Heteronormativity, White Racism, Etc. at Minnesota

This is a serious venue and not the place for parodies.

Here is more, Charlie:http://www.thefire.org/article/11402.html

Do you actually believe that meritocracy works in the US? Does it work in college admissions? At Emory? How do you account for legacy admissions, athletic admissions, and big donor special treatment?Where is your scientific evidence for this assumption?”They don’t allow students to defend meritocracy as a reality, not a myth.” Really? One CAN defend meritocracy as a reality, but isn’t that like letting students defend the tooth fairy as a reality? Whatever happened to science?Chuck Kleinhans

Mr Marker (5), Bauerlein quoted Ski U Ma’s Education College’s own document. That hasn’t been libel in the British North Amnerican Colonies > the United States since Peter Zengler. And yes, the way those little educationist thought police twits use “understand”, they mean demonstrate ideological agreement with’.

Thank you, Mr. Texter, You’ve confirmed Prof. Bauerlein’s point but brought us the bad news that it’s apparently pervading the Education and Humanities faculties at U Minnesota — I hope not the Social Sciences although the gooier SS’s tend to be susceptible to such infestations too. Oh, well. They still have good programs in Geology and Geological Engineering. I doubt anybody but Turks and native speakers of L/D/Nakota actually pronounce the final “h” of Ski U Mah. English never has an /h/, i.e. a glottal fricative, except at the beginning of syllables. Although Vh does sometimes serve the orthographic ~ phonological function of indicating the vowel is the unshifted long lax variety, which one might contend that it does here.

red,Just FYI, slander and libel are legal definitions, the former regarding spoken speech, the latter regarding print speech. So when you typed ‘slander’ you really meant ‘libel.’ And MB’s commentary on this blog does not, as jffoster writes, constitute libel in any way, shape, or form.

What stands out to me is not the viewpoints the documents’ authors are promoting, but the authors’ remarkable naiveté and lack of savvy in the way their views were framed and expressed. It is almost as if the authors were intentionally provoking parody and the inevitable reaction from conservative groups such as FIRE. But, based on my experience, I doubt that baiting conservatives was an intentional ploy. Instead, as one previous comment suggests, it is more likely that this document was produced by a group that exists in many faculties of education (and some other disciplines) and who stand squarely at the intersection of arrogance, moral superiority, ignorance, and intolerance of sympathetic but more moderate views.

To red-marker-Just keep reading Mark Bauerlein’s occasional pieces. In a short time your case will be clearly made. Mr. Bauerlein slanders far more than higher education institutions. He slanders political parties, candidates, incumbants, anyone outside his immediate partisan persuasion. Notice his standard genre. He searches for an old article that no longer is applicable to anything, examines it to determine its potential to be twisted, misrepresented and capable of being presented in a way that serves his personal right-wing agenda. At every step of the process he is fully aweare that the initial report, that he has now twisted, is no longer even relevant to the original author/s/. He believes he is so clever. He can hide behind the skirts of the original author/s/ as he did in his response to you herein. He tries to imply that he is only the reporter. If readers have a beef it is with the originators of the report he is referencing. Nonsense. He is not clever. He does not realize how transparent his motives are week in and week out. And he gets paid to put out this garbage. red-marker, you stared that you took a Chronicle subscription because you thought it would present the practices, business and collegial presentations within the higher education community. So did I. But join me in thinking again. Mr Bauerlein believes The Chronicle is a political document awaiting his regular manipulation. So reader beware.

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Bauerlein, re #7: You state “What if they don’t find that white privilege plays a significant role in their pasts?” Your earlier quote from the report says future teachers “will be able to discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression.”According to your own selected quotes from the report, they weren’t “demanding” anything, merely that prospective teachers “be able to discuss.” If they have understood the content related to white priveledge (whether they agreed with it or not) they ought to be able to discuss their own historied drwaing on those theories. And, yes we’re talking about theories here. You don’t have to agree with quantum physics to be trained in the theories.Sheesh, chill out Bauerlein. Nothing like yelling Fire! in a packed theater. Also, given that this is an institution of higher education, and last I checked there was *still* something about academic freedom… At what point do institutions get to determine their own degree plans?Also, I also tracked down the full document, which includes a fair amount of info on assessing these skills and capacity. Here’s what’s “demanded” of students (http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cehd/teri/task-group-reports/): “This reflection and self-discovery paper requires students to: (a) define ‘culture;’ (b) describe their own ethno-cultural background, (c) identify three of their personal motives (desires, needs) that are potentially beneficial and three that are potentially harmful, and discuss how they might affect their teaching.”Oh, and to restate what goxewu said (#15) this document is watermarked “for discussion uses…only.” And to quote from the doc’s intro: “These task group reports are not policy, but a set of working ideas brought forward by these groups for discussion.”To selectively quote from the mission statement of those brainwashers at the Division of Education at your own Emory: “#3 To exercise our independence by supporting that which is morally and ethically in the best interest of education, such as the eradication of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia; #4 To oppose state and national policies that facilitate the placement of uncertified and inadequately educated teachers in schools, particularly high poverty schools that enroll students of color”Eradication of racism? Oppose state and national policies? Talk about brainwashing. How dare we talk about racism?And isn’t it astounding that a committee charged with addressing the issues of race, culture, class, and gender in teacher preperation actually did that. Of course they didn’t talk about meritocracy. Why would they?

