it's synth-pop friday!

the online imperative, continued

Music: American Analog Set: Golden Band (1999)

As most who have done either will confess, learning and teaching are crafts, which is to say these counterparts concern a "hands-on" process. The origin of the term "craft" did not always imply the hands, but rather "skill" or "strength" (which may have something to do with the association with sailing "craft" on the water). Teaching is not always literally hands-on, of course, but may involve a physically remote lecturer in a lecture hall. Still, the connotation of craft is useful for explaining the learning process as one of continual adaptation that stretches back to the Platonic dialogues: although one can learn something from reading, in an (seemingly) unmediated interpersonal situation, teacher and student can interact, not just in speech, but through the subtleties of eye contact and body language. For example, many of us have had the experience of lecturing to a large room and feeling, for some intellectually impossible to identify reason, that the class was "not getting it" or that you have, somehow, "lost them." In those instances, you ask questions of the students, figure out what is going on, and then try teaching the material from a different angle. Moodwork and tone are crucial components of teaching.

I mention the crafty dimension of teaching because I am worried about recent trends in higher education toward "massive open online courses," or MOOCs, pioneered by Harvard and MIT. MOOCs allow tens of thousands of students to take "free" courses online from prestigious schools to . . presumably, "brush up their skills." Now, anyone with a critical bone in her brain will tell you this is primarily a public relations initiative premised more on the logic of branding than it is learning. But that's not what president of "edX," Anant Agarwal, has been saying to the press: "Our goal is to reinvent education," he said. With MOOCs paving the way, he argued that, online courses "will dramatically improve the quality, efficiency, and scale of learning worldwide and on our campuses." It's probably no surprise that Agarwal is also the head of MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. (Still need a warrant? Think about those academic enterprises who are most comfortable with the U.S. version of capitalism.) Are "quality, efficiency, and scale" god terms in the academy? Perhaps "quality" is, but not often in concert with "efficiency" and "scale." Together, these words bespeak an ideology of standardization, that which Adorno hailed as the hallmark of "rationalization" deep in the heart of the culture industry.

There are unquestionably noble goals behind the push to make education widespread and free. Few could argue with the lofty aim of making education within the reach of the poor, who could not afford to go to college by other means (or in the traditional sense). These aims are premised on the assumption, of course, that "education" is possible in an online environment, or that what we call "learning" actually takes place (in some cases, yes, in some cases--"click click yawn"). Universities defend their online offerings as just as "rigorous" as their on-campus versions, but of course, what "rigor" means is never explained (and for me, being "extremely tough" in the classroom is frequently counterproductive; "rigor" must be strategic, and I shudder to think of an online course designed to standardize something like extreme toughness---that has more to do with a video game like Dark Souls than a craft).

Others defend the MOOCs as something like TED talks, designed to inspire students toward further investigation on their own. Aside from the (often hilarious) critiques of the TED business model, please note gentle reader that is not what the heads of the MOOCs portal are saying. They're not saying MOOCs will inspire further learning, but rather, that they comprise learning, that the courses they deliver will be of higher quality, efficiency, and scale. Although I will agree that the fundamental reason MOOCs are touted is public relations (this makes universities seem relevant to the corporate-dominated world, which is to say the development-and-mass-media world), the online imperative is being touted as the future of education to both the masses and policy makers. The only folks who apparently have no voice in the new The Wizard of Oz of Higher Education are the little people behind the curtain.

Because of its creation (or further entrenchment) of class divisions---smaller elite, more vocationally trained college students (the new working, middle class), we have good reasons to fear the online imperative. Teachers, in particular, have reasons to worry too. "Experts" have claimed, for example, that online courses will "transform the work of professors": "Besides potential cost savings," reports Terence Chea of the Associated Press, "the new generation of online classes can change how students learn on campus by relieving professors of lecturing duties and freeing up more time for research and discussion with students." It's hard not to laugh aloud when reading such a utopian sentence; anyone who has worked in higher education for any time knows exactly how to properly write this sentence. Let me restate it: "In addition to potential cost savings, the new generation of online courses will allow universities to hire fewer professors and relieve others of their jobs." I'm being hyperbolic, of course, but what reader doubts this is actually how such a utopian vision will be used? We have four decades of higher education's pursuit of "quality, efficiency, and scale" to predict the eventual outcome of the online imperative . . . if implemented successfully.

I say "if implemented successfully" because, as an educator, I know online teaching will meet with limited success. While it does "teach" something, I'm not sure that something is what we would call an education, or that it has anything to do with a craft, in the bigger picture. Let me be clear: I am not against online teaching. Some things can be taught online. Rather, I am against the replacement of traditional classroom teaching with online teaching, of "blended approaches" eclipsing the sun of knowledge (of how students have been taught for thousands and thousands of years). Now, those who advocate strongly for an online component to teaching also tend to be those who argue for it as a supplement to education, one piece of a broader program. Recently my colleague Diane Davis mentioned there was a big push toward MOOs in the 90s, and it was also met with resistance and, in the end, petered out because those who demanded its implementation in the writing classroom realized that it took more instructors and instructional time to actually teach with MOOs than to do it the old fashioned way. Indeed, studies of online teaching have tended to bear out the claim online courses take as many resources, if not more, than a traditional teacher in a traditional classroom.

Of course, such considerations may be moot if your university is jockeying for real estate. If you can't build out or build up, how can you increase enrollment? Well, you go virtual, of course. Which is what, apparently, the UT regents are considering (which is to say, they've already decided; reports of "consider" usually mean this): as The Texas Tribune reported yesterday, the university is already in negotiation with that portal of "quality, efficiency, scale," Edx, as well as its competitor, Coursera. Vice provost for education policy Harrison Keller is the pointperson and media representative for the project. Although presumably MOOCs are for the express purpose of continuing the land-grant university mission (educating the "industrial classes," expanding learning to the working poor, and so on), note what Keller had to say to the press yesterday:

These are very complex deals . . . There are lots of different dimensions around intellectual property, and in the event that there were revenues that were generated, there are a lot of things that have to be worked out. . . . We don't see these [MOOCs] as replacing what we do with our learning management systems or what we're doing on campus . . . but there are things you can do to leverage the capabilities of the platform and the scale of the audience.

Given all that I've just said, I suspect you don't need any rhetorical analysis to see the bottom line, not educational mission, is driving all of this, and the mood of teaching is one of numbers---standardization, rationalization, digitization. Notably, Mr. Keller has ties to the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, claims independent political status, and routinely votes Republican.

on sparing the rod

Music: Iggy & the Stooges: Raw Power (1973)

I recently had a student send me a series of frantic email messages, three in as many days, about her grade. She was literally a point-and-a-fraction-of-a-point off from the next letter-grade, and the difference made all the difference on whether she graduated. She did not know that I had calculated her grade many days prior to her realization, and I had "bumped" her up so that she would not be spending thousands of dollars and an extra semester to earn her degree. Really: if a student is that close she or he gets the benefit of the doubt from me---the doubt being about my calculation skills and less his or her performance in my class. I do not advertise this policy, nor have I ever told students about it, for more than a decade. But I exercise it routinely: if a student is less than two points away from the next grade, I bump them "up."

