A bit of a digression from higher ed this time to comment on the recent report of the state of Massachusetts on my eldest daughter's reading comprehension ability, which apparently is not up to snuff as far as they're concerned. Fortunately, the interweb now allows the interested parent to see the actual questions and reading assignments on which this assessment is based. It turns out that there were 12 multiple choice questions (and one short answer question but we cannot see the answer to that one). She got the first 8 right. These were on a reading about a boy getting milk in the snow.
She got one of the next 4 questions right, in other words, as well as a chimp who couldn't read might have done. This reading was on the launch of the nuclear submarine Nautilus. I can only assume that Molly doesn't like subs. I have to ask: what is our school doing to bridge the gender gap and ensure that little girls are as intrigued about Cold-War submarine history as little boys? I can only hope they are on the case.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Historical Thinking and other Unnatural Acts
My history 101 sections are going brilliantly well, for what it's worth. It won't get me a job and it won't change the world, and it all happens in a national, regional, and local context that constrains the outcomes. But we've been having fun, point one. And we've been engaged in the kind of historical thinking that all the right thinking people who think about history think we should be thinking. So I turned back to Sam Wineburg's Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts (http://www.amazon.com/Historical-Thinking-Other-Unnatural-Acts/dp/1566398568) to review and see where the gap was between my class and nirvana. Here's what I found.
Wineburg writes in the context of the history wars of a decade ago and concludes, as many historians did, that the battle over what to teach in history obscured the more fundamental question of why teach history. We've already reviewed carefully what the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks say about teaching history (indoctrinate youth so they will be willing to fight and die to uphold Western Civilization, or at least pass a test). But Wineburg says it is something else: we study history to transcend ourselves, to be humanized in a way that, he argues, only history can humanize us. The only trick is the balance between studying people at another time and place and seeing that they are both exactly like us and nothing like us.
That's all well and good until we arrive at an essay near the end that recounts the supposedly transcendant class exercise about the so-called "Critical Period" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Critical_Period) in American history. The lesson culminated in a class discussion that ended up being about the question of whether there is moral law that superceeds national law. They revisited the Nuremberg Trials.
As recounted, the class discussion was wide ranging and energetic, but there's the rub: the students made repeated reference to specific historical events and questions in making arguments about whether there is indeed a higher moral law. Aha! Where and when did they learn these? One must assume that either they spent hours hearing them, or reading deeply contextualized references to them. In other words, they had loads of content in their heads before they started thinking historically, or doing what historians do.
Squaring the circle of student knowledge remains the fundamental problem. In lieu of deeply historical understanding of, say, Mesopotamian civilizations, I simply ask students about their own civilization. That alone takes us from them having lots of answers to them having lots of questions -- high school was about answers, college is about questions -- but we do all of this with the barest base of factual knowledge.
Wineburg's right in his critique of teaching history -- which he shows goes back nearly 100 years without change. But he celebrates the kind of well-informed students he thinks we'd all like to have at the table before the conversation begins.
Wineburg writes in the context of the history wars of a decade ago and concludes, as many historians did, that the battle over what to teach in history obscured the more fundamental question of why teach history. We've already reviewed carefully what the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks say about teaching history (indoctrinate youth so they will be willing to fight and die to uphold Western Civilization, or at least pass a test). But Wineburg says it is something else: we study history to transcend ourselves, to be humanized in a way that, he argues, only history can humanize us. The only trick is the balance between studying people at another time and place and seeing that they are both exactly like us and nothing like us.
That's all well and good until we arrive at an essay near the end that recounts the supposedly transcendant class exercise about the so-called "Critical Period" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Critical_Period) in American history. The lesson culminated in a class discussion that ended up being about the question of whether there is moral law that superceeds national law. They revisited the Nuremberg Trials.
As recounted, the class discussion was wide ranging and energetic, but there's the rub: the students made repeated reference to specific historical events and questions in making arguments about whether there is indeed a higher moral law. Aha! Where and when did they learn these? One must assume that either they spent hours hearing them, or reading deeply contextualized references to them. In other words, they had loads of content in their heads before they started thinking historically, or doing what historians do.
Squaring the circle of student knowledge remains the fundamental problem. In lieu of deeply historical understanding of, say, Mesopotamian civilizations, I simply ask students about their own civilization. That alone takes us from them having lots of answers to them having lots of questions -- high school was about answers, college is about questions -- but we do all of this with the barest base of factual knowledge.
Wineburg's right in his critique of teaching history -- which he shows goes back nearly 100 years without change. But he celebrates the kind of well-informed students he thinks we'd all like to have at the table before the conversation begins.
Monday, September 21, 2009
What can we expect of working students?
This year's students seem to have more responsibilities outside of school than those I had last year. I've not run numbers, but I cannot think of a student last year who had children to care for but this Fall I've got at least a half dozen if not more.
