Category Archives: Education

Arbitrary Observations on a Thursday Afternoon

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I was walking from one building where I work to another one, which involves a couple of doors that need to be opened. As there was a bit of pedestrian traffic in the area, at one point I found myself holding the door open for other people. At the time, I ended up holding the door open for four different people at different times (not one right after the other), and the one thing that struck me as odd was that each person reached for the wide open door I was holding, almost as if I was going to shut it in their face. If it would have happened once, it would have just been one of those things, but four different people all reached for the opened door, almost as if they had bad experiences with other people holding open the door for them. Kind of strange. At least they said thank you, even though they seemed to suspect I was going to rescind my offer to keep the door open for them.

Another observation: When teaching at a community college, I’ve discovered that the axiom once taught to me by Professor Ashlyn Kuerstin was that you should always explain on the first day of class that attendance is mandatory AND that the death of your grandmother doesn’t affect attendance. I forgot to give her spiel this time around. Two students have now reported ill or dead grandmothers. Kind of strange, but strangely enough, expected.

One of my colleagues was let go today by the company for not meeting expectations. I walked by her desk today and noticed her half filled (or half empty, depending on psychological disposition) cup of water is still on her desk, the straw in it, as if ready to continue drinking. I guess someone will eventually clean it up and throw it out. I often wonder what that person must think to himself as he or she cleans up after someone’s now empty desk. Probably just glad it was someone else. Or not. Who knows what people think?

I have tomorrow off from work. I have a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon, and I need to get to the Secretary of State’s office to renew my auto registration, which means I have to find my current insurance card (for some reason I never replaced my old one, even though I have the same insurance and the same policy number). I’ll probably have to sit in that place for a few hours because it’s always slow no matter when you go there. I guess that’s why I put off these sorts of things. I hate bureaucracy, almost as much as Kafka.

I kind of wish I had some kind of social life these day, but I don’t. I don’t even really have close friends anymore, other than a few close colleagues who I basically only ever get to see at work (one of whom I consider a friend, even though we don’t really spend any time together outside of work). I’m at that age where I don’t really feel comfortable going to bars (I don’t drink), especially alone, and I don’t really have any other options to meet people. E-dating never works, at least not for me. I sometimes suspect that the same people doing well at e-dating are the same people who do well at regular dating; they’re usually players who lie to women and get away with it. I’ve never been good at that sort of thing, and because of it, I’m probably never going to meet anyone. Women talk about liking nice guys and all that, but they lie, and everyone knows it. Eventually, they might settle for a nice guy after they’re done playing their own games, but by then, we’re off the market, playing World of Warcraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic, because at least there we have something that makes a bit of sense, even if it means no real social interaction.

Anyway, that’s my Thursday. I teach my class tonight at the college, and then I go grocery shopping before heading home to a house full of friendly stuffed animals. Well, mostly friendly. Some of them can get a bit roudy. But they mean well.

Burning Bridges

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I got fired today. Not from my regular job, but from one of my teaching jobs. I teach at two community colleges, or at least I teach at one community college and I was about to start teaching at a new one yesterday. I was assigned two political science courses at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. I had taught there about seven years ago back when I was finishing my Ph.d work at Western Michigan University. Other than a visit to see my friend Melanie (who was defending her dissertation and visiting from Germany), I hadn’t been back to Kalamazoo once since those days. It’s changed a lot.

But what happened was I mapquested the instructions to get to KVCC on my computer, printed them out and then drove down from Grand Rapids (where I live). I left an extra hour early so I would have time to get some stuff done on campus before my first class. And then I hit Kalamazoo, turning off the freeway at the first sign that indicated I was near Kalamazoo Valley Community College. Trying to remember if this was the path to get there, I drove along the path, following the signs that led to KVCC, and when I made the last turn, I discovered that I was nowhere near KVCC. The signs in Kalamazoo all led me to an alternative campus of KVCC. So I was lost.

As I drove around Kalamazoo, I continued to get more and more lost. And then it got dark. And then I was completely lost.

After an hour or so of driving around, I finally found my way to the freeway again, and this time I decided to follow the Mapquest directions to the letter. And that brought me to a wonderful factory that had nothing to do with KVCC whatsoever. So, a friendly security guard gave me directions to the campus, as this was not the first time someone showed up at the factory thinking it was KVCC, and I continued on. Before leaving, I contacted security on campus and informed them of what was going on. I didn’t know who else to contact because the information sheet they sent me in the mail had the incorrect information for the person who was my main contact (it ended up connecting me with somebody else completely who was completely unaffiliated with the person I needed to contact).

I finally got to campus half an hour after my class was to begin, and of course, no one was there. So I ended up walking around the campus a bit and trying to see if I an accomplish anything. Which wasn’t possible because I had no keys to get into my own office, get my own mail, or anything. Finding my contact’s actual office (by physically just looking for it), I left him a message, detailing my adventure that evening. And then I hopped in my car and drove the hour and six minutes home.