Re #16:”Mr Bauerlein believes The Chronicle is a political document awaiting his regular manipulation.”If one takes “political document” to mean an ongoing online document that contains manifestly liberal/lefty and conservative/righty political comment, that part of the sentence is true. And if one takes “manipulation” meaning the posting of such comment, on the conservative/righty side of things, that part is true, too. (Only if Prof. Bauerlein were one of the behind-the-scenes editors, cutting and changing comments, deleting them, etc., would “manipulating” be literally true.)”Brainstorm’s” political menu is pretty obvious: Marc Bousquet on the far left and Teresa Ghilarducci on the milder left, Mark Bauerlein and Diane Auer Lones, closer in outlook than Bousquet and Ghilarducci, on the right. Kevin Carey, Sara Goldrick-Rab and Stan Katz are the higher-ed wonks who wax liberal, as does academe as a whole. Gina Barreca, Laurie Fendrich, John L. Jackson, Jr. and Michael Ruse are the mostly apolitical (in most of their posts) gadflies who also, when they opine on political matters, wax liberal, too, as does academe as a whole. But, for a publication ensconced in academe, “Brainstorm’s” roster of bloggers is fairly balanced. (If anybody has a nominal cause for complaint, it’s conservatives/righties because there’s no real far-right righty in the lineup.)The commenters likewise: mostly liberals/lefties with enough conservatives/righties to make it interesting. The difference is that, since commenting is wide open and attracts that large constituency of embittered conservative white males who disproportionately live on the Internet, the far right is more visibly represented. (I give you livefreeordie2–his bumpersticker pseudonym, his “Barry” for Barack, his sports-blog “ROTFLMAO!!!!,” his…well, you get the idea.)Each of us commenters has his/her joneses. I can’t stand, for instance, Stan Katz’s reciting of his speaking engagements and academically famous buddies before he gets to his usually tepid points. And I enjoy hounding Prof. Bauerlein, especially when he he tries, with increasing fecklessness, to defend such indefensible positions as his, as a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, rehashing in short form so many WSJ articles, and his maintaining, as an ostensible opponent of Big Government, that the National Endowment for the Arts (which he worked for) is not part of said Big Government.But I usually think Prof. Bauerlein is simply wrong or fooling himself. And he certainly doesn’t lie low and not answer his detractors; that’s what makes him so much fun to argue with. But Prof. Bauerlein is not the ethical villain that willynilly–whose jones for Prof. Bauerlein is probably the #1 personal jones in all of “Brainstorm”–makes him out to be.Note: red_marker said only that he/she was “new” to the CHE, not that he/she “took a Chronicle subscription” (which costs money; registering to comment is free). And one should probably take with a grain of salt red_marker’s self-description of being an innocent that opens #5.As Tammy Wynette might have sung: “Sometimes it’s hard to be a liberal…” ‘Twould have applied on this thread to me.

Your bias, my point of view. Apparently no one involved in this project understands the concept of “beg the question.” Not surprising, since it’s so commonly misused to mean “prompt one to ask” rather than “assume the conclusion.”Racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia are of course persistent problems, and denying their existence would be futile. What gets me is the notion that such isms are (a) ubiquitous and (b) absent from “our” point of view. Can anyone think of a funnier–in a mordant sort of way–phrase than “current color-blind ideology”? The oblivious self-righteousness is amazing. It would be interesting to see this program’s defenders have to go through it themselves. Ah, but of course, “we” don’t need it. It’s these other poor benighted souls who have to be brought into line with our right-thinking orthodoxy. And the very people most sensitive to the abuse of power by others will naturally deny that they themselves would ever . . . after all, we’re right, aren’t we? So it can’t be wrong to . . . it’s for their own good . . .Mark, may all your enemies be such as are simply incapable of distinguishing between slander and libel, even after a clear, direct, accurate explanation of the matter.

