I don't like the idea of using a blog solely for the purpose of personal narrative. To me, a web log should be an outlet to explore ideas and practice the skill of persuasive or argumentative writing. You should always have a point, and you should arrive at it rather quickly in a decisive and satisfying manner.
Of course, sometimes we break the rules to prove a point, or to do something we couldn't possibly have done if we allowed ourselves to become prisoners of habit.
So, I feel the need to explain the reason for the lack of posting on this blog over the past couple of weeks. And the only way I can do that is to destroy the persona and speak to you, the reader, as plainly as I can. Part of the reason I haven't posted here has been technological constraints. My internet service was just hooked up yesterday here in Columbia and I'd been mooching bandwidth from the neighborhood Hy-Vee. You can only refill your coffee cup so many times before that kitchen attendant starts to wonder if maybe you're a transient beatnik poet who's decided to fuel his next cross-country masterpiece with Caribou and crab rangoon. I blame my long hair more than anything.
But I could have posted at Hy-Vee or any other free wi-fi spot I happened to stumble into over the past several weeks. The real reason I didn't post was much more complicated than that. This isn't where I thought I'd be four or five years ago. And, to be honest, it extends beyond the whole Kansas fan selling his soul conundrum. If it was just that, I'd have torched my new student I.D. card with the giant Bengal tiger staring me down and strutted down Broadway with my KU National Champions '08 shirt a long time ago.
No, this is more of an existential concern of mine. I know I want to be a journalist. I'm excited that I have a skill set that I believe will prove useful in informing the public and serving a basic civic function within a democratic society. I know all of that. I knew that when I applied here last fall, and when I made plans to attend here last spring.
Proust said that the individual is never whole or unified, but merely a succession of selves throughout time. The idea implies progress--or, at the very least, some sort of constant evolution in our personality and consciousness. Sometimes, when I find myself in a place I never thought I'd be, doing something completely different than what I've done before, I can't help but wonder if that succession of selves must always build toward something, or if we float around on the whims of a moment and where we end up, be it pre-ordained by a benevolent force or not, is unquestioningly what we are meant to do.
Tomorrow, I officially begin my education at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. I'm excited, nervous, but most of all curious.
It's hard to write about video games, TV and what kind of violent circus is being held in the Kansas City Chiefs locker room with all that floating around in your head. But I promise to try. Stay tuned to the Shallow End, it's going to be an interesting fall.
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
Wishful Thinking: Affirmative Action Off-Limits in 2012
Today, the justices of the 6th U.S. Circuit of Appeals ruled against an amendment to the Michigan state constitution that sought to circumvent the process of Affirmative Action in enrollment practices by institutions of higher learning within its borders. The ruling is expected to be appealed straight to the Supreme Court, who will likely hear the facts of the case and make a judgment right around crunch time for the 2012 Presidential Election.
With a black man in the White House and African-American college and university enrollment at an all-time high, it's not at all surprising to see a backlash against an institution in society that seeks to engender equality of outcome by enforcing equality of opportunity (in an ideal sense). Affirmative Action is a politically volatile subject. Given the timing of this particular ruling, the influence of ideology and rhetoric will certainly have a profound impact on the way in which the Supreme Court's subsequent ruling will be digested by the public at large.
The achievement gap in education in America continues to be a major problem. Perhaps Affirmative Action, in-and-of-itself, isn't the answer. Certainly, academic performance statistics would indicate the program has had a negligible effect on the success rate of minority students in the American education system. But the problem of education discrimination should not be solved (or attempted to be solved) in a partisan shouting match, or in the ideological make-up of a particular set of judges at any given time in a courtroom. The data is simply too complex, and the stakes of acting in error are dire. Political posturing through rhetoric is an inevitability of the election cycle that we are just months away from being thrust head-long into. Let's keep the future of American students out of the shouting match, for a change, and let cooler heads prevail.
With a black man in the White House and African-American college and university enrollment at an all-time high, it's not at all surprising to see a backlash against an institution in society that seeks to engender equality of outcome by enforcing equality of opportunity (in an ideal sense). Affirmative Action is a politically volatile subject. Given the timing of this particular ruling, the influence of ideology and rhetoric will certainly have a profound impact on the way in which the Supreme Court's subsequent ruling will be digested by the public at large.
