Arts News Briefs

You wrote:

“He states bluntly that we [in the U.S.] are betting that we can compete in this global economy by educating a technological elite and ignoring the masses.”

This ignores the historical record that it is the freedom, opportunity and industrial might of America that brought some of the scientific and technological elite of Europe to America. Among those that came were: Einstein, Fermi, Teller, Von Neumann, Von Braun and Szilard. These attributes have continued to draw the technological elite of the World. Military spending is the source of the computer industry, Silicon Valley, Route 128 and the Internet. Military spending ended the Great Depression and created post-war prosperity.

US industrial power rose due to effective exploitation of science and technology. Success has been based on educating a small group in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects, largely at R1 institutions (public and private), of which a tiny group enter the technological elite. This strategy has been enormously successful. Could it be better? Yes! A key problem is the lack of decent jobs for many STEM students at all levels. It would be good to end the long post-doc limbo with a very uncertain future that many STEM scholars find themselves in. A larger proportion of STEM students should get a real shot at getting into the technological elite.

Higher Education for the rest, has been of unclear value to the nation as a whole, for probably the last 25 years. The great problem is that R1 STEM and medical research is being threatened based on perceptions (maybe reality) of non-STEM activities and deficiencies. Why should STEM and medical researchers and students suffer due to the activities of MLA members? When Professor Vedder writes about “trivial research” he is probably thinking of MLA members or Humanities professors in general.

Most students have no interest in STEM subjects and resent being forced to take service STEM courses to meet their program requirements. Even toys say:

“Math class is hard!”

How many students read Charlie Sheen? How many students read Richard Feynman?
Most don’t want to be part of the technological elite, they just want to play with the toys created and get paid a lot. How many students spend their time with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, “Jersey Shore”, Angry Birds, Farmville or other recreations? How many students spend their time working on creating “the next big thing” in software, science, technology or medicine? How many students want to be world-class consumers?

You wrote: “designed to combat the Soviet Union”

Weapon systems can work just as well against any nation state or portion of any nation state. Having at least 3 different ways to destroy the enemy (of today or tomorrow) is important because current and potential enemies are busy working on counter-measures. Which really means you need a constant flow of new weapons and new counter-measures.

The end of the Cold War resulted in major cutbacks and guess what? The money saved wasn’t used to hire more English profs. Do you really think the latest START treaty will result in more jobs for English profs?

bscmath78,

Please refrain from using Humanities/English profs as straw men and women. I suggest you read “Capitalism’s Dismal Future” — at http://chronicle.com/article/Capitalisms-Dismal-Future/126659/#top — before insisting that the REAL answer is to continue building our technological elite. The very idea that people are “consumers” is part of the story that capitalism has helped us to tell ourselves as a culture. The best Humanities/English profs help students to understand rhetoric, and history, and the essential role that metaphors and models play in our views of “reality.” We could use a lot more of such “trivial” work.

Brad Sullivan
English Professor
http://mars.wnec.edu/~dsulliva/

What would have happened if Polish and British mathematicians, and other boffins, hadn’t used their “trivial research” [1] to break the Enigma Code? How much harder would have WW II been to win if the Western Allies didn’t know the Nazi military orders?

What would have happened if “trivial research” hadn’t enabled the US to break Japanese codes?

* What if Pearl Harbor and Manila hadn’t been warned to expect a Japanese attack?

* What if the US hadn’t decoded the infamous December 7, 1941 cable to the Japanese Embassy, hours BEFORE the Japanese Embassy did?

* What if the US radar unit hadn’t caught the first Japanese attack approaching Pearl Harbor?

Oh! things didn’t happen as they should during December 1941, but the code-breaking did have much better battlefield results after December 7.

As Robbie Burns wrote:

“The best-laid plans of mice and Men
Go oft awry
And leave us nothing but grief and pain”

Or as G.I.’s used to say:

“SNAFU!”