This morning, at work, I received a blistering phone call from the dean who was really only interested in riding my ass about not showing up to class. After I explained what happened, and how it would be rectified in future situations (I also teach a class on Friday there), that didn’t seem to be enough. It was one of those conversations you have with a girlfriend whose only interest is in continuing the fight because she realizes she has the upper hand and wants to put in as much damage as possible while she has that first wind. And as friendly as I tried to keep it, it never really stayed there because she just kept trying to goad me further into more confrontation. Realizing my own temper was starting to rise, I realized I either needed to end this conversation, or I was going to lose it. And then she threw in a “and I’m still waiting for an apology from you!” By then, I was no longer in an apologetic mood, Basically, I wanted to say, “go fuck yourself” although I didn’t. Instead, I said, “I’m ending this conversation now and hanging up.” And then I hung up.

About ten minutes later, I started getting phone calls on my cell phone from the dean, and I just pushed them to voicemail, still being very upset by our previous conversation. I figured any conversation we had was going to make me lose it, and honestly, that isn’t very productive. So at one point, her voice mail stated that she was revoking my contract, and I could call her if I had any questions.

I don’t really have any questions. Instead, I’ll go back to work and then tonight I’ll go teach at the other institution where I teach. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to teach at KVCC, but when their administration is basically hostile to the point of making your instructors not want to be there, well, that just leads to obvious conclusions.

But she still probably wants an apology, so here it is, even though she doesn’t read my blog and won’t ever know: I’m sorry I didn’t get to teach that class. I’m sorry I got lost and couldn’t find the campus. And I’m sorry that you have the people skills of a wandering raptosaurus. The pay wasn’t that great that I’m going to miss the paycheck. The students, however, will miss out on a really good instructor who actually really cares about his students. During that whole conversation, that was the only reason I never lost it completely. I like to teach, but unfortunately not always do circumstances make it possible.

The Ramifications of a Scientific Study That Purports That High IQ is Linked to Drug Use

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There was an article reported today on CNN’s site, discussing a recent scientific study in which high levels of IQ are linked to the propensity to use drugs. Immediately, the people who have responded have started making the usual faulty scientific connections, such as “that proves it! Using drugs leads to a higher IQ!” One responder, named JeffinIL, states specifically, “I never realized I went to high school with so many geniuses.” As usual, someone took the conclusions and then tried to return the conclusions to the hypothesis, essentially trying to create the cause from effect, rather than what the study itself said, that cause led to effect.

Okay, right off the start, I have to make a few comments on faulty reporting, which is leading (and will lead) to bad conclusions.

1. The data was collected in 1970 and just recently analyzed. This is not a RECENT study by any stretch of the imagination, even though the article attempts to make exactly that claim in the second paragraph: “A new British study finds….” 1970 was over 40 years ago. The people studied back then are now reaching latter stages of adulthood, which means that their “habits” and the findings are relevant to a group of people who are now in their 50s and 60s, not children as the study claims to connect.

2. The “high” score for IQ was registered as between 107 and 158. Not really that high when it comes to what people refer to as “high” IQ scores.

3. IQ has never been an acceptable gauge of someone’s actual intelligence. There’s a reason that IQ scores are rarely used anywhere other than in comparison studies in which people try to use them to inflate their attributes. People generally don’t take IQ scores to begin with, and those who do often take them numerous times to try to “game” the system. Other people learn logic skills that help them “beat” the IQ test, and mostly, the scores are considered fringe on the levels of acceptable science.

4. The study makes inferences that may or may not be contributing factors. While the only claim the study makes is that people with higher IQs report higher levels of using drugs in later years, there is no actual connection to drug use AT THE TIME of the IQ test, so there’s no way to know how much more education a person may or may not have had since having an IQ test. Socioeconomic factors were mentioned, but weren’t really discussed at length.

5. The study (and the author of the article) make a lot of guesses as part of the study, indicating that maybe people were “bored”, and thus turned to drugs because their higher IQ put them in a bored state of mind in comparison to other people with lower IQs who might not be as bored because, I guess, they don’t have as much to think about with their lower IQs. I mean, that’s the inference of that statement, but I’m just guessing based on the lack of information contained in the article itself. Seriously, anyone can do that kind of logical exercise, even people with low IQs like me.

The worst part of this study is that the way it is reported means a whole bunch of people are now going to be “armed” with faulty logic as trivial information they store away. When someone is at a party and someone offers him or her cocaine, rather than think, “no, that stuff might be dangerous”, in the back of someone’s mind is going to be the thought, “well, I did read this one study once that told me that people who take drugs are more likely to have higher IQs, so it might actually be to my benefit.”

It doesn’t take a genius to see that one coming.

They’re Trying Really Hard to Discredit the Anti-Wall Street Movement

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I’m really not all that surprised that the people who have the most to fear are doing everything possible to target anyone who has anything to do with the Occupy Wall Street movement. At first, it was an attempt to paint the movement as extreme, something that no one is interested in. Then it became popular, so they had to try other tactics, like attempting to fool listeners into believing OWS was filled with hypocrisy (“OMG! They have Ipads and they’re complaining about big businesses that might make technology stuff!”). That didn’t work because unlike previous movements of the past, the people attracted to the movement aren’t generally stupid. The movement has been appealing to a pretty educated crowd. It’s hard to derail that when those derailing it aren’t that much smarter than the people they hope to discredit.