But, as in the past, the most common responsibility outside of school is working for pay. Of course school is more important than working at Foot Locker (Someone came to class in their refs outfit from that shoe store and we learned that they have removed the peas from all of their whistles so that they are merely ornamental. A typical assault by corporate America on the freedom of the working woman!). Yet the immediacy of work conflicts with the importance of school.
Consider the example of a young woman who failed World History with me last Fall and is back for another go. Last year she never bought the text the class and didn't make a regular habit of attending class. This year, she still has not activated her Salem State email account and still has not bought the book. Then she fell ill. We spoke one evening last week about what she needed to do to avoid a repeat of last year. She's already missed two classes on account of the illness and needs to get ahold of the book. Equally important she needs to get well and come to class, I reminded her. The problem she tells me with both of these needs is work. She can miss class, but she cannot miss work.
That really hurts. Sure, it could be a dodge, an excuse for which any other would do as well. But knowing this student I don't think that's the case. Instead, the consequences of missing work are more immediate and potentially harsher than missing school. She's already given up playing sports for Salem State and has taken summer classes to get back on track. So somehow in America it is not worth the government paying a student $10.00 and hour to go to class, but it is worth letting Foot Locker pay that student $10.00 an hour to work at the mall. I guess we get the society we deserve.
But, as in the past, the most common responsibility outside of school is working for pay. Of course school is more important than working at Foot Locker (Someone came to class in their refs outfit from that shoe store and we learned that they have removed the peas from all of their whistles so that they are merely ornamental. A typical assault by corporate America on the freedom of the working woman!). Yet the immediacy of work conflicts with the importance of school.
Consider the example of a young woman who failed World History with me last Fall and is back for another go. Last year she never bought the text the class and didn't make a regular habit of attending class. This year, she still has not activated her Salem State email account and still has not bought the book. Then she fell ill. We spoke one evening last week about what she needed to do to avoid a repeat of last year. She's already missed two classes on account of the illness and needs to get ahold of the book. Equally important she needs to get well and come to class, I reminded her. The problem she tells me with both of these needs is work. She can miss class, but she cannot miss work.
That really hurts. Sure, it could be a dodge, an excuse for which any other would do as well. But knowing this student I don't think that's the case. Instead, the consequences of missing work are more immediate and potentially harsher than missing school. She's already given up playing sports for Salem State and has taken summer classes to get back on track. So somehow in America it is not worth the government paying a student $10.00 and hour to go to class, but it is worth letting Foot Locker pay that student $10.00 an hour to work at the mall. I guess we get the society we deserve.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Beware the popularity of Jared Diamond
Well blog followers and advertisement clickers, soon we will be back in full swing. As the semester approaches, I can report that the higher educators of Salem State will be trying to do more with less: an increase of 25% in my insurance premiums (IE I will pay not 20 but now 25% of the premium for my family) and an increase of 10 to 20% in class sizes. All the more reason for you to click those ads because every fraction of every penny (and that's what it is worth) keeps food on the table.
I'm now preparing two different World History I classes, what we now call a F2F (face to face) and a hybrid class (half the class time but online work). It should be amusing and much better than last year when I used a textbook. I will be lecturing, but since it's the 21st century my lectures will all be 5 minutes long and be available to students pretty much whenever they want by Youtube, Screencast, and other sources. As some of you know, I'm a technophile at heart so I enjoy having to write my own html embeds and search the web for swf to flv converters. But it sure takes time.
Now what about this Jared Diamond fellow? I'm laying out the scope of big arguments about human history as existing between polls of environmental and cultural determinism. Diamond is the environmental guy, one step away from those that insist we're all just DNA slaves out to propogate. The complaint here isn't about his turgid prose or the fact that he gets so much wrong (see the lastest research on Easter Island, for example). In fact, the complaint isn't about him at all as much as it is about his popularity. (Yes, you can discount this all to jealousy -- as long as you click those ads!) He is popular because he writes what are essentially "Just so" stories. The world is as it is because this is the way it had to be thanks to geography, climate, and biology. It is interesting to note, however, that he is attacked from the right for being to presentist in his approach: that is for writing environmental jeremiads rather than well-researched histories.
I don't question the man's integrity or motivation. It's just that he's not a historian. Perhaps arcanely I still believe that the humanities professor is obligated to speak inconvenient truth to power in a way that is empowering. The scientist Diamond is not so missionary.
I'm now preparing two different World History I classes, what we now call a F2F (face to face) and a hybrid class (half the class time but online work). It should be amusing and much better than last year when I used a textbook. I will be lecturing, but since it's the 21st century my lectures will all be 5 minutes long and be available to students pretty much whenever they want by Youtube, Screencast, and other sources. As some of you know, I'm a technophile at heart so I enjoy having to write my own html embeds and search the web for swf to flv converters. But it sure takes time.