Dr. Bauerlein, either you really don’t read very well, or you must lecture your students. Let’s parse the bit you quote as if it were a prompt. The first outcome demands that students “discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression.”Look at the directive verb there: discuss. This means that, yes, in fact students can, as you coyly put it, argue that “they don’t find that white privilege plays a significant role in their pasts? They’re stuck”I note, by the way, that the people who most loudly decry the notion of white privilege, and class privelege, and basic courtesy, tend to be straight white males. Funny, that.

The “final report” of the tast group was made public on the Teacher Education Redesign Initiative blog in September. It’s here:http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cehd/teri/task-group-reports/And, Lisa, when the outcome asks students to “draw on” white privilege etc., that means, contrary to what you say, precisely that they cannot reject the notion. They must frame their history in these race/gender identitarian terms.And, amazingly, marktropolis raises the idea of academic freedom here, as if that included the right to put students through these ideological coercions.And FIRE is a First Amendment group, not a conservative group. They will defend people on any part of the ideological spectrum whose free speech rights are being trampled upon.

No, Mark, you’re still not parsing it correctly. “Our future teachers will be able to discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression.”Notice, again, the verbs: “drawing on,” by the way does not imply pro or con, neither does “discuss,” and “notions” is, if anything, suggestive of something that is not a shared truth, fact or value. A student can draw upon her knowledge of white privilege and assert that it exists for evolutionary reasons (yes, people do make that argument,) or that whit privilege is actually about class more than race, or that heteronormative assumptions are less about sexual preferences than gender assumptions . . . Someone who understands the theory behind “white privilege” or “heteronormative” can draw on “notions” to argue that white privilege is or is not relevant, or historically present, or even at issue in specific contexts. I note that that it is part of our job to teach students to perceive and understand and even argue multiple points of view in order to actively and persuasively support their own opinions. It isn’t an ideological coercion any more than presenting multiple theories about the various causes of medieval plagues are “ideological coercions.” And no, there’s nothing wrong in being straight or white or a Walloon–but there is a problem when we make assumptions about universal reality because of being white or straight or black or Jewish or Walloon or or . . . ultimately all of these issues resolve into assuming that the universe is just like us, of being self-absorbed and egotistical. It’s useful to learn how “other” is perceived, and perceives us, whatever and whoever “other” might be.

Prof. Spangenberg appears to be one of those dewy-eyed souls who could read the old Soviet constitution and conclude, golly! what wonderful freedom of speech each and every comrade had! Anybody who’s been around even half a block knows that the “discussion” promised future teachers in the report is going to be more like those Maoist “self-criticism” sessions that workers, shoulders slumped and heads bowed, used to have to file onto the factory floor to endure, than any honest give-and-take. Put it this way: If the passage in the report had read, “Our future teachers will be able to discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of the achievements of Western civilization, male heroism, normativity, and internalized liberty,” how enthusiastic would the report’s supporters be about the prospects of free and open “discussion”?Bottom line: The report sounds less like discussion points “education” than it does like a re-education camp.

Sorry Mark (#28), but I’m going to have to disagree with your position on FIRE. While they may present themselves as “nonideological” I’ll challenge you (or anyone else for that matter) to take a gander at the list of cases (at http://www.thefire.org/cases/all/) and identify how many of those cases could be considered as defending a so-called liberal point of view. The vast majority of their cases are focused on continuing the culture wars that started in the 80s and 90s. I don’t see any cases in that list where they are bringing challenges to any codes of conduct at any of the conservative colleges out there. I don’t see anything about Liberty, Patrick Henry, Regent, Thomas Aquinas. I think part of the issue that folks are missing is that students have choices about where they go. There are conservatives who go to places like Berkeley and get ticked because they can’t “express their views” (which is code of most of the population doesn’t agree with me). More liberal students have the same choice – which is why they don’t end up at places like Liberty or Regent. You don’t like what they’re doing at Minnesota, don’t work there and don’t become a student there.FIRE may want to present themselves as purely a first amendment group, but their actions tell a different story.Also, I want to ditto the point that Lisa (#30) has tried to make at least twice: this is not coercion. Then again, I guess if you’re more interested in supporting a conservative view of the world, you’d support a student insisting that his professor be fired because he’s teaching evolution (and the student in question is an “intelligent design” proponent). The point of the report (which is, again, only a report from one of a number of committees, and not requirements), is that students should understand the content. They don’t have to agree with it. I can be a Christian and take a class in Buddhism. Doesn’t mean I’m converting, but there would be an expectation that I understand Buddhism.