So, the anti-protest movement, which I define as “people who have an incentive to keep things as the status quo”, is now targeting specific individuals as an attempt to destroy the entire movement. One obvious target has been Michael Moore, who likes to see himself as the everyman complainer, but according to Fox News (not exactly the most objective source, as it was the voice of the Republican Party during the entire Bush Administration), because Michael Moore has an expensive house, he’s really one of the one percenters, rather than one of the many included in the 99%. Here’s where that math doesn’t add up: Yeah, he’s rich, but just because someone is rich does not make them automatically a part of the problem.

Much of Michael Moore’s success has come on the coattails of debunking the myths of the rich, and empowering those without any power. As a result, he has become very wealthy for his actions. That should be seen as a good thing, not something to somehow force his followers to throw him to the wolves. Just because he made a success at pulling the veil back from the hidden excesses doesn’t somehow make him part of the hidden excesses.

The movement is about the fact that there are some really greedy, bad people out there who are trying to pull shell games on the rest of us. For way too long now, corporate entities have cloaked themselves in the shadows while doing all sorts of crappy things to the rest of us, like poison our water supplies, sell us damaged goods, sell wars for profit (not our profit, but theirs only), and allowed the changing of money that served to devalue the work of those who handle the actual work but benefit those who control how the money gets spent. When you have businesses built up with the sole purpose of generating more money from money, there’s seriously something wrong. When scientists are pulled off the assembly line of science and told its a lot more profit to be a businessman instead, there’s seriously something wrong.

There are a lot of pissed off people right now mainly because our education system has been teaching us that the American Way is the best course for the future. But we’re now starting to realize that those who make it rich in this country aren’t the ones who bought into the American Way (work hard and build a great country) but profited off of those who did. The ranks of the 1% should be filled with educators, scientists and innovators, not speculators, bankers, politicians and lawyers. THAT is why so many people are upset.

A lot of those people out on the streets right now are the ones who stood behind Obama when he was running for office in 2008, because his campaign promised a bright, brilliant future. Instead, we got a term of exactly what we had before, No more, no less. Hope and change yielded absolutely nothing but false promises. And the people who put Obama into power are smart enough to realize that no matter who they put into office next (Obama again, or a generic Republican), the promises are still going to be made with the reality that the next four years are going to be exactly what came before.

That’s why people are complaining. And discrediting Michael Moore isn’t going to change that.

Politicians paying lip service to the OWS movement

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I was pretty excited when I saw that President Obama was announcing changes to the federal student loan program that would benefit those of us with outstanding student loans. And then I started examining the details before I realized that for the most part, they help practically no one who currently has any student loans. In other words, if you are currently in school and racking up student loans, you might get a bit of a nudge in the way of help, but if you’re one of those saddled with $150,000 worth of student loan debt, well, the government isn’t really interested in helping you. As a matter of fact, every action the government has taken over the last few years concerning student loans has worked completely against helping anyone discharge (or pay) their student loans. The last piece of “help” we received was when the government sided with the credit card and bank lobbyists and made it impossible to use bankruptcy to discharge your student loan debt. You can discharge your debt for killing someone, losing your business, or throwing all of your money into the ocean, but if you took out student loans, you are stuck with them for life.

Students who have been part of the OWS movement have been screaming for some kind of help from the government since the protests began. As a result the Democrats have realized that a huge segment of their voting population are now tying themselves to this movement. So, obviously, they had to do something to look like they’re on the same side. What better way than to pretend to be doing something, which is exactly what President Obama’s action the other day did? As usual, the government response to a popular protest has been to pretend to be doing something and then hope the movement goes away long enough for people in power to get reelected. In other words, let’s continue to ignore the man behind the curtain.

I don’t think our current crop of politicians seems to understand what’s going on in the country right now. People are pissed off that their chances of a good future have been squandered away by corporations, banks and government officials who kept kicking the cans down the road. Sure, you can blame students for taking out loans, but you really can’t do that until you analyze why they took out the loans in the first place. The corporations, banks and government told them that the only way they would ever have a sustainable future was to take out these loans because the corporations, banks and government weren’t going to be picking up the bills for education. Throughout most of our lives, we realized that our economic future was going to be somewhat of a disaster if we tried to go it alone without education (sure, you can argue that a few people managed to make it without college, but they’re really a statistical outlier rather than anywhere near the norm), so we really had no choice. But now we’re finding out that the promise of a future was really a lie, created by people who realized they had to sell us this lie in order to continue making insane profits.

And look at some of the companies who have profited off of our stupidity. Look at the Fortune 500, and you’ll see nothing but lists of corporations that have played the game all the way to the top. And they did it in some pretty shitty ways, too. I look at the misinformation campaigns, and I”m shocked that we continue to allow it to happen. We have fake colleges selling fake degrees to students who think they are providing a future for themselves, yet are really only getting themselves further into debt and will have absolutely no future. Sure, you can point your fingers at the profit colleges, but what no one wants you to recognize is that legitimate, innocent looking companies are also the ones behind them. While we can all point at Haliburton and the Fox Corporation and claim all sorts of evil, there are so many companies like the Washington Post, which really doesn’t want you to know that it’s practically running one of those profit colleges that the government has been “claiming” to want to curtail, but when lobbyists got involved, suddenly the government didn’t want to “hurt students”. This happens in so many different avenues of business that we don’t even pay attention to it any more. And no one reports it because the major news agencies are all part of the same problem that caused our dilemma, and who wants to report on themselves? Certainly not NBC, which is owned by General Electric. And the lists just go on and on.

