20190303.0430

In the past, I have done a fair bit of summary and response in my online writing--not only in this webspace, but in others I have maintained and currently maintain. Sources have ranged across CCC, College English, Profession, the New York Times, the San Antonio Express-News, and others, some of which I no longer read with anything approaching regularity. And I have benefited from doing the reading and thinking about the reading that are needed to write summary-and-response pieces; I have had to keep more abreast of things to do so than I would otherwise be likely to do, and that has helped me to be more engaged with the world around me, even as it has annoyed me greatly at times (because the world is not as I would have it be, and for reasons I tend to think bad).
I am not doing that exercise this month, at least not consistently in this webspace, although I may well return to it. It is, after all, good for me. But thinking on it does lead me to think about the reading that I no longer do. I've let quite a bit of reading go along the way, which is something that is strange for me to consider despite the fact of my doing it. I have always prided myself on my ability to read both quickly and deeply, and I have long worked--successfully--to incorporate what I read into what I do. But much of what I used to do, I do no longer, or do so little of that it makes no sense for me to maintain the subscriptions that facilitated my reading. Thus, I have let go of a number of my professional journal subscriptions, and I am rarely in the kind of library that would let me get around that lack with any real skill.
Oddly, however, I feel that I am doing more useful work with my reading and writing now than I did when I was doing more such reading. What I note seems to be taken more seriously, and I feel I am writing that kind of writing with greater skill and nuance than was formerly the case. And it seems I am doing more writing, overall, whether in this webspace or in others, or in my personal journals, or for other projects entirely. It would seem that I was getting in my way with what I was doing to try to get my way; I no longer do as much of that, so I am not as much in my own way, and more gets done. It's a good thing, although it is still strange for me to think on.
I had thought that my identity would be as one thing, one particular thing that it has not been allowed to be. But after being pushed aside from that thing, I seem to be doing more to approach that thing than I had done before. It is a paradox, perhaps, but not one that I think I will work to puzzle out so much as to enjoy.

20190104.0430

It is clear at this point that I am going to try to keep my blog going. I remain a creature of habit, after, all, and that of posting to this webspace is pretty solidly established at this point. There are ways in which writing here is easier than writing in other venues, perhaps because the expectations are somewhat lower. I do not feel compelled to work toward the same production value or quality of content that my more professional online venture seems to me to demand. And by that I mean that I do not have to support my assertions here with the same rigor that I do in the other webspace. Nor yet do I feel obliged to attend to paratextuals quite so closely here as there (which is good, because I do not have the same control of them here as there, owing to platform programming limitations). And while I link from here to there, I do not much go from there to here. I am freer here.
I feel I've been exercising that freedom to better effect here recently than in previous attempts to write prose in this webspace. My posts have been longer, running a hundred words of more longer than their earlier counterparts (in the main; there are always exceptions, but general tendencies are useful to identify). I feel I've been thinking in more depth about things as I've made the more expansive responses; though the Express-News does not have the heft or institutional history of the New York Times (not that that paper hasn't been having its own difficulties of late), the articles I've read and responded to in it have gotten more from me than the paper of The City. Perhaps it is because I am a more mature writer and person now than when I worked from the Times; perhaps, too, it is because the Express-News is closer to home for me, even if I still regard myself as being in some ways in exile from the Big Apple. And even in those posts which have not grounded themselves directly in the readings I do (not do enough of), I am seeing more and better words. Or I think I am; I do not know that I want to know if I am not.
Part goes to my composition process, I suspect. While I do have some buffer set up, a set of posts written ahead of time and made ready to go, I do not have as much as I might like. (I can have more of posts like this than of responses to news, given the turnover of news; I cannot get too far ahead of myself when responding to the newspaper, lest what I write about cease to matter before what I write of it emerges into the world.) Even when I have had more of one, I have maintained it against the certainty that there will be days in which I cannot write; that maintenance helps me feel accountable, which helps encourage me to write at least one post to this webspace each day. (This is in addition to the work I do in the other webspace, where I also strive to maintain a buffer despite lower publication rates, and the personal journal I keep.) Persistent practice, of which I never seem to get enough, does seem to help--as is a commonplace, and in other work than writing. Indeed, had I been so diligent in practicing my saxophone as I was and am with my writing, I might well be a band director today, my initial adult professional goal fulfilled.
That would be quite a different me, though, and I am not sure I'd like him better than the me I know at the moment. That me, at least, will keep on writing here for a while.

20151205.0720

Work continues. I intend to spend much of the day today at work with grading. When I manage to get the grading cleared, I will tend to the next freelance project that faces me--which ought to be fun, actually. The new project is one of the back-fill type I get every so often, looking at older materials that have been brought to new prominence. Working on such projects allows me to catch up on some of the reading I have long thought I ought to do but have not done due to the press of other reading that work demands I do. So that much is to the good.

I finally broke down and went to a clinic about the cough and cold I have been fighting for a long while now. The Mrs. persuaded me into it--not that it took much argument on her part, and not that I was actively resistant to doing so. (That I had not done so earlier is a measure more of my being lazy, tired, or otherwise taken up more than anything else.) I came away from the clinic with a couple of prescriptions--both filled--and a strong suggestion for an over-the-counter drug, and I have begun the course of treatment laid out for me. How much it will help is not yet clear to me, although I have to think that it will. I am tired of being sick. (I am also tired of being tired, but with exams coming next week, a little bit of rest is in view--after which I will be working again.)

One of the things I do in support of my teaching is maintain membership in the National Council of Teachers of English. As part of that membership, I receive a daily digest of online discussions among the membership. Recently, news has broken about the Washington Post allowing the use of singular they (here*), something about which I have commented on occasion (examples are here and here). With that news has come another onslaught of expressed vexation about the purported degradation of language from those who see themselves as bastions of good taste, "logic," and "linguistic principles." Never mind that the linguists I know--and I know a fair number--look at language as an evolving thing, not a static one; for them, change is change is change. Never mind that even in languages that track grammatical gender more rigorously than modern English there is not a necessary association of physical gender and grammatical gender. (I have noted before a case in German, here.) Never mind that taste--even good taste--changes, as should be evident from simply observing the world.

That there is so much resistance to such changes among those who teach in the liberal arts--even at the university level, I might note--and that the changes are coming from the private sector and from the expressed will of the people--that theoretical thing that is supposed to determine how the affairs of any just society are to be conducted, at least in the lip-service paid by many--seems to me to be at odds with much of the bilge pumped out from the mouths and keyboards of pundits I have heard and read and seen. But that will, of course, not matter; facts too seldom do.