Re #34:”I can be a Christian and take a class in Buddhism. Doesn’t mean I’m converting, but there would be an expectation that I understand Buddhism.”What’s proposed ain’t no little class in Buddhism. This is more like a whole Buddhist curriculum, in which the minority Christian is supposed to stand up in class and, to use the words in the report (slightly modified for #34′s context), “discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of Christian privilege…and internalized oppression.” Students, being the street-smart buggers that they are, will soon figure out where their professors’ approval lies, and start reciting faux-confessions/experiences about (returning to the report’s subject) being undeserving recipients of “white privilege” ready to reform, etc. Like I said: re-education camp.”…only a report from one of a number of committees, and not requirements.”Funny how the supporters of the report want to have it both ways: They think the contents of the report amount to a great idea we should all get behind, but then they tell people not to worry because it’s a long way from being implemented. Hello? Are they proud of it or ashamed of it? Opponents, astutely, don’t buy the “only a report” = harmlessness gambit. Nip it in the bud, they realize, and don’t stand around doing nothing until it IS implemented and the metapphorical re-education camp [curriculum] has metaphorical cabins [classes], fences [approved syllabi], guards [vetted professors], and daily recitals of “white privelege” confessions ["discussion].

All of this notwithstanding, anyone who has ever taught as a credentialed teacher (especially high school) knows that none of these mandates are going to change anything anyway.When I was working with pre-service teachers, I always emphasized that one of the biggest aspects of professionalism in education (both higher and k-12) is realizing that, while we do have laws to regulate behavior, in a free society people are free to think however they want, regardless of what anyone else may think about it. The factor of regulation in play here is personal responsibility; this is the most important idea that teachers traffic in.If one cannot be free in one’s own mind, where else can they ever possibly be free?Unfortunately, these mandates and their assumed effect in the k-12 classroom go against the very thing students in our society desperately need the most; preparation to think as individuals and the willingness to take responsibility for one’s own existence.

goxewu gets to the distinction, marktropolis. Of course I don’t want to remove race from the curriculum–I never said that. I’ve written enough about race in US history not to have to prove that I think it’s a central academic subject. But there is a difference between presenting race as an idea and a reality to study and to take different, evidence-backed positions toward and presenting it as an idea and a reality that one must incorporate in a pre-determined way into one’s thinking.

Mark (#40), I think you’re missing (fundamentally disagreeing?) with a point that I and others have made. That no one is talking about dictating anyone’s thinking. Although that has been the conservative (right-wing?) response to much of these issues all along. Call it multicultural education, diversity, race awareness, white priviledge, pick your phraseology, those on the right have always criticized those ideas as brainwashing, or my personal fave, group-think. Instead of simply dismissing the entire thing as full-scale mind control, perhaps we should have a more indepth (nuanced?) discussion of what exactly *should* be required of future teachers as it relates to their compentency to address the issue of racism in their classrooms. What should they know and be able to do? Is it enough for them to know that Brown v. Board of Education happened in 1954, or should they also understand the interpersonal dynamics that occur in a classroom with a white teacher and a 95% black/latino classoom (or a room with a Black teacher and a 95% white class)?If, in fact, you think it’s a central subject, how do you best teach that subject to future teachers? And how do you do it without pushing goxewu over the edge?

@gowexu #32Prof. Spangenberg appears to be one of those dewy-eyed souls who could read the old Soviet constitution and conclude, golly! what wonderful freedom of speech each and every comrade had! Anybody who’s been around even half a block knows that the “discussion” promised future teachers in the report is going to be more like those Maoist “self-criticism” sessions that workers, shoulders slumped and heads bowed, used to have to file onto the factory floor to endure, than any honest give-and-take.I’m a lot of things, but dewy-eyed ain’t one of them. I’ve spent more than twenty years in four campus classrooms, in the U.S. and the U.K. being indoctrinated. I know what it means to really understand rhetorical analyis, otherwise I’d assume that it’s abnormal to love someone of the same sex. That pretty much covers my undergrad and early M.A. experience.But then working on my Ph.D. I had years of classroom instruction wherein some faculty and students argued that white privilege and hetronormative thinking was subsuming the voices of people of color and QLTBG members who were disenfranchised. I heard otherwise rational people assert that people of color can’t be racist, that straight people can’t be trusted, (don’t even ask what everyone had to say about bisexuals) that women can’t be sexist, that feminists are ruining the family . . . oh yeah, and that Jews killed Christ. You know what? Along the way, with a lot of help from incredible teachers, I learned to dissect arguments. I learned to spot logial fallacies, and inherently contradictiory positions, and goal-post shifting, and arguing to an agenda, and lying with statistics. I learned how to ask for a citation, and how to analyze numbers. I learned it from a lot of people that ideologically I don’t agree with at all. But they gave me skills that I can pass on to my students, so they too can decide what they think and why for themselves.

