I've seen different versions of the following essay, which is attribute to one Robert Hall, and which is sometimes referred to as a "viral op-ed"; it certainly seems to be popular in right-wing cyberspace. I thought I'd take the time to analyze it, and then maybe I'll fashion (a much shorter) response--later. The piece, with my comments (in bold following each section):
I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.
The rhetorical model is established here: the person is not really "tired" but exasperated, and he asserts that he is being told things, but one wants to ask, "by whom, exactly?" Yes, national and state governments take money and then spend it on things like inspecting food, building and maintaining interstate highways, funding a military that is more expensive than all other nations' militaries combined, enforcing labor-laws, gathering intelligence, providing emergency assistance after national disasters, and so on. To assert that one is being told about this seems silly; the government has always worked this way. "People too lazy to earn it"? Really? What percentage of the 10% out of work are "too lazy"? Later the person identifies himself as a Christian. Isn't part of Christianity the willingness to help others in need, partly because of the spiritual gifts the helper gets from the helped?
I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them with their own money.
Much too skewed. One may argue with the decision to keep banks afloat after the bubble burst, but the evidence seems to suggest that if they weren't kept afloat, a consequence would have been Depression, not recession. Also, some people may have bought what they couldn't afford, but many were trapped in adjustable loans that weren't fully explained. One may go ahead and try to blame Congress, but why only "left-wing" Congress? Fannie and Freddie weren't the main problem and were less of a problem than de-regulation, which is a right-wing obsession but not really a "conservative" one; if you are conservative, you are prudent, and prudence dictates that where there is a lot of money, there will be cheating, so it's best to have someone watching things. Also, no one was told he or she had to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes." We were told that some of our tax money had to be used to prop up large financial institutions--run by wealthy people who are "too lazy" or too craven not to cheat. Also, TARP was a Bush plan, not that of left-wing critters. Also, most of the TARP money has been paid back, and the GM strategy helped recover a major manufacturing unit that employs many people who are not, in fact, too lazy to work.
I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros, and Hollywood entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Christian people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela .
Ad hominem. Attack a symbolic man, Michael Moore, but not his ideas. I'd like to suggest that the deception of "trickle-down" economics and the refusal even to discuss cutting the military budget are as harmful to the economy as anything. No organization attempts to protect free speech more than the ACLU (you could look it up, as Casey Stengel used to say), but the ACLU is of course much loathed by "conservatives" who aren't conservative. I'm sorry--I see almost no intolerance toward Christian people in the U.S. (I'm a Catholic.) I see lots of intolerance toward non-Christian beliefs, and I see a desire to make the U.S. government officially Christian: look at the influence of Focus on the Family, the Moral Majority, etc. Let's flip the scenario: "I'm tired of being told how bad government is by rich people like the Bushes who spend their lives in government."
I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives, and daughters for their family "honor"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers"; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.
Christians murder their relatives and rape and intrude on the personal lives of women all the time, but I assume this man doesn't ascribe their misdeeds to Christianity. And there are the glaring examples of slave-holding Christians (among them our founding fathers), of Christian members of the terrorist organization, the KKK, and of Tim McVeigh. And do the math: what percentage of the total number of Muslims worldwide are terrorists? Less than 1 per cent, no doubt. Any religion is only as peaceful as each of its followers. Bush, a Methodist, attacked Iraq without provocation, or with what has been documented as fabricated provocation. Was this a Christian act? And don't confuse the question with "we're better off without Saddam Hussein": that is a separate question. Is torture "Christian"? I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. I just wish our black President was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less arrogantly of an all-knowing, all-intrusive federal government.
The first part is condescending. "Condi" Rice supported an unprovoked war and illegal, immoral torture. Name one way in which Obama has been more intrusive than previous presidents. He didn't compose the intrusive Patriot Act. The FBI, CIA, and NSA were there before he was. His attorney general has done nothing--not one thing--to jeopardize "gun rights." Unlike several right-wing politicians, he didn't have thugs beat up dissenters at his campaign rallies. Identify one concrete example of how Obama has been more intrusive than Clinton, Bush I and II, Reagan, Nixon. "Arrogantly" is a tip-off. It carries the whiff of "uppity." Obama is more arrogant than Bush II? Please.