But right now, there are people out there making themselves heard, and they’re probably not going to last very long. Just yesterday, Oakland Police were tear gassing protesters and then shooting projectiles at Iraqi veterans who have joined the protest. But no one pays attention long enough to really care. And like the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s, we’re probably going to condemn the protesters because it’s become really easy to ridicule the protesters instead of actually give them the coverage they really need.

You see, the protesters are out there for more than just themselves. They are out there advocating for everyone who doesn’t have a voice. And for the most part, they’ll be ignored, beaten and ridiculed by everyone else, even though everyone else is part of the 99% they’re there to represent. In the end, they’ll probably give up because we didn’t care long enough to help them make a difference.

And the fault will be ours. But we’ll never know, because we didn’t even take the time to care.

What Political Issues Should Be Focused On?

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Every time we come close to a major national election, I’m left scratching my head at the innane subjects that end up becoming “important” politically. You know the things I’m talking about. Stuff like abortion, stem cell research, soccer moms and legalizing marijuana. Sure, some people find them important, but for the most part, they’re fringe topics that tend to get people galvanized around unimportant issues that end up costing votes for elections. And we fall for it every time. So, I decided to look into a couple of topics I thought SHOULD be issues, and then ask if you have any thoughts or ideas of your own.

1. While the economy is an important subject, just focusing on “the economy” or “jobs” are useless endeavors because they really don’t get down to the point of actually doing anything. Sure, I could run for office and say “Duane is FOR a good economy and believes we SHOULD put people to work! So vote me for me!” Sadly enough, a bunch of politicians are probably already preparing their campaigns to say almost that. In rhetoric, it works great. In substance, well, not so much. Mainly because it doesn’t mean anything. Killing puppies is bad, but no one is actually advocating killing puppies, so getting on the side of the pro-puppy crowd doesn’t lead anywhere but to banal arguments that don’t lead anywhere. That’s the economy problem.

So, if I was going to talk about fixing the economy, I could probably focus on taxes, even though those often fall into banal areas as well, because then we end up in a pro-left “more taxes” or pro-right “taxes are bad”. Instead, I say that we k now that taxes are inevitable, so why don’t we focus on what exactly we’re taxing in the first place. And I don’t mean whom, such as rich versus poor. Yeah, I think the rich could probably afford to pay more taxes, but let’s be honest and think about the possibility that perhaps that’s not exactly right either. While they CAN afford more taxes, is it really right to say they SHOULD be paying more taxes? While I could argue that they’ve probably benefited more from capitalism than someone who is poor (which WOULD be a good argument), I’m going to take a different tact and focus on what should be taxed, because I think there are avenues where we are completely missing the boat.

Here me out here. What I propose is that we legalize prostitution and then tax anything and everything that has any ties to sexual barter exchanges. Right now, there is a HUGE blackmarket industry that is nothing but this type of behavior, and the only reason we don’t tax it is because the people who would pay those taxes are afraid to report it because they’d probably then get arrested for all sorts of blue laws we have instituted in our scared of sex morality that exists in our society. Face it. There are people paying other people for sexual behavior, some of it pretty innocent and some of it pretty damn bizarre involving all sorts of devices, machines, trapeze-apparatus mechanisms and some involving things that still shock the crap out of me. But I know it takes place because there are people out there doing it and enjoying it. None of them are evil, bad, dishonest or any other letter-wearing designation either. They’re normal people who have decided that that is how they interact with each other. And some people throw a fit because it doesn’t fit into their sense of morality.

Get over it. If you don’t like it, don’t participate in it. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be acknowledging it and taxing it. Believe me, there’s a LOT of money that changes hands here in this area, and once it becomes legal, you start to clean it up as well. Sure, people are still going to do their naughty things, but legalizing it gets organized crime, gangs and predators out of the business. It also allows women to have an easier avenue to protect themselves from some of the problematic people out there who prey on them because they figure the illegal nature of the business keeps them from every having to face justice.

Now, we could also legalize drugs, but at the same time I realize there’s a more health-related problem involved here that needs to be dealt with. Perhaps if we went into it with all eyes open, we might see drug behavior as a problem that needs to be dealt with through therapy and positive actions, rather than having someone try to get off drugs while in lockdown, waiting for his court case for possessing illegal substances.