*The piece also comments about the use by the New York Times of the gender-neutral courtesy title "Mx." I like this one, actually; it is simple, and it is accordant enough with existing forms that it does not strike the eye as too strange to use. I can see that it might produce confusion in such situations as my discussions of my family--while "the Mx." and "Mx. 8" might be fine, trying to differentiate among references to the many people in the family who would be "Mx. Name" would be a challenge. (Since I have a doctorate, I stand aside from the problem--I do not generally respond to "Mr. Name" anymore. I worked hard to be "Dr. Name" and am lucky to be able to claim "Prof. Name" at present.) Even "Mr. Name" while I lived with my parents and there were three people at the same address who could and should answer to that phrase was...interesting. So I suppose that the potential confusion is not enough of a reason not to move in such a way.

20151121.1036

I did not realize
The New York Times is so drafty
Admittedly
Blowhards and hot air are expected
From The City
And its newspaper
The nation's newspaper
The world's, perhaps
But I spent some time poring over its pages
And I was blown away by the drafts
I have a way to use that wind, though
Even if I have to search among many currents
To find what I need

20151006.0628

The papers I am having my students write this term are, in large measure, prescribed by program dictates. That is, there is a required sequence of major assignments in the class I am assigned, one established in the interests of normalization. The idea is that all sections of the class will be largely equivalent to one another, demanding much the same tasks of the students within them, so that those who teach them afterwards can make stable, reasonably reliable assumptions about what skills and training the students have had. The idea is not a bad one, overall, in part because there should be some consistency among iterations of a single course within a single semester, and in part because the normalization allows for some structured guidance for the novice teachers who most frequently teach the course. (That the course is largely ascribed to novice teachers is a problem in itself, I admit; I am convinced by several CCC and College English pieces that argue the point. And I am suddenly reminded that I need to read more from those journals.)

The paper my students are currently assigned is a textual analysis. They are set to pick apart a piece of writing (something recent from the Opinion section of the New York Times), looking at it in terms of its overall effectiveness at fulfilling its evident purpose for its presumed audience. I have to wonder what would result from such attention to my own writing--which is not something I can reasonably provide, being too close to the composition of it to be able to assume the necessary perspective. (Also, I am minded of the...issues attendant on self-critiquing work. Poe's "Philosophy of Composition" comes to mind as an easy example of how such endeavors can go wrong.) That does not mean I am not aware of certain things in my writing, to be sure. My prose entries to this webspace, for example, are usually 500 to 550 words or thereabouts, and they tend to include both a single link and the statement that "work continues." The word count is something I set out to do, as I believe the length is useful as a sort of warm-up for a day of reading and writing, as well as teaching of the same. The others, as well as other features I have seen and do not note here, are largely organic, authentic products of my writing process and development. What they suggest about the audience I explicitly and implicitly try to address, about my expected primary and imagined secondary readership, about what I am trying to do for each, I am not certain--although I know that they are revelatory of things of which I am normally unaware. Whether I succeed in any of it for any of them, I am also unsure. It is to uncover such things that my students are set on the current paper. I have no small hope that they will succeed, even if the pieces they read ultimately do not.

20150425.0809

I finished another volume, the twenty-seventh, of my journal last night. I had meant to reflect upon the experience today, to comment about the ten years of work on my journals in bound volumes rather than the hole-punched and binder-gathered legal pad pages that precede them. I was going to talk about how the journaling maps onto my graduate and post-graduate experience, since I made the switch to the bound volumes after completing my student teaching, at the end of my undergraduate days, and I switched the kind of volume I used at much the same time that I began my job search--the hallmark of the newly-minted PhD--in earnest. But I looked back at entries in this webspace and recalled that I have recently done that very thing, within the month, in fact, and so I will not wax so eloquent about my erratic, inadequate, and decade-long nighttime writing as I had intended. (I will note, though, that there is likely a metaphor in there somewhere.)

If I am going to follow a retrospective impulse, though, I might note that it has been some two years since the news came that I would be out of work in The City, and that I remain somewhat annoyed by the circumstance. A year ago today, I offered a wry comment about winter holiday shopping, not even realizing or recalling it to be National Poetry Writing Month. This day in 2012 saw me rant about something I read in the New York Times, which I read when I lived in The City and was better able to keep abreast of events in the world. It echoes, or mimics with greater ferocity, what I wrote on this day a year before, discussing my reactions to the quadricentennial of the Authorized Version (which, in its original printing, includes such works as Bel and the Dragon and the Book of Tobit, in case people think the KJV is absolute and unchanging). 25 April has evidently been a good writing day for me across the years; I should probably look back over my journals to see if I have been as god in them as I have in this webspace, at least about this day.

Retrospection will only do so much, though, particularly when it can only be indulged for short times--and I cannot at present spend more time on it than I have. There is, as ever, more work to do; the freelance piece I have begun needs finishing, and there are assignments submitted that need my comment and assessment. Other projects also require my attention, although several of them look back on other things entirely, and not always through the lens of the real. Perhaps sometime, when I have cleared out more of my docket than I currently can claim to have done, I can spend more time poring over such records as I leave on occasional nights and in the mornings and find something within them that I had not before seen.

20140721.0720

Along the way back from Texas to Sherwood Cottage yesterday, my wife and I talked about my journal-keeping. As I think I have noted, I have kept a journal for some years, switching from gathered legal pad pages to inexpensive bound volumes in spring 2005 and upgrading from them to nice leather-bound, gilt-edged volumes while I lived in the Best of the Boroughs. (Brooklyn treated me well; I feel obliged to sing its praises even living away from it.) I am nearing the end of another such volume, the twenty-fifth in just over nine years (I did not say I was good at keeping a journal), and as I want to continue to keep one, I have to see about procuring a successor volume. And that means I have to think about what type of volume I want for the next volume, either to maintain my current practice or to change it, and if to change it, how to do so.

Determining how best to proceed requires that I contemplate what I want to do with my journals. It is a task to which I am giving attention...in the journal. But similar questions obtain here; how ought I to proceed with the entries on this blogroll, and to what purpose do I make the posts that I make? In answering the latter and more fundamental first (because it is more important, and it is easier), I look back at the earliest entry in this webspace. In it, I write of the same kind of impetus that prompted my switch in journal-writing: the desire to offer my comments in a socially-privileged form. What I had been doing before, making status updates (now lost) on a vanity site (that still exists but that I do not maintain as I ought to do), seemed no longer to suffice for my purposes. Although it was not until late last year that I began to make daily or near-daily posts (and some of those, I admit, are made more to post daily than to post well), there seemed to be a difference in presentation that pushed me to do a better job of writing for this blog. If nothing else, it has equipped me to better carry out the work I do for the Tales after Tolkien Society here.