I'm tired of a news media that thinks Bush's fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama's, at triple the cost, were wonderful; that thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control weight and stress; that picked over every line of Bush's military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his; that slammed Palin, with two years as governor, for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever. Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004. Red herring. Most of the inaugural expenses for any president come from private sources. Well, at least Kerry had a 'war record.' Why didn't Bush II ever fly in Viet Nam? This is not a rhetorical question. Palin wasn't slammed for being inexperienced. She was slammed for saying she could see Russia from Alaska and for not being able to cite one magazine she read (etc.) Also, she quit as governor.
I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America, while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.
I'm sorry, but if you pay somebody something for a product, that money then belongs to that someone. If you don't want to buy Saudi Arabian oil, then ban American oil companies from doing business there. And/or support the development of alternative energy sources. It's not out of "tolerance" that we buy the oil; it's out of a need to fill our gas-tanks. Please.
I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight man-made global warming, which no one is allowed to discuss or debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Albert Gore's, and if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough. People are allowed to discuss and debate the issue all the time, as in this op-ed. Also, the Republican House has decided to disband the committee on global warming, so precisely who is shutting down debate here? Gore = ad hominem. And ironically, the person has followed his complaint about Saudia Arabian oil with an attack on an issue that has spurred the U.S. at least to consider non-petrol energy sources.
I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don't think gay people choose to be gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.
I don't know anyone who's been harrassed for not "tryinig" marijuana, but I'm willing to try to belief this man has. Precisely who has told this man that he must support drug-treatment? Most treatment places are not-for-profit (501-C-3) or private and for-profit. True, some state and municipal agencies dispense methadone, but that seems like money well spent, considering the heroin addiction costs states and cities even more money. I smell another red herring here.
I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers," especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on welfare or a life of crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, "Undocumented Pharmacists"? And, no, I'm not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic, and it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I'm willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person, who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record, and who is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military ... Those are the citizens we need.
"Undocumented worker" is a more precise term than "illegal alien." They're not aliens. They're human beings. If you want to play the euphemism game, how about linking warrantless wire-taps to something called a "Patriot Act." What is un-Constitutional is, arguably, unpatriotic. Or how about Fox News and "fair and balanced"? Or how about the famous "mission accomplished"? Nonetheless, I fully support the argument for "fast-tracking" some people from other countries. . . . And by the way, weren't Catholics among the original "illegal aliens" who invaded "the New World"? Did the Aztecs put the Spanish on a fast-track for citizenship?
I'm tired of latte liberals and self-absorbed journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people than themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years and still are? Not even close. So here's the deal. I'll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims, who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we'll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear.
This is a good place to assert the both/and vs. either/or argument. All torture is bad; both "American" and "Muslim" (so-called) torture are bad: so why pit them against each other? I don't know one journalist, liberal or otherwise, who wasn't appalled by what happened to Pearl, a journalist. All torture rooms are bad, so close all the ones you have control over. At some point, all troops in all wars commit atrocities. Want to trade insults? I'll match your "latte liberal" with your liquored-up Vice President who never served in the armed forces and who shot his friend in the face with a shotgun. Chicken-hawks? Try Bush II, Rumsfeld, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly.
I'm tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers; bums are bipartisan. And I'm tired of people telling me that we need bipartisanship. I live in Illinois, where the " Illinois Combine" of Democrats has worked to loot the public for years. Not to mention the tax cheats in Obama's cabinet. I just don't believe he's been told that one party has a corner on virtue. Bums are not necessarily bipartisan, but they do come from both (all) parties: on that we can agree. Well, if one is sick of one party dominating, why wouldn't one be in favor of bipartisanship? It's only logical.
I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or middle-class or poor. Well, I suspect we're all tired of hearing about such mistakes, except when we make such mistakes. It's that cast-the-first-stone thing. Also, the rhetoric of this piece springs from an entitled viewpoint that licenses the speaker to assert that he's "tired." I'm tired of his being tired. And wasn't once purpose of the Constitution to set out rights and privileges to which some are entitled (but not African Americans, who were relegated to slavery and 3/5ths humanity in the original Article One of the Constitution. You could look it up.