2. International Diplomacy. We haven’t gotten this right in over a hundred years now. We’re still dealing with foreign entities as if we’re still part of the Napoleonic era. Governments aren’t that way any more. Major powers don’t really deal with each other on the international stage as they used to with detente and brinkmanship. What is needed is a different perspective, involving a more game theoretic foundation of tit for tat and compliance understanding than “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” nonsense. If you look at the problems the US is having with Middle Eastern countries, almost all of them stem from brinkmanship and religious intolerance (from both sides) than it does from actually attempting to engage with people as part of a give and take relationship. Right now, our foreign policy has more to do with where we might get our next barrel of oil than it does with how we get along with people who like types of music you can find on iTunes, yet much of our actual engagement comes from those avenues through social networking sites than they ever will through economic business ties being handled by corporate entities trying to corner the market on petroleum.

Years ago, I used to have disagreements with a young man who was fresh from Iran (shortly after the Shah was deposed). He was a strongly ideological Persian who believed in east versus west superiority (for whatever reasons, which surprisingly were not religious), but we actually became friends and arguments and conflicts practically ended overnight when I discovered he was a fan of Madonna, and I managed to get him a copy of Madonna’s “Sex” book that he so wanted but couldn’t bring it to himself to buy for himself. To be honest, I never heard an anti-western comment from him after the day he received that book. While I can’t verify he still didn’t feel that way, it was amazing what a sea change was made over such a simplistic gesture.

That our government has NEVER figured this out shocks me more and more as the world becomes a much more dangerous place while still moving towards some bizarre sense of a global economy.

3. Education. This, to me, is probably the most important issue that our country should be dealing with on a daily basis, almost with the same sense we gave to putting men on the Moon. Our whole country should be rallied around the idea of improving our educational system not so that we somehow obtain minimal standards, but that we start to surpass the very dreams we had back in the 1960s about the great civilization we hoped to one day become. Children should be taught calculus by sixth grade as a standardization and expectation because it should be almost second nature. Parents should be irrate that their children don’t know more than they did at their age and do everything possible to make sure that we don’t continue to churn out stupid people. Reality show programming should be seen as the embarrassment to America that it really is, instead of some kind of ideal that people look up to. My god, there are people who want to be Snooki and the Situation, and somehow seem proud of that. College should be an expectation for all, not because it’s an enlightened goal of the few, but because it’s necessary to build a society of free thinkers who should be challenging everyone about practically everything. I would like to see a presidential debate that is moderated by the audience who shows up to the event wanting to know the answers to real questions, not just packaged answers to questions pre-screened by candidate panels beforehand.

That’s all I’ll go with for now, because now I’ve depressed myself as I realize we’re never going to achieve any of this, and we’re doomed to go another century with people striving for the lowest standards possible, mainly because they never learned to challenge themselves.

Is Being Upset Enough to Sustain a National Movement?

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The Occupy Wall Street movement is turning out to be a very interesting flashpoint in modern day history. If you follow the news, commentators are going out of their way trying to explain away something they can’t explain by using metaphors and comparisons to previous movements that are completely void of any dichotomous connections. What is simply happening is that something new has emerged, and the media has no way of explaining it.

So, let me explain what is really going on. What we have are a lot of people who are pissed off because the American Dream (or whatever international aspirations they might have if they’re not Americans) isn’t working out as originally sold by the marketers known as government and media. It used to be if you worked hard, put in your time, and did the right things, you would come out ahead, and that your children would end up doing better than you did before. This would continue on for generations until several generations later the new species wouldn’t even recognize the old species.

That works great in theory. However, the theory doesn’t account for the concept of greed. A capitalistic system works really well at bringing the society to a higher level of achievement, but what doesn’t get discussed is that not everyone rises up with the new tide of prosperity. In reality, a capitalistic system is designed to benefit those who are capable of taking advantage of the process, and in a zero sum economy, someone generally has to do horribly bad in order for someone to do horribly well. Socialism is the economic system where everyone comes out equally, although not always at the best they could be (as government isn’t known for raising tides of boats of economies all that well when there’s no incentive to provide for upward mobility). But capitalism is a different animal, and equality has never been a promise, a guarantee or even a necessity. Instead, capitalism promises prosperity for some, and desparity for most others. What we’ve only recently discovered is that 99% is desparity while 1% is prosperity in this zero sum game.

That is why people are pissed. You see, most people don’t want to be part of the losing side of economics. Yet, whenever this gets addressed, the 1% (and the clueless numbers in the 99% hoodwinked by the 1% to believe that they’ll one day have a shot at being one of the 1%) does everything possible to make the 99% sound clueless, making such commentary irrelevant, and even more important: Unheard.

But one thing happened that wasn’t a part of the capitalistic dilemma: Education. Many more people achieved education than a capitalistic system can actually maintain. Oh, this works out well if the education is vocational in nature, in that everyone exists for the purpose of feeding the greedy animal, but if the education is social in nature, and people become made aware, rather than compliant, then there would eventually be a reckoning. It’s somewhat inevitable, although I don’t even think Marx or Hegel predicted it would happen as quickly as it is beginning to occur; they suspected much more saturation would have been necessary first, but who knew?

That’s where we are today. The movement has no leadership because there is no one who can steer a crowd to inevitable collapse. There is no rallying cry that can push people in that direction. And there is really no rallying cry that can push a population back in the other direction once the masses have been unleashed.