One might ask---well, to be frank, someone did---whether or not the student "deserves" the bump? My response is: well, she's in the ballpark of the grade she was aiming for. What would my strict enforcement of point-fractions actually do, or prove, or accomplish? My attitude is that learning is not a game of numbers, which is why we use letter grades in the first place. Getting "As" or "Bs" or "Cs" does not signify an exact percentage on purpose; the letter grade represents the qualitative character of educational assessment. [Insert diatribe about "accountability" measures and the reduction of education to "scores" here.]

I mention this recent, "real life" incident in the life of an educator to help frame an interesting discussion I had with a self-identified "conservative" person, a trusted fraternity brother, some weeks ago about higher education. He had taught high school for some years, and we were commiserating about how politics (that is, politics external to the institutions of teaching) had become burdensome for educators. (As you might imagine, living in Texas the burdens of a politicized educational system are not unfamiliar to conversations at work.) He lived in a different state, but we had similar stories. Somehow we got to assessment, and our differences concerning the "grading" of students emerged. He stressed how important it was to grade fairly and accurately, and that he would fail a student even if it pained him to do so, for "his own good." I said that I understood his position, however, at least in my position I was very loathe to fail anyone on the matter of principle alone. "If a student wants to argue his or her grade," I said, "I'll hear them out. And sometimes if they're looking for a fight, I'll give in just to avoid the dynamic."

He looked perplexed, then disturbed. "What?" he said (I'm paraphrasing). "You give them the grade they want?"

"No." I replied. "But usually if a student is haggling over a grade, it is usually for a minor bump, not like a C to an A. More like a C to a B."

"So you just give in? What is that teaching them?"

I explained that I don't give in, but rather "give up my role for them." If it's a student who is failing, more often than not it's impossible to justify doing anything but failing them. That's not the case I'm talking about. I explained, rather, that most students who want to argue about a grade are students who are arguing for a minus-to-plus sort of situation, for single-digit percentage points (minor percentages). In my experience, insofar as these conflicts involve relatively minor point spreads, students who are angry with me or my grading policies are not upset about their grade but with me. "It's personal," I said, "except it's not really about me." As an authority, I have come to represent someone else who has treated him or her unfairly in the past, perhaps a paternal figure, or "society," or "those liberals" or whomever. "It's on my syllabus that if you have a problem with a grade, you have to state that problem in writing and send it to me, then come see me," I explained. By the time they've come to my office, they've worked out an argument for why they deserve X grade instead of Y grade.

What I did not explain to my fellow teacher is that more often than not, I do not get an actual argument. What I get is "I worked so hard," or "I studied so hard," or "I put forth so much effort." Or worst of all, "if I don't get a B in your class I cannot graduate." These are not arguments, but rather, claims based on the worth of the student as a person who does stuff . . . but I digress.

"By the time they see me face-to-face," I said, "it's no longer about the course, or the assignment, or the point of taking my class in the first place. It's about me as an authority figure standing between them and what they want." I explained that, given this dynamic, it makes no sense for me to be a hard-ass or to assert my authority (ultimately, to say "NO!") for two reasons. First, the educational institution is "customer service" oriented. While every single "hearing" I have had with upper administration about a student's grade has gone in my favor, there is nevertheless systemic discouragement from having a student petition upstream; the notion that the "customer is always right" has infiltrated education, which has effectively eroded the authority of the teacher when it comes to conflict. Yes, the teacher is usually backed-up, all I'm saying is that it's very unpleasant getting to the point where the institution says "I'm with the teacher." We're supposed to handle the conflict at its source. Educators no longer live in a Hogwarts world in which the educators and the administration are united in their authorial expertise (and respected for it); the public no longer consider the professoriate experts who know how to best educate students. (Goodness, there's a lot more to say here, but my friend and I did not go into it and I won't here.)

Second, and more importantly, it no longer makes sense for the student's education to be a hard ass about grades. Whereas telling a student two decades ago he or she deserved a D on her paper would have been the end of discussion, today it is "just your opinion." This is directly related to the first reason---the customer-service-ification of education, of course. Half of the student body still recognize the professor as an authority figure, as someone who has expertise (and many of these first generation college students, who are excited to be in college at all), but the other half understand the professor as a servant-gatekeeper who provides the necessary hurdle for a degree that leads to a job. Nine times of ten, the student who comes to me to protest a grade is in this latter category, in which case, again, it's not about the principle or the point of the assignment or learning, it's about getting in the way of the paper/job/career aspiration.

"So if they come to my office wanting to fight, I give in," I said. "'What grade do you think you deserve?' I ask the student. Usually it's a mere fraction of a point, or a very minor thing, and so I say, 'sure, ok.'" I explained to my fellow teacher that the student is usually shocked that I don't argue with him or her. They seem, frankly, dumbfounded. They came into my office expecting some sort of dramatic conflict, and I completely dissolve whatever fantasy they had envisioned---some sort of battle, I imagine. I don't give them that battle. They get compliance, an ok, an agreeable professor whom they expected would be a formidable foe. I give them what they thought they wanted.

They leave my office confused, but with the grade they sought.

My fellow teacher was visibly unnerved when I told him this. Much like the student who comes in expecting a fight and doesn't get one.

"But you're doing the student a terrible disservice!" he said, angrily. "You're teaching them that they can turn in substandard work and still get buy. [later edit: I see the slip with typing "buy" instead of "by." Not intentional, but I'm leaving it.] You're actually teaching them the opposite of what they need, you're telling them the opposite of what they need to hear!" he said. He was, frankly, disgusted with my approach to the disgruntled student. He believed, and not without good reason, that I may be setting up disgruntled students for failure "in the real world."

This former teacher believed the teacher had more power than he or she actually does. Culturally this is part of the problem with the politicization of education in our world today: teachers used to be in loco parentis. That is so very much not the case in higher education today. And unfortunately, the role my friends in primary and secondary education have inherited. My friend who teaches 5th grade disciplines (and parents) as much as she teaches, but I'm digressing again . . .

I am not sure my brother was a good teacher, I don't know. I do know that he did not teach long. And I know that he came at our discussion holding two assumptions that I do not share: (1) that the university is not "the real world"; and (2) that as a professor I have the power to mold minds and build character.