Speaking of poor, I'm tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, plasma color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn't have these things in 1970, but we didn't know we were "poor." The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the tax dollars flowing to their causes. Well, plasma TV wasn't available in 1970, so I have to grant that point. Personally, I miss the days when we could get just one channel in black-and-white in the Sierra Nevada. I will assert, however, that one may BOTH live in poverty AND have an air-conditioner. (And have a job, I might add: the working-poor.) I don't know what he means by "poverty pimps." I do know what a lobbyist pimp, an insurance-corporation pimp, and a tobacco-company pimp are, however, and many have served in Congress (from both parties).
I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination, or big-whatever for their problems.
Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making for the rest of us. I'm just sorry for my young, beautiful granddaughter. I'm tired of "conservatives" who claim to be against government but serve in it, who claim to want to reduce the deficit but then reduce in the influx of money from people who can afford to pay taxes (millionaires and billionaires), who don't allow themselves to be investigated for corruption (Cheney/Enron) or for shooting a friend in the face with a shotgun. And who are "these people"? We have seen the enemy, and he or she is us. In a bipartisan way, let's agree to close the chasm between rich and poor, to make health-insurance not-for-profit, to make sure the government has to get a warrant before tapping a phone, to stop rendition and torture, and to stop the race-baiting rhetoric of TV and radio "talkers."
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
When A College May Be In Decline: Know the Warning Signs
A colleague at a far-flung university (well, far-flung from where I am, not flung at all from where s/he is) wrote to say that, for the first time since she's taught there, she thinks the place is in decline, and it made me wonder how many other colleagues at a various institutions (community college, state university, private college, private university) feel the same way--and what the warning-signs of "decline" might be.I'll use shorthand and simply refer to the institutions as "colleges."
Of course, two major factors have nothing to do with the internal workings of the colleges: 1) The wrecked American economy; and 2) Americans' deeply ambivalent (at best) attitude toward higher education and the public funding of it. I see these factors only getting worse, especially when one of the two major political parties seems gleefully, manically, and maniacally anti-intellectual. The House of Rep[tile]s will disband its committee on global warming, for example. As with trickle-down economics (and why did people ever think that metaphor portended anything good when, at best, people would get trickled on?), the GOPers are unamused by data. Not that he Dems are any day at the trickle-factory's beach. I'd rather watch a dog vomit than listen to almost any federal politician or politico-celeb at this point. Seriously.
But I disgorge, I mean digress.. . . Anyway, the two major factors above have immediate impact on the internal workings of colleges: more use of adjunct-faculty, salaries not even keeping pace with inflation, large class-sizes, evaporation of benefits, and overall a kind of dreary bottom-line approach to everything, where before some vision and hope might have been found. I mean, everybody knows there always is a bottom-line; it's when the bottom-line becomes excuse for every decision, the lead in every campus mandate, that things get Dickensian.
In such a climate, different offices, departments, and sectors of the university become like silos or bunkers, with everyone hunkering down, the not so subliminal message being "actually, we're not all in this together, and don't have a nice day." Often this means that directives or plans set out by higher-level administrators are ignored or undermined--or are drawn and quartered, as every unit pulls in a different direction, if pulling at all. Usually, then, the higher up the administrator, the more out of touch he or she gets with what's really going on. People start to shine him or her on, withhold information, and, to borrow a term from a Karl Shapiro poem, "back-scuttle."
Once a college--or any institution--starts going after benefits or salaries, one temptation on the part of those who run the place (boards of trustees, regents, legislators, higher level administrators, and so on) is to get legalistic: "Well, we aren't legally bound to keep giving you that benefit," e.g. That's to be expected. ("We are not all in this together.") At a college, however, this quickly becomes dicey because so much of what faculty and staff do is off the books, not part of the contract. Informally advising student groups, attending students' performances, helping to recruit students, contacting alumni, helping with fund-raising: faculty, especially, are more likely to take part in such things when a) they don't have tenure (this would be called self-interest), b) they feel the place is treating them not merely as contracted employees, c) and they sense the place is at least holding steady and maybe getting better. Once they get a strong whiff of legalism, stagnation, and/or decline, however, they are more likely to take a punch-the-clock attitude, teach their classes, fulfill the other basic duties, and get off campus.
I wasn't surprised to hear that a lot of this stuff was taking place at my friend's college, which is different in kind from mine.
There may be other signs, depending upon one's institution. Younger faculty may be less productive than those from older generations, and the standards for promotion and tenure may be so murky and/or inconsistently applied that most of them will skate to tenure anyway--or get denied tenure for reasons that seem fickle. The inconsistency cuts both ways.