So, the question is: Are we there yet? If we’re at the inevitable saturation point that leads to eventual destruction of the capitalistic system, then nothing exists that can push the movement backwards. If we’re not there yet, the people who hold onto the reins of power will continue to use their influence to push the masses back to compliance again. But one thing is certain: There will be no actual compromise because the holders of power cannot compromise without acknowledging that the system was flawed to begin with.

So we’re left with the question of whether or not there is enough anger, frustration and disgust amongst the population to fuel a movement further to a point where changes will actually take place. As collective action theory points out, people will gather together for a common purpose, but if they do not receive a payoff for their efforts, the movement dies until it raises steam again. If they do receive a payoff, they may settle down, thinking they achieved their goals but not really satisfied (meaning they will eventually have to rise again and start over from scratch), or they will be so insulted by the compromises asked of them that the movement will fuel itself and sustain itself further until it actually acquires the goals it sets for itself.

Either way, no one is going to sit down and write out a list of wants and needs to sustain the movement (something the media keeps asking for). It will either achieve what it needs to achieve (fulfilling a sense of punctuated equilibrium) and return rhetoric to a sense of order again, or it will overwhelm everything until it becomes the new world order itself.

Only the future can really tell.

Reviewing “That Used to Be Us” by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum

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I picked up this book on whim, not sure if it would end up being partisan drivel, interesting or just a waste of time. Well, halfway through it, I decided on “interesting”. While reading it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my experience when I was reading the book “Teachers Have It Easy” (don’t remember the three authors), a book that tells the brutal truth of what it’s like to be a teacher. I remember at the time of reading that book how some of their stories rivaled my own, and there were times when I just shook my  head because I knew that other people needed to be reading the book, but they never would (or will). So, I’d end up reading a book that reinforced what I already knew, and I’d constantly be berated by people who knew nothing of teaching, but would act like they knew everything because “my mom was a teacher” or “I know a teacher” or my favorite: “I don’t have to be a teacher to know how easy they have it.”

“That Used to Be Us” also talks about one of the platforms that needs to be embraced in order to make things better, and one of those platforms involves teachers. In order to make America strong again, we need to empower teachers, and that means asking a lot of people to do something that definitely won’t be in their best interest, and that’s the part their book never really addresses. You see, the majority of the critics against teachers outright hate teachers. They don’t know enough about them, but they know that they hate them, and they take every opportunity to cast ridicule upon them. I see it on message boards and newspaper letter sites all of the time. MLive.com is one of those that excels in this. What happens is a bunch of “good ole’ boys” start posting about how teachers have it so easy with their big paychecks, their miniscule hours and the fact that they get these HUGE vacations every year. And then they’ll drone on about unions and how teachers are lazy, overpaid, quite often stupid, and more often than not, the problem. Try to talk to them politely, and they flame you left and right. Try to engage them in argumentation, and they start making personal attacks that have no actual basis in reality, but are designed to hurt and throw mud all over the walls.

Friedman and Mandelbaum rightly believe that the solution needs to start with an empowering of teachers who will then embrace a Colorado style of educational reform, but at the same time don’t seem to offer any way of getting everyone else on the side of teachers to make it happen. What ends up happening almost every time that standards are increased is that they become punitive so that unions become defensive, and then you end up with no one actually trying to improve things for children but people are seen as targets rather than part of the solution. For most people, educational reform is a zero sum game where one side has to lose for the other side to win, rather than their approach which is for all sides to win. Unfortunately, that’s what always makes it completely incapable of achieving success.

Part of the solution would be a simple paradigm shift in respect towards educators, which doesn’t happen too often in this country. I saw it when I went to Korea and was traveling home through China. I was stopped at the Beijing Airport, and I was being questioned about the medication that I was carrying with me (I had stupidly forgot to pack the prescription information with it, and Korean pharmacies have a tendency to just package pharmaceuticals in individual bags with no markings on them). I was in a seven hour layover, so I wasn’t in any hurry, but it didn’t look like I was going to be getting through customs any time soon. However, about fifteen minutes or so into it, one of the customs guards asked me my occupation, and I said I was a teacher, that I taught little kids (which is what I had done in Korea). His eyes opened, and he immediately took off to track down his supervisor, who had been in and out of dealing with me about the whole “drug” issue. The supervisor came back with another customs guard, a young woman. They both stood there for a second and just stared at me. Then the first guard started talking to them with animation, pantomiming the whole “little kids” action I had done when describing my job. Then both the supervisor and the other customs woman smiled, thanked me for my time and packed up all of my Korean bags of pharmaceuticals into my bag and released me to the waiting area untl my plane arrived.

Right then and there, you could see how much respect they had for someone who actually taught children. It didn’t matter that I was an American, and that the children I taught were Korean. I was a teacher, and it mattered to them.

We don’t get that sense of pride in this country. Ever. And that’s why it is so hard to find quality teachers who really care about their job. It obviously isn’t the money that keeps them in the profession, no matter how much political spin people want to put into it. For someone who has a master’s degree, the pay for the work isn’t worth it. The drama, the politics, the hassles and the unrealistic expectations with the lack of care of parents for the proficiency of their children…just doesn’t make it worth it. So it has to be something that keeps teachers in the business, and quite often it’s the few successes they do get from the struggles we go through.

