Darned smart people

"The State of Things" will be discussing the in-state tuition waiver for graduates of the North Carolina School of Science today at noon. Evidently, some legislators want to do away with the benefit. As an alumni of NCSSM (Class of '88), I feel obliged to listen in and defend it.

As I understand it, the waiver was enacted to do two things:

• Increase competitive enrollment in the school. Many prospective students saw that going to NCSSM would give them a better education, but it would most likely hurt their college prospects. If you were at the top of your class at your old high school (as many NCSSM students were), you would be surrending a top class rank and GPA, and probably a lock on the school's nomination for the big in-state scholarships like the Caldwell and the Morehead. At NCSSM there is no class rank; you take a tougher course load, and your grades are inevitably less than what they would have been before. Many students (or their parents) decide that remaining the big fish in the small pond with have greater benefits for them. The tuition waiver helps remove some of that concern.
• Keep graduates in-state. The graduates of NCSSM are much more likely to remain in the state if they go to school here. By enticing them to the state university, the state keeps more of its educational investment in the local economy.
  

I graduated long before the tuition waiver was enacted, so I never had the benefit of free tuition to our state schools, although I did attend N.C. State. So I imagine that many will argue, "Hey, we didn't need to give them that benefit before, and we don't need to do it now." And, to be honest, there is some truth to it. I didn't need a guaranteed scholarship to want to go to NCSSM. I was in a backwoods high school where football reigned supreme and science geeks were at the bottom of the social ladder. I jumped at the chance to get out of there, and go to school with people who valued what I valued.

Still, I imagine the current attacks on the waive are similar in tone to the attacks on the whole concept of the school itself: "Those darned smart kids don't need no help. Give the money to the poorest, the lowest, not the best and brightest." Elitism is always a tough sell, politically.

Tough, but not impossible. I do happen to believe in a meritocracy. I think educational dollars should belong to those who will make the most of them. NCSSM was a demonstration of an educational free market: I had a choice of where I wanted to go to school, and I voted with my feet. Students access to superior education should not be limited by where they happen to live.

Questioning credentials

I had written earlier about a revolt in the world of college admissions, and how the dean of admissions at MIT was trying to defuse a high-pressure system that encouraged people to exaggerate their credentials. Now, sadly, that very same dean of admissions has quit her job because she lied about her own credentials on her original resume for her first job with the school. And not a small lie, either . . . she fabricated three college degrees, when she had only attended college for one year and never graduated.

Jones must have been exceedingly popular and well-loved, because no one seems have a shred of schadenfreude for the incident, and the tone of everyone's announcements have been regret and sadness, not outrage and calls for reform. (Although someone, somewhere must have it in for her, since it was an anonymous phone call that tipped off the administration.)

When somebody screws up, and then we find out they falsified their credentials, people are outraged that an incompetent managed to dupe us. But the story is more complicated when someone who is obviously talented, highly skilled and very effective in their career turns up with false credentials. We're unhappy that the system has allowed someone to cheat, because that undermines the validity for all the people who paid their dues. Why spend half a dozen years working hard to get degrees, when you can just pretend you got them and still get the job? Jones' dismissal was clearly a matter of integrity and ethics, not competence.

But what's more troubling to the colleges (and those who attend them) is not a question of people counterfeiting credentials that have real value. It's worse than that. It's the sinking realization that maybe the degrees don't have that much value to begin with. If someone can have a successful twenty-eight year career with high visibility, and nobody could tell that she didn't have the degrees she claimed, can the degrees really mean that much? Could it be that a college degree is not all it's cracked up to be?

A college degree is not so much a certification of competence as an insurance policy against incompetence. Just because someone has degree, doesn't mean they will be good at a particular job. It just lowers the odds that they will be utterly unqualified. Employers look at college degrees as a proxy for real experience. Once someone proves they can do a particular job and do it well, the degree is somewhat superfluous. Which is probably why so many people lie about their degrees: once they get their foot in the door and prove their worth, they figure, "No harm, no foul."

I certainly don't want a world where more and more people lie about their accomplishments. But I wouldn't mind it at all if people start to give real-world experiences and demonstrated ability more consideration than degrees, diplomas, and certifications. That might lead people to focus more on really learning what they need to know to be successful, instead of just chasing after a potentially meaningless piece of paper. Which, in fact, was what Marilee Jones has been telling us for years.