So has the work in public intellectualism--if I can call it that--begun early in this blogroll and continued intermittently throughout. Whether or not it has done any good for me to offer summaries and responses to the piece I have read in, say, CCC, College English, the New York Times, PMLA, and Profession, I do not know. They have helped me to better understand what I have read, certainly, and that has helped me to be better in the classroom, but I am not sure that they have been of benefit in fostering conversation about the kinds of things that need to be discussed better than they generally are. I have tried to encourage it as I can; it has been another of the standing projects of this blog that I do so. I have to wonder, however, at the effectiveness of it. Perhaps it is another thing at which I need to keep working. Perhaps I have my answer to the earlier point, as well; I ought to keep doing what I have been doing, hoping that it will make some kind of breakthrough and practicing for other writing venues whether it does or not.

20140522.0822

I seem to have been writing more poetry of late. I am not sure why. If poetry is supposed to be the exaltation in verse of things that exceed quotidian prose to convey with any semblance of justice, then many of the little snippets of verse I push forth are failures, or I am exceeded by much in my life. Or both; the two are not mutually exclusive.

Lest it be thought that I bemoan myself in some pity-seeking attention-whoring...well, maybe I do, a little. But there have been times when I have been appropriately moved to verse, even if my execution has left somewhat to be desired. I recall penning a short piece in the Anglo-Saxon alliterative style for the death of Gary Gygax (I was playing a character whose deeds were recorded in the mode); I penned another at the death of my Anglo-Saxon professor (it does not do justice to the man). In both cases, I wrote in response to intense feeling, following what I have heard many say is the proper inspiration for poetic work. (In both cases, I may well have needed more practice before making the attempt.) Simply stating would not have sufficed; something about the removal from "regular" language offered by poetic form made it more equal to the task--much as I have noted before.

Many of my more recent pieces of poetry have not proceeded from such places. In writing of the summer quiet of a college town, I was mildly happy, but not overwhelmed by that happiness. In writing of resting on the day of rest, I responded to discussions I have had with people, and if they have weighed on my mind, that is more because of how my mind works than because of how my heart does.

Perhaps I use it as a respite from the work I do in prose. The Work is almost all in the kind of dense, sober prose that makes so many shy away from academic writing (and, given that I have read much more of it than many who shy away from it, I cannot say those who do so are wrong to do so). The freelance work I do is less dense, perhaps, but not necessarily more vigorous; it is written to order, and the order is for clarity and concision, neither of which corresponds to what voice I have as a poet (or as a writer of other types of prose, as might be guessed from what I include in this webspace). What I have to suppress in myself to do the work that needs to be done in freelancing and in The Work--which do occupy most of my time--builds up, or would did I not express it.

That can be an unpleasant image, my poetic efforts as expressions, as if they are the pus and stagnant oil that accrue behind blackheads and would swell the skin as blemishes were they not pressed upon and forced out, little splatters of what was stuck beneath the surface unattractively strewn across a bathroom mirror, soon wiped away and forgotten...

20140211.0600

Robert W. Goldfarb asserts in the 1 February 2014 New York Times article "Reopening an Employment Door to the Young" that employers should be more willing to hire recent college graduates whose degrees may not be the most "practical," more willing to train said graduates in the demands of the corporate world, and less condemnatory of those graduates.  The author, a management consultant, notes that the unemployment rate among those in their early twenties is half again that of the general public, not because they are not trying to find work, but because the entry-level jobs for which they are applying are being held by financially struggling members of older generations.  Goldfarb adds that it is incumbent upon employers (who are ultimately those who make the decisions about who has jobs, rather than the applicants themselves) to work to alleviate the problem, suggesting that their doing so will "have a competitive advantage as the economy recovers and older workers can afford to retire."

Unfortunately, the article is overly optimistic.  The very people whose complaints Goldfarb uses to introduce his article are those who condemn the pursuit of degrees other than the "useful"--usually STEM fields and business--are the ones he would have to persuade to alter their hiring practices, and they currently have no reason to do so.  As Goldfarb himself notes, there are many experienced workers willing to work entry-level jobs, and by the time things recover enough that those workers can move on (either to higher-level jobs or retirement), there will be a plethora of younger applicants who have grown up to the refrain of the only worthwhile degrees being those that are technical and career-focused to succeed them.  Those who are currently out of work (or who are underemployed) will not benefit from the jobs potentially available at that time; they will be too far removed from current training to be employable, rendered stale by being out on the looking-for-work shelf for too long.

I teach in the academic humanities, one of the areas employers frequently deem less than useful (despite remarks by such people as Kyle Weins who refuse to hire those who do not do well with what I and mine are traditionally tasked with teaching and other, somewhat older, comments in the same line).  I have heard thousands of variations on the theme of "You should have gone into something worthwhile," including from the people whom I had thought would support me in all of my decisions and from myself in my darker moments.  I am aware, more than many others (although not more than my colleagues, who operate under a similar onus), that there is a prevailing disregard for those whose training is like mine--and more so for those whose training is most like mine, who have gone through the work of earning multiple degrees in "useless" fields.  We are the off-brand, the generic version, normally only desirable because easier to find and cheaper to procure--but there is a clearance sale on top-line models, and they are fools among the financially centered who pass up such deals.

20131127.0904

Yesterday's post has lingered with me.

When I posted a link to it to a social media feed, I did so by contextualizing it as "the kind of public intellectualism I hope to continue to do."  The post is one that assails the words of a reporter for their inaccuracies and shortcomings, which is problematic.  While flaws in the transmission of knowledge and disagreements about the presentations thereof ought to be noted, linking "public intellectualism" to that activity serves to reinforce unhelpful stereotypes that contribute to the idea of the scholar as undesirable company.  It supports the kind of thing that makes one of Zawacki's jokes work, inadvertently contributing to the anti-authoritarian, anti-intellectual component of the US zeitgeist John McWhorter identifies in Doing Our Own Thing and which I discuss a bit more here).  As such, the comment was ill-advised.

Certainly it is the role of the intellectual to identify errors that are passed on as "fact"--and publication in major media associated indelibly with "factual" writing* comes off as presentation as "fact."  It is the role of the intellectual to apply the cultivated powers of mind, the result of a society organized such that people can take the time and expend the effort to cultivate them instead of necessarily and solely the crops in the field (not that I am arguing against those who do, particularly given how much I like to eat), in the pursuit of perfecting human activity--and the discourse of people, their dissemination of information, is a fundamental human activity.  So it is the role of the intellectual to pick apart what is presented, to find the holes in it and, by extension, the holes in humanity they indicate; only by doing so can those holes be filled, and only by doing so can what is needed to fill those holes best be known.

