Afghan Unrest

More than a decade into the U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan, it seems we're still learning (or relearning) hard lessons.  This time it's the alleged burning of the Koran by troops at Bagram airbase, and the results have been tragic.

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind...

Faculty Meeting at Snowflake College

I like to think I’m someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly.  Unfortunately, I’ve pretty much been ordered to.

It’s time for the semiannual faculty meeting at Snowflake College, a perfunctory affair held each semester the week before classes begin.  The agenda never changes: Although most of the folks in the room are returning faculty, the meeting is a review of basic administrative procedures, library hours, operating the classroom audiovisual equipment, etc.  

The main draw for me is that 1) It’s a paid training, and 2) The college provides dinner.  Three hours’ pay and free food?  Just for sitting and listening?  I’m there, dude!  I don’t care how many times I’ve heard this stuff.

As the sign-in sheet is passed around, Dean Kimpossible outlines the evening’s program.  She introduces the new faculty and the courses they’ll be teaching, offerings which afford our students opportunities for personal growth to augment such perennial favorites as Eidetic Portrait Painting, Indonesian Tribal Dance, and Tantric Navel Gazing.  Kimpossible solemnly reminds us it’s precisely this sort of curriculum that makes Snowflake College uniquely suited to educating a new, more discerning generation of students.

Kimpossible recognizes a few of the returning faculty, most notably Professor Duckie, the Most Popular Faculty Member at Snowflake.  A twentysomething only in his third year teaching, Duckie is beloved by faculty, staff, and students alike.  Rumor has it he’s gotten more chili peppers on Rate My Professors.com than any other prof at Snowflake, ever.  He invites his students to send him friend requests on Facebook.  He’s agreeable and apparently charismatic which of course gives everything he says added weight.  The fact that you could wade through his deepest thoughts and not get your ankles wet is something that seems to have escaped almost everyone in the room, which goes to show that cultivated superficiality will get you far even in academia.

After sitting through several pro forma presentations by our colleagues, the dean shifts the topic to academics.  Kimpossible’s teaching philosophy is informed by her recruitment brochure vision for Snowflake: Carefree youth in dreadlocks and tie dye playing hackeysack on the front lawn before traipsing off to tatami mat weaving class.  And so we’ve now reached that point in the evening’s proceedings where Kimpossible takes a moment to share her views.  We raise our metaphorical paper cups and prepare to drink the rhetorical Kool-Aid:

“Our students are ‘digital natives.’” (Translation: They’re adept at texting and updating their Facebook pages in class, and yet somehow can’t figure out how to access the course’s online content.)

“Our students don’t want to be lectured.  They are ‘knowledge explorers,’ and your job is to be their guide.”  (They want to do the least amount of work for the highest possible grade.  Your job is to be engaging and entertaining.)   

“Our students are idealistic.”  (Ideally, they would spend all their time on the ski run while Daddy and Mommy pay their bills.)       

“Our students have a different orientation toward work than our generation.”  (They don’t like it.)

“Our students know what they want and live by their values.”  (They have an exaggerated sense of entitlement and will angrily confront anyone who challenges it.  And that includes you, my dear professor.)

At this point Kimpossible pauses a beat, then delivers the punch line:

“Of course, you are responsible for maintaining Snowflake College’s high academic standards.”

Ay, there’s the rub!  Since our students’ exceptionalism is axiomatic, standards are pretty much moot.  I’d like someday to walk into my classroom and not feel like I’m in that Twilight Zone episode about the bratty kid who banishes the grownups he doesn’t like to the cornfield. 

Wait, we’re not quite finished yet.  Kimpossible closes the proceedings by reminding us why we’re all here.  She reads us an email from a student who recently transferred to Big State University:

           “Hey, Kimpossible!

           “Just wanted to tell you how I’m doing now that I’m at Big State. 

“The teachers here don’t care about students.  They’re not cool like at Snowflake.

“They expect me to come to class and do homework and stuff.  This jerkwad professor wouldn’t let me make up an exam even though there was six inches of fresh powder on the slopes and I had to go snowboarding that day.

           “It totally sucks here!”

Kimpossible pauses dramatically to make sure the full meaning of this travesty sinks in. 

“‘It…sucks…here!’” she intones slowly.  “Always remember how special it is at Snowflake.  I’m proud we can provide such a nurturing environment…and I’m thankful we have such students!” 