A high percentage of departments may be dysfunctional, and the dean, provost, division-head, or vice president may be too overwhelmed, too implicated in the dysfunction, or too close to retirement to do anything about it. Dysfunctional departments are like open sores on the body of the campus.
Private colleges face a particular challenge because most of them are so tuition dependent, so that while they may talk a lot about rigor and idealistic curricula, their main goal is to recruit and retain enough warm bodies. Moreover, the "liberal arts education" may be getting more and more arcane and frivolous, especially when so much information is so readily available. It may be that a moderately motivated autodidact can get a perfectly sound liberal-arts education online, in libraries, and from used bookstores. However, the reader over my shoulder is now howling with counter-arguments about the need to be guided by good professors, the conducive atmosphere of liberal-arts seminars and "residential education," and so on. The larger question about whether liberal arts colleges are keeping pace with larger societal changes obtains, however--or sure seems to do so, from this p.o.v. It's counter-intuitive, I know, but at liberal arts colleges, where high value is placed on critical thinking, one rarely sees critical thinking applied to assumptions, definitions, and bromides affiliated with "the liberal arts."
My friend and I did caution each other about what Randall Jarrell once called "Golden Age-ism"--a form of nostalgia. He wrote that, "in the Golden Age, people probably went around complaining how yellow everything looked." For my friend's sake, I wish s/he were merely nostalgic, but she isn't. The evidence of financial, functional, administrative, and collegial decline is just too overwhelming there. Still, one needs to look for things that may be better now than they were before. And keep looking.
While one must guard against nostalgia, one must also confront the fact that American educational institutions, their basic structures and assumptions, are now about a 100 years old (some are older, of course).. In October I went to a conference at which an expert spoke about this. He noted that the current high school system is one pretty much rooted in the 1920s and 1930s--when child-labor laws made it necessary to put kids somewhere during the day, and when there was a push for "universal literacy." Most high-school curricula, schedules, and systems now are hopelessly unrelated to the society into which the students will go--in which they already are. Higher ed is a fusion of 19th century aims: (the cultivation of gentlemen and gentle-ladies) and a mimicking of English education (William James is quite good on this subject)--plus a post-World War II model tailored to educate returning soldiers (and their wives) and get them ready to participate in the economy of what had become an empire.
The expert at the conference noted that most managerial/administrative structures at colleges spring from these old days, keep repeating the same errors, cultivate dysfunction, and respond to change about as well as Archie Bunker. He also noted that, fairly soon, many corporations won't care who has a college degree or where from. Why? He thinks many corporations won't have traditional employees but will work with independent contractors. So that, say, if you can design a new widget and can prove you can design a new widget, no one will care if you have a B.S. or a B.A. or, in the event you might have earned one, no one will care where you went to college. The expert also said that several "futurists" predict that, soon, a doctorate will be given to an illiterate person--in computer science, for example. And if the person both has a doctorate and is good at what s/he does, no one who matters will care that s/he can't read--or that she hasn't read the Odyssey.
At my own institution, I'm not quite sure what to think. Some signs seems good; others, not so much. The place has always spoken openly about a list of "aspire-to" colleges--colleges it would like to emulate, with regard to quality of students (as measured by SAT scores, at any rate), size of endowment, and ratings. I don't see us moving up that list any time soon. Because of the economy and a lot of other factors (some of which I've mentioned above), my college and a lot of others may find themselves (at best) in that phase of musical chairs when the music goes off: "okay, everybody freeze where you are." A lot of places are frozen where they are (at best) and hoping (to shift to Oz) that they won't be "melting, melting" any time soon.
"Do we live in interesting times?" I asked my colleague at the far-flung place. "Define 'interesting'," s/he said. (What a professorial response!). "Car-wrecks are 'interesting'," she added.
Of course, two major factors have nothing to do with the internal workings of the colleges: 1) The wrecked American economy; and 2) Americans' deeply ambivalent (at best) attitude toward higher education and the public funding of it. I see these factors only getting worse, especially when one of the two major political parties seems gleefully, manically, and maniacally anti-intellectual. The House of Rep[tile]s will disband its committee on global warming, for example. As with trickle-down economics (and why did people ever think that metaphor portended anything good when, at best, people would get trickled on?), the GOPers are unamused by data. Not that he Dems are any day at the trickle-factory's beach. I'd rather watch a dog vomit than listen to almost any federal politician or politico-celeb at this point. Seriously.
