Category Archives: Education

Documentary Film

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Francis, one of my ace commenters recently read my “Of What Value is Art?” reflection which inspired him to weigh in on “subjectivity in art and why the notion of experts in this field is problematic.” I agree that art inevitably produces different reactions in people. The social scientific notion of “selective perception” suggests that when you and I go to a film, stand and view a photograph, or watch a dance concert, there’s so much visual stimuli that we filter it differently and therefore don’t see the exact same film, photograph, or concert.

In addition, we interpret the film, photograph, and/or concert based upon our differing life experiences. In large part, that explains how you can excitedly send a friend to a favorite movie only to have them ask why on earth you liked it so much.

Even though selective perception and differing worldviews lead to idiosyncratic interpretations of art, I believe it’s possible to reach agreement on some broad criteria for discriminating between good and bad art.

For example, below I propose two criteria for identifying especially excellent documentary films.

Apparently, movies are relatively recession proof because people like to temporarily escape the worsening realities of their economic lives. I like watching documentaries not to escape reality, but to think deeply about someone else’s reality that I’m not familiar with. It’s less about entertainment than intellectual stimulation.

There are different types of documentaries all which find audiences so I don’t presume to have a monopoly on how to think about them. For me though, I have a two-part litmus test of documentary excellence. To illustrate the first, let’s rewind the tape of my life ten years to one night when I was channel surfing before going to bed. I stumbled upon a documentary on public television titled “The Farmer’s Wife”. It was just beginning and I was so mesmerized by a topic—farming—that I had no connection to and relatively little prior interest in, that I had to carve out six hours over three nights.

So that’s the first criterion, to what degree does the documentary film engage viewers with no previous connection to or interest in the subject?

The second litmus test is how intimate is the portrayal?

In the best documentary films, I’m grabbed by the collar and pulled into the screen as a result of authentic dialogue, compelling characters, subtle interactions, and sometimes music. “The Farmer’s Wife” was the ultimate in intimacy. For six hours I lived in a midwestern farm house with a hardworking struggling farmer, his equally hardworking and stressed out wife, and their daughters. Afterwards I had far more understanding of how difficult it is for small family farmers to survive in an era of increasingly large commercial farms.

The same filmmaker, David Sutherland, made another interesting documentary a few years ago titled “Country Boys”.

My all time favorite documentary? Hoop Dreams. I was at a conference in D.C. and went to an independent theatre in Georgetown by myself to watch it. Afterwards in the subway, replaying it in my mind, I realized I learned a lot more about what it’s like to be a poor African-American living in a large inner city than I did about high school basketball. 

And for those of you interested in learning more about one of the most maligned groups in society, middle schoolers, I enjoyed SpellBound, and  more recently, The Boys of Baraka.

Lastly, I’m not a fan of  intensely ideological documentary films. I like films that prompt questions because they stimulate my thinking far more than films that are one-sided arguments utterly lacking in subtlety. Maybe that explains why I’m probably the only liberal Democrat in the country who likes documentary films, but has never seen a single Michael Moore film. People tell me I’d really like Bowling at Columbine, but I still haven’t made time to watch it.

The State of the Blog

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Long time readers may know that when I began blogging in January I said I’d post weekly throughout the year and then decide whether to continue indefinitely. Somewhere along the way, I decided to post a few times a week. 

Random thoughts on my blogging experience to this point:

• I appreciate my commenters, but in general, it hasn’t been as interactive an experience as I had hoped.

• The limited interaction is okay because it has forced me to continually think about why I’m writing. One reason is because it contributes to a “decluttering of the mind.”  I’ve enjoyed taking nebulous thoughts about things I’ve thought a lot about , meritocracy or youth sports for example, and clarifying them. I think, “Okay, it’s nice to have finally captured those thoughts, now I can move on.”  

• A related potential benefit is going back to the captured thoughts and expanding on them sometime soon. When I look back over the year’s posts, I see a lot of essays in the making.

• Another thing I’ve enjoyed is looking at the broad outline of my post topics. The written record is a map of my thought process. I knew I had wide ranging interests, but I’ve been surprised by the number of topics I’ve chosen to write on and how often I switch gears among them.

• Related to that, I don’t regret writing on any particular topic, but I think I need to narrow my focus in order to strike a better breadth/depth balance. 