Yet that...corrective impetus is not the only role of the intellectual.  I was reminded of this while I was looking over materials in support of yesterday's post: the words of the Good Doctor.  In "Galley Slave," Asimov writes that the work of a scholar is that of an artist; scholars "design and build articles and books.  There is more to it than the mere thinking of words and putting them in the right order" (although that is no small task).  Scholarship is a creative act as much as painting or dance or sculpture or poetry.  Those of us who work The Work try to capture some small slice of our perception of The Truth in a way that others can see and follow to their own perception of The Truth; the end goal is to have enough separate views of The Truth that it can be shown in all its magnificent splendor to the eyes of any who care to look upon it.  And if I seem something of a mystic in my phrasing, that is not to be wondered at; I have linked my work as a scholar to the exercise of my faith before(here, here, and here, at least), and I have experienced something of the Divine in my work on various projects.  Oxymoronic as it might seem, my scholarship is in large measure my worship, and because I am called to share my experience of the Transcendent, I do what I do.

It simply sometimes does not go as well as I would hope.

*I am aware of the contested nature of the claim as it regards any publication and presentation.  I am also aware that long-standing cultural assumptions at work in the United States hold journalistic writing up as an exemplar of "unbiased" and "accurate" presentations of "fact," and that the New York Times is cited as more or less the national newspaper of record.  It is "supposed" to be "fact."

20131126.0834

Yesterday, I was working on some of my outside teaching activities (a bit of extra money is welcome, and that means a bit of extra work needs to be, as well), and I came across John Markoff's 24 November 2013 New York Times article "Already Anticipating Terminator Ethics."  In the article, Markoff reports on the Humanoids 2013 conference, focusing on one presentation at the event: Ronald C. Arkin's "How to NOT Build a Terminator."  He provides a summary of Arkin's talk, using it to note that "we are a long way from perfecting a robot intelligent enough to disobey an order because it would violate the laws of war or humanity" and thus that humanity still must accept responsibility for the field actions of the automatons they create.  Markoff notes that there was some challenge to Arkin's ideas about the potential peril of robotics research, if only passingly and at the end of the article, indicating his fundamental agreement that continued development of autonomous military machines is ethically fraught.

I find much of interest in the article.  As a student of literature who has at many points made reference to the Good Doctor, I was pleased to see the deployment of Isaac Asimov in the article.  Any time the kind of work with which I am familiar and for my interest in which I was ridiculed or abused appears in broad reference, I am glad to see it; something in me is satisfied by the impression that I was right to familiarize myself with the material, since it allows me to be part of the conversation going on.  More formally, as a literary scholar, I appreciate the irony of using Asimov in discussion of robots being developed in the service of DARPA; Asimovian robots are predicated on not being able to cause harm to human beings, and "defense" projects (as Markoff reports that Arkin notes) are all too easily turned to the destruction of life and property.  (The seeming dodge that Markoff quotes Gill Pratt as offering suggests that such a turn is intended--although I would have to have more context to be sure.)  I appreciate that literary and figurative devices appear in "sober" reporting, and I would like to see my students learn the lesson that such things are good to know and to understand when they are seen, as in Markoff's employment of Asimov.

Despite my pleasure at seeing the Good Doctor cited, I have some quibbles with Markoff's specific use.  By referring to Asimov as a "science-fiction writer" in a science article, he creates the impression that Asimov is only a fiction writer, which is demonstrably untrue.  While the Foundation and Robot novels are perhaps his best-known work, Asimov was also a capacious writer of non-fiction, including Biblical and literary commentaries and an astonishing number of essays.  Too, he was among the professoriate at Columbia University, from which he earned his PhD at a remarkably young age (younger than I did, and I had mine before I was thirty, which is early).  To imply something of a sneering only, then, does the man a disservice.

Similar are the errors of fact in the article with reference to Asimov.  For instance, Markoff notes that Arkin's talk begins "where Asimov left off with his fourth law of robotics--'A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.'"  The law referenced appears initially in the 1985 novel Robots and Empire, and it marks a significant shift for a character who eventually (both in terms of composition and in terms of the Asimovian milieu) assumes a godlike character (in a bit of irony for so dedicated a humanist as was Asimov).  And it is worded differently, if only slightly, than Markoff quotes it--but I suppose that a missed preposition may be forgiven (or that a later edition of the text than mine might have changed it).  But it is not the fourth law, but the Zeroth (since zero precedes one and the law regarding humanity takes precedence over the First Law, which protects the individual human being), although calling it fourth (with the lowercase, not-a-proper-noun f) can be justified on the grounds that it was the fourth to be developed.  Still, that the wording is questionable does not argue in Markoff's favor any more than crossing a date does; Markoff early in the article notes that Asimov anticipates the need for robotic ethics fifty years ago, and he does not go far enough.  The anticipation goes as far back as the late 1930s, as the Good Doctor notes in his introductory remarks to the 1990 collection Robot Visions, and Asimov's codification of those robotic ethics appears as early as 1941 (as does the word "robotics," as the OED notes)--more than sixty years back from Markoff's piece.  Again, more accuracy ought to be given to that particular son of the Best of the Boroughs.

If I come across as something of an Asimov fanboy...I am something of an Asimov fanboy, so it makes sense.  But I am also a scholar of writing, and Markoff's writing could have been better in some ways.  The topic he treats and the conclusion he reaches about it deserve to be handled with the utmost care and diligence, so while he does well to engage with them and bring them to the attention of the general public (which the New York Times serves to do, as I have noted), if only for a short while (because most will not remember long that he has written, let along what he has written), he does less well than he ought to have done.

20131108.0621

A few days ago, my lovely wife emailed me a link to the Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow's New York Times article, published on 1 November 2013 and revised on 3 November, "The Repurposed Ph.D."  In it, Tuhus-Dubrow reports that an increasing number of people who trained as academics are leaving the traditional academic workforce (which is itself substantially undermined, with most of the work of teaching carried out by contingent academic labor).  Some are transitioning to other careers within academic institutions, such as library and curatorial work.  Others are transitioning to work outside the academy that is similar to academia, working in programs that call for many of the skills developed during graduate study.  Still others are abandoning academic work and work like it altogether, even going so far as to strive to prevent other people from entering into it.  Even so, Tuhus-Dubrow offers some indication that those with terminal degrees can find satisfying, worthwhile work to do, even if it is outside the tenure track.