Teacher Man

I just finished up Teacher Man, Frank McCourt's third memoir. Since he had already had a smash hit with a memoir of his miserable Catholic upbringing in Limerick (Angela's Ashes) and his miserable immigrant struggles in America ('Tis), he must have figured it was safe to come out and share the bulk of his life, which was teaching public school in New York for thirty years.

It's funny, in retrospect, how the mind romanticizes the troubles most removed from your own current lot. You see it in the progression of McCourt's books. Though the horrors of his youth -- the abject poverty, his father's drunkenness, constant disease in himself and death in his siblings -- are clearly the worst times of his life, they are still tinged with a magical aura of Dickensian sympathy. Once he gets back to this side of the ocean, his struggles to be something more than just "some Nick straight off the boat" are less horrifying, but still from another time. They have a romance of their own: an all-American, West Side Story kind of romance, tinged with ethnic tensions and New World ambition.

But then we arrive at his middle-age struggles, and here we are: back home in the here and now. His troubles are pretty much our own: struggle to get through school, struggle to get a decent job, struggle to make sense of his own life. He knows he's come a million miles from his miserable beginnings, and that he ought to be grateful, but he's still aching under the burden of his own limitations. His job is an awful grind; his marriage is unhappy; he sees flashes of beauty and meaning bobbing in a gray sea of term papers. Welcome, Mr. McCourt! You have arrived in the Land of Plentiful Anxiety.

McCourt is a truth-teller, and I read this book because I wanted an insightful truth-teller to lay bare the teaching life, since it's somthing I have contemplated doing for a long time. I got my money's worth. He sees the value in good teaching, but he also freely admits he's only half-sure what good teaching is, anyway. He is not shy about describing the burdens: meddlesome asshole administrators, front-row seats at adolescents' home life tragedies, the circus of discipline issues, the absolutely crushing burder of papers to take home. It's not the sort of book to inspire someone to take up teaching, though it might be enough to inspire a teacher to bear up under it. He does celebrate the victories: unexpected breakthroughs from students, the triumph of creativity and joie de vivre in the face of middle-class meaninglessness. But it's not an all-upside, Rafe Esquith memoir of incredible transformations in the classroom. It's probably closer to the truth.

Frank McCourt is a kind of Irish Woody Allen. His constant anxiety and self-doubt, delivered with a somber light-heartedness, is always fun to listen to. I hope he hasn't run out of stories to tell.

The Measure of a College Education

U.S. News & World Report addressed the question of the quality of college education in their latest issue ("The Measure of Learning," March 12, 2007). Evidently the feds are finally starting to scrutinize higher education with the same intensity they have been putting on public primary education for the last ten years, and (surprise, surprise) they find U.S. colleges to be performing poorly. The feds want an objective standard to measure whether the colleges are really educating people, and of course the colleges are aghast to think of somone trying to apply a universal standard to the college experience.

I've written before about how little our education system does to prepare people with essential real-world skills. But I thought some more about how I would gauge whether a college was doing its job, and I came up with a simple, albeit subjective test:

A college graduate should be able to carry on an intelligent conversation.

Every aspect of a good college education is engaged in spoken discourse:

• The person must be generally well-informed and well-read to be able to hold up their end of a conversation on any given subject. That means that they read newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals with critical understanding. It means they have read enough philosophy and literature and history to be able to draw connections between current issues and broader principles.
• The person has to be able to listen, learn, and critically assess information, all at the same time. A good discussion requires you to hear the other person's point, pick out the substantive points, and spot weaknesses in reasoning or information.
• The person must be able to communicate effectively. They have to assess their audience, compose their thoughts, pick their points, and package it with a certain degree of artistic sense.
• The person ideally has a sense for the people they are talking to, as well as the content of their discussion. They should be asking themselves, "Why does he care about this? What's his angle? What's really going on here? Does he really believe that, or is he trying to impress that girl?" That requires some practical psychology, sociology, and politics.
• The person needs to be able to ask good questions. You don't even necessarily need to have lots of specific knowledge to have a conversation, as long you can ask good questions. Most forms of human endeavor -- science and business, especially -- rely more on asking the good questions than having the good answers.
• They have to be the kind of people who enjoy having intelligent conversations . . . perhaps the best measure of all as to whether they have really become a cultured person.

The colleges can rest easy -- no one is likely to come up with a good standardized test to measure an intelligent conversation. But those of us who care most about the quality of college education -- the employers, and the parents -- will probably be able to make a good assessment of how the schools are doing. There, at least, the feds and I can agree: they aren't doing very well.