Science and Technology gives one a better chance, that doesn’t prevent it from it being misused or ignored. Which is another reason to have plenty of alternatives and backups when it comes to weapons and counter-measures.

[1] The “trivial research” quotation is from Professor Vedder’s March 10, 2011 article, in a blanket point about faculty in general. Please see:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-revolution-of-rising-expectations/28804

Please see my comments there for further questioning of “trivial research”.

NO, It should not be an Entitlement. It should be a national priority.

Dear brad_sullivan, you wrote:

“The best Humanities/English profs help students to understand rhetoric, and history, and the essential role that metaphors and models play in our views of “reality.” We could use a lot more of such “trivial” work.”

Where are these best profs? What percentage of students attend their classes? What percentage of those students “understand rhetoric, and history” a year after college? What percentage of those use their understanding of “rhetoric, and history” to fleece the gullible? What percentage of those use their understanding to work on Madison Avenue, K Street and Wall Street to manipulate “reality” to their advantage? Why do Professors Vedder and Donoghue make no mention of these best professors? Why are these professors silent? Maybe they existed once. Are they now dead, retired, administrators, away from undergrads or away from academia?

BTW, Professor Vedder was talking about “trivial research” in the article I was referring to, not “trivial work”. His recurrent complaint is that professors are not teaching undergrads enough and not making them work hard. His article makes no mention of college resulting in the understanding of anything. In fact, he claims:

“learn little about how to think critically or write well while in school;” in:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-revolution-of-rising-expectations/28804

Variants of this claim appear in earlier articles and he claims support for these views from studies including “Academically Adrift”. I have seen persistent claims elsewhere by supporters of English/Humanities that English/Humanities professors teach undergrads “how to think critically or write well”. Actually, they claim both are done and some claim “complex reasoning” is taught as well. But “Academically Adrift” claims little of any of this actually happens for many college students. In fact, an associated document shows that Science/Math majors edge out Social Science/Humanities majors for best predicted CLA score. So who else would Professor Vedder be thinking of when expresses displeasure with the job done in this area? So how likely is it that I misrepresented Professor Vedder’s position by my suggesting that it was “probably thinking of MLA members or Humanities professors in general.” It is possible that he is just thinking of English profs.

Yet there is just silence from English/Humanities professors. I can’t have misrepresented their position, because they have failed to articulate one. They have done an excellent job of making Professors Vedder’s case against at least English/Humanities professors. I seek to reject the painting of STEM and medical research with the same brush.

If you abandon the field to Professor Vedder, his associates and his followers, don’t you deserve to be sacrificed to them, to help protect those who are willing to protect themselves? If you demonstrate a lack of “critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills” in your own defense, don’t you deserve to be sacrificed, if only to stop your aiding and abetting of Professor Vedder? Though maybe your silence is “the lesser of two evils” given what some English/Humanities professors have previously written.

Most US students did not go to high school until FDR in the 1930′s used child labor laws to force them to stay in school. This was to reduce competition for jobs during the Great Depression. High School was a mechanism to reduce official unemployment, while keeping the kids off the streets. Women went to work in the defense factories during WW II and were then forced out at the end of the war. The need to keep job competition lower continued, so high school continued to be required.

Education has been a: parental, religious, private, individual state or local entity responsibility from its beginnings in the US and through much of its history.

Rudolf Flesch wrote “Why Johnny Can’t Read” in 1955. This is one example of the long-standing dissatisfaction with public education results and the continuing battles over what educational methods actually work in the real world of children.

Strangely, NCLB seems to have used up enormous amounts of time, money, effort and freedom of action, and yet professors complain about the quality of freshmen. You hear claims that college is the new high school. Why is that? Why didn’t they learn how to read, write and do math in high school? Weren’t other subjects sacrificed in some places to focus on just these topics? So why is there a problem with the basics? Why do you read about all these remedial classes in colleges? The existence of students in remedial classes in colleges suggests that some not only have been Left Behind, but somehow graduated High School. How could this be?