How much indication is offered, though, is questionable.  As is understandable for a New York Times piece, Tuhus-Dubrow's article focuses on New York City.  In such a place, there is potentially the kind of work that she outlines, work that takes the kind of expertise and focus that I have yet to see develop outside of the academy or the type of monastic community from which Western academia proceeds.  But that does not mean that people are willing to hire the terminally degreed for such jobs, as I found out in my own recent job hunt (discussion begins here, I think).  Indeed, as a result of that experience, I have little sympathy for the Capitanio quoted by Tuhus-Dubrow; if he thinks sending out 60 applications in three years is "kind of desperate," what, then, must I call my having sent out some 70, to the academy and to "real" jobs, in a few months?  And I got interviews at perhaps three institutions (and a job, yes, but still a contingent one).

As my wife and I have both looked for jobs in the past few months, we have encountered a number of employers who have rejected us because we have advanced degrees in humanistic study.  Outside the academy in a number of places, a doctorate in English is not usually the kind of thing employers want to see; rather than bespeaking attention to detail, focused discipline, a careful attention to the beauty and accuracy of language, and an abiding understanding of the people who create that language, the degree is seen as a waste of time, a frivolity, an avoidance of thing that matter, a disconnection from "real life," a predilection away from "wholesome" values, and, perhaps, a hyper-exaggeration of primary and secondary school English teaching (I never thought I'd get so much use out of Zawacki).  Advanced degrees in some other humanities fields--linguistics, for example--are met with confusion.  And even when those of us who have such things work (using the argumentative skills our degrees demand of us and, in the case of those whose degrees are about writing, those in specific language) to present ourselves and our credentials in ways that suit the working world, we are rejected.  Never mind being able to dash out several hundred words of researched, well-written, and relatively polished prose in under an hour; never mind being able to type close to 80 wpm while generating the content, or ten-keying at several thousand strokes an hour; never mind being able to glance at a document or webpage and understand in that glance what audience is intended and what the composer thinks about that audience; never mind that these are the very things asked for in the job description.  None of that matters; the degree is the wrong one (even though no degree is mentioned in the job listing).

It is something I have remarked upon relatively recently and earlier, that those of us who have sought the kind of education scholars in the humanities have find themselves made Other.  And it is a choice that we make, going into it.  I have to wonder, then, if the post-ac people Tuhus-Dubrow mentions do not have the right idea...

20131009.0649

Life at Sherwood Cottage has been fairly good to me so far.  The climate has been congenial, the terrain acceptable, and the quality of groceries pretty good (particularly given the prices).  That does not mean, however, that I do not miss anything about living in The City; many aspects of that quintessentially American-urban life (and, really, New York is the US city in popular conception, although there are many others which are better in many respects) are well worth having.  Some of them are even embedded amidst aspects that are, on initial review, quite annoying.

One of those things is the time to read.  I have commented about commuting through The City in the past, and the comments have not always been complimentary.  The smell is not often desirable, and there is some vexation in taking an hour to travel eight or nine miles by subway--walking is nearly as fast, and bicycling every bit as quick, and both avoid delays in the tunnels and reduce the claustrophobic experience of riding what amount to large sardine cans.

Even so, there are benefits.  On even the most crowded rush hour trains, people read.  Some read books, whether novels or textbooks.  Some page through magazines, from National Geographic to Playboy (read for the articles, of course).  The stereotype is of the many-folded newspaper (and it occurs to me that the way newspapers in The City divide their articles makes little sense for a readership expected to read while strap-hanging; the New York Times ought to know better).  Some of the pages are physical, some electronic; some of the pages are "high," as are some of their readers, while others are very much not; but many eyes look over and take in many words on the trains, and there is some benefit in that.

I found a fair bit of it, actually.  I have commented more than once on my journal-reading (including annoying delays in journals getting to me, which does seem to have abated somewhat here); while I lived in The City, I did most of my journal-reading while on the trains.  The marginalia that result show the erratic motion of the train cars' decking under my feet and the benches under my butt when I could get a seat, but some of the best reading I did was while I was jerkily traveling from home to work to dojo to home.  The repeated bursts of reading, intensified through their use as a means to block out much of the surrounding clangor and commotion, improved my work as a scholar in both its aspects (research and teaching).  For that, then, I value the time spent on the trains, even if there are other things that still annoy me in memory.

Sherwood Cottage does not offer me that particular benefit, despite the many others it affords.  My transit, because undertaken by my own efforts, requires my attention--if not quite my full attention, enough that I cannot immerse myself in reading, nor even dip shallowly into it.  For a man whose identity has largely derived from frequency and ease of reading, this is something of a problem--and I have not yet figured out how to resolve it.

20131001.0741

I have in past years referred to the month of October as Death Month, for it has had an unfortunate tendency to claim the health or life of members of my family.  Both of my grandfathers died in October, for example.  I spent many Octobers ill, and indeed contracted mono at the end of October during my first year of graduate school.  I recall that some rather unfortunate diagnoses came through in October, as well, and what I recall of the family legendry notes that many of the dates of death in earlier generations fell in the old eighth month.

The past months--nearly a year now, actually--have produced quite a shift away from that.  Deaths among those I have known have been happening throughout the year, not confining themselves to the early autumn.  Major upheavals have taken place time and time again since December, and most of them have been far other than pleasant; even those that have been good have been stunning in their magnitude.  Hair-tearing somehow comes to mind.

So as October begins amid a governmental shutdown for me (since I live in the United States), I find that I cannot accord it the same label I have given it in years past.  I do not know that the label will not be accurate--although I very much hope it will not be.  I do know that it no longer serves to differentiate this month from the others, hence my refusal to use the label again this year.  And I cannot say that I am entirely pleased with the change, particularly given the price paid for making it.

Such prices are charged and paid whether or not those who are billed and whose accounts are debited are aware of them or consent to them--as public events have served to return to mind.  I know that my own reserves have been quite depleted of late, sometimes by my own expenditures and for my own goals, sometimes by fees incurred along the way.  And I have trouble balancing accounts; there are factors involved, compounded interest and taxes and penalties and various other numerical trickeries, of which I am ignorant.  (Some will say, no doubt, that it is the foolishness of my seeking training and work in the academic humanities that has left me thusly ignorant, and that I deserve to suffer therefore.  Fuck those people.)  I am not certain that I trust that matters balance out; I feel very much as if I am in the red, as if I have paid more than I have earned, and that I will never be able to earn enough to offset the expenses that I incur simply from being in the world.  Those I take on in the attempts to find work at all--I have long since abandoned any pretense of being entrepreneurial--add to the burden, as I increasingly think true for all.