#43: Perhaps a poor choice of words, but my “let me try this again” was intended to be directed at my own inability to convey a message, and not some effort to pass judgement on how dense you are (or not). So, apologies that I came across as patronizing.I think I understand your consternation about this report. I think. What’s confusing to me is this differentiation you seem to be making about the content. Both you and Bauerlein have made the point that you don’t wish to ignore or dismiss the reality of racism. But I think where we get tripped up is in the discussion around how racism should be taught. My position is that this Minnesota “thing” is merely a method of delivering content. Your position (as I understand it) is that it’s more than simply content, it’s insiting that people think or feel a certain way. Or as you put it another way “propoganda as education.” We may have to agree to disagree on that point.I guess I’m struggling to get a handle on this differentiation. Also, as I requested of Bauerlein, I would like to understand (really) what your choice of curriculum would be. I too bristle at the warm and fuzzy approaches (which is where I put things like “diversity” and “multicultural education” as well as Black History Month, and insisting that we know King’s I Have a Dream, but not his speeches against the Vietnam War). I’m of the opinion that the white privilege (thanks for the spelling correction) approach is actually the anti-warm and fuzzy. I’m of the belief that in order for us to get anywhere in this mess called racism, individuals need to interrogate their own racisms and prejudices.Which takes me back to dank48′s comments (#24), who said “It would be interesting to see this program’s defenders have to go through it themselves. Ah, but of course, ‘we’ don’t need it. It’s these other poor benighted souls who have to be brought into line with our right-thinking orthodoxy. And the very people most sensitive to the abuse of power by others will naturally deny that they themselves would ever . . . after all, we’re right, aren’t we?”I think that’s the entire point of the language and strategies of talking about white privilege (or understanding things like heteronormativity): None of us is entirely free from racism. Yes, there are some (many in the academy) who feel they don’t need that kind of self-analysis, because they are smarter and more evolved than we are.I too have seen the “self-congratulatory, educatorese bulls**t” and sometimes have seen it clothed in the language of the report in question. I don’t personally know the authors so it’s tough for me to pass judgement. If this was a piece written by someone like Peter McLaren, would it have more legitimacy (for lack of a better word)? If I knew it was written by a bunch of white folks with no experience beyond the sheer whiteness of Minneapolis (or their own ivory tower) I might jump to the same place tha tyou are. A shorter version is the question I posed to Bauerlein: if not this, than what?

marktropolis gets to an important point about domain knowledge in a field. He says that the “teacher education” field has determined that “that race and racism play a fundamental role in education. As in it’s considered fact.” Two questions here. One, is it possible that a whole field can become ideologically-uniform and -directed? And two, what does “play a fundamental role in education” mean?

This is all very deep, and quite foolish I might add.”Students” who do not like the program will spend their money at another institution and get their license another way.”Students” who do not the like the program of their own country will spend their time pursuing their dreams in another. America is the perfect example of where people like to come to do this.To paraphrase Hoffer, when people are so empty in their own existence that they are not capapble of mananging their own affairs, they must necessarily turn their attention to the affairs of the people around them.

A teaching license is granted by the state, not by the university where the work was done, the way a diploma is. The license says nothing about where the actual work was done.In fact, many hard to staff districts in my state (a state with a large immigrant population) run their own licensing programs that have no connection to any university.

In education hiring, the employer looks at the authorizations on the document because that is what the law says they have to look at.The discussion is about education, not law.

The law is very clear about what is permitted in an interview of this sort and what is not. As in most professions, experience trumps all. A reference check in this case is not made to see where one went to school. And as everyone knows,the most inexperienced teachers work in schools where experienced teachers are needed the most (i.e. schools with large minority populations).The point is, and perhaps I was not clear, is that if one applies for a job as, say, a bilingual educator, one must have that qualification on their license. If one does not, then it is against the law for the school to hire that person to perform that function. To my knowledge, the U. of Minn. proposal(and I must admit I have never lived or worked in that state) does not meet any such specific requirement.To go full circle however, the more salient point has been raised in your post in relation to the original blog. If a society plans to educate a population as diverse as that in the U.S., then it requires a teaching force that mirrors that very diversity. Who is to say who needs “remedial reasoning” anyway? Besides God, who has the right to make that judgement about other people? Was that not the premise of the Minn. proposal in the first place?I say “good night” to this particular subject because it is already on page 2 and too many inexperienced people contribute to it but, what’s the line for the L.A. Kings and Boston Bruins tomorrow?