• I’ve learned blog readership depends largely on entrepreuneurial know-how and drive. I’m not entrepreuneurial, and haven’t marketed “Welness Writ Large” so my readership remains humble. Still, there’s positive momentum. The three top months in terms of viewers—1) November; 2) September; 3) October.

• A third of the time I think I need to pull back and just think/write off-line. Two-thirds of the time I feel like continuing. So I’m leaning towards continuing.

• Over time I’ve grown less fond of the concept of “wellness.” I’ve tried to expand it’s definition along the way, but it still does not feel robust enough for what I most enjoy thinking and writing about. So I think I need one more name change. 

• Maybe I can narrow my focus by forcing myself to delete some of the categories that I haven’t written as much about.

Thanks for reading.

Of What Value is Art?

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Forget Wall Street and Detroit for a minute. Should we subsidize more artists?

Some would say “yes” because art suffers as a result of market competition. The artist says my concern is less with developing a distinctive style or voice than with earning a livable wage, less emphasis on what do I need to say or create and more on what does the audience want to hear and see. 

Some would say “no” because art benefits from market competition. The artist says my economic vitality is dependent upon me developing a distinctive voice and style, yet at the same time, I have to attend to my audience’s interests, desires, and tastes. As a result, art advances.

We have the National Endowment of the Arts that supports some artists, but those monies are miniscule relative to the national budget. In Norway, I was intrigued that new buildings have to budget something like 2% of their total building costs to public art.

Deja Vu All Over Again

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When the first George Bush was president he oversaw a process that resulted in eight National Education Goals that were straight out of the Republican play book. When Clinton took office he surprisingly said, “Those sound good to me.” 

Now, when I listen to Obama education soundbites, I hear echos of the national educational goals, especially with regard to privileging math and science education at the expense of not just the humanities, but every other subject area.

Here’s a question I’d like someone in the press corp to ask the PE at his next press conference: Your repeated emphasis on math and science education is consistent with your last few predecessors who viewed schooling as a key variable in continued economic growth. Is that the exclusive purpose of schooling or are there other important purposes?

Maybe PE Obama should just get on with it and expedite things by passing an executive order declaring that all elementary schools teach reading and math exclusively and all secondary schools teach math and science exclusively.

The redundant social studies, art, music, foreign language, English, and other teachers can contribute to economic growth by rebuilding highways and bridges.

Choosing a College 2

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In hindsight my “Choosing a College 1” post was among the more ridiculous I’ve written this year.  

Here’s the comment I kept expecting someone to write, “What planet are you living on Byrnes? Do you really think ANY 17-19 year old in the country will choose their college based on the thoughtfulness of the general education program? That’s not even as important as the school’s colors, whether the cafeteria serves frozen yogurt, and whether the dorms get high speed internet and cable television.” 

Thank you for being so apathetic. 

Thanks to that apathy, I’m going to make another maybe even more ridiculous suggestion for choosing a college: choose one you can afford.

I’m going to go even farther and suggest the student and their family start thinking about how they’re going to afford to send their future children/grandchildren to college.

From today’s newspaper the headline reads “Rising Tuition, Credit Crunch Threaten Affordability of Higher Education”. Here are the first two sentences: A new study on American higher education gave all but one state a failing grade on affordability, and warned that college could soon be out of reach for most Americans. The biennial study by the nonprofit National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education gave 49 states an F for affordability, up from 43 two years ago. California passed with a C because of its community college system.

The author went on to say if current trends continue, in 25 years, college will be out of reach for most families.

When it comes to college decision making, people seemingly assume you get what you pay for. Sometimes that’s true, but not always. I received an excellent education (some may dispute that) at a large public institution that was one-third the price of most small private ones. 

I work at an expensive, smallish private institution that likes to tell anyone that will listen that we provide a much better education than the larger, less expensive publics. The argument is go to the large public school if you like being thought of as a number in large classes taught by overextended graduate teaching assistants.

Most of my classes were taught by exceptional scholars. I learned early on to take initiative and knock on their doors during office hours. By doing so I made the humungous college much smaller. They’d stop typing (yeah I’m old) their next book and we’d talk about the course content or the paper I was working on. Interestingly, few of my students come to office hours. 

I had some brilliant graduate teaching assistants who were inspiring beginning teachers. I remember one who got pissed at us for not being prepared for a discussion. After ripping us in ways we deserved, he walked out. We were stunned and way more prepared for the next discussion.  The TA’s taught “discussion sections” of 25 students. Yes, the lecture was 400, but there were also 16 sections that met weekly. 