Now what about this Jared Diamond fellow? I'm laying out the scope of big arguments about human history as existing between polls of environmental and cultural determinism. Diamond is the environmental guy, one step away from those that insist we're all just DNA slaves out to propogate. The complaint here isn't about his turgid prose or the fact that he gets so much wrong (see the lastest research on Easter Island, for example). In fact, the complaint isn't about him at all as much as it is about his popularity. (Yes, you can discount this all to jealousy -- as long as you click those ads!) He is popular because he writes what are essentially "Just so" stories. The world is as it is because this is the way it had to be thanks to geography, climate, and biology. It is interesting to note, however, that he is attacked from the right for being to presentist in his approach: that is for writing environmental jeremiads rather than well-researched histories.
I don't question the man's integrity or motivation. It's just that he's not a historian. Perhaps arcanely I still believe that the humanities professor is obligated to speak inconvenient truth to power in a way that is empowering. The scientist Diamond is not so missionary.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Too few students get a college education, not too many
Before we begin, a reminder that all things have value only to the extent that they are valued in the marketplace, hence the value of this blog is currently $11.25. But you can increase the value of this blog by clicking on the ads on the right hand of the page and by telling two friends to tell two friends to do the same.
I'd slowly started to believe the cry that too many people are going to college. You've heard a lot of this over the last year, from people like Charles Murray, co-author of the Bell Curve. I'd started to believe, until I looked at the actual numbers. Of course I had to find them by accident instead of really looking, but the result is the same: I know now that too few Americans go to college, not too many. Massachusetts boasts a very high rate of BA or higher at 38% (22% BAs with 16% Grad or Professional Degrees and another 7% get an Associates degree). For the nation as a whole, that number is only 27% (17% BAs, plus 10% Grad or Professional Degrees).
So, that leaves two-thirds to three-quarters of our population undereducated. So, before we start erecting more barriers to education or looking for ways to get rid of the students who arrive unprepared for college because our public schools are failing our lower income students, why not see if we can actually do what we said we were going to do and have an educated population? That and more leisure time, much more leisure time, would be good.
I'd slowly started to believe the cry that too many people are going to college. You've heard a lot of this over the last year, from people like Charles Murray, co-author of the Bell Curve. I'd started to believe, until I looked at the actual numbers. Of course I had to find them by accident instead of really looking, but the result is the same: I know now that too few Americans go to college, not too many. Massachusetts boasts a very high rate of BA or higher at 38% (22% BAs with 16% Grad or Professional Degrees and another 7% get an Associates degree). For the nation as a whole, that number is only 27% (17% BAs, plus 10% Grad or Professional Degrees).
So, that leaves two-thirds to three-quarters of our population undereducated. So, before we start erecting more barriers to education or looking for ways to get rid of the students who arrive unprepared for college because our public schools are failing our lower income students, why not see if we can actually do what we said we were going to do and have an educated population? That and more leisure time, much more leisure time, would be good.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
The Critical Thinking Shibboleth, or It matters what you think about
I've had a revelation: it matters about what you think critically. Maybe I'm slow to realize this and you, dear readers, knew it all along, but I find it to be a very profound insight. Or perhaps this is an act of translation from one way of thinking about a problem to another.
We all know what we in higher education are supposed to do to make the American economy competitive, to make the Massachusetts economy competitive: generate workers with the critical thinking skills and mental flexibility to be the high value workers of the future. That sounds good, but I've never really believed it. If an individual cannot turn critical thinking on and off, she will sink down a rabbit hole of despair. This is not some problem of false consciousness. It is a problem of mental exhaustion.
In fact, we want people who think critically about some things and not others. It is one thing to think critically about the current campaign to sell soap, but it is another thing entirely to think critically about the human experience, the nature of society, and the relationships of power within it. In other words, critical thinking is not a skill like being good with your hands; it is a skill that exists only in a context. Just as we cannot define life in the abstract -- we must point to examples -- we cannot describe critical thinking as an abstract skill because it is as much an attitudinal or emotional state as it is a rational one.
The chilling conclusion I have reached about the Massachusetts State Curriculum for History and Social Science is that we don't actually want students to think critically at all. The thrust of the curriculum is clear in the introductory remarks which state plainly that the goal is to acculturate students to a mythic America of "liberty, justice, and equality." The appearance of critical thinking within the curriculum is just that, an appearance with no reality.
Here, for example is one goal of the World History Curriculum that calls for students to analyze -- that is to examine in detail and draw conclusions about -- the causes and effects of Islamic expansion:
WHI.3 Analyze the causes, and course, and effects of Islamic expansion through North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Central Asia.