But I disgorge, I mean digress.. . . Anyway, the two major factors above have immediate impact on the internal workings of colleges: more use of adjunct-faculty, salaries not even keeping pace with inflation, large class-sizes, evaporation of benefits, and overall a kind of dreary bottom-line approach to everything, where before some vision and hope might have been found. I mean, everybody knows there always is a bottom-line; it's when the bottom-line becomes excuse for every decision, the lead in every campus mandate, that things get Dickensian.
In such a climate, different offices, departments, and sectors of the university become like silos or bunkers, with everyone hunkering down, the not so subliminal message being "actually, we're not all in this together, and don't have a nice day." Often this means that directives or plans set out by higher-level administrators are ignored or undermined--or are drawn and quartered, as every unit pulls in a different direction, if pulling at all. Usually, then, the higher up the administrator, the more out of touch he or she gets with what's really going on. People start to shine him or her on, withhold information, and, to borrow a term from a Karl Shapiro poem, "back-scuttle."
Once a college--or any institution--starts going after benefits or salaries, one temptation on the part of those who run the place (boards of trustees, regents, legislators, higher level administrators, and so on) is to get legalistic: "Well, we aren't legally bound to keep giving you that benefit," e.g. That's to be expected. ("We are not all in this together.") At a college, however, this quickly becomes dicey because so much of what faculty and staff do is off the books, not part of the contract. Informally advising student groups, attending students' performances, helping to recruit students, contacting alumni, helping with fund-raising: faculty, especially, are more likely to take part in such things when a) they don't have tenure (this would be called self-interest), b) they feel the place is treating them not merely as contracted employees, c) and they sense the place is at least holding steady and maybe getting better. Once they get a strong whiff of legalism, stagnation, and/or decline, however, they are more likely to take a punch-the-clock attitude, teach their classes, fulfill the other basic duties, and get off campus.
I wasn't surprised to hear that a lot of this stuff was taking place at my friend's college, which is different in kind from mine.
There may be other signs, depending upon one's institution. Younger faculty may be less productive than those from older generations, and the standards for promotion and tenure may be so murky and/or inconsistently applied that most of them will skate to tenure anyway--or get denied tenure for reasons that seem fickle. The inconsistency cuts both ways.
A high percentage of departments may be dysfunctional, and the dean, provost, division-head, or vice president may be too overwhelmed, too implicated in the dysfunction, or too close to retirement to do anything about it. Dysfunctional departments are like open sores on the body of the campus.
Private colleges face a particular challenge because most of them are so tuition dependent, so that while they may talk a lot about rigor and idealistic curricula, their main goal is to recruit and retain enough warm bodies. Moreover, the "liberal arts education" may be getting more and more arcane and frivolous, especially when so much information is so readily available. It may be that a moderately motivated autodidact can get a perfectly sound liberal-arts education online, in libraries, and from used bookstores. However, the reader over my shoulder is now howling with counter-arguments about the need to be guided by good professors, the conducive atmosphere of liberal-arts seminars and "residential education," and so on. The larger question about whether liberal arts colleges are keeping pace with larger societal changes obtains, however--or sure seems to do so, from this p.o.v. It's counter-intuitive, I know, but at liberal arts colleges, where high value is placed on critical thinking, one rarely sees critical thinking applied to assumptions, definitions, and bromides affiliated with "the liberal arts."
My friend and I did caution each other about what Randall Jarrell once called "Golden Age-ism"--a form of nostalgia. He wrote that, "in the Golden Age, people probably went around complaining how yellow everything looked." For my friend's sake, I wish s/he were merely nostalgic, but she isn't. The evidence of financial, functional, administrative, and collegial decline is just too overwhelming there. Still, one needs to look for things that may be better now than they were before. And keep looking.
While one must guard against nostalgia, one must also confront the fact that American educational institutions, their basic structures and assumptions, are now about a 100 years old (some are older, of course).. In October I went to a conference at which an expert spoke about this. He noted that the current high school system is one pretty much rooted in the 1920s and 1930s--when child-labor laws made it necessary to put kids somewhere during the day, and when there was a push for "universal literacy." Most high-school curricula, schedules, and systems now are hopelessly unrelated to the society into which the students will go--in which they already are. Higher ed is a fusion of 19th century aims: (the cultivation of gentlemen and gentle-ladies) and a mimicking of English education (William James is quite good on this subject)--plus a post-World War II model tailored to educate returning soldiers (and their wives) and get them ready to participate in the economy of what had become an empire.