Where there is any debt relief, I am unsure.  If there is any such debt relief, I am also unsure.

20130831.1411

Having resumed reading pieces from the New York Times the other day, largely because I once again have access to its online version, I decided to do a bit more such reading to support my ongoing writing on this blog and in other places.  That led me to Tyler Cowen's 31 August 2013 article, "Who Will Prosper in the New World," which had just released when I looked at it.

In the article, Prof. Cowen asserts that the increasingly automated and always-accessibly-online means of production and transmission will not benefit all persons equally, but certain groups will do particularly well.  Cowen lists the groups, explaining why and how each of those listed will find special benefit from the direction he sees matters going.  The article is reported as an adaptation of material from a book, Average is Over, and it is perhaps one with the adaptation that the explanations are not as detailed as they perhaps could be to be truly informative.

And there is a problem in the worldview that seems to underlie Prof. Cowen's assertions.  The article seems to take as given that the increasing mechanization of production of materials and information is a good thing; while I am happy to have access to diverse information and am on record as a supporter of work in the digital humanities (sometimes despite the words of far more senior scholars), I do not have quite so optimistic a view of the encroaching computerization of all things as Cowen seems to have.  Indeed, I view what he asserts as being good things as dehumanizing--and as a scholar of the humanities, I do not know that I can endorse those things that tend to the excision of what is human, and potentially some of the best parts of what it is to *be* human.

For instance, Cowen comments on online coursework, using Coursera as his example (I focus on his comments about teaching and about evaluating writing because they are areas in which I may claim some expertise).  While Cowen points out that the motivated will be those who benefit from such coursework, it may be argued that the presence of a professor in the classroom, of a living human being to whom one is accountable, does much to motivate people who might otherwise not be motivated and who, in finding such motivation, end up discovering a greater purpose for themselves than that of which they otherwise would have conceived.  And it is also the case that those who have already proven themselves to be good students find it difficult to maintain motivation in online courses.  Steven D. Krause reports himself as being one such in his contribution to the June 2013 issue of CCC.  Presumably, as someone who holds a professorship and was therefore good at the thing called school, and who describes himself as interested in the course for several reasons (689), he would be one of the more motivated participants.  Yet this was not the case; he reports that his interest wavered soon, and in large part because of the nature of the course itself (690-94).  The same was true for Jeff Rice, who notes that "Even with eagerness to learn about MOOCs by doing them, even with an overall interest in music [the subject of the course], and even with the minimal requirement of two to three paragraphs per writing assignment and relative ease of watching video lectures created in advance, [he] failed to follow through on the course" (699).  Again, someone with reasons to be motivated and a demonstrated past history of being a motivated student--for Rice is also among the professoriate--has difficulty maintaining motivation in the absence of actual human contact.  Rice asserts that it is a lack of emotional involvement that drove his failure in the class (702)--and physical presence and direct connection between people, such as that within a well-run traditional classroom, fosters emotional involvement in a way that no more remote medium can.  As Krause notes, "a textbook is not the same as a teacher," and education is not simply the provision of information (694); it is a series of interactions among people, and the removal of people makes those interactions less possible.  Cowen's assertion that we will have the best education ever available because of the ease of content delivery, that teaching will be better for being less human and more digitized, is therefore not entirely sound, and I must wonder if the rest of his statements are similarly suspect.

Perhaps it is because I have read as much science fiction as I have in my life that I have the opinions I have regarding the values and dangers of thinking devices.  I nearly cut my teeth on Asimov, and if I am going to be living in a world where the machines are doing most of the work of the mind, I want at the very least to see that those machines have something like the Three Laws, or their corollary Zeroth Law, built into them.  And even with them in place, one only need look to the Spacers to see what an overreliance on the machines will foster...

Works Cited

• Cowen, Tyler. "Who Will Prosper in the New World." NYTimes.com. New York Times, 31 August 2013. Web. 31 August 2013.
• Krause, Steven D. "MOOC Response about 'Listening to World Music.'" CCC 64.6 (June 2013): 689-95. Print.
• Rice, Jeff. "What I Learned in MOOC." CCC 64.6 (June 2013): 695-703. Print.

20130829.0824

It has been a little while since I have read anything from the New York Times, including the opinion columns that have tended to attract my attention.  I remedied the lack in some small measure this morning, reading John Kaag's 24 June 2013 article "On Writing with Others" in the online version of the newspaper.

In the article, Kaag discusses the difficulties he faced in beginning to write explicitly collaboratively, going beyond referring to the writings of others and engaging in writing with others as co-author.  The difficulties inhere in writing as a professor of philosophy, he notes, as philosophers are trained to work as individuals and not in collaboration, as distinct from those in the academic sciences, who almost always author papers and books in groups.  Collaborative authorship, though, as with any collaboration, opens fruitful discussions that precede writing and publication, likely leading to better ideas and better-phrased ideas.  More importantly for Kaag, it guarantees that one other person will read what is written, validating the writing in a way that he and many of his colleagues have sought to be validated since childhood.  It is a useful statement on the value of including others in the writing process.

What Kaag says of philosophy can be extended to many of the academic humanities--many of those working in those fields of study are doctors of philosophy, after all.  In many such fields, such as my own literary studies, it is very much the case that the individual effort is what is prized and rewarded; I do not have the texts with me at the moment, so that I cannot refer to them in detail, but I recall a number of articles in Profession and other journals which wrestle with the question of how to evaluate collaborative scholarship in the humanities for purposes of tenure and promotion, which tells me that it is not common practice to write in groups, that doing so is something which is not particularly favored.  I and those like me tend to write alone, sequestering ourselves in offices and libraries, hiding away from the world in the oft-decried ivory tower, pursuing esoteric truths that reveal to those few who care to look some small slice of the nature of humanity hitherto unseen.

I have said, and many others have said, that a large part of the problem facing the academic humanities, a major factor in the common public disdain for them, is the lack of transparency in them.  That those of us working in them do retreat from the world, following the monastic origins of The Work in which we are engaged, allows others to ignore us or to ridicule us; in neither case are we present to be able to answer those accusations leveled at us, usually of irrelevance or inanity.  Kaag is correct, therefore, in asserting that "writing with others might be a first step in writing for others [emphasis mine]," that in writing together those of us in the academic humanities can begin to write in such a way that we not only say what it is that we mean to say, but do so in such a way that others are able to read it and happy to read it---as happy as they are to read anything, which is a different discussion altogether.