I've been teaching since 1996. What I have learned from teaching (and teaching is learning, unquestionably) for sixteen years cannot be summarized in a blog post. I can say, however, that I do not have the power to mold minds or build character. I can only nudge along, encourage, and occasionally inspire. I aim for nudging, encouraging, and inspiring. If I wanted to discipline, I would have pursued politics or law enforcement.

Tickling curiosity and inciting interest is what I like to think I do for young people.

Now, if we shift gears to talking about graduate student education, my philosophy shifts substantially. That is different, if only because we're training, not just teaching, our grads. And the students are very different, too. In graduate education, however, I've rarely given anything lower than an "A"---the student has violate the very principle of admission to a graduate program to get below an "A"---and very very rarely does that happen. Even so, I have seen the "rare" case . . . but again, I digress.

it's synth-pop friday!

Marsheaux's brilliant new album, The Ebay Queen is Dead dropped last May.

the creeping ulcer of indifference objectivism

Music: Neil Young: Harvest (1972)

I watched with interest the John Williams' inspired revelation of vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan of Wisconsin this morning on CNN. With the backdrop of a Norfolk warship, dramatic music swelled as Romney, then Ryan, descended from the battleship to the podium. Posed on Facebook and Twitter like my fellow pop politics junkies, our tweets and status barbs started to fly. One of my favorite conservative friends (and a brilliant graduate student) said: " Ugh, whoever stagecrafted this event needs to lose their job. A gray ship? Nope. Choose the ocean as a background - limitless possibilities, horizons, the whole nine yards." I responded, "Sound reinforcement would have been bad. It's all about the John Williams-like presidential soundtrack as Mittens and Rand Paul--oops, I mean Paul Ryan--descend from the festooned Super Star Destroyer."

My deliberate slip from Paul Ryan to Rand Paul references Ayn Rand, the Russian émigré and novelist who relocated to the United States as a consequence of the Russian revolution. Ron Paul named his politician son after Rand (she changed her name to "Ayn" because it rhymed with "mine") and her so-called "objectivist" philosophy, which celebrates the figure of the wealthy capitalist as a "hero" and lambasts the poor as "parasites." In her widely read novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Rand extolls the "virtues of selfishness" by painting a black-and-white world in which Christ's social gospel (love your neighbor, indeed, help them) is responsible for destroying the civilized world.

My own aversion to Rand---like most aversions---is born of a previous fascination if not adoration. I read The Fountainhead in high school, obsessed. I then turned to reading her other works, devouring them like comic books (because they paint the sort of world that is reflected in comic books, of course). With my debate partner John, I devised "briefs" that critiqued the "blood sucking altruism" of debate resolutions for years. Rand appealed to me because of its staunch atheism and righteous defense of white privilege. I was a smart white kid growing up in Snellville, Georgia, of course. And while I always identified as "left" in political orientation, there was something about Rand's libertarian views that seemed sensible to me. As a 15 year old.

College changed all that, of course, exposing me to a diversity of views. I grew to see the Randian view of the world as somewhat limited---even perverse (I never quite understood her joyful celebration of violent sex in her novels). In part, my reading of Nietzsche eclipsed her views---as did close readings of Plato and Aristotle (her read of the ancients is woefully wrong). While I've never quite outgrown my love of comic books (I still get giddy with each new issue of Creepy), I have outgrown the bloated, faux-philosophizing of Randian novels---if only for the beauty of Joyce, or Faulkner, or even Hemmingway. But of course, mostly for my exposure to deeper thought (even if I don't understand it, such thought complicates my easy solutions/thinking). It's hard to take Rand seriously after reading Derrida on mortality, for example. Or after attending a funeral service (as I did today). I guess what appealed to me about Rand was an identification with whiteness and privilege (even though, by the standards of my peers in college, I was from the working class). She paints a chiaroscuro world of clearly discernable good guys and bad guys, when the world is actually peopled by anything but "guys." The success of Randian ethics is the ability to "other," and to other with resolution: thou art but shit. No compassion. No compromise. No quarter.

So it is with amusement and fear that I greeted the announcement of Ryan as the vice presidential candidate. Ryan has been on record, many times, for espousing the virtues of selfishness. In 2005 at a speech to a objectivist think tank, Ryan said: "[T]he reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.” He gifted workers in his office copies of Atlas Shrugged at Christmas. In recent years he has distanced himself from Rand because of her strident atheism (principally leveled at Christian altruism and the teachings of Christ), but his previously expressed fealty to the female Palpatine is a matter of public record.

I've said it before and no doubt my saying it again makes it true: blogs are dead. Which makes, again, this endeavor a gothic enjoyment. Even so, friends, you should read Ayn Rand if you have not, if only to become familiar with the strategic affective appeal hailing Ryan to the RePube ticket makes. Recently an Objectivist group endowed a Chair of Philosophy (to the tune of a million bucks) here at UT. Two years ago at a graduate student conference in North Dakota I heard not one, not two, but three graduate student papers about Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged has been made into two films (thankfully, pretty bad). But Rand is back in public discourse and the popular imaginary, even if her name is a "dirty word."

For reasons I am not yet conscious of, I have been on a Star Wars kick lately: reading, almost obsessively, graphic novels devoted to the "expanded universe" and re-watching the films with adolescent glee. The same "good/evil" simplicity animates Lucas' vision as does Rand's novels, only on the side of the Left. Even so, it's hard not to see both fantasy worlds as the same piece of the cloth. I suspect my regression to adolescent fantasy is not mere happenstance, but overdetermined by the (mediated) culture within which I am immersed.

One interesting thing I'm discovering reading the Star Wars expanded universe literature is the over-the-top attempt to humanize Darth Vader and the "Dark Empire." Stories have proliferated about the Empire (well known to be a riff on the Nazis) to complicate the black/white cast of the original films. Vader is alternately cast as a conflicted man goaded by quest for power (eventually, a desire to have a stronger relationship to his son, Luke---a familial bond) or a strong leader who desires order and fairness. I had no idea the Star Wars had become such a complex fantasyland. Still, it's that desire to humanize evil (or rationalize a fascination with evil) that I see at work in the ironically-named Republican guard. There's no question that those on the right believe they are doing good, and I have no doubt that Romney and my self-identified "conservative" friends mean very well---or are, at root, good people. But what Star Wars is still about is a characteristically Christian compassion versus those who are "all for themselves."

The question is not whether or not human beings are selfish. We are. If you are not a narcissist at some level, that is depression (and sadly, one resolution is violence). Rather, the question is whether we will elevate our better natures to the status of structure, against our worse and more selfish impulses. It's easier to politic against the "parasites" than it is to "love your neighbor." It's both amusing and depressing to watch mainstream politics, for playing out Lucas' fantasies so accurately.