The expert at the conference noted that most managerial/administrative structures at colleges spring from these old days, keep repeating the same errors, cultivate dysfunction, and respond to change about as well as Archie Bunker. He also noted that, fairly soon, many corporations won't care who has a college degree or where from. Why? He thinks many corporations won't have traditional employees but will work with independent contractors. So that, say, if you can design a new widget and can prove you can design a new widget, no one will care if you have a B.S. or a B.A. or, in the event you might have earned one, no one will care where you went to college. The expert also said that several "futurists" predict that, soon, a doctorate will be given to an illiterate person--in computer science, for example. And if the person both has a doctorate and is good at what s/he does, no one who matters will care that s/he can't read--or that she hasn't read the Odyssey.
At my own institution, I'm not quite sure what to think. Some signs seems good; others, not so much. The place has always spoken openly about a list of "aspire-to" colleges--colleges it would like to emulate, with regard to quality of students (as measured by SAT scores, at any rate), size of endowment, and ratings. I don't see us moving up that list any time soon. Because of the economy and a lot of other factors (some of which I've mentioned above), my college and a lot of others may find themselves (at best) in that phase of musical chairs when the music goes off: "okay, everybody freeze where you are." A lot of places are frozen where they are (at best) and hoping (to shift to Oz) that they won't be "melting, melting" any time soon.
"Do we live in interesting times?" I asked my colleague at the far-flung place. "Define 'interesting'," s/he said. (What a professorial response!). "Car-wrecks are 'interesting'," she added.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
When You Are Naked
*
*
*
*
When You Are Naked
When you're naked, I feel like celebrating,
except when you are ill and I take care of you.
When you are naked, I feel like celebrating,
and I want to take my clothes off, too.
When you're naked, you sometimes
don't want to be bothered by adoration,
curiosity, or lust, as when you step out
of the shower before getting ready
to go to work. I respect your wishes
then, but I celebrate in secret still.
Restraint is not negation.
When you are naked, sometimes
sirens go off in my head, and the red
lights of police cars whirl, and the cars
lead a motorcade of my desires to
a high-level meeting downtown, where
my libido and I will hold serious talks.
When you are naked and starting
to get dressed, I like to watch how
you assemble the ensemble on
your body. It is you and your body
dressing your body. I watch your
hands dress your body. I watch
your body.
When I am naked, and you look
at me, I feel like an old battleship
that's drifted into a harbor after
many an abrasive voyage, and
you're waiting there to get me
into dry-dock and make repairs.
You're wearing a red beret, and
I'm a battered thing with a cheerful
captain on the bridge.
When you are naked and lying
in bed, I sometimes like to sniff
you--slowly--like a cat, not
manically like a dog. I like to
sample the odors and aromas.
Like then to stop and lick
your navel, to hear you giggle.
Of such small moments, the good
of a good life is largely composed.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
*
*
*
When You Are Naked
When you're naked, I feel like celebrating,
except when you are ill and I take care of you.
When you are naked, I feel like celebrating,
and I want to take my clothes off, too.
When you're naked, you sometimes
don't want to be bothered by adoration,
curiosity, or lust, as when you step out
of the shower before getting ready
to go to work. I respect your wishes
then, but I celebrate in secret still.
Restraint is not negation.
When you are naked, sometimes
sirens go off in my head, and the red
lights of police cars whirl, and the cars
lead a motorcade of my desires to
a high-level meeting downtown, where
my libido and I will hold serious talks.
When you are naked and starting
to get dressed, I like to watch how
you assemble the ensemble on
your body. It is you and your body
dressing your body. I watch your
hands dress your body. I watch
your body.
When I am naked, and you look
at me, I feel like an old battleship
that's drifted into a harbor after
many an abrasive voyage, and
you're waiting there to get me
into dry-dock and make repairs.
You're wearing a red beret, and
I'm a battered thing with a cheerful
captain on the bridge.
When you are naked and lying
in bed, I sometimes like to sniff
you--slowly--like a cat, not
manically like a dog. I like to
sample the odors and aromas.