On the other hand, I don’t see Professors Donoghue and Vedder emphasizing the poor quality and preparation of high school students in these articles. Why don’t they suggest that the problem is Federal money for K-12? Why don’t they blame Federal law and money for making things worse? Why don’t they highlight studies assessing the quality of NCLB high school students? Why don’t they talk about studies about the tests used by states? Why don’t they say it is an individual state responsibility, so it should be theirs to figure out and pay for? Why don’t they proclaim the benefits of 50 different solutions, each tailored to the specific needs of each state? Why don’t they proclaim the benefits of 50 different experiments?

Unfortunately, it appears that many students have come to consider being entertained in college by big-time sports an entitlement, too. It is perhaps telling that the top private institutions like CalTech, Chicago, the Ivies, MIT, etc. do not offer athletic scholarships and do not spend a lot of time and effort recruiting top athletes. This has become a major distraction for the large public universities, which have allowed this to undermine their dedication to academic values as the main raison d’etra for their existence–and public support.—Sandy Thatcher

Dear brad_sullivan, you wrote:

“We could use a lot more of such “trivial” work.”

Were you making an English Professor joke? The word “trivial” comes from the word “trivium” (grammar, logic, rhetoric) of the traditional liberal arts.

Dear brad_sullivan, I do not rely on unimpeachable empirical evidence.

Many of my comments here relate to material like Professor Vedder’s articles, Professor Donoghue’s articles and “Academically Adrift” that I consider dubious. It in no way implies my agreement with those sources.

You might say that I was unfair in my comments about the Humanities in the comment below, because I refer to history and books that support a particular view. You can then explain why Karabel, Graff, Magill or the critics of the Scholastics should be ignored.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-revolution-of-rising-expectations/28804#comment-164271291

I will continue to generalize and if someone can point out that the generalization is false in the context of the discussion, then they should do so.

As of 10:50 AM March 18, 2011, I look at:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-revolution-of-rising-expectations/28804

and still the English/Humanities profs are silent, no challenges of the article, “Academically Adrift” or the other sources since at least March 11 or 12 (excluding my posts and someone who appears to teach Biology, I don’t know the subject areas of the people who commented initially). No defense of English/Humanities has appeared there. You made a defense in this thread which received some support.

Do you agree that I did NOT use “Humanities/English profs as straw men and women” in my comments in this thread?

More of Mr. Vedder’s eloquent “keep the riff-raff out” rhetoric. His proposal would limit the postsecondary options for vast numbers of students – sorry you inner-city kids attending schools with more gang violence than SAT preparation, it’s community college or trade school for you. Why? Because that would save a tiny fraction of one percent of the country’s budget while we’re bailing out banks, subsidizing oil companies and giving tax cuts to billionaires.

And since “I bet…” is good enough for Mr. Vedder, I will hold myself to the same standards. I bet that students who receive Pell Grants and attend college, even if they do not graduate within an arbitrary period of time used for gathering such statistics, do better in life and earn more money than those who do not. Mr. Vedder’s argument only stands as proof that those who start out with more money wind up with more money, and as the first commenter mentions, that illustrates the general economic condition within the country, it’s not a fault of the Pell Grant program.

Dear cwinton, how many economists made winning bets on the housing bubble, using their own money? How many shorted the right banks, using their own money? How many made a killing with Credit-Default Swaps, using their own money? How many got to gamble with other people’s money and other people’s lives and have the government cover their losses and pay their bonuses?

The economist Robert J. Shiller warned about the dot-com bubble in his 2000 book “Irrational Exuberance” and later warned about housing. Various economists, analysts and others gave warnings about the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble. It would be interesting to have a scorecard for each economist, especially for Professor Vedder.

As a caution, “the sources, the facts” can be easily misused, abused and distorted to support a wide variety of positions (see some of my earlier comments about earlier articles). Though the failure to provide them in this article is especially telling.