I miss Paul Wellstone.

it's synth-pop friday!

it's synth-pop friday!

red flags and higher ed

Music: Neil Young: Harvest (1972)

Yesterday it was reported that the Aurora Assassin, James Holmes, sought help from a University of Colorado psychiatrist, Lynne Fenton, and that Dr. Fenton approached the university's behavioral health watchdog group with concerns about her client. The Behavioral Evaluation and Threat Assessment Team (BETA) at the University of Colorado is a recently created group of mental health professionals assembled for the express purpose of preventing violence and catastrophe (er, just like the Aurora massacre). It was to Dr. Fenton that Holmes mailed his Mein Kampf, but she did not discover the notebook detailing his plans until after they were carried out.

Today the BlogHills are alive with the sound of condemnation: why didn't the BETA do something? The official answer from UC and the BETA group was that Fenton reported her concerns in June, but that Holmes left the university shortly thereafter. The group believed they no longer had the power to do anything about Fenton's concerns because Holmes had left the university. Further, owing to confidentiality issues, we don't know exactly what Fenton's expressed concerns were. We simply know that she had them and that she reported them.

Much speculation in the MSM today suggests their reasoning is akin to passing the buck, or perhaps yet another example of academic cover-up. From my personal experience dealing with students with "behavioral" issues, however, I think BETAs response is both sincere and truthful: mental health professionals in academic settings are very constrained, guided by a maze of protocols that are designed to protect universities from lawsuits. Whether or not the BETA had the power to do something is beside the point; they perceived they could not act if the student was no longer affiliated with the university. This is a reasonable, if not overdetermined, perception (I mean, I've personally seen this "our hands are tied" excuse many times at my own university). And, barring knowledge of the notebook Holmes mailed, it's entirely possible Holmes' interactions with Fenton did not rise to the level of official, actionable behavior. Whatever the case, I do not think Fenton is to blame any more than the threat assessment team; Holmes would have had to demonstrate a possible "threat to himself or others" for the group to have legal standing to act. Aside from the fact that Holmes was not a student by the time the committee would take up his case for consideration, it seems to me quite likely that Holmes did not present a clear danger in respect to the very clear protocols established for action or reporting concerns to authorities

Of course, I have already discussed this problem before this information came to light: we do not have the mental health infrastructure to deal with threatening students. The law errs on the side of protecting the student, and probably rightly so if we reckon with the power hierarchy involved in all academic settings (surely it would suck if a teacher's concerns about a student's morbid paper could lead to compulsory mental health assessments, expulsion, and so forth).

I think it is likely to come out that the university did everything "by the book" and is not to blame (at least from a legal standpoint). But I also think that, as this story continues to unfold, we'll be learning more and more about how constrained mental health professionals are when expressing concerns about a client or student. Now, I am strongly in the camp of those who defend confidentiality in matters of mental health---I think the whole enterprise of mental health treatment depends on it (if only for the social stigma). But I also think BETA teams and the like should be afforded much more power and discretion. How much, of course, is the pickle.

While we wait to learn more information, however, I think it's pretty instructive to point out the political character of this case. Presently, the neo-liberal jet set has identified higher education as the latest battleground for winning the hearts and minds of "the people." Their vision for education, perched upon a business model of incorporation, is to metamorphose teaching and learning into a transaction of deposit and withdrawal: student deposits money, withdraws knowledge. This vision is entwined with a sort of anti-indoctrination zeal, that some how the "left-leaning" academy is injecting students with "liberal" ideas and turning the classroom into a sanctuary of Marxist thought. To "improve" education, we need to focus on inputs and outcomes, they say. They imagine the student as Joe Friday, "just the facts professor."

Such a vision, of course, is in stark distinction from the one what demands educators steward the mental health of students: "why didn't they do something?" cries the self-identified conservative. "They're covering something up, they're passing the buck!" they proclaim. The irony here, of course, is that the BETA team modeled exactly the vision of neoliberal education: here's the information, take it or leave it. No editorializing. If he's a student, we can act, but since he's not, we should not. No discernment allowed. In other words, in the today's culture wars it's precisely the same kind of "paternalism" that is decried by the "right" that would have had the power to do something about Fenton's concerns. In Loco Parentis has been under attack because, so says the "right," it's a form of liberal indoctrination. Yet only having the "power of the parental" could have prevented Holmes from doing what he did.

you gotta know you(')r(e) crazy

Music: Indian Wells: Night Drops (2012)

What a difference an apostrophe makes, as Freud might say, like "a running figure with his head conjured away . . . ."

I overheard a "journalist" describe James Holmes, the 24-year-old who killed twelve and injured 58 in Aurora, Colorado on July 20th, as a "psychopath" this morning. Days earlier I heard another journalist describe Holmes as a "sociopath." Clearly journalists are murky about what these terms mean and, frankly, so am I. That's perhaps because they're not used by the psychiatric and psychological community in the United States in clinical settings: these terms are intended to describe psychical structures in popular parlance, and in the U.S. the diagnostic terms are defined behaviorally. Both what journalists (and in some jurisdictions, lawyers) would dub psychopathic or sociopathic fall under the rubric of "antisocial personality disorder" in the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM, published by the American Psychiatric Association.

The confusion between "psychopath" and "sociopath" unquestionably has to do with their interchangeable use (common definitions in dictionary use the one or the other term tautologically), and I'm not clear where one might locate the origin. The terms have become so popular that some countries use the term in legal proceedings (apparently including the US, although I plead ignorance here---I've gleaned some uses on the InterTubes). [ENTREATY: if any of my lawyer buddies reading this know how the terms are used in legal proceedings, please explain in the comments!] The term "psychopath" does have some footing in psychology because of a fairly well-known inventory that is used to predict criminal behavior (the PCL-R), however, this and related inventories are usually used in the US to diagnose (confusingly) antisocial personality disorder. Adding to the confusion, the popular use of "sociopath" and "psychopath" would use the former for individuals who violate the assumed rights of others in a given culture with the possibility of guilt and the latter not so much, however, the psychopath may not exhibit anything that the psychiatric community would recognize as "psychotic." The upshot of all of this is that, it seems to me, "sociopath" and "psychopath" are terms that are dispensed in the mainstream media to mean, simply, "crazy," where "crazy" refers to failure to recognize the rights or well-being of others and the possibility of the lack of guilt. (For example, a free-market capitalist.)

I started to recognize the problem of such terms recently when I referred to Holmes as "psychotic" here on Rosechron and on Facebook "status updates." Folks seemed to recognize "psychopath" or "sociopath" in my remarks, when I meant neither. When I use the term "psychotic," I confess I'm referencing the psychoanalytic tradition, and none of those terms used in the medical community today. In the nineteenth century, as Dylan Evans explains, "psychosis" was used as a synonym for "mental illness in general." Gradually it was distinguished from "neurosis," which referenced "less serious disorders." Freud relied on this distinction and it gradually became increasingly refined.