Like then to stop and lick
your navel, to hear you giggle.
Of such small moments, the good
of a good life is largely composed.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
Saturday, November 20, 2010
NSFW In San Francisco: Library Vixen
I've been intrigued lately by the several endeavors of a digital librarian in San Francisco who goes by the nom-de-blog, Library Vixen. In addition to being a librarian and doing graduate work in information sciences, she is a photographer, writer, poet, blogger, and student of culture.
Warning: Not Safe For Work. I only recently ran across this term (I hear Obama's the President, too!) and immediately thought about people who work at nuclear power plants and missile silos, and in fireworks factories, or in mines--or on BP oil rigs. They'll show you Not Safe For Work.
At any rate, one of LV's blogs--the one called Library Vixen, as it happens--is a sex blog, so read no further if you're likely to be put off for any reason. The LV refers to the subject matter variously as sex, smut, porn. What makes it different from other sites? I'm glad you asked. The LV deliberately blurs lines between autobiography and fiction, erotica and porn, art and reportage, private and public, love and desire, making art and living life. And/or works with existing blurs. I like the project(s) she's undertaken, including this blog; she also photographs "fugitive art" in San Francisco, and she writes about cutting-edge library stuff. She's smart.
One thing many feminists on the Left and many moralists (I didn't say moralizers) on the Right seem to agree on is that all porn is bad, although I guess first they agree that all porn is porn. Yes, there's an exploitative, industrialized aspect to much if not most mass-produced porn, but that's not the LV's project. Moreover, the boundaries of what's acceptable do shift even if they don't and shouldn't disappear altogether. Remember that Joyce's Ulysses was once labeled "obscene." I just happen to have gone to a Picasso exhibit today (they're renovating the museum in Paris, so they took the show on the road), and his art was once called junk, etc.
I do concede that it's easier for me to keep an open mind because I seem to have been born with one. For example, I liked "The Missouri Breaks," and when I told a chum that in graduate school, he looked at me as if I'd just thrown up on his lapel. (I hadn't, by the way.) My tastes are so broad in music, I reckon they've ceased to be tastes. If you suffer similarly you might like parts, some, or all of the LV's blog; or not. No worries.....
.....I like to write sonnets about the darnedest things--good for me, bad for the form (arguably). So I wrote one for the LV but not about her, so do remember that the "LV" in the poem is not the real LV--heavens, don't blame my poem on her. The poem is sadly far too tame for the LV, alas. Not to mention alack.
Sonnet For the Library Vixen
You always knew she kept more than the keys
To information. And you sensed the cool
And stern affect and skirts beyond the knees
Hid sexuality. Of course, only a fool
Would underestimate this vixen's power--
The holdings and the indices, the hair
Unpinned, a tryst after the aching hour
Of closing time, commingling truth and dare.
Imagine this: she keeps the glasses on
But nothing else. She shushes you, and then
Instructs you how to do the search--keyword:
Libido. Once--and then again--
Insatiable. Oh, no--it's not absurd.
Librarian-as-vixen: perfect sense.
Sheer force of smarts and lust: it is immense.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
Warning: Not Safe For Work. I only recently ran across this term (I hear Obama's the President, too!) and immediately thought about people who work at nuclear power plants and missile silos, and in fireworks factories, or in mines--or on BP oil rigs. They'll show you Not Safe For Work.
At any rate, one of LV's blogs--the one called Library Vixen, as it happens--is a sex blog, so read no further if you're likely to be put off for any reason. The LV refers to the subject matter variously as sex, smut, porn. What makes it different from other sites? I'm glad you asked. The LV deliberately blurs lines between autobiography and fiction, erotica and porn, art and reportage, private and public, love and desire, making art and living life. And/or works with existing blurs. I like the project(s) she's undertaken, including this blog; she also photographs "fugitive art" in San Francisco, and she writes about cutting-edge library stuff. She's smart.
One thing many feminists on the Left and many moralists (I didn't say moralizers) on the Right seem to agree on is that all porn is bad, although I guess first they agree that all porn is porn. Yes, there's an exploitative, industrialized aspect to much if not most mass-produced porn, but that's not the LV's project. Moreover, the boundaries of what's acceptable do shift even if they don't and shouldn't disappear altogether. Remember that Joyce's Ulysses was once labeled "obscene." I just happen to have gone to a Picasso exhibit today (they're renovating the museum in Paris, so they took the show on the road), and his art was once called junk, etc.