My saying so is hardly unique, of course, and my practice does not as much follow what I preach as it ought to do.  I have also said before that if I am a hypocrite, I am in good and abundant company.  If I and others could make of that company a group of collaborative writers, as those in rhetoric and composition seem to be beginning to do quite effectively (witness the increasing occurrence of collaboratively authored journal articles and scholarly books, as well as the increasing numbers of full-time, tenure-track jobs open in composition), we could do a fair bit of good in the world, helping to increase our mutual understanding of one another and presumably thereby opening avenues for the diminution of such conflicts as do so much harm to us all.

20130623.1737

A former colleague pointed out an article from yesterday's New York Times, Verlyn Klinkenborg's "The Decline and Fall of the English Major."  In the article, Klinkenborg offers an elegy for the decreasing numbers of undergraduate students of English language and literature.  Cited are graduation numbers from Yale and Pomona College as well as a tripartite reason for the decline those schools evidence.  Presented also is a statement of the value of the humanities in general and of the English degree specifically--not a direct monetary value, but a value insofar as it represents being able to effectively express thoughts and ideas, thereby effecting agency in the world.  Unfortunately, Klinkenborg's statistical data offer too small a sample to be representative, and the statement of value--a fairly standard view among humanities scholars--is too vague to convince those who are not already convinced of the value of the humanities that the decline of their study in one form at the undergraduate level is lamentable.

It is unfortunate because Klinkenborg is correct in many points.  The tripartite underpinning of the decline of humanities study is one of them: "One, the rush to make education pay off presupposes that only the most immediately applicable skills are worth acquiring (though that doesn’t explain the current popularity of political science). Two, the humanities often do a bad job of explaining why the humanities matter. And three, the humanities often do a bad job of teaching the humanities."  The first point, the focus on "practical" rather than "soft" skills, is in some senses understandable; if college exists so that students can graduate and "get a job," then it ought to work towards getting them jobs.  The idea is problematic, though, as I have noted in a few places: here, here, here, here, and, a bit differently, here, among others.  In brief, the "soft" skills that the humanities teach can, in fact, help students in their jobs.  Too, a narrow focus on "applicable" skills does not at all guarantee a hob--and students are more than their prospective jobs, in any event.  The study of the humanities helps to address the whole person, and the improvement of the whole of the person is a desirable goal.

Klinkenborg does work to address the second, the paucity of explanations by humanities scholars of the value of the humanities.  It is something which I have addressed in my own writings (here, for example, as well as here and here).  I can add to my earlier discussion at least one other idea.  With the observably increased saturation of popular and public culture with multimedia material comes a concomitant increase in the amount of symbolic content with which people are presented--and the humanities, both generally and in the English major Klinkenborg addresses specifically, are very much invested in the recognition and interpretation of symbolism.  They may not be quantifiable skill sets, given the fluidity of interpretation.  Even mathematics, reliant on such numbers as π (the accurate value for which is yet undetermined) and i (which is openly called "imaginary"), is not wholly quantifiable, yet it is not so decried as humanities study.  Too, the studies of such revered subjects as law and theology (admittedly arguably among the humanities) are fundamentally investigations and promulgations of interpretation.  Their value is not lessened thereby--and neither is that of the humanities as it emerges in the studies of languages and literatures.  How people use language, in literature and elsewhere, reveals much of the human condition, and its study is therefore well warranted; the decline of such study is concomitantly a matter of concern.

The third member of Klinkenborg's trifecta, that of teachers too often teaching poorly, rings uncomfortably true.  I have addressed that issue before, as well (among others here, here, here, here, and here).  There are a great many people in the classroom, in all fields so certainly in the humanities, who ought not to be there.  Many teachers at all levels are teachers because they could not get other jobs--and this is in part because teaching is too often seen as not a "real" career, not a "real" job.  The image of the schoolmarm, who would often be dismissed from employment upon marrying, informs it.  So, too, does the refusal to offer teachers decent salaries in many places in the United States.  So, too, does the increasing reliance on transient labor to staff classrooms.  It is disingenuous at the very least to act surprised that those who are in the classroom will handle their jobs poorly when they are told repeatedly, both explicitly and implicitly, that the job they do is not worth doing.  Again, this is true in all fields, including the humanities.  Perhaps it is more true of the humanities, whose students and teachers are more likely to be told of their uselessness than are those in many other fields.  Their poor teaching, too much tolerated, combines with the other two members of the trio to undermine the value of the humanities.  And if I have a vested interest in them, so that my comments on them must admittedly be regarded as biased in favor of them, I am not the only one--for as I note above, the humanities are the study of humanity, so that all people are invested in them.

Another point in which Klinkenborg is correct is that "writing well isn’t merely a utilitarian skill. It is about developing a rational grace and energy in your conversation with the world around you."  Despite what pushes to testing standards would assert, despite what some of my current colleagues try (with too much success) to enforce upon the policies of my current institution and despite the views of a great many people (noted in at least one of the earlier posts I have already linked), clear language use is not only a matter of following "the rules," of adhering to arbitrarily determined forms of orthography and conventions of phrasing, just as effective play of any sport (something widely valorized) is not only a matter of following the sport's rules.  Knowing when which rule comes into play is important.  Knowing when and how to violate the rules is also important.  And more important than either is delving into what has happened to develop new knowledge about what is happening so that what will happen can be glimpsed, if dimly, and shaped perhaps to better ends than would otherwise be the case.  Good writing is very much an engagement with what was and is in the world as well as a means for the development of vigor and rigor of mind, which, as I tell my often-resistant students, allows for greater ability to resist manipulation by it as well as enactment of greater agency within it.  These are desirable, as well.

Because Klinkenborg is correct in several points, as well as in the greater assertion that the reduction in study of the humanities is something worth concern and even mourning, it is unfortunate that "The Decline and Fall of the English Major" is unlikely to convince those not convinced of its correctness before reading the article.  How it might be able to persuade those who need persuading is unclear.  Perhaps a reliance on more of the type of empirical data that those who would seek to undermine humanities study--or even those who simply do not know enough about the matter and are therefore not so steeped in the humanities as to be already convinced of them--value would help.  What is clear, though, is that more people do need to be convinced of the truth that Klinkenborg accepts and with which I agree: study of the humanities is necessary, far more than is often recognized.