Lacan developed the distinction further: most of us are "neurotic" to some degree, while less of us are "psychotic" (and "phobic," and "perverse"). He insisted on "psychical structures," not behaviors (as all of us are capable of having neurotic, psychotic, phobic, and perverse behaviors). Adjective and noun, I guess.

Psychoanalysis is only useful for the neurotic, in general. The psychotic is generally believed out of reach (although not necessarily a lost cause) for "talking cures," or those that rely on symbolic inducement and working-through. I won't go into any detail here, but in the Lacanian psychoanalytic tradition, a psychotic has not fully accepted negation or "the no" (castration if you want), and thus is not beholden to the symbolic (say, law or rights or moral norms and what not) that structure the rest of us in some fundamental way (that's why the "talking cure" is sorta lost on them). So, when I say Holmes was psychotic, I simply mean to say he does not function in the same moral/normative universe as the rest of us---you cannot help him improve by pushing on the symbolic weak-spots. This is stronger than saying what he did was psychotic---because everyone is capable of psychotic behavior. It's possible he had a "one time" break, however, today it was reported he was seeing a shrink for mental issues for some time . . . .

I admit I'm drawn to the Lacanian categories for their elegance; these, however, are not the same categories our psychiatric/psychological system operate on. Like it or lump it, whether you identify Holmes as behaving psychotically or as a "sociopath" or "psychopath," the proper designation for the system we live in is antisocial personality disorder, which is among the second or "B cluster" of personality disorders listed in the DSM. The detail is extensive, but a key characteristic is a lack of empathy and persistent anti-social behavioral pattern. More specifically (since the DSM is sitting in front of me), here's the lowdown:

A. There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for a violation of the rights of others occurring since the age of 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:

1. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest
2. deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
3. impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults
5. reckless disregard for safety of self or others
6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another

B. The individual is at least 18 years.
C. There is evidence of Conduct Disorder [repeated violation of the rights of others] with the onset before age 15 years.
D. The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of Schizophrenia or a Manic Episode.

What is striking about such a definition (at least to the student of rhetoric) of antisocial personality disorder is basically it is anti-state behavior, premised as it is on "rights." What is antisocial in one culture is defined, here, as potentially appropriate in another. I've never read the entry for ASPD before tonight; I'm struck by how it is a behavioral definition guided by statist assumptions. Huh.

Incidentally, I've been totally obsessed with reading Star Wars comics over the past month. The Rebels and the Jedi Order are plagued by antisocial personality disorder. As are the Joker and Batman, alike.

Perhaps the reason I find psychoanalytic explanations of "psychotic behavior" compelling has something to do with the way in which they locate them in both affect and enduring structures---it's "essentialism without essentialism," as Zizek might say. Regardless, the more I follow the "news" of the Aurora massacre the more and more I find the terms "sociopath" and "psychopath" odious terms: they signify only one thing. They signify "not me" or "not like us." And I find that terribly problematic. There is an imperative here, a moral imperative, perhaps best intoned by Cibo Mato allegorically:

it's synth-pop-from-aus-vegas friday!

on james holmes in graduate school

Music: Erykah Badu: Bag Lady (2000)

Today a Colorado judge put a halt to a FOIA request by the AP for the emails of James Holmes, the suspect who killed twelve and injured another 58 in an Aurora, Colorado movie theatre last Friday. A federal law prohibits the release of grade- and performance-related information in any case, but not email correspondence. The judge presumably stopped the request because it would interfere with an ongoing investigation, which is the legal exception.

The request indexes two issues for me. First, it represents the symbiotic relationship between secrecy and publicity Jodi Dean has detailed brilliantly in her 2002 study, Publicity's Secret: contemporary modes of publicity function in regard to a logic of revelation based on a perceived public's "right to know." So powerful is the mediated desire to unearth the previously unknown or forbidden, Dean suggests, that truth or verifiable facts have given way to the latest nugget of now, even if it only has the whiff of possible truth (this is related, by and by, to the desire to publish one's innermost secrets on social networking sites; as Eldrich once sang, "I don't exist if you don't see me"). I would extend that to a rhetorical observation about media framing: whatever glint of "fact" or "detail" that dribbles out about Holmes' private or personal life is whipped up until it has stiff peaks in a preformatted fantasy or cultural narrative---in this case, variations of the "youth in crisis" fantasy. One variation is "death by texting," you know. Here is another: genius gone unreckoned. And more deeply, that genius is related to madness. And by extension, genius excuses bad/immoral behavior.

For example, the first frame for reporting was the "young genius" whose unrecognized brilliance put him over the edge. A couple of days ago this narrative began to fall apart with the reports of fellow students and teachers that he was not all that (it's probably a little of column A and column B: smart, but not emotionally or socially so). So it remains to be seen what details will be crammed into the next ready-made frame, so that there is something to report, as "news."

Incidentally, I just saw "Dr. Drew" doing a special on schizophrenic children as a way to address Aurora. I'm glad to see mental illness getting attention, but (a) there's no evidence Holmes was schizophrenic; and (b) I'm ambivalent about swinging the pendulum from moral responsibility to biological pathology. You and I both know it's probably somewhere in the middle---as psychosis often is, a "both/and" . . . perhaps the mental health angle is so troublesome to journalists because it is not like Western biological medicine, collapsing into a neat binary? (insert rant here about the stigma against Eastern medicine.)

Regardless, and aside from the obvious desire we all have to have "answers" to the existential questions, this particular case is especially noteworthy because there is not a lot of information to go on. It's intriguing, and often disgusting, to see how our contemporary publicity machine spins out content, or fantasy, in the guise of news. I ask you, reading friend, to keep track of the different ways this story gets framed over the weeks this case continues to unfold. I suppose the only surprising element is that someone has not suggested he was a practicing Satanist or "goth" or what have you.

Closely related to my issue with media framing is the rather odd avoidance of discussing the mythos of the Dark Knight, a decidedly perverse shift in the Batman comic that portrays the hero as mentally unstable---the meta-move being that there is little difference between Batman and his villains except means (money). Holmes reportedly told police he was "the Joker," a telling betrayal of reality-as-fantasy . . . .