I learned as much outside of class as in because our student body was incredibly diverse and our campus drew a steady stream of fascinating speakers including national and world leaders. Every night, somewhere on campus, there was an interesting documentary or lecture. Then there were the world class libraries where most of my learning took place.

In another recent newspaper article on college affordability, a family said they were going to take out loans to pay their child’s $41,000 college tuition. I’d like to ask them why. I’d suspect they’d say because it’s an investment in his/her future. 

There are at least three problems with this line of thinking.

1) As I’ve tried to illustrate, tuition and the quality of the educational opportunities provided aren’t perfectly correlated.

2) Stretching financially inevitably leads to unnecessary stress.  College expenses are similar to home construction expenses, there are always unanticipated hidden costs. For example, once I assigned an extra book mid-semester. It was available on Amazon.com for $10, but a few students said they couldn’t afford it. I like to think of myself as compassionate, but I had a hard time processing those objections in the context of our $30,000 tuition/room/board.  

3) The principle of compound interest makes building wealth relatively easy if young people start saving early. But increasingly, young people are graduating from their expensive colleges in serious debt, thus sacrificing the compound interest window.

I don’t understand why more people don’t strategize on how to get through college debt free.

I know, I know that’s not the American way, with our negative savings rate. Live in the present, spend freely. Don’t worry about future debt.

In the end, maybe someone will bail you out.

General Education Curriculum Redesign

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My “Choosing a College 1” post caught the attention of some higher ed faculty so I thought a follow up was in order. That post could have been titled better since it dealt with differing perspectives on higher education and general education more than how to choose a college. 

Some background. I have studied curriculum development and assessment since beginning my doctoral coursework in “Curriculum Leadership” at the University of Denver in 1990.  In the mid-1990’s, at Guilford College, I was one of four Curriculum Committee members charged with redesigning Guilford’s general education program.  I refer to that challenging work as my “second doctorate” in curriculum.  At PLU, I have continued learning about curriculum and assessment through my work with the Wang Center, my facilitating a Wild Hope seminar, my service on the Chinese Studies Program Committee, the International Core Committee, the 2010 Academic Distinction sub group, the Rank & Tenure Committee, and the Faculty Affairs Committee.

I’ve reflected on each of those experiences and could write in great detail about what I’ve learned from them.  I would summarize some of the insights this way:

• Each faculty member has had their life enriched by their discipline; consequently, there is a tendency to view one’s discipline as especially important relative to others.

• When revising general education programs, faculty tend to think about what is in their department’s or unit’s best interest rather than what’s in the best interest of the university more generally. 

• When revising a general education program in the midst of an economic downturn and declining resources, point two is doubly true.

• When soliciting feedback on possible general education program improvements, some faculty will inevitably submit comprehensive proposals that they believe to be the only way forward. In actuality, progress is always slow and the result of continuous collaboration.

• For the sum of students’ educational experiences to equal more than the parts faculty have to do more than periodically exchange syllabi; at minimum, they have to talk, listen, and revise syllabi and engage in programmatic assessment together.

• When faculty are not provided opportunities to get to know their colleagues from across campus, they often fall victim to negative preconceived notions about other departments and units and don’t fully appreciate what they contribute to the general education program. Put differently, opportunities for substantive cross campus conversation fosters mutual respect which is integral to redesigning general education programs and successfully implementing them.

• General education excellence takes many forms. Successful implementation requires faculty to pay considerably more attention than normal to teaching methodologies. Faculty need to come to grips with the limits of 20th century “transmission of knowledge” pedagogies and ask “How should we adapt our teaching in light of the information revolution?” 

Why Go To College?

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The people have voted and they are far more interested in the Obama/Palin dancing pic than the inner workings of higher ed faculty. I’m shocked and dismayed. 

Let me try a different tack on the choosing college front. Why go to college at all when there are options? Get a job, enlist in the military, go to Vegas and win at Texas Hold Em’.

The main reason you hear high school counselors tell high school students to go to college is because college grads earn something like $1m more over the course of their working lives. But that’s an average. What if, like me, you’re really good at Texas Hold Em’? Besides, even if you lose, it’s bright, warm, and sunny in Vegas, while right now in the Pacific Northwest at least, it’s dark, cold, and cloudy. 