Unfortunately, as long as the people in this country treat teachers as they always treat teachers, don’t expect things to get any better. And as for the book, much like the previous book I mentioned, I don’t expect anyone to read it who needs to read it. It will be read by people who already have an idea of what the book is expected to say, and only by them. I’ve actually be surprised at a lot of the information contained in the book, and I am one of the people who tends to read this kind of book. Unfortunately, the people who need to read it…well, they won’t.

Why Don’t Politicians Discuss the Poor?

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There’s an interesting essay on CNN this morning by Roland S. Martin that takes the stance that Republicans do not ever mention the poor even though the most important red states are heavily infected with poverty. While it’s a thought-provoking article, it’s obviously very partisan in its approach, almost as if saying (without actually saying it) that Democrats DO care about the poor while Republicans do not. While it’s easy to throw mud on the GOP over this particular issue, I’m going to take a different tact and introduce the question of: Why don’t politicians discuss the poor? Because, as much as Democrats like to see themselves as the party of the people, when it comes down to discussing issues that actually alleviate poverty, neither side really does a good job.

For those waging class warfare, you might disagree with me, thinking that Democrats have always been on the side of the poor, but honestly think back and try to figure out when was the last time Democrats actually went out of their way to do something to alleviate poverty, aside from talk about it or use it to get re-elected. When I was pursuing my Ph.d in political science, I remember putting forth the argument (to a group of Democrat-professors) that asked the same question but in terms of race. It was during a seminar on party politics, and I asked why the Democratic Party actually felt it deserved the votes of blacks. And the room went silent because it was one of those questions you don’t really ask. I tried to push away the “you must be a racist to ask such a question” responses quickly by indicating that while the Democrats may have more African-Americans making up its ranks, what exactly was the Democratic Party doing to help African-Americans when it came to either ending racial discrimination or anything that had to do with bringing all races into a sense of equality. Responses all seemed to point at Civil Rights legislation and other such issues, but I kept pointing out that much of these efforts were started in the 1960s by politicians who were either very old or dead. Recent attempts to actually “make things better for everyone” weren’t really being made. My argument was that the Democratic Party seemed to be expecting African-American participation and support solely on the basis of not being the Republican Party. Needless to say, this caused all sorts of negativity in the room, and to be honest, to this day I’ve never achieved a sense of anyone really going out of his or her way to address the issue. Instead, I often see race being treated as an issue with already decided expectations that make it so that no one actually discusses the issues but instead do a lot of scholarship that consists of doing what has been done before without much further effort.

I bring this up because the issue, for me, is the same when it comes to poverty. There are more poor people in this country now than there has been in a very long time (since the Depression itself), yet politicians don’t seem to really be focusing on it. Instead, the focus has been the deficit, getting people back to work (the middle and upper classes), and a couple of areas of foreign policy. The War on Poverty became a “war” in name only, as we haven’t really done anything to alleviate poverty, unless you look at current trends as a War on People in Poverty, which we seem to be conducting quite admirably as we cut money to shelters, food banks, food stamps, schools and practically every other area of society that has anything to do with the poor.

But no one really seems to care. On the local news website (MLive.com), I read daily scribes by the common citizens that attack anyone who is poor as lazy, a criminal and a drain on society. Whenever someone puts forth ideas to alleviate poverty, that person is treated as part of the problem, and the masses don’t even want to discuss the issue further. And this isn’t even some right-wing media outlet. It’s the outlet used by the majority of people who read the local newspapers on a daily basis.

I don’t know about you, but I would love to see every politician start talking about what he or she is going to do to get people out of poverty. That would be so refreshing. But that never happens, and the reason for that is because it’s so much easier to not do anything about it and make up other issues that aren’t important, but are easier to hold conferences about. One of the big issues going into the presidential election is most definitely going to be the deficit, but at the same time I would not be surprised to see other ridiculous issues become part of the common conversation, like same sex marriages, abortion, religion in schools and taxation. It would not surprise me if one of these issues becomes the reason why one politician wins rather than any other.

Another factor to look at is political power itself. Since the poor first became poor, they have never really had an advocate working on their behalf. Congress is constantaly barraged with lobbyists over every issue under the sun, except for those that have anything to do with poverty. And that’s because there’s no money in it, which is somewhat ironic because that’s the problem in the first place. Lobbyists exist mainly to push political interests that then serve economic interests as well. When the economic interest is in getting people out of poverty, there’s no basis for creating a political process behind it. It’s a game theoretic where there’s no payoff for anyone involved, so no one gets involved, and the poor are left to their own lives of poverty without anyone really caring about the struggles they go through.

Instead, we end up with people thinking they know what poverty is because they brushed with it somewhere in the past but never really experienced it. I used to see this all of the time in the academic environment whenever poverty was discussed, and some college student who once struggled to make a decision between buying a new CD and purchasing food because of a limited budget actually thinks he went through a bout of poverty, so he thinks he completely understands it. And that person, when living somewhat of a decent lifestyle, is confronted with the idea of poverty, immediatedly thinks of poor people as the lazy people who couldn’t sacrifice that CD to put food on the table that one day when in reality the idea of buying a CD is a luxury most of them wouldn’t even consider in the first place. So when a poor person actually owns a cell phone (because it’s the only way they can communicate, making it an immediate Maslowian need), that former student scoffs at them, saying stuff like: “Well, if they can afford cell phones, obviously they don’t need assistance.” Again, it’s an inability to completely understand the bigger picture brought about by the fact that no one is ever going to take the effort to want to learn in the first place.