Getting In

Yesterday NPR aired an extensive story, both morning and evening, about the college admissions process, and how many admissions professionals are calling for a major rethinking of the stressful, pressure-laden rite of passage. Applying and being admitted to prestigious schools is a teenager's initiation into social stratification. Parents and teachers call upon them to "be their best," which in this case is inevitably translated to, "get accepted to the top-ranked schools." The frenzy of test preparation, test-taking, personal coaching, strategic planning of extracurriculars, all for the sake of looking better than everyone else, is enough to make the "greedy 80's" look like European socialism.

At first I thought it sounded like a marketing dig from the smaller colleges: "Oh, those big schools aren't so great. You can get a fine education at a smaller school, with more interaction with professors and peers and a better atmosphere." To a generation schooled in educational elitism, any call for "re-thinking educational goals" sounds a lot like apologizing for less-than-optimal performance. The parents, more than anyone, are interested in brand-names: "I'm not paying that much money for a chummy, collegial atmosphere. I'm paying that much money for Yale, dammit! Harvard!"

But the call for change is coming from some of the top schools in the country. The dean of admissions at MIT, one of the most selective schools in the country, is saying the emperor has no clothes. The system of college ranking, she claims, is a tyrranous system that forces colleges to game their numbers. To make their stats look good, they encourage people to apply who really shouldn't, just so they can boost their percentage of applicants denied admission. They also are highly rewarded for having high graduation rates, which means there are strong disincentives for having high academic standards and flunking people out. In the end, the academic mission of the schools is being compromised for a sake of a highly orchestrated kabuki dance of social status.

What interests me most is that the call for new perspectives on college admissions sounds an awful lot like what the Self Knowledge Symposium has been saying for the last fifteen years: "Why are you in school? What do you want to accomplish here? Your life is about more than just finding a job or lining up an upwardly-mobile career. Find a setting and lifestyle that will let you do what you really want to do." Maybe our hardworking, ambitious culture is finally ready to let young people be young, and let them explore aspects of life that don't necessary translate into paychecks.

Set that teacher's hair on fire

Janet heard a story on NPR about an award-winning teacher, Rafe Esquith, and she forwarded a link to me about the guy and his book, Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire. I am full of ideas about teaching, mostly untested and half-baked, so you would think that I would be immediately keen on hearing about someone who was actually doing new things in the classroom.

My first reaction to NPR's page on the story was surprisingly cold. I looked at Esquith's head shot, with the classic chin-on-knuckle thoughtful pose, and something inside of me said, "Slick. Phoney." Then I looked at the cover of his book. Esquith is wearing a suit and tie, and he is surrounded by kids all looking at him as he gestures. He is literally the center of attention. I wonder if actually wears a suit when he teaches . . . it's possible. Then I read the prologue to his book, and it starts out, "It is a strange feeling to write this book. I am painfully aware that I am not superhuman." Harumph. False modesty if ever I heard it. "Not a day goes by when I do not feel overwhelmed by the attention . . . " Just how much attention has this guy gotten?

And the rest of the prologue is more me-me-me, what he hopes and what he's done and how hard his job is and . . . not much about the students at all. A few cliche claims about how "crazy" his methods are. So my first impression was, "Raging egomaniac."

But I also remembered my previous post about being objective and fair and taking responsibility for what one writes . . . and I thought, "I can't pan this guy just because his head-shot gives me the willies." So I listened to the NPR interview.

And . . . I was very impressed with the guy.

He was extremely articulate and composed. Some of the things he said I had been saying for years: teach fiscal responsibility, teach economic principles of budgeting and responsibility and ownership, things nobody teaches but everyone knows are critical to success. (Yes, I know . . . of course I think he's brilliant if he shares some of my ideas. So who's the real egomanic now, huh?) And, when he spoke about the level of his dedication, and how it wouldn't be fair to expect it from everyone, I believed him. I heard someone who had found vocation, and was pointing the way, knowing that few could follow. And when he said that he only wanted to teach and wasn't interested in being a full-time education pundit, I believed that, too. "Well, other people can do that, but that's not what I do."

Then I went back and read the book prologue again . . . and I started to see what I had missed. "Our culture is a disaster," he writes. He clearly saw that the problem was one of culture and values, not merely technique.

So what am I to make of this? Was my first reaction just wrong, an allergic reaction to some good self-promotion? Or was my initial reaction correct, and my intellect papered over it once it warmed to the content? I think he's the real deal, he's doing good things for the kids, and he is worth listening to. He may also think very highly of himself. But . . . mea culpa. Perhaps I only see a mirror of my own ambition and my own ego.