There are other good reasons to go to college. If you’re a male heterosexual, the ratio of young single women to men has never been better. If you’re not male or heterosexual, there’s still a better chance of meeting that special someone playing intramural sports or hanging out in the student center than there is bagging groceries, going through basic training, or hitting full houses on the final card in Vegas.

Also, if you go to a sports power like say UCLA, you can watch world class athletes for next to nothing. If you go to the University of Washington or Washington State, well, you can watch UCLA on television.

I was a lackluster high schooler so when I was an 18 year old senior dad went reverse psychology on me. Told me he didn’t think I was ready for college. Offered me a job sweeping the floors of his company’s inner city LA factory. 

College. . .sweep floors. . . college. . . sweep floors?

When it comes to high school, my daughter is anything but lackluster. No need for reverse psychology, instead I find myself saying, “Put that book down and go to bed for Pete’s sake!” Then I wonder, did I just say that?

There’s at least one more excellent reason to go to college. Keep me employed.

Choosing a College 1

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My daughter, known as A or 16, is beginning her college search. This is the first of several posts on how to choose a college. I do not want to make A’s decision for her, I simply want to share one insider’s perspective and stimulate her thinking.

Suggestion one: compare and contrast general education programs and choose a school with a thematic, interdisciplinary oriented general education program. Ask yourself, “Is the logic of the general education program self apparent and engaging?” And ask people at the college, “Does the sum of the general education sequence equal more than the individual parts?”

Five, six winters ago, two friends and I headed to a telemarking ski clinic. Free the heel, free the mind.

Friend one is a doc, a general practitioner. Friend two is a scientist who leads Washington State’s response team whenever there’s an oil spill or other type of accident that has serious ecological consequences. His team works with the groups responsible for the accident to restore the damaged area to it’s original state.

On the way home, One reflected on the limits of his medical education. Specifically, he wish he had learned how to run a business since that had proven to be the most difficult aspect of creating a thriving clinic. Two regretted being dependent upon an anthropologist who helped his team interact more thoughtfully with native groups every time their land was threatened by oil spills and other accidents. He wished there had been a little anthropology somewhere within his doctoral science program.

Now I’m going to let you in on a dirty little secret. Some of my colleagues, let’s call them the “militant liberal artists” believe strongly that academics must reject any and all references to business model thinking. If you were to ask them, doesn’t a faculty that charges $100 to $200k for four years have some responsibility to equip graduates with skills that will enable them to earn a livable wage, they’d say, not really.  They’d point out that the economy is in constant flux and the purpose of a liberal education is to think deeply about the human condition, to question the status quo, to develop self understanding, to self actualize. Let the job market take care of itself and let technical colleges focus on marketable skills.

Economics department and business school faculty tend to think very differently about the purposes of higher education which can make for depressing faculty meetings. The business model folks, let’s call them “the utilitarians”, tend to think about higher education as an investment that should pay tangible dividends including a good job, health care, and material well being.

One philosopher of ed captures the different orientations of the “militant liberal artists” and the “utilitarians” by distinguishing between “education for being” and “education for having.” Getting faculty with wildly contrasting orientations to agree on general education requirements is exceedingly difficult because the MLA’s (pun intended) believe literature, art, music, religion, history, philosophy, and languages are most important while the U’s emphasize math, the sciences, economics, and business.

In large part, that philosophical divide explains why so many general education programs lack coherence and fail to inspire. Most people don’t understand that they are compromises. Keep some modicum of faculty peace, take one of these, two of those, and one of these. Students mindlessly check off each requirement as they go and the sum rarely equals more than the parts.

When it comes to undergraduate education, I’m more MLA in orientation; when it comes to graduate education, I’m more sympathetic to the U’s.  

A higher education is not a mutual fund; consequently, I’m not terribly concerned with whether undergraduate students and their families feel they receive an adequate monetary return for their investment. In my view, the more important question is whether graduates have sufficient interdisciplinary knowledge, skills, and sensibilities to make a positive difference in their communities. 

What would happen if the MLA’s and the U’s made nice and designed a general education program in response to One’s and Two’s questions: How does one provide quality medical care in an economically viable way? And how does one protect ecologically sensitive environments in culturally sensitive ways? The answer to one is by melding science and business, and to two, by melding science, humanities, and social science content.