The second issue, however, does hit rather close to home. The AP request for academic emails from this student does beg a question that bears on what I (and most of you reading) do for a living: were there warning signs, and if so, why didn't someone say something? In other words, higher education is implicated at the center of this massacre. We say undergraduate education is in loco parentis, but graduate school is a bit murkier in terms of its paternal function, since the mentoring relationship is supposed to metamorphose to an advising one, the intimacy assumed a bit removed (e.g., because graduate students are more "adult"). Anyone who works in education knows, this popular fantasy is the inverse of what happens at the research university: with ugrads we are more hands-off, but with grads we tend to be more mentorish---more, uh, parental. I know that's a can of worms, so Imma gonna drop it like a potato on the Sterno. Still, there are questions: Were Holmes' graduate professors responsible for assessing his mental health? Should they have noticed signs? After all, the news has been reported that he mailed a notebook detailing his massacre plans to a professor of psychiatry (whether he knew Holmes is not yet known).

Now, there's not much more to say regarding Holmes specifically. There is not enough information, as badly as the MSM would like it (as badly as we would like it, as I would like it). I do actually have faith that very smart and well-intentioned people in Colorado are on the case and we will have more considered and accurate information once the legal system works itself through. What we can discuss is the issue of mental health in higher education: what do we, as educators, do about students we perceive are mentally unstable, or whom we think needs help? How do we recognize "warning signs," if that is possible? And then, who has the power to recognize warning signs, and what is appropriate, and to whom does one say something to if she has concerns? I've been a professor at public institutions for ten years now, and I tell ya: I don't know the answers to these kinds of questions.

As a professor, I have personally engaged three students whom I believed posed a physical risk to my person. I reported these individuals to my immediate supervisors and in two cases to the police. In each case, legal issues took precedent over mental health. In one case the person was legitimately a danger to him/herself and others, and even then mental health issues took a back seat to legal and then moral issues. The person had to be cited for a "violation of the student code of conduct"---that is, s/he had to be punished---before any mental health services could be rendered (and even then, it was only an "option" and not compulsory for him/her to stay in school). Before this incident, in the wake of a previous (my third) with an unstable student, I contacted behavioral services and asked if there were workshops or training sessions to help faculty recognize and manage mental health issues with students. Nope. My query, in fact, was regarded as strange (perhaps I was identified as an unstable person for inquiring? I certainly felt that way on the phone).

I realize there is a morass of legal issues involved here, and offering to help this or that student can implicate a school in legal problems. There is also the rather strict rules about medical health information disclosure that closely guard a student's mental health records for all sorts of legitimate reasons (e.g., discrimination).

Even so, I do think we gotta get over this ideological stigma of having issues with one's mental health as somehow a moral shortcoming or failing. (Heck, just living in Seattle in February can get ya down!) The widespread hatred of psychiatry and psychoanalysis among academics is a good example of such an ideology: if you are bipolar, or suffer from depression, on up to the less functional issues of schizophrenia or even personality disorders, somehow it is "your fault." Some volitional acts may be---there is certainly a moral culpability for what Holmes did, and there's no question he'll be asked to reckon with it (for not, for example, seeking help). But is there something preventative that could have been done? If so, I am pretty sure the reason it wasn't has to do with the systemic discouragement of doing something about a graduate student who exhibits problems.

Educators are encouraged, systemically, to pass the buck.

I have seen "unstable" graduates come and go. I've seen very disturbed graduate students "ignored" because getting involved meant possible legal trouble or entanglement (or more to the point: trying to do something means one will meet a metaphorical brick wall). I've also seen very abusive and mentally unstable professors go ignored or "contained" in some way too (another can o' worms).

Of course, educational institutions all have "student behavioral services" or some euphemistically named office to deal with concerns and problems, however, in my experience these offices are often an extension of legal services. Their well-trained and well-meaning counselors often have their hands tied.

We simply do not have the infrastructure to deal with mental health issues. Educators don't have the training. Those who have the training don't have the power to do something. And then, if something is done, there's always the question of eccentricity: most of us in this line of work are not "normal," because---and this is a common joke---who would chose to be a teacher in his or her right mind, given the increasingly politicized hardship of education as a profession? It's a problem. And frankly, I don't know what we, what I, can do about it. Holmes is admittedly an aberration---the odd (psychotic) break out. Even so, it's one odd break too many. What can we do? What do we do?

aurora

Music: Robert Earl Keen: Gravitational Forces (2003)

Sitting in an airport bar, Holmes' badly dyed red head bobs periodically as he endures a preliminary hearing. A harried attorney with long hair---its subtle, unkempt character the signature of "harried"---sits with him in the jury box as his primary public defender navigates the inevitable ten paces away. His head bobs, at times his eyelids shut; he seems sedated.

While I was in Colorado Springs at a conference just an hour's drive away, Holmes massacred twelve and wounded another 58 in a packed movie theatre with assault weapons. I write these details not to inform, but chronicle, mostly for myself. (Insert aside here about the death of the blog and its retreat to journaling for the self, as it began.)

CNN has been looping images of the dazed and confused killer in court, which I watched live this morning with my hosts, who live close to Aurora. Shortly after I arrived to visit them, Bernadette reported she and her partner Josh were deliberating seeing the midnight showing of the new Batman movie. "That's the theatre we go to," she said. She explained they liked to attend the midnight screenings of new releases in the past. "This thing hits a little too close to home."

It was strange to be so close to the crime scene by mere happenstance, having traveled to share scholarship and to spend time with friends, and then have the latest excuse for a mass mediated apocalyptic frenzy explode Onto The Screens the first fitful night. I have trouble enough spinning down the hard drive in strange bedrooms. Mediated atrocity demands sleep aids.

By any account, this morning Holmes didn't appear completely aware of the situation (or perhaps he was faking, it's impossible to tell). He appeared to be drugged, or physically exhausted, or simply "crazy." Owing to the horror of the pre-planned slaughter, the seemingly "blank" emotional reactions of the killer provide an enticing projection screen, and certainly at some level Holmes knows this: he lived-out a kind of fan-fiction, in a movie theatre, with a mythos about the glory of psychosis (in the Dark Knight comic series, Batman is far from a hero to be praised . . . nor is Bale as an actor, I should add, which might say something about Nolan's casting decisions). Why hasn't the film this guy used as a context for murder not been more widely discussed? This seems important. You know this guy is thinking about nothing else right now.

Projection is a powerful concept in the psychoanalytic literature. Originally theorized by Freud as the attribution of feelings, fantasies, and so forth that one harbors onto others as a means of "defense," projection has subsequently been absorbed into general parlance as a common thing we all do. In film studies it was taken up in apparatus theory, melding the ideological function of cinema, technology, and the psychoanalytic concept to explain how the cinematic experience "sutures" us to the celluloid. I've been wondering over the past couple of days, in the context of the carnage in Aurora: was Freud thinking about cinema when he introduced "projection" as a defense mechanism? I don't know, and a quick run through my reference books didn't yield a fast answer. He does reference photography from time to time . . . but this is a tangential wonder (still: was Freud thinking about cinema? Probably not, but from a sort of zeitgeist context it seems overdetermined just a tad). Film theory gear heads had a field day with projection, regardless. Whatever the concept's cultural moorings may be, this particular massacre demands "projection" as a concept for thinking-through: the metaphorical theatre of violence collapsed all sorts of "projections" into a deadly event. The irony of the media coverage of the massacre is the "blindness" of journalists to the symbolic gesture of projection at its dead-center. It would seem, given the film and the place Holmes chose to anchor his "acting-out," that projection is key, which implicates displacement as the shadow of violence.