But of course the analysis is already done for them and the causes and effects are laid out simply:
A. the strength of the Islamic world’s economy and culture
B. the training of Muslim soldiers and the use of advanced military techniques
C. the disorganization and internal divisions of Islam’s enemies
D. the resistance and/or assimilation of Christianized peoples in the Mediterranean
So in fact the student's goal is to find out what ABC & D are and then put them into a coherent essay or identify them in a multiple choice test. That's an exercise in a certain kind of thinking to be sure, but critical it ain't.
We all know what we in higher education are supposed to do to make the American economy competitive, to make the Massachusetts economy competitive: generate workers with the critical thinking skills and mental flexibility to be the high value workers of the future. That sounds good, but I've never really believed it. If an individual cannot turn critical thinking on and off, she will sink down a rabbit hole of despair. This is not some problem of false consciousness. It is a problem of mental exhaustion.
In fact, we want people who think critically about some things and not others. It is one thing to think critically about the current campaign to sell soap, but it is another thing entirely to think critically about the human experience, the nature of society, and the relationships of power within it. In other words, critical thinking is not a skill like being good with your hands; it is a skill that exists only in a context. Just as we cannot define life in the abstract -- we must point to examples -- we cannot describe critical thinking as an abstract skill because it is as much an attitudinal or emotional state as it is a rational one.
The chilling conclusion I have reached about the Massachusetts State Curriculum for History and Social Science is that we don't actually want students to think critically at all. The thrust of the curriculum is clear in the introductory remarks which state plainly that the goal is to acculturate students to a mythic America of "liberty, justice, and equality." The appearance of critical thinking within the curriculum is just that, an appearance with no reality.
Here, for example is one goal of the World History Curriculum that calls for students to analyze -- that is to examine in detail and draw conclusions about -- the causes and effects of Islamic expansion:
WHI.3 Analyze the causes, and course, and effects of Islamic expansion through North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Central Asia.
But of course the analysis is already done for them and the causes and effects are laid out simply:
A. the strength of the Islamic world’s economy and culture
B. the training of Muslim soldiers and the use of advanced military techniques
C. the disorganization and internal divisions of Islam’s enemies
D. the resistance and/or assimilation of Christianized peoples in the Mediterranean
So in fact the student's goal is to find out what ABC & D are and then put them into a coherent essay or identify them in a multiple choice test. That's an exercise in a certain kind of thinking to be sure, but critical it ain't.
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Monday, May 11, 2009
Class
If you're rich, your car doesn't break down; if you're poor, it does. If you're rich you don't get into a car crash; if you're poor, you do. If you are rich and you do get into a car crash your safer car and the fact that you are in the habit of wearing a seat belt means you will escape with minor injuries. If you are poor, chances are your car is older and thus not as safe and chances are greater that no one ever got you into the habit of wearing your seat belt. If you are rich your car starts every time; if you are poor, sometimes it does not.
If you are rich all of your teeth are in the right place; if you are poor some of them are missing or misplaced. If you are rich you're less likely to be fat than if you are poor, and in any case you dress better to hide the extra bulk.
These are just a few of the ways in which socioeconomic class is written onto the bodies of college students. I have two students in wheelchairs, both car crash victims, one of whom is a double amputee with burns and missing fingers. Often, I suppose, chronic diseases and health risks are associated with other factors that shape learning outcomes during high school, but one can't help be struck by the difference between the students at Salem State and those at Amherst, Wesleyan, or Williams. There are the alphas and the gammas, the haves and have not. I don't imagine any of us are naive about this fact, but in this academic year I have been struck by the degree to which class is written on the body, visible to us all. What especially strikes me, of course is the public health component of all of this, more so than the fashions or the cultures.
Anyone can drive carefully of course, but all things being equal, things are not that equal. Newer cars are built with different steel than older cars, stronger steel, better able to protect the precious cargo.
If you are rich all of your teeth are in the right place; if you are poor some of them are missing or misplaced. If you are rich you're less likely to be fat than if you are poor, and in any case you dress better to hide the extra bulk.
These are just a few of the ways in which socioeconomic class is written onto the bodies of college students. I have two students in wheelchairs, both car crash victims, one of whom is a double amputee with burns and missing fingers. Often, I suppose, chronic diseases and health risks are associated with other factors that shape learning outcomes during high school, but one can't help be struck by the difference between the students at Salem State and those at Amherst, Wesleyan, or Williams. There are the alphas and the gammas, the haves and have not. I don't imagine any of us are naive about this fact, but in this academic year I have been struck by the degree to which class is written on the body, visible to us all. What especially strikes me, of course is the public health component of all of this, more so than the fashions or the cultures.
Anyone can drive carefully of course, but all things being equal, things are not that equal. Newer cars are built with different steel than older cars, stronger steel, better able to protect the precious cargo.
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