bachelor's degree in anything down here. Anything. Degree in Psychology? Pass the test and instantly become eligible to become a middle school science teacher.

As long as you're paying a "certifying agent," that is.  That will be $4,000. Thank you. Alternatively certified teachers make up the supermajority of new teachers in Texas now. You just don't need a teaching degree to teach in Texas. Some programs are fine. Others are run out of bail bonds companies. Still others (see, Teach for America) cream and instill demands that ensure their "great ideas" will never scale.

What makes this almost unbearable is that the young men and women who chose to become teachers from the beginning will be paid less than those who thought, "This isn't working. Maybe I'll just go teach."

The certificate would count as a master's degree, in terms of pay scale.

I enjoyed my time in academia. Teaching bright students how to engage young people was always fulfilling. But this example shows the need for colleges and universities to become much more mindful of the off-campus world. It shows the need to drop assumptions. It shows the need to drop any sense of entitlement.

And it shows the need for action, not words.

 http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/01/higher_ed_groups_oppose_teacher_training_bill