20130428.0837

On 27 April 2013, Benjamin Nugent's "The Adulterous Sins of Our Father Figures" appeared in the online New York Times.  In the article, the author relates the conflict between having condemned a man for adulterous behavior and, a month later, beginning to engage in it himself.  Nugent provides context for the condemnation and discusses the results of his own engagement in the kind of activity he had proscribed, noting that the experience drove him to a greater understanding of mercy as a superior quality to loathing of the self and of others.  The article is short and intensely personal, but it becomes all the more poignant therefore.

I say "poignant" largely because of my own affective reading (I know that I should be better about it, with my PhD in English, but I am human before I am a scholar even now).  I have long wrestled with self-loathing, with self-deprecation, much to the annoyance of those people who love me.  While it is good to reflect upon one's errors so as to learn from them and learn how to avoid repeating them, it is not good to dwell upon them; it strips energy away from meeting the demands of the day and all too often generates a cycle of waste and self-recrimination proceeding from the knowledge of having allowed the waste to occur.  And I dwell on things rather than reflecting upon them.

Even now, in fact, I am fighting myself to not slip into such a cycle--and slipping is easy, in this as in walking across icy streets in treadless shoes.  A part of me, unfortunately well trained, wants to revel in chastising myself for spending time chastising myself when I ought to have been doing something else.  (The irony is not lost on me, and I am fighting against that part, now as ever.)  It knows that Nugent is right in the assertion that "Hating yourself is a kind of stimulant, anxiety-producing but also energizing. It can be nearly pleasurable."  It feels good when it runs me down--it has to, else I can think of no reason why I continue to berate myself for things that happened years ago and are remembered by nobody other than me.

It speaks especially loudly at the moment, berating me for not having a job to return to; I have yet to secure other employment.  Another New York Times commentator, Sara Hope Anderson, correctly points out in "The Hand That Feeds Us" that "Job searching involves an uncomfortable mix of constant public self-aggrandizement and the private loss of self-respect," a situation conducive to self-condemnation, and I am very much looking for a job.  (If you read this soon after it is published, and you are hiring, let me know.)

I am trying to shout it down, trying to do the things that give me a reason to feel favorably toward myself and others.  This blog entry is one of those things.  My beginning work on HubPages.com is another (please go there, read my stuff, and click on the ads so that I can get money).  The other writing with which I occupy myself is yet another.  And I am sending out job applications in plenty, so that I can hopefully make that part of me shut its mouth.

20130221.1141

One of the most excellent things about teaching is learning from the students.  Even in such a situation as I am at my current institution, with students who are significantly academically disadvantaged, I learn things from the pupils in my charge.  It sometimes comes in the form of my learning more about sets of circumstances and backgrounds utterly alien to me; I grew up in a fairly "traditional" household in central Texas, so the experiences of my students on "the streets" and in other countries is far removed from my own upbringing.  Indeed, it sometimes makes it difficult for me to understand my students, their needs, and their concerns, which makes my job harder.

I hate that.

Sometimes, what my students teach me is less...fundamental, but fairly interesting.  For instance, there are times when my students respond to a regular assignment--say, the summaries that I require of my remedial English classes--with something that captures my attention.  This happened just this week; a student brought an article to my attention, I read it, and I found that I had something to say about it.

That article, Phillip Lopate's "The Essay, an Exercise in Doubt," appeared in the online New York Times on 16 February 2013.  In the article, Lopate asserts that the essay is in its traditional conception--from Montaigne forward--a means for expressing and grappling with doubt, rather than a means primarily to make and support a claim.  He does note that there are institutional pressures within schools that drive instruction away from the engagement with doubt in which a more traditional essay revels, but expresses concern over the tendency.  For Lopate, doubt is a necessary feature to growth, if for no other reason than that it frees a person to have bad ideas from time to time--the fear of which stifles thought.  The piece effectively speaks to some of the fundamental drives of essay-writing, such that it suggests itself as worthwhile reading for a college writing class.

Lopate confirms for me something which I have formally known for some time, and informally for longer.  Writing is an act of knowledge generation, rather than simply an act of reporting; even journalistic writing and technical writing, ostensibly devoted to conveying data about events and processes to interested readers, are involved in the creation of understanding.  What is newsworthy is determined by those who report the news, and how processes and analyses are conducted and ought to be conducted is mediated by those who discuss the processes and analyses no less than those who perform them.

Working to generate knowledge requires that there be in place a recognition that there is a piece of knowledge missing, somehow.  Without perceiving that there is something missing, there is no impetus to develop something to fill it.  And that perception is one fundamentally undergirded by doubt, a recognition by a person that he or she does not know something, that he or she is incomplete.  I tell my students that expressing the doubt and working through the process of resolving it, then expressing it on the page, is a good way to frame the kinds of writing I want them to do.  Too often, they do not heed the advice, and either try to discuss what they already know or slap together information found through hasty, cursory Internet searches (and then they wonder why their grades suffer).  Every so often, though, one of the will look at the surrounding world, find something not yet understood, and come to understand it a little better, putting the means by which understanding is attained on paper so that I, and maybe others, can read and ourselves come to understand.

That, I value greatly.

20120509.1210

Just to follow up on a couple of earlier posts:

I mentioned here that I am the beneficiary of federal student loan programs, and so I have some concern for my interest rate...which looks like it may be going up soon.  The comments attendant on the later article, the one I cite second, worry me even more than does the event which occasioned them; the rancor and "I did it with no help; why can't you?"* attitude that pop up in them makes me shake my head.  Matters have changed, and not always for the better, and the lack of compassion for and understanding of others voiced...I cannot say I am pleased to see it.

Also, here I discussed comments about standardized state exams and the amount of money being paid to produce them.  One would think that something that costs several million dollars to produce would be put through a simple fact-check and quality control review.  That is one of the things that is pushed forward as the virtue of the free market, after all, that it efficiently self-regulates and makes good products.  So when I saw this piece on the news this morning, I was surprised...very little.  I am aware that the myth of business efficiency and the basic ethical stance of corporations is just that: a myth.  It came as no shock to me that a business, one not interested in teaching so much as in making money, would fail to do what it needs to do to make valid, reliable tests--insofar as any one test can actually be an adequate assessment measure or means to drive instruction.  And it did not escape my notice that test results support administrative bonuses rather than going to the people who are held immediately accountable for the creation of those results.

And we wonder where our school tax dollars go.

*Of course, "no help" is not so much not helped.  But when one commentator sought to point that out, referencing the immensely increased tuition and fee rates, decreased governmental subsidies for public institutions, as well as the public infrastructure used to get to and support the school, he was roundly condemned as making, and I paraphrase, "sissy, liberal complaints."