One college student’s opinion about one professor.
“Passionate about her work but poor people skills. Interrupts students and even fellow faculty while speaking. Often ignores or invalidates comments even when requested. Seemingly judges based on appearance and admittedly judges based in writing skill. Unsympathetic to life circumstances, not a teacher willing to work with you. Good yoga instructor.”
LOVE that pivot at the end, but maybe shoulda started with that.
More accurately, my year in movies, so far.
January
February
March
Vice was my favorite because my daughter took me for my birthday and paid for my ticket. No check that, Kala Shah Kala was my favorite because it was a hoot and the Good Wife and I were the only non Indians in the Victoria, British Columbia theater. No wait, Roma because of the cinematography and “monitor NBA boxscores at the same time” pace. No no, Shoplifters, yeah Shoplifters because at the end of it my date sat glued in her seat and said it was the best movie she’d ever seen. No, Bohemian Rhapsody because I’m a young hard man shouting in the street and I’m gonna take on the world someday. And I’ve got blood on my face and I’m a big disgrace, wavin’ my banner all over the place.
1. Johnny Manziel’s wife denies she cheated at a half marathon, stands by world record pace. Funny headline, sad trend. Prolly the prevaricator President’s fault.
2. Comparing transit levels across U.S. cities. 3.5 out of every 100 workers in my fair city of Olympia, WA commute to work by bicycle, fifth best in the Specific Northwest. I guess the fourth person bikes one way and drives the other.
3. The official fast food French fry power rankings.
4. How to turn schools into happier places. Respond to conflicts in non-punitive ways. Work to improve school climate. An aside, I can’t remember the last time I heard the Prevaricator-in-Chief say anything at all about public schooling. Which, I greatly appreciate.
5. This is very good news for me.
6. Yes please.
7. What does it cost to repair a Tesla? Invoice at 6:44.
Excellent advice from David Gooblar’s Chronicle of Higher Education essay, “What is ‘Indoctrination’? And How Do We Avoid It in Class?”
His answer. . . by modeling open-mindedness and intellectual humility.
Gooblar thinks we can guard against closed-mindedness if we:
“. . . admit when we’re wrong, discuss our failures, and let students know when we’re unsure about something.”
When researching my doctoral dissertation, I spent two months closely studying a master high school teacher with a PhD in Mesopotamian history. Most PhD’s in Mesopotamian history would fall FLAT on their face if required to teach high school, but not this one because he never flaunted his intellect. One time, I recall, he started a story about something he had recently read about Egyptian pyramids. “I recently read in a book, but I don’t know if it’s true, . . . ” With one simple phrase, he demystified textual authority. The take-away, reader beware, authors are flawed.
However, there’s more to the “indoctrination story” than Gooblar reveals. A year ago, I was teaching an interdisciplinary International Honors course to a dozen whip smart juniors and seniors at my liberal arts university. One session, when discussing economics, a winsome but exasperated senior said, “I’ve never had a single professor here say anything positive about capitalism.” And on a scale of “1 to 10” in terms of liberal, liberal arts campus cultures, I’d rate my university a 4.
I thought long and hard about that statement, but also the student’s seeming resistance to critically question obvious, albeit unintended, negative consequences of unfettered free-market capitalism. As a conservative surrounded mostly by liberal faculty and peers, did he feel compelled to overcompensate? “I’m planting my flag on the hill of free-market capitalism come hell or high water!”
No, I don’t think that’s what was happening. I also taught the same student writing four years earlier in a seminar where we got to know one another well. I was reminded in the Honors course of how close he was to his mother whom he talked about affectionately. When I probed a little about how he came to his pro-capitalism views, he talked about his mother’s passion for it and their numerous conversations about it from when he was little. His hesitance to question capitalism as an economic system didn’t have anything to do with peer relationships, it had everything to do with his love for his mother. To even question capitalism, let alone reject it like an increasing number of his peers, would’ve required him to reject his mother. Far too high a cost to pay.
When teaching anything remotely political, that is the educator’s dilemma—how to honor each student’s familial context while also challenging them to expand their worldview. Or more specifically, given our example, how to celebrate the beauty of a loving child-parent relationship, while simultaneously cultivating critical thinking about closely held, unquestioned assumptions learned from birth.
How do educators challenge students to thoughtfully confront their families ideological blindspots knowing their intellectual awakening will disrupt those cherished relationships?
Derek Thompson’s Atlantic essay “The Religion of Workism is Making Americans Miserable” deserves widespread discussion around dinner tables; and in churches; synagogues; and heaven for bid, workplaces.
It’s hard to excerpt from because the whole thing deserves a close reading. In particular, the conclusion is strong:
“Workism offers a perilous trade-off. On the one hand, Americans’ high regard for hard work may be responsible for its special place in world history and its reputation as the global capital of start-up success. A culture that worships the pursuit of extreme success will likely produce some of it. But extreme success is a falsifiable god, which rejects the vast majority of its worshippers. Our jobs were never meant to shoulder the burdens of a faith, and they are buckling under the weight. A staggering 87 percent of employees are not engaged at their job, according to Gallup. That number is rising by the year.
One solution to this epidemic of disengagement would be to make work less awful. But maybe the better prescription is to make work less central.