So what is the solution? Stop ignoring it and do something about it. Write your leaders and say something about it. But we won’t because we’re as lazy as we claim the poor must be, and we rarely do anything about it. If a politician doesn’t have constituents yelling at them about poverty, it’s not an issue on their dashboard. Unless someone starts telling them about it, they’re never going to even be aware of it because they don’t travel in circles that requires them to have to see the homeless as they live on a daily basis other than the random one who happens to be begging on the side of the entrance to the interstate, and like most people, the politician probably ignores them, thinking that if they don’t look at them, they don’t have to worry about them; or worse, they give them a dollar to get some alcohol, and somehow feel like they’ve done their all to address the poor.

Asking politicians to do the right thing is the recipe for failure every time. Asking YOU to make them do the right thing IS the answer. But I suspect we won’t because it’s too much work, and we all know those poor people are really lazy people who just don’t want to work like the rest of us. Right?

The Struggles of Teaching Political Science to College Students

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My role as a teacher

Every semester that I teach a new batch of students in political science, I find myself less and less confident in the future of America. Every now and then, a semester will throw off this natural trend, but more often than not, I find myself wondering what kind of future we’re leading to when so many students seem to have little to no grasp of the events happening around them.

I’m not talking about obscure political knowledge here. I’m talking about answers to simple questions like: “What’s going on the country today?” or “What are the important events happening in the world today?” I can understand the concept of being put on the spot to think of something. It used to happen to me when I first started my undergraduate days at West Point and an upperclassman would jump in front of your face and demand answers to “Tell me what’s on the front of the New York Times, New Cadet!” and you’d draw a blank more because you were scared to death of failing rather than actually not remembering what you read in the paper that morning. But this is different. When we finally end up with some story of current events in the discussion, like Obama’s “big speech on Thursday” I look around the class, and I’m met with completely blank stares, like they have no idea what was just mentioned. And when this continues over EVERY subject that gets brought up, you really start to feel scared when it comes to young people understanding what’s going on around them.

At one point in the past, I completely figured this was inconsequential because I started thinking, “who cares who knows anything about current events?” I figured it wasn’t all that important anyway. But it is important because significant decisions are being made each and every day in our governments, and quite often the people who influence public opinion and the decisions of leaders are completely clueless about what’s going on anyway. As Mussolini pointed out, when you have a population that is so blind to what’s going on around them, you can so easily influence them into doing anything you desire.

When we look at the last presidential administration and the atrocities that may have been carried out in our name, I look at the people of this country who don’t seem to care, and I immediately understand why so many bad things can happen at the hands of our leaders because no one will ever hold them accountable if no one has a clue what’s actually going on. When a presidential election occurs and the only reason someone votes for a leader is because of what partisan letter they registered for at one point in their life, we have a real problem. The country is divided into two camps of partisan designations, which means that the people who make up the party leadership of those two parties can practically do anything they want to do, and they’re still going to get the support of blind, oblivious constituents.

This is why someone like former Detroit mayor Kilpatrick can commit outright crimes against his own constituents, and he’d probably get reelected by the same people he cheated because their loyalties are to a mindset rather than to an individual. It’s why we have so much corruption in our governments these days. It happens so often that leaders rarely even hide it because they realize that they’re still going to get reelected because they’re not “the other guy”. This sort of thing stems from the fact that it takes a simple majority to put someone into office, and the majority of the population is filled with people who have no clue what’s going on in their government, and more importantly, don’t care.

The usual response to this argument is that “education” is the solution, but as one of those educators, I practically give up myself because no matter how much energy, how much struggle or how much entertainment I add to a class, students are generally only interested in rote memorization that will lead them to the answers for a test that they generally don’t understand. I’ve had students tell me a correct answer, but when I try to analyze the answer to see if there’s an understanding of the nature of that concept, they stare at me as if I just asked them the question in Klingon, meaning a) they don’t understand it, and b) as Klingon is from Star Trek, they figure it’s not important for them to give a rat’s ass about it anyway.

Yet, each semester I teach, I’ll receive a random email from a former student who thanks me for opening his or her eyes to knowledge he or she never realized existed, so I feel that I got through to someone. But when you have a classroom of 30-50 students, reaching two of them each semester leaves you with a sense that it’s not a successful achievement on a cost benefit analysis. You start to wonder if they would have come to this knowledge regardless, and you’re just surfing the wave that was heading towards the shore anyway. Or did you cause the wave to form? And if so, was it worth the costs of creating the wave in the first place.

I fear that not enough people are “getting it” to make a difference because when only 0.4% of the people who vote understand the process well enough to cast an enlightened vote, do the 99.6% doom us to bad choices, a doomed future and inevitable Mussolinis?