The achievement gap in education in America continues to be a major problem. Perhaps Affirmative Action, in-and-of-itself, isn't the answer. Certainly, academic performance statistics would indicate the program has had a negligible effect on the success rate of minority students in the American education system. But the problem of education discrimination should not be solved (or attempted to be solved) in a partisan shouting match, or in the ideological make-up of a particular set of judges at any given time in a courtroom. The data is simply too complex, and the stakes of acting in error are dire. Political posturing through rhetoric is an inevitability of the election cycle that we are just months away from being thrust head-long into. Let's keep the future of American students out of the shouting match, for a change, and let cooler heads prevail.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
University Presidents-The Real Reason Liberal Arts Don't Matter
Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan University, posted an interesting editorial to CNN this weekend defending the preservation of liberal arts degrees in modern American higher education. Roth argues that the modern workplace demands the kind of convergence of disciplines and broad critical thinking only a liberal arts education can produce in a newly-minted American worker/intellectual. "We should think of education as a kind of intellectual cross-training that leads to many more things than at any one moment you could possibly know would be useful," Roth insists. As the president of one of the most distinguished liberal arts colleges in the country, Roth's argument is at once poignant, self-serving and vapid.
I have no problems with the importance and perceived benefits Roth bestows on a liberal arts education. It would be difficult for me to do so, receiving a great deal of my post-secondary training in the arts and "soft" sciences. The problem is with Roth's own colleagues, who he doesn't call out forcibly enough. In fact, he applauds members of his faculty for taking the initiative to establish chairs within their departments that laud their interdisciplinary achievements. This does not lead to the convergence of the problem-solving and analytic skills of English Lit courses invading the theoretical and scientific realms of Math and Science departments on college campuses. It allows the educators to believe they're preserving the ideals of a liberal arts education while encouraging the kind of specialization Roth argues is detrimental to the American education system.
In my second semester of undergraduate work at Belmont, I took part in what was called a "linked-cohort" class. In theory, these classes were supposed to link sub-fields that would ordinarily be thought of as the two poles of academic life. Chemistry and Political Science, Psychology and Art History, Biology and Religious Studies were linked together in ways that I suppose were meant to make administrators like Michael Roth feel like throwing a self-congratulatory knowledge party (I've been to a few of those, the dip sucks). The problem was, the students I knew always viewed the classes as a bit of a joke. No serious attempt was made by anyone to tie the concepts they learned in one class to another, and (more distressingly) none of the professors seemed too interested in that goal, either. The linked-cohort was something you begrudgingly fit into your schedule, completed, and then filed away somewhere near Pauly Shore movie trivia knowledge (I mean for a normal person, not for me where it's located directly adjacent to the mechanical motions of brushing one's teeth) for safe keeping.
Education is a service. It always has been, and it always will be. I'm not saying everyone should be a Faulkner scholar (mainly because forms at the DMV would be indecipherable if that were the case) nor should we all be automatons trained in one discipline. That's kind of what this blog is ultimately about. At the same time, university administrators should not pay lip service to the preservation of a liberal arts education if that's not what is demanded by their students. By ordaining a liberal arts education structure, college administrators make the decisions about what knowledge is necessary for their students. Isn't that the exact opposite of the goal of a liberal arts education in the first place?
I have no problems with the importance and perceived benefits Roth bestows on a liberal arts education. It would be difficult for me to do so, receiving a great deal of my post-secondary training in the arts and "soft" sciences. The problem is with Roth's own colleagues, who he doesn't call out forcibly enough. In fact, he applauds members of his faculty for taking the initiative to establish chairs within their departments that laud their interdisciplinary achievements. This does not lead to the convergence of the problem-solving and analytic skills of English Lit courses invading the theoretical and scientific realms of Math and Science departments on college campuses. It allows the educators to believe they're preserving the ideals of a liberal arts education while encouraging the kind of specialization Roth argues is detrimental to the American education system.
In my second semester of undergraduate work at Belmont, I took part in what was called a "linked-cohort" class. In theory, these classes were supposed to link sub-fields that would ordinarily be thought of as the two poles of academic life. Chemistry and Political Science, Psychology and Art History, Biology and Religious Studies were linked together in ways that I suppose were meant to make administrators like Michael Roth feel like throwing a self-congratulatory knowledge party (I've been to a few of those, the dip sucks). The problem was, the students I knew always viewed the classes as a bit of a joke. No serious attempt was made by anyone to tie the concepts they learned in one class to another, and (more distressingly) none of the professors seemed too interested in that goal, either. The linked-cohort was something you begrudgingly fit into your schedule, completed, and then filed away somewhere near Pauly Shore movie trivia knowledge (I mean for a normal person, not for me where it's located directly adjacent to the mechanical motions of brushing one's teeth) for safe keeping.
Education is a service. It always has been, and it always will be. I'm not saying everyone should be a Faulkner scholar (mainly because forms at the DMV would be indecipherable if that were the case) nor should we all be automatons trained in one discipline. That's kind of what this blog is ultimately about. At the same time, university administrators should not pay lip service to the preservation of a liberal arts education if that's not what is demanded by their students. By ordaining a liberal arts education structure, college administrators make the decisions about what knowledge is necessary for their students. Isn't that the exact opposite of the goal of a liberal arts education in the first place?
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