I do concede that it's easier for me to keep an open mind because I seem to have been born with one. For example, I liked "The Missouri Breaks," and when I told a chum that in graduate school, he looked at me as if I'd just thrown up on his lapel. (I hadn't, by the way.) My tastes are so broad in music, I reckon they've ceased to be tastes. If you suffer similarly you might like parts, some, or all of the LV's blog; or not. No worries.....
.....I like to write sonnets about the darnedest things--good for me, bad for the form (arguably). So I wrote one for the LV but not about her, so do remember that the "LV" in the poem is not the real LV--heavens, don't blame my poem on her. The poem is sadly far too tame for the LV, alas. Not to mention alack.
Sonnet For the Library Vixen
You always knew she kept more than the keys
To information. And you sensed the cool
And stern affect and skirts beyond the knees
Hid sexuality. Of course, only a fool
Would underestimate this vixen's power--
The holdings and the indices, the hair
Unpinned, a tryst after the aching hour
Of closing time, commingling truth and dare.
Imagine this: she keeps the glasses on
But nothing else. She shushes you, and then
Instructs you how to do the search--keyword:
Libido. Once--and then again--
Insatiable. Oh, no--it's not absurd.
Librarian-as-vixen: perfect sense.
Sheer force of smarts and lust: it is immense.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
Friday, November 19, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Re-Posting "Fresh Poem for Anyone"
I thought it might be a good time to re-post "Fresh Poem for Anyone." As my late mother used to say to me, "And don't ask me why."
Fresh Poem For Anyone
by Hans Ostrom
Here's a fresh poem for you. It snaps
crisply like a cold carrot just pulled
out of hard ground. It shocks like the time
the politician simply told the truth. It
loves like a woman sailing on a voyage
of her beauty. It's awkward and generous--
a large barn of a poem. It's a knock-kneed,
unsophisticated singer a crowd stayed
late to hear. It's a scar left by a dog's tooth,
the stench of a rattlesnake-den, a
satisfaction long denied, a time after
weeping, the thing you've known for sure
all along, and the words you were hoping
to hear. It explodes right here
into the poem you need to write, to read,
and to remember. Take it. It's fresh
and it's yours and it's free. It belongs to
you now. Start writing it, keep going, and hold on.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Fresh Poem For Anyone
by Hans Ostrom
Here's a fresh poem for you. It snaps
crisply like a cold carrot just pulled
out of hard ground. It shocks like the time
the politician simply told the truth. It
loves like a woman sailing on a voyage
of her beauty. It's awkward and generous--
a large barn of a poem. It's a knock-kneed,
unsophisticated singer a crowd stayed
late to hear. It's a scar left by a dog's tooth,
the stench of a rattlesnake-den, a
satisfaction long denied, a time after
weeping, the thing you've known for sure
all along, and the words you were hoping
to hear. It explodes right here
into the poem you need to write, to read,
and to remember. Take it. It's fresh
and it's yours and it's free. It belongs to
you now. Start writing it, keep going, and hold on.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Sunday, November 14, 2010
And So You Live Your Life
And So You Live Your Life
And so you live your life, fulfill some plans,
Are changed by accidents of whim or fate,
And wake one day, let's say, with toes in sands,
And--still hypothesis--it has grown late--
Late in the day, not early in your life.
In fact you tell yourself this day, "I'm old."
Should you stop striving, surrender strife?
That is the question that pops up as cold
Now comes into the picture of the day.
What more is there to do that can be done?
Are you a spectator who's in the way?
A body simply blocking light from sun?
Precisely how to live the rest of it
Is what you ask, unsettled where you sit.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
And so you live your life, fulfill some plans,
Are changed by accidents of whim or fate,
And wake one day, let's say, with toes in sands,
And--still hypothesis--it has grown late--
Late in the day, not early in your life.
In fact you tell yourself this day, "I'm old."
Should you stop striving, surrender strife?
That is the question that pops up as cold
Now comes into the picture of the day.
What more is there to do that can be done?
Are you a spectator who's in the way?
A body simply blocking light from sun?
Precisely how to live the rest of it
Is what you ask, unsettled where you sit.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
Friday, November 12, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
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