And displacement is what we are all watching on our screens now.

Popular discourse immediately collapsed onto "gun control," which is an easy and well-trod recourse, a sort of "filler" for the vacuum that the existential "why?" seems to suck us (them, the MSM) into. But is this not the sort of rent that implicates the role of (cinematic) fantasy violence in "real life," the tired but nevertheless important worry we have about the influence of cinematic violence on youth? It's a projection of my own, of course, but it would seem Holmes' choice of spectacular violence is a deliberate sort of mirror-work. Reportedly, he told the police he was "the Joker." Commentators were speculating that his courtroom appearance as "drugged" today was feigned.

Coming up for air: on the day of the carnage, I was frustrated with the news coverage drinking my morning coffee. As David Beard and I wrote about in our essay "On the Apocalyptic Columbine" over a decade ago, once television news made the move to continuous "real time" coverage of "tragic" or atrocious events, the challenge was to keep viewers glued to the screen when there was little to no new information---that is, news. Our argument then was that the solution initially developed was one in which viewers vicariously experience, and re-experience, atrocity through looped footage and reenactments. Little has changed in today's coverage, except that the maudlin machines now get to retrospective sentimentality almost immediately. I laughed aloud when I saw NBC has brought Ann Curry "back" to reporting to ask stupid, manipulative, and insulting questions to survivors of the massacre. Covering Columbine amounted to a continuous reenactment of the killing. The difference now is the almost immediate fashioning of trauma into sentimental nationalism/commercialism. Ann Curry back from the banished realm is the displacement.

Our projection is to misread this violence as the act of a "monster," displacing the larger, structural problems this kind of "wake up" horror points us to: a larger ideology that fashions "mental health" as individual problem, often a moral shortcoming. Although I totally get this tendency---what this kid did was evil---I feel dirty writing the massacre off as the result of a single nut. When Stanley Kubrick made Full Metal Jacket, he was tapping into a larger, cultural psychosis that echoes in this latest horror in Aurora. Holmes will be tried and killed. Projection and scapegoating are the Oreo of public "justice." What will be deferred is a reckoning with our own responsibility in this, as a people and a culture: mirror work. He'll be killed and put away just like he killed and put away the faceless others of his video-game world, two-dimensional and utterly absent of compassion. That he's a white kid just makes it a little harder to execute the script.

it's i-have-no-clue-what-to-call-it friday!

it's dave-has-a-new-band friday!

Soulsavers - Take Me Back Home (music video) from High5Collective on Vimeo.

scientological publicity and symbolic decline

Music: Peter Murphy: Deep (1985)

CNN "journalist" Piers Morgan hosted a former member of the Church of Scientology recently on his show. They were discussing the separation and divorce of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes in relationship to the so-called religion of Scientology. Because of their various techniques of brainwashing and the strange culture particular to Scientology, the former church member suggested the divorce would be particularly traumatic.

From the very beginning of their marriage (which some argued was "arranged" by the church), journalists, critics, and various sundry MSM windbags have suggested there is a deep, religion-based tension between Cruise and Holmes (as was apparently the case with Kidman). Holmes and Suri were apparently "public members" of Scientology, which apparently is some sort of face-saving non-committed membership or something like this, whereas Tom Cruise is the church's most popular, public spokesperson. Unquestionably differences between Tom and Katie about Scientology had something do to with the divorce, if only because Cruise believes in Scientology so strongly (indeed, it has structured his entire inner-life).

Of course, I think the real reason for the split is Cruise's psychotic tendencies, which of course , have fascinated me for many years. One of these days I am going to write the essay (now currently an undergraduate lecture) titled "Celebrity Crazy," in which I try to tease out the strange and increasingly ubiquitous relationship between publicity and psychosis.

For the moment, however, I think it's very interesting to watch how the Church of Scientology is responding to the stories that are starting to circulate about this high-profile divorce. For the next two weeks, I predict more and more mediated discussions about Scientology and Cruise's role in the church (incidentally, the best expose I've come across is Janet Reitman's briskly written and smart expose). What's absolutely fascinating is that Scientology meets almost every principled definition of a "cult" that you can locate (pyramid structure, esotericism, elitism, enforced estrangement from outsiders, and so on), and yet, MSM talking heads seem fearful from saying the word; Scientology's legal department is mighty, we're told. What's even more fascinating is the rhetoric of their public statements, which reads more like a Donald Trump attention-grabbing maneuver than an earnest and professional rebuttal of criticism:

With respect to Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes divorce, the Church has no comment. Please direct any questions to their representatives. This is and always was a private family matter and the Church will continue to respect their privacy.

With respect to your other questions, the Church regrets that excommunicated self-serving apostates are sadly exploiting private family matters to further their hate-filled agendas against their former faith. Having left the Church many years ago, these sources have no current knowledge about the Church and their recollections are distorted by their animosity.

Every religion has its detractors and these stories come at a time of tremendous Church growth. Anyone desiring correct information about the Church can find it on the Church’s website,www.scientology.org, which contains thousands of pages of information and hundreds of videos involving all aspects of Scientology.

Very truly yours,

Karin Pouw
Media Relations
Church of Scientology International

The phrase "excommunicated self-serving apostates" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and just look at all those "devil" terms: "exploiting," "hate-filled agendas," "distorted," "animosity." It reads like the sound of my cat's vocalizations when I try to give her a bath.