Steal this Lecture

The News and Observer reported that an NCSU professor has been asked to stop selling his lectures as online downloads. Interestingly, the university was not contesting whether the professor owned the rights to his lectures -- they affirmed that he did own the copyright to his own material. They were worried that he might have a conflict of interest, if he is making money on material that students expected to have already been covered by tuition costs. At least, that's what they are saying . . .

I am fascinated by this development because for the last five years I have been predicting the coming of the "rock-star professor," an educational free agent who will generate syndicated multi-media interactive content (what in ancient days was called a "class") used by many more institutions or individuals than a single teacher could previously reach in the traditional classroom fashion. Such an evolution in higher education would create a competitive market for good teaching, something often shockingly lacking in colleges and universities. An engineering grad student once told me: "This is probably the only professional job one can get with absolutely no training. I have zero preparation to teach." Nor does anyone have an economic interest in teaching him: the pay is comparable to unskilled labor.

In the case of Dr. Schrag, it looks like the university is trying to side-step the legal question of ownership, but still frames up the question in the status-quo assumption that the university is the seller of the education, not the professor. He is being told he can't sell it to his students because they already bought it . . . in the form of tuition to the school. Given the ever-mounting costs of college tuition, I can see why students might object to being nickeled and dimed . . . but it's hardly without precedent. When I was in school, professors routinely created course packs, photocopied materials of articles, reprints, and original material made specifically for the course. They were printed at Kinkos, and sold to students. It was just another textbook to buy, that's all. And at the price of $2.50 per lecture, his entire course could be had for $80, which is not uncommon for a textbook. (Ahhh, textbooks . . . that's another racket I would love to see undermined by a truly free market.)

When the university officials say "we just need a little time to look at the issue closely and sort everything out," what I hear them saying is: "look, you're going to create a lot of confusion in the marketplace. You're opening the door to people buying from you instead of us. Our whole branding message as a university will be shot if you start offering a la carte lectures. More importantly, that's our action. Hands off."

But the day is coming, mark my words. When a better-quality product can be had online for a fraction of the cost the universities charge, the market will there. The universities will get into the education syndication business, lending their branding to such efforts . . . or they will get run over by it.

Blue Goo Stew

Aidan pulled me away from my newspaper, a big grin on his face. "Daddy, come see! We're making Blue Goo Stew!"

Next to the couch in the living room Aidan and Malcolm had corralled all the dining room chairs into a circular clump. "So, so, so, here's how you play. You run around in the circle, until someone ... TAGS you. And then . . . we tie the jumprope around you, and we throw you into the Blue GOO!" And he collapsed into giggling. "BLUE GOO!" echoed Malcolm enthusiastically.

"Here, we'll show you," said Aidan, suddenly business-like. And he and Malcolm danced around on top of the chairs in a mock chase until Aidan tags Malcolm. Aidan tied the red jumprope around Malcolm's middle, and Mal, like the youngest bungee jumper alive, hurled himself onto a pile of pillows on the couch.

"Ok, I'll play," I said.
"And YOU," said Aidan, "You sit right . . . right . . . HERE," indicating a tiny kid chair next to the sofa, "And you . . . mix up Malcolm . . . into the Blue Goo! And that's how you make . . . Blue Goo Stew! And then, and then, and then, and then . . . you EAT! the BLUE GOO STEW!" And he dissolved into laughter again.

So we played Blue Goo Stew, with Aidan and Malcolm alternately hurling themselves into the pillows, and me stirring the pillows around with a long buckwheat pillow, and me scooping up a child in a ticklish embrace and pretending to eat them, chanting "Stew MEAT! Stew MEAT!"

We had a lot of fun.

* * *

So where did THAT come from? I have no idea. But that's exactly why I loved it so much. It was the result of unstructured play. They started with a bit of spontaneous young-boy wordplay and gross-out humor, and expanded it bit by spontaneous bit, putting rules together like so many tinker toys. They were peacefully, enthusiastically collaborating (which is challenging for a six-year-old and a three-year-old), all without any input from me at all.

I can't begin to describe how important unstructured play is. When you see it happening, you realize that this is it, this is what kids that age are supposed to be doing. They are clearly firing on all cylinders; physical, mental, emotional, and social aspects are fully engaged, and they are enjoying it more than anything else they could be doing.

I recently heard a lead-in on a story on NPR about how unstructured play was gradually being displaced by TV, video games, and structured activities like music lessons, dance lessons, and sports. Having witnessed the beauty and wonder of my own kids in unstructured play, I can fully conceive of the loss. I have explicitly given over part of my Schedule to unstructured play time with the kids, because I want to be a part of that world.