And with that, we’re dismissed for the evening.  Welcome to another semester at Snowflake College!

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

A Lament for a Lost Movement

I was born and raised in a “blue” state, and I live there still.  However, I also spent my childhood in a small rural town.  Coming of age during the Reagan era, I absorbed a lot of the conventional wisdom of the time.

Given my upbringing, it’s no surprise I developed progressive views relatively late.  But having lived through the past decade, I’m amazed that more people haven’t turned leftward.  In fact, I’ve been hard pressed to find a place where my neighbors share my ideas. 

For the last few years I’ve lived in a mountain resort community where I teach at the local college.  When I first arrived in Treetop (not its real name), it seemed like just the nice, free-thinking sort of place I’d been searching for.  I hoped to find friends who thought and felt as I do.  I thought it might be the where I’d realize a long-nurtured ambition to start a free alternative school.  I yearned to breathe free in the clean alpine air.

Treetop does have a reputation for having a free-spirited, youthful, alt vibe.  What I discovered underneath, however, was a pretty typical small town, right down to the weekly Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions Club breakfast meetings.  The conversation at the wine and cheese parties differs little from what you’d hear in the suburbs.  Town ordinances ensure that one downtown building looks much like all the others.  

I shared my misgivings with an acquaintance, telling her I wished Treetop was more socially progressive.  She was taken aback.  “But Treetop is very progressive,” she protested.  “We have snowboarders, artists, and yoga studios.  I listen to NPR and read The Huffington Post every morning!”

I didn’t bother to argue.  While Treetop isn’t exactly the kind of place Sinclair Lewis would have satirized, neither is it a refuge for aspiring bohemians or dissidents.  My exchange with the neighbor underlines an important fact of American political life.  Progressivism is a fringe movement, probably more so than at any other time in our history.  Oh, we have a loose cultural tolerance we call liberalism.  But being a liberal is largely a matter of style over substance, just another meaningless fashion statement.  I blame this on the legacy of the 1960s.  More precisely, I blame it on people taking away the wrong lessons from that era.  The individualistic, do-your-own-thing, let-it-all-hang-out countercultural ethos seeped into the mainstream without transforming the soul of “square” society.  This is why you have kids today with long hair, tattoos, and body piercings who vote Republican and unabashedly seek business careers.   

The biggest roadblock to reviving progressivism is our essential, small “c,” conservatism.  We don’t like change.  We stubbornly believe individual initiative and hard work conquer all.  Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, we think the system is basically fair and should stay the way it is.  Most importantly, we don’t want to lose whatever social and economic privileges we’ve managed to hold on to.   In short, our national narrative and decades of propaganda have convinced us progressivism just isn’t a good idea.  It helps explain why the Occupy movement has failed to take off.  It hasn’t been police repression or official harassment.  It's been public skepticism and apathy.

So, what’s the solution?  In my humble opinion:

What we need is a compelling counter-narrative.  We need to take back the symbolism and heroes of our past.  We need to remind ourselves of the taken for granted gains made by our forebears.  We must let go of our preconceived notions.  This is easier said than done, but I believe it has to happen.  It may be a bridge too far to win over older generations whose members feel they have too much to lose.  Perhaps we can count on the open mindedness of youth to rebuild the movement.

To build a future movement, we have to look to the past.  We must revisit the experience of the 1960s New Left, the political movement that faded into historical oblivion even as the decade’s music and fashion became cultural icons.  Our goal should be nothing short of a revival of the New Left.   This next New Left must not simply engage in activism.  It must win the cultural war against reaction and corporate hegemony.  It will have to rely on moral suasion to remake our basic cultural values.              

This last charge – to fundamentally remake our collective beliefs – is the most critical and the most difficult.  I’ll mull the possibilities in a future post.

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

Not Concerned

It seems Mitt Romney has suffered another slip of the tongue. 

This week he told an audience that he was "not concerned" about the very poor because they had a social safety net to rely on.  Apparently he meant to emphasize his commitment to making things better for the middle class. 

All the same, his infelicitous choice of words was quite telling...and perhaps even calculated.  Romney's utterance reflects the long-held bias of American voters against the impoversished.  The Puritan belief that the poor somehow deserve their plight because of their moral unworthiness is alive and well, and Romney is simply walking the well-trod path followed by Republican politicians since Reagan.  Brace yourselves for more of the usual right-wing drivel of how we should help the less fortunate by cutting the programs that keep them afloat...