The comparison to Trump is apt because of the hyperbole, but notably this kind of rhetoric reeks of Fox News and Tea Party discourse as well. Which, in a backward way, gives us a clue into why the Scientological enterprise is seeing "tremendous" growth: as Jodi Dean might say, it's another attempt to respond to the decline of symbolic efficiency. On the one hand, characterize truth and fact as belief or mere opinion. On the other hand, promise to have the way through an esoteric system of belief. To wit: draw on the widespread fear of the suspended Big Other while, nevertheless, offering access to the Big Other. This tends to be true of most religions, of course, but Scientology is especially unique because of its reliance on a rather massive publicity machine and it's active courtship of actors and beloved public figures---which is to say, Scientology is unique because of its contemporary star system, a model abandoned by Hollywood in the 1950s and just now being dismantled in politics (e.g., note the erosion or decline of the political star). Scientology may be a folk psychology on the inside, but that's only half of it. The other half consists of publicists---the evangelicalism of postmodernity.

it's synth-pop friday!

no hots for teacher

Music: The Invisibles: Rispah (2012)

A number of friends have poked me, mostly virtually, over the official platform adopted recently by the Texas Republican Party. The 2012 platform (which you can find in its entirety here) has a statement listed under "Knowledge-Based Education" that reads as follows:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

This is a rather baffling statement, insofar as "HOTS" refers to Bloom's Taxonomy, an elegant and highly influential model for thinking about education and curricula that was developed in the late 1940s and 1950s. Named somewhat erroneously after the editor of the book that advanced the taxonomy (which was, in turn, developed by a group of folks meeting at conferences over many years), the scheme identifies education as addressing cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains (all three are addressed in the very early grades, for example, where hand-eye coordination and sharing crayons is just as important as counting). The RePube platform addresses the more cognitively complex levels of the "cognitive" domain, which consists of the following: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The last three, "analysis, synthesis, and evaluation"---derived from that Mac-Daddy of thought, Plato---are the so-called "higher order thinking skills" that the Texas politicians seem to oppose.

Of course, my job description is to teach precisely these skills: I am to get students to break things down into their many parts, put them back together to see how they work, and then assess the whole shebang. For example: what are the elements of this movie? what are its constituent parts? Can you reassemble these parts into alternative plots and narratives? If so, how would it change the meaning? The impact on the senses? What do you think of that? These are basic questions critical thinking is designed to inspire. Why a political party would oppose this as somehow counter to their interests is strange.

Of course, the sign something is amiss is the parenthetical "values clarification," which apparently has something do to with higher order thinking skills. Prima facie, it simply appears that whomever penned this particular sentence was referring to some priming document that suggests that the teaching of higher order thinking is actually a calibration of values. Contacted by numerous folks, the TRP responded that the wording of the platform was in error. “I think the intent is that the Republican Party is opposed to the values clarification method that serves the purpose of challenging students beliefs and undermine parental authority," said a spokesman.

The clarification, of course, only makes it worse. Alongside the plank, the clarification only amplifies the battle cry of the newest battle of the Republican-sponsored culture wars: pedagogy itself is ideologically suspect. That is to say, even Bloom's Taxonomy is a disguised, "liberal" ideology . . . . This is akin to saying something like higher fuel-economy vehicles like the Ford Focus or Prius or whatever are responsible for higher gas prices. Oh, dudes: who would want to identify themselves with a political party that promotes stupidity? Yikes this is bad.

I've said it many times here and elsewhere, but, these folks are determined to politicize educational policy. At first blush I thought it was insane that a political party would oppose the teaching of critical thinking. But in their clarification of "intent," I see it's precisely that. And "they" hold up signs accusing Obama of "socialism." As Orwell might observe: socialism is neoliberalism; conservatism is fascism; doubleplusgood.

it's yacht pop friday!

Work Drugs - License to Drive from Thomas Crystal on Vimeo.

it's synth-hop friday!

the online imperative

Music: Alejandro Escovedo: Big Station (2012)

As the result of a smart use of the FOIA request, journalists at the University of Virginia's student newspaper secured a series of email exchanges between the Rector and Vice Rector of the university's Board of Visitors. As I blogged recently ("the for-profit hustle"), these two and a number of others orchestrated the firing of a widely respected university president, Terry Sullivan, on the basis of "philosophical differences." These emails reveal the primary difference between the seasoned educator and administrator and the wealthy businesspeople of the board was "online teaching," what used to be called "distance learning." The first relevant email between Dragas and Kington is a message sent about an opinion piece, most likely David Brooks' defense of online teaching titled "The Campus Tsunami." While acknowledging the emotional complexity of "learning," Brooks nevertheless expresses faith in online education---destructive storm and all.

There are other reasons for Sullivan's dismissal of course, as the respective statements released by the ousted president and sitting rector make plain: Dragas wants dramatic and swift change to UVa, something mystical called "strategic dynamism," while Sullivan argued for a more prudent, "incremental" approach. Still, the larger point I have made about this controversy is the same: the university is corporatizing, the politicized boards that govern public universities are business people, and business are trained to think as business people and will govern accordingly. The present climate of "accountability" (which is another way of saying outcome-based assessment on a commodity model) and the demand for cheaper degrees is a market-driven imperative. And as Brooks' defense of online teaching begins, the mold is, alas, the University of Phoenix.

(Need to know why the University of Phoenix is bad? Watch this Frotline documentary, "College, Inc.")

This imperative to online teaching as a way to reduce the cost of education (which is perhaps better read as "increase enrollment") entails plenty of consequences, and most of them are not pleasant. In a thoughtful if not altogether depressing essay by William G. Tierney, "The Price of College Affordability," the professor outlines a number of predicted consequences for heeding this imperative:

• Poor students will disappear from campuses; only the rich will be able to afford residential college.
• Four-year degrees will disappear in favor of shorter and more cheaply "earned" degrees.
• The professoriate will be eclipsed by production values and part-timers and adjuncts.
• The university will shift to the community college model, significantly curtailing research.
• Public intellectualism and expertise will cease, as academic freedom is curtailed in favor of a rhetoric of PR.

My friend Catherine Liu embellishes Tierney's essay this way: "A sobering view of the rationalization of higher ed. I wrote about this in American Idyll. We are going to have liberal arts for the rich, a tiny but powerful minority and job training for the poor. And then politicians are going to crow that American students can't speak foreign languages or think critically." Of course, it was reported that one of the things the Board of Visitors wanted Sullivan to "cut" was the teaching of foreign languages.

So with the corporatization (or as Catherine nicely puts it, "rationalization") of the university comes the irony of educational ironies: the basis upon which such radical changes are called for is the land-grant mission, to educate the "industrial classes" affordably. And yet, the only experience the working classes will be able to afford amounts to professionalization with online classes---a cheaply delivered commodity, not an "experience" (certainly not what I would call "learning"). Only the incredibly wealthy will have access to the life of the mind. The working-class structure of the land grant, public university becomes, in the end, the province of elites "on the ground." If you're working class, you can only afford the "brand" online.

To these rather sour predictions I'll add one more: the network model. In the early days of radio, pioneering companies like AT&T realized it was a helluva lot cheaper to standardize programming and deliver it to stations they owned around the country. Local, community-based programming was expensive. The network was born so that programming to be done once, and then replicated. On this infrastructure television was born, and then later, of course, cable. I predict the online imperative will graft the textbook industry on an analogous course model, such that basic courses are standardized and beamed across the InterTubes to various public universities. College freshpersons at "participating" institutions will now be able to take "Introduction to Argumentation" with, say, Richard Cherwitz at the University of Texas in California and Missouri.