It also influenced me to declutter my own schedule. How much room do I have in my own life for unstructured play? How much creativity, enthusiasm, and development is lost because I'm so busy all the time? The comparison doesn't completely hold up; adults are not children, and their need for re-creation is not the same. But I have noticed that, when I structure time away from work, to be with my family or work around the house or write, that I am noticing more. I am doing things better; fixing things spontaneously; making tiny improvements. Little things, mind you; making a bed that otherwise would not have been made, or tightening the screws on a doorknob. Because I have given myself over to the moment, because I have lavished time on these things, they are becoming more alive for me.

Teaching violence, teaching control

I heard on NPR the other day that a program was doing a "violent-toy exchange," in which kids brought in their toy guns and violent video games and exchanged them for constructive or cooperative games: craft kits, puzzles, sporting equipment.

For all of my familiarity with Attachment Parenting and our continuous committment to shield our children from media as long as possible, I still feel a strange ambivalence about these sorts of events. True, I am convinced that the popular culture has immersed itself in extreme violence, and that such constant exposure to ever-more-graphic displays will have an inevitable corrosive affect on sensitivity and sensibility of developing minds. But I also feel like the counter-culture, the anti-violence activists, have yet to come up with a coherent philosophy to handle the reality of violence in human nature and in life.

This local event, at least, had the right idea to emphasize the alternatives to violence. Most of our political and social problems in the world are one long, unending quest to get people to consider alternatives to violence. And it is perfectly rational to say: "Look, building things with Legos is every bit as 'boy' as running around with guns." And so it is. But once the building is done, it is every bit as "boy" to explode the Lego buildings with Richochet Racer mortar fire. While they encourage the constructive, pro-social elements of human nature, they fail to acknowledge the aspects of violence that are built into human nature itself. Boys are not "infected" with violence from outside entities; they only fail to develop the capacities to control and channel violent impulses that were always there to begin with.

Recently, when I was wrestling with my two small sons, I spontaneously started to show them some basics of aikido. I encouraged them to experiment with different ways to push me over, and showed them what worked and what didn't. I showed them some ways to roll and fall without getting hurt. That they enjoyed it was not surprising; but I was shocked at how much they paid attention. Usually slow and casual in responding to my requests, Aidan was obedient to the point of being crisp. His violent impulses, thus far only finding release in playground stick fights, was now getting official sanction and direction. He loved it. More importantly, I think he was ready for it. He needed it.

I do not believe we can take all the violence out of our kids, nor even that that is a worthwhile goal. I believe it needs to be channelled, schooled, and controlled. The pro-social-non-violent moms might be shocked when I call, not only for more Legos, but for boxing, wrestling, martial arts, archery, and hunting. Our children will be schooled in violence. Our only choice is whether we will do the schooling, and incorporate principles of restraint, discipline, respect, sportsmanship, and honor -- or whether we will let their schooling come from Grand Theft Auto and The Sopranos.

Learning by teaching

In a really ironic way, many of the things I have learned to do well, I learned because I had to teach them to other people.

• I taught courses in "writing as a spiritual discipline" for years, but always felt like a fraud because I didn't have a really solid writing discipline myself. It was that cognitive dissonance that forced me to daily blogging, where I rediscovered and internalized many of the things I was teaching.
• In the SKS, I'm always teaching the students about the value of making and keeping commitments . . . which invariably forces me to reevaluate my own capacity to make and keep commitments (which sometimes has been less-than-stellar).
• As a consultant, this is a regular part of business. Sometimes people hire me because of my specific knowledge in a specific field, but given the breadth of my projects and their very nature (systems integration) there are always lots of things I'm learning on-the-fly. And, with most technical things, you don't have to know that much more than everyone else to become the local expert.

It comes down to making the committment to learn. Once you get up in front of a bunch of other people to teach them something, you feel an awful lot of pressure to know what you're talking about. And because the teaching always has a deadline -- an explicit time and place when the class takes place -- you don't have a lot of room to procrastinate or fudge.

If we embrace this approach, it turns into a kind of conscious hypocracy -- teach the things you know nothing about, model the behaviors you yourself are lacking. Weird. But, as Hamlet said, "Assume a virute if thou hast it not." We will fake it until we make it . . . or, more precisely, fake it in order to make it.

This also is why I think teaching should be a core part of the curricula in education at nearly all levels. The process of trying to model and transfer skills and understanding is a powerful way to motivate and reinforce your own learning.