Not a good idea, Dr. Vedder, to place even more administrative and bureaucratic regulations onto the schools and students who can least afford them. You really gotta love you conservatives who abhor any kind of regulation, except those imposed on the weak and powerless. Then, you’re all about efficiencies and outcomes. The problem with higher ed funding is not with accounting and accountability shortcomings in the Pell Grant program. The problem is that the 40 most selective, prestigious colleges and universities control 2/3 of all higher ed assets–the kind of wealth concentration we now see in so many other major industries in the western world. If the Harvards, Amhersts, Williamss, and Princetons would 1) share their excessive monies with the colleges doing the work in the trenches, 2) do more to fund Pell Grant kinds of kids, or 3) my lord, even deign to admit a few!!!! then we as a true system of high ed (and not an oligarchy of higher ed) might begin to make some headway on higher ed for low income students.

The single greatest problem with an “entitlement” mentality is not even the fiscal bankruptcy that it promotes. It is the bankruptcy of ambition that it promotes. Once people are told that higher education is an “entitlement,” they stop seeing it as something that they need to work for, to invest in (personally, not merely financially), earn, deserve, merit, and KEEP — and begin seeing it as something that someone else, somewhere, OWES them. This not only translates to demands that someone else PAY for it, which is bad enough, but it creates the kind of “you owe it to me to educate me on my terms” attitude that so many of our current crop of college students display.

I am not going to get into the “liberal arts and humanities versus capitalism” debate that’s been going on here, as I see that as a tempest in a teapot, and besides the point. There is no question but that the liberal arts and humanities are valuable, in and of themselves. Yes, they prepare people for life, and yes, they pass on understanding about the world, and yes, education is arguably incomplete without it.

In fact, this very debate has been spurred on and exacerbated by the “everyone deserves a college education” movement. Why does everyone “deserve” a college education? Why do some people even need it? Once it becomes an “entitlement,” then, suddenly, we all begin arguing about what ought to be “in” that education. And, interestingly, the fact that the government has handed out billions of dollars in student loans – which was intended to make higher education affordable and more accessible – has sent the price of education – particularly private school education – into the stratosphere. Now that students (or their parents) are paying upwards of $50K/year for some schools, or borrowing the money to pay that kind of tuition, it has become a perverse disincentive to work. I have sat through meetings and listened to administrators who insisted that certain assignments could not be given, certain curves could not be implemented, certain class schedules could not be utilized, because “students are paying X-and-such amount of money” and so they demand that things be set up as they want them.

This is counterintuitive to me – why would not someone insist that they get the MOST for their money? The most classwork, the hardest assignments, the toughest schedule?

I can only conclude it is because it is no longer “their” money — it is borrowed money, or it is handed to them by wealthy parents. If you have to earn the money to go to school, then you value what you pay for. This is why those of us who teach at places with non-traditional, or re-entry students, often observe that they are much more dedicated than the so-called “traditional” student who is coming straight out of high school.

The bitter irony is that it is the “entitlement” mentality, which encourages people to view education as a commodity. When I walk into a grocery store, and I want to buy a box of Pop-Tarts, I give them the money, and they sell me the Pop-Tarts. I don’t have to jump through hoops, or perform, or write papers, or otherwise earn the right to take home the Pop-Tarts. Too many people now treat higher ed the same way.

Higher education is a “good.” But it is NOT an “entitlement.”

“Catholic University of America would return to single-sex dormitories to discourage students from hooking up ”

I find this hilarious. Imagine all the future preists now in a single-sex dorm. I know, I know….

Not so fast…  No less a source than Richard Feynman (sp?) has stated categorically that light is not a wave.  

Has anybody explained to Mr. Banzhaf that CUA is a private university?  And where are are his lawsuits against the scores of other universities in the country that have single-sex dorms?  Notre Dame and BYU immediately come to mind as biggies, but then there are the many, many smaller religiously-affliated schools (Catholic, Mormon, Baptist, etc.), too…