Today in the Times... an editorial on the common core

Editorial on New Public School Curriculum​

I applaud the NYT for taking an interest in nation-wide educational reforms and I am grateful that they ask for a year of grace for teachers making this transition. ​

But I'm still waiting for the perfect editorial on public education.​

It would go something like this:​

Gentle Readers,​

We applaud recent reforms intended to bring more rigorous standards to the public school curriculum. At the same time, we lament the reform's inattention to the structural issues that give rise to many of our system's challenges.

Our schools are desperately in need of more resources. In particular, there is a need for an immediate shift of one percent of the nation's budget away from defense and toward education. This would dramatically increase the resources available to the next generation of leaders. A large amount of these funds should go to increasing teachers' salaries. Teaching is already an enormous challenge, why must it also be a serious financial sacrifice?​

Secondly, we send students to universities to get a liberal arts education, but our public schools look like factories for creating employees, for sorting those who deserve a liberal arts education from those who deserve nothing but a vocation. Suzanne Pepper, in her masterful work on education in authoritarian China, describes it this way, "Schools did not develop talent as much as they performed a sorting, labeling and certification function that was, by reason of the educational inflation also under way, more than sufficient to meet the cognitive requirements of most jobs that most school leavers would fill. Through meritocratic values - with grades allocated for performance and promotion for grades - schools were therefore legitimating the present and future status of all who passed through them" (2000:29).

Schools teach people their place in society, and help employers identify potential employees. Is that what we want from them? Our students study math, science, social studies, history and literature. But what about all of the other aspects of being a human being, about which our schools are silent?

We should admit that we do not prepare students for most of the challenges they will certainly have: managing their finances, cooking for themselves, dancing at weddings, ​maintaining their cars or marketing themselves in the age of social media. We act as if students are more likely to have to estimate the length of a hypotenuse than to pay their electric bill. Think of how much more engaging schooling would be if American history were taught through the lens of pop music and the music industry, if home economics were required for all students and actually taught them life skills like how to maintain a budget or save up for a car, if disagreements between students were seen not as disciplinary problems but as opportunities for talking about healthy relationships.

Sincerely,​

[Significant Newspaper Editorial Staff}​

I know what my critics think: all of these things should be learned in the family, and that is certainly a valid critique. At the same time, the most effective lessons are taught in multiple locations and I'll be honest, I don't care if my kids can calculate the length of the hypotenuse of a triangle.​

Can the academy be a bandstand?

Stefon Harris's Ted Talk​

​There's a lot for academics to learn from Jazz musicians, and particularly their conception of the bandstand. Harris argues that there are no mistakes on the bandstand, there are only opportunities that go unrealized. If, in the middle of a performance, he plays a particular note which could change or influence the direction of the piece, it either affects the other musicians or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it is not a mistake, it's an unrealized opportunity:

"So there is no mistake. The only mistake is if I'm not aware... if each musician is not aware and accepting enough of his fellow band member to incorporate the idea.. if we don't allow the creativity..."

If we view the academy as a bandstand, then other peoples scholarship merely provides opportunities for the field to go in different directions. If the field does not go in that direction, it is not a reflection on the quality of that person's scholarship, though it may say something about that scholars' relationships with other members of the field.

In other words, the literature review is not a hazing activity. It's an exercise in listening, and being aware of what others are doing around you. It is part of a larger process of engaging others which includes collaboration and conference participation.

The only way to really make change in your field is by engagement. ​Take another lesson from Jazz. Harris explains that he as a musician can force his idea on other band members, but that will stifle their creativity:

[If he forces an idea musically] "It's kind of chaotic because I'm bullying my ideas. I'm telling you come with me over there. If I really want the music to go there, I have to listen. This is a science of listening. It has far more to do with what I can perceive than what I can do. So if I want the music to get to a certain level of intensity, the first step for me is to be patient, to listen to what's going on, and to pull from something that's going on around me. When you do that, you engage and inspire the other musicians and they give you more, and gradually it builds."​ (emphasis mine)

Those interested in making a change in their fields or in the larger academy are wise to learn from Jazz musicians. Don't bully the field in the direction that you want to go. Listen, take from a pre-existing thread, engage the scholars around you, and it will gradually build.​

Today in the Times... what PS can learn from Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei's latest projects​

I first encountered Ai Weiwei's work at the Tate Modern in London. I walked in and found his giant pile of sunflower seeds. I balked. "Modern art is so lame sometimes," I thought.

But then I read the description of the project, and the attention that had gone into the creation of it. I watched an interview with the author and those who participated in the creation of the project. And I marveled. And I fell in love with Ai Weiwei.​ The work captured the subtle forms of resistance of those who live under authoritarianism. The sunflower project highlights the ways that authoritarian symbols can be re-purposed and given new meanings by subjects.

​Today the NYT​imes​ has a review of some of his latest work (see link at top of page to see the pics). The pieces attempt to capture his time in detention under the Chinese authorities in 2011. The scenes depict Weiwei showering, eating, and sleeping under the watch of two guards. I think they are a brilliant illustration of life under authoritarianism.

The article touches on a few very important issues:

1. The effects of authoritarianism on individuals:​

“China is still in constant warfare, with destroying individuals’ nature, including people’s imaginations, curiosity, motivations, dreams,” Mr. Ai said. “This state’s best minds have been wasted by this high ideological control, which is fake. Even the people who are trying to use it as a tool to maintain power or stability know that this is a completely fake condition.” ​

​2. Similar to Political Science, art itself can abstract to the point that it obscures:

“Can political art still be good art?” Mr. Ai said. “Those questions have been around for too long. People are not used to connecting art to daily struggle, but rather use high aesthetics, or so-called high aesthetics, to try to separate or purify humans’ emotions from the real world.” ​

3. The article also alludes to the difficulties of defining the boundaries of what is art:

"Philip Tinari, director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, said in general, “Weiwei has been looking, in the years since his detention, for a way to use art to talk about social issues in a way that still codes and functions as art.” The metal rods from Sichuan, he said, are “a good example of his search for this middle road between overtly political and purely formal.” ​

In my own experience, political science theories about authoritarianism abstract to such a degree that it becomes possible to forget that real people live under these systems. Authoritarian subjects experience fear, paranoia and rage that must be silenced. ​One of my long-term goals is develop a syllabus on the politics of authoritarianism that marries recent scholarship with other art forms that capture day to day life under such a system and adds more texture to what can become a sterile study of a system of horrific abuse. I am planning on including some of Ai Weiwei's work.​