The gen ed status quo requires students to take eight separate requirements in five, six different areas, but in those programs faculty typically don’t even read one another’s syllabi so students are left to themselves to connect dots between courses.

So A, if your goal is to graduate with the knowledge, skills, and sensibilities to improve the actual quality of life of people, seek a school with a thoughtfully designed, engaging, thematic, interdisciplinary general education program.

President-elect Obama

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F, a former student of mine just wrote the following. F is a real cosmopolitan. She’s Nigerian, she was in my class when I taught in Ethiopia, and she’s currently honing her ground strokes in Canada.

Hey Ron…
What happened yesterday in America? A British newspaper proclaimed it a giant leap for mankind. From Obama Japan to Antarctica to Kenya to Western Europe and of course Canada, people seem to have recognized that something truly profound and seismic just took place. It goes beyond Barack’s inspirational vision of unity and change I suspect and his clear grasp of current tall issues facing the US economy and by extension the world at large, his delineation from the platitudes of the Republican party and the sense that with tectonic plates shifting constantly around the globe he may be the leader the free world needs at this time. Perhaps the real reason people wept openly was the acknowledgment of emotional inclusiveness more than anything else, the feeling that everyone was indeed equal, and that this wasn’t illusory. Is this then the dawn of a new Golden Age? Are we all going to be happy now for ever and ever? I daresay, I think not—Darwinism and everything else that makes sure human beings will ultimately see separation in all things could still win out as it has every time for millions of years; after all prosperous homogeneous societies haven’t necessarily been the end of terrible ills. I can only hope I guess that Obama will carry these great expectations the same way he weathered the rigors of the campaign trail—pretty damn well, in my opinion—but who can see the future?

F’s thoughts inspire a few of my own. First, it’s strange that I’ve been by the phone all day and I haven’t received a call from Obama’s transition team.

I kicked on CNN this morning at 5:40a before meeting up with M, my neighbor, friend, and McCainiac training partner at 5:55a to get our morning run on. CNN had a split screen that showed people celebrating Obama’s victory in Georgia (the republic), Kenya, Western Europe, and one other foreign location. I felt an affinity with those people who were celebrating Obama’s improbable victory. Of course it’s a special unexpected accomplishment for African Americans, but I believe it’s also a watershed for anyone who is not white or male. And it’s even a watershed for white males like me who believe we may now begin to maximize all of the talent that’s available in this incredibly diverse country. 

At the same time, I couldn’t help but think how M would interpret the same footage. I deeply appreciate my American citizenship, but ultimately, I think of myself as a global citizen. In contrast, M thinks of himself exclusively as an American. As a result, he thinks we’ve made substantial progress on the war on terrorism under 43 because we haven’t been attacked in seven years. He isn’t even aware of how many attacks there have been in other places. I count those deaths, he seemingly doesn’t.

I believe we need to rely more on diplomacy and less on our military strength. M believes diplomacy is pointless and military strength is the key to our security. So if he were watching the CNN split screen, he’d probably say, “There you have it, another reason people should have voted McCain-Palin.” Why? Because he’s suspicious of the “other” and prefers having adversarial relations with foreign countries. His perspective is a “guy on the street” version of real politic. Every country’s every decision is based upon their perceived self interests and military power trumps diplomacy. Ultimately, we have no true friends, we’re a lone shining light on the hill.  

F raises the prospect that this momentous occasion doesn’t mean everything will inevitably turn out well. I always get nervous whenever someone younger than me is more cynical than me, but I have to agree with her. I thought his speech last night was excellent and chuckled at Mark Shield’s when he criticized it for being too long. I think he spoke for 17-20 minutes, at the end of a campaign that lasted 21 months! I’m going to give Mark a pass on that one because he was up way past his bedtime. One of several aspects of the speech that I liked was how he began lowering expectations. “The road will be steep, there will be setbacks.” Then he said progress will take more than a year and maybe more than a term. How will it turn out? As F implied, only time will tell.

And like F, I was tremendously impressed with his campaign, especially his communication skills and poise. So I’m going suppress my normal cynicism and be cautiously optimistic that he can leverage his incredible momentum to as Tavis Smiley said, “Make sure progressive policies trump personality.” He’ll put an excellent team together and Congress will work with him at least early on.

Can we grow the economy while preserving the environment, rebuild foreign alliances, and begin making progress on a long list of global challenges? If we patiently and persistently work together inside and outside of government, yes we can.