Category Archives: Problem Practices

Communication behavior or analysis that is often counter-productive

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Thank you very much, but The Governor of Florida would prefer to tell your story his way.

Active Listening in the Classroom Heather Syrett.

An age-appropriate accounting of the multiform American experience is an educator’s duty.

These days a possible run for the Presidency means becoming the voice of widespread grievances held by potential voters. It’s a bit too early to know, but Governor Ron DeSantis’ and Florida’s legislative leaders seem to have mapped a path that includes taking on the educational establishment.  There appears to be no end to the state’s interest in laying down curriculum rules distinctly at odds with best practices known to schools of education, teachers, librarians and curriculum specialists. An age-appropriate accounting of the multiform American experience is an educator’s duty. But the Governor seems to favor gag orders that omit inclusion of all of the state’s citizens. Among other goals, he wants newer but widely accepted representations of gender off the table in most school classrooms.  In addition, DeSantis has replaced a university president and most of its board with fellow social conservatives, demanded the removal of “inappropriate” library books, disallowed a high school AP African American Studies course, and is attempting to dismember various diversity initiatives. He clearly prefers narratives that pull us back to the less aware years of the last century, when homosexuality was mostly not acknowledged, or insights about social injustice were limited to a few heroic figures. And forget about introducing students to what we now understand are the many sources of systemic bias. He treats this aspect of organizational life as if it were mere speculation rather than settled social science fact.

Here’s the thing. Building a description of anything in everyday language is not a neutral act. The vast and largely accepted literature in the Sociology of Knowledge reminds us that narrative cannot help but come from perspectives shaped by the particular experiences and values of a given community. Narratives evolve with shifting preferences. The question is less if there is a perspective, but which ones are in play at any one time. These systemic preferences—some harmless and some pernicious—are built into the rhetoric of human communities.

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To progress beyond these limitations requires awareness.  Going the other way to denial leads us to banning rhetoric if it is “woke,” meaning that they may consider newer narratives that acknowledge more fluid definitions of gender, racial discrimination, or the situational ethics of the founding fathers. All are unsettling to anyone who mistakenly understands learning as a static enterprise dealing with “knowns” that are oversimplified into immutability. And so it follows that if a student is made to feel uncomfortable through discussion of a specific topic like the many form of the American family, a teacher is presumably supposed to retreat to some safer topic. Ditto for any topics touching on gender identity in the early elementary grades.

How does all of this look like in the classroom? One teacher in Palm Beach County recently changed her plans for a discussion about the first American woman to fly in space to omit the fact that Sally Ride was a lesbian. The teacher feared for her job if that detail was included. The same frightening logic is evident in the recent decision of a Florida College to cancel a scheduled appearance of the U.K.’s renowned King’s Singers. Someone discovered that a member of the acapella group was gay.

This land of swamps may have even more than it knows.

To be sure, no one wants to expose children to more than they can comfortably understand. And Ron DeSantis has imposed more gag rules on teaching professionals than the courts may accept. But hate bills against a lot of groups are fouling the very idea of education in the Sunshine State.

We can hope we have less to fear than we think from doctrines that pretend not to see. As Communication Theorist Marshall McLuhan once noted, school is a place where children can ‘take a break’ from their education via the mass media. For better or worse, our social and public media are infused with contemporary attitudes that are easily absorbed. And there are alternate ways for children to find their way to understanding the nature of social relations, even if they start with unfairly branded books like Todd Parr’s The Family Book, or Justin Richardson’s and Peter Parnell’s And Tango Makes Three.

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Advantages of On-Site Learning

Source Williams College

Though times have changed, a decision to pursue graduate work should come with the hope of doing it full time, on location, and in the company of mentors and peers.

Covid has changed higher education by pushing more undergraduate and graduate work online.  There are a few advantages to working on a degree off site. Part-time students who work full-time can avoid commuting times. And a few subjects may lend themselves to distance learning. But pursuing an academic degree away from the energy of a good graduate program has significant limitations.

For many, the decision to get an advanced degree starts by picking a campus that satisfies financial and geographical limits. Students usually go to graduate school for themselves, not for their parents, picking a field that aligns with their interests. Often a final choice is also shaped by interest in working with particular faculty, or exploring a program’s special features.  We tend to forget that academia can function as a life-changing threshold, where new insights will fire enthusiasms that can last for a lifetime.

The search for practicality can easily douse those fires. Work, Covid and a kind of rampant careerism have too often turned the search for an M.A. or Ph.D. into another form of occupational training. Curiosity for a field’s deeper complexities seems to have been replaced by choosing a program for its ability to deliver a “ticket” of immediate employment.  The model here is perhaps the MBA. Some pursue this degree out of sheer exuberance for the subject.  But most are looking for ways to advance their financial prospects. We accept this, and the likely correlate that communications with instructors may be casual and infrequent. But even while the appeal of distance learning has spread throughout the society, fields of human inquiry especially in the arts, humanities and social sciences can look pale if also seen only as just a “ticket” to a job. A transactional motive for advanced education represents a weakening of what academic inquiry ought to be about.  Universities are now frequently selling jobs and vocational training to make their quotas, but that doesn’t mean talented students should be buying.

High order learning works best as an immersion experience.

In watered-down online programs many of the canons that are part of the traditions of a subject may be left unexplored. Lost is coursework on a campus backed with an expansive range of human and material resources. Mentorship and the goal of seeking knowledge for its own sake also withers.  Learning needs the model of an enthusiastic instructor that can perform their passion for their field.  Those kinds of teachers are why most of us chose academe.

The immersive experience of on site and full-time graduate study has a lot of advantages.  Learning in a room with others is synergistic; discussion enriches understanding of a subject.  Students are likely to make contact with faculty not only in seminar rooms, but in their offices and sometimes their homes.  The exchanges can be personal and direct, replicating the Oxford model, where regular meetings with a teacher are still the norm. Because discussion-based learning is intense, there is little chance to hide in a large classroom or at the other end of a Zoom session. A student has to take ownership of their work and insights in the presence of others.

I remember a time when I was ordered out of a Professor Robert Newman’s office at Pitt after offering an ill-formed conclusion about the conduct of the Vietnam War. Newman easily detected that I had no basis for making some of my glib conclusions: a fact I was about to find out in no uncertain terms. As he pointed to the door, and without looking up from his notes, his uttered a typical Newman exclamation:  “Goddamn it Woodward; go read the reviews!”  He wrote a book on tests of evidence, so I knew I had deserved his displeasure.  And I was thankful to be shown the door rather than his eleventh floor window. His point was that I could leaven my ill-considered conclusions by at least reading some of the long form assessments  written by other scholars.

The intensity of that dressing down-made an impression. With growing confidence I spent time at professor’s houses, got personal coaching on upcoming oral exams, and witnessed the routines of working academics. I was learning to do the kind of critical thinking that is seeded by real conversation.

High order learning should remain an immersion experience. Though times have changed, a decision to pursue graduate work should come with the hope of doing it full time, on location, and in the company of mentors and peers.  Most of us following this route learned as much from the heightened and direct conversation as from the materials studied on a page or screen .

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