This can start with public policy. There is new enthusiasm for universal policies—like universal basic income, parental leave, subsidized child care, and a child allowance—which would make long working hours less necessary for all Americans. These changes alone might not be enough to reduce Americans’ devotion to work for work’s sake, since it’s the rich who are most devoted. But they would spare the vast majority of the public from the pathological workaholism that grips today’s elites, and perhaps create a bottom-up movement to displace work as the centerpiece of the secular American identity.”
Insightful and important, but incomplete. Thompson misses the sociological nature of workism. He implies well compensated Americans are consciously choosing to work to the point of exhaustion, but the dynamic is far more complex. More of a sociological sensibility is needed to understand two things: 1) the subtle and nuanced way status anxiety contributes to conspicuous consumption, and 2) how a few workaholics can create workplace cultures that lead others to haphazardly conform until a critical mass of pathological workaholism takes over.
Simply put, in some workplaces, you are not truly free to choose whether to make work the centerpiece of your identity or not. Your co-workers make the decision for you.
1. Exercise May Help to Fend Off Depression. I would state it more definitively.
2. The Economic Gains of a Liberal Arts Education.
3. Two hundred years of health and medical care.
4. John Gruber’s 2018 Apple Report Card.
5. How Muggsy Bogues saved his brother’s life, and found the meaning of his own. Dig the pictures.
As explained in “Ready for Your Close-Up?” in the Chronicle of Higher Education, some institutions can’t afford to reimburse job applicants for travel to their campuses. So for initial interviews at least, they resort to video-conferencing. Queue some funny stories:
“You might think that today’s Ph.D.’s — many of whom have grown up with video as a part of online communication — are already masters of self-presentation on camera. Sadly, you would be wrong. Here are a few cautionary tales from some of the selection committees I have worked with:
One candidate allowed her hamster to run loose in her home. During her interview, it ran up the back of her shirt and popped out on her shoulder, next to her collar.
During one candidate’s interview, a floor lamp toppled, spraying glass shards. She was cut and bleeding on camera.
Another candidate chatted with a committee while sitting on her bed, propped up by ruffled pillows. (Fully dressed, but it was still a little disconcerting.)
Then there was the candidate who was seated in front of a firearms-training target that showed several bullet holes grouped around the heart and the center of the forehead.
A candidate with a large dog failed to secure said animal in another room, so it came bounding in and leapt onto her lap midinterview, knocking everything over — and howled loudly for the rest of the interview when finally forced to stay in the adjoining room.”
And don’t forget this viral one.
1. The Way Out of Trump Country. Yes.
2. Attack of the Fanatical Centrists. Three comma club variety (explicit vid).
“. . . Harris or Warren are portrayed as the second coming of Hugo Chávez, so that taking what is actually a conservative position can be represented as a brave defense of moderation.
But that’s not what is really happening, and the rest of us have no obligation to indulge centrist delusions.”
3. What’s It’s Like to Deliver Packages for Amazon.
4. How tax brackets actually work. Double dog dare anyone to provide a clearer explanation.
5. A Beginner’s Guide to Getting Into Podcasts. In case you’re late to the party.
International Pressing Pausers have to be especially confused by what’s going on in the (dis)United States. I confess, I don’t fully understand what’s going on in the picture below which has prompted an intense national debate. At first glance, the central teen’s smile communicates a certain immaturity, arrogance, and disrespect for the elderly Native American in front of him.
Anyone that has worked with teens for any length of time can tell you that most are immature, some are arrogant, and a few disrespectful. So why the national outrage over one possible example from Covington, KY?
The picture probably fired up lefties because Native Americans deserve unmitigated respect for enduring centuries of oppression largely at the hands of white men. It most likely fired up conservatives because they believe the Left overreacts to any form of conservatism, thus opening themselves up to the criticism that they aren’t nearly as tolerant as they claim. Historical ignorance + a certain hypocrisy + ubiquitous social media = intense national debate.
What I think I know about the photographed high schoolers is best explained through a short story. It’s the mid-90s, when I was a young prof at a liberal arts college in Greensboro, NC, I lead a First Year orientation mountain biking trip in West Virginia. By the end of Day One I was exasperated by the incessant immaturity of my charges. The young men in particular were crass, cliquish, and careless. Despite West Virginia’s natural beauty, I was dreading the remainder of the trip.
Then a funny thing happened. I started to have individual conservations with the participants one after another. And I was blown away by the discrepancy between their group and individual selves. One-on-one, or even two-on-one, at meals, in the jacuzzi, alone on the trail, I found them imminently likable. It was a powerful reminder of what I had forgotten about my teenage self and the hundreds of high schoolers I had taught previously. Teen males, a terribly insecure species, routinely bring out the worst in each other. The mathematical term is lowest common denominator (LCD). At it’s worst, it can contribute to a mob mentality.
When I first saw the “Covington” picture, the first thing I zeroed in on was the students in the background who were smiling and laughing at their classmate’s behavior. Classic LCD. Is susceptibility to negative peer pressure an excuse for immaturity, arrogance, disrespect; hell no, but it is reason to view the incident as more of a teachable moment than a criminal act.
Even without knowing the broader context, which is what now is being endlessly debated, the educator in me believes the teens deserve a modicum of grace. To learn about Native American history and people’s criticisms of their actions. In the expectation that if they ever find themselves in a similar situation they behave differently.
Pressing Pause 