Free College (and more) For All?

Is it so difficult to understand the difference between making college AVAILABLE for all v. requiring people to go to college, perhaps because we don’t offer enough viable alternatives?

“Traditional” college education should certainly be affordable and available to all - which will mean it would have to be subjected to much more oversight.

But, regardless of where people receive formal education, what we value about college and education should also be available to everyone. I am talking about:

1. A good liberal education for citizenship,
2. Opportunities to develop specialized skills, and
3. Opportunities to join and cultivate mutually supportive networks.

These opportunities can be provided in traditional college settings for traditional college-aged students, but just as young people develop on widely varying and eccentric schedules, the needs of adult learners evolve and change based on thousands of semi-predictable variables. That’s why educational opportunities in a wide range of formal, informal, and blended settings must be supported for individuals of all ages.  Lifelong education should also a wide range of opportunities for skills training and self-enrichment.

By necessity, this means we need to work towards a culturally supported system of lifelong education where informal values and practices normalize the occasional resort to formal structures of learning for all based on individual needs and inclinations just as much as on the dubious dictates of the so-called “labor market”.

BF Skinner famously noted that "the evolution of culture is a gigantic effort in self-control." Notions of transcending "freedom and dignity" remain quite as disturbing on their own even when not linked to the idea of "cultural engineering". Still, narrow and fragile notions of "freedom" and "dignity" are being whipped into a toxic melange of ideas regarding "identity", "race", and "nation" with this process driven, in part, by dangerously reckless and irresponsible provocateurs. Skinner's challenge, "We have not yet seen what man can make of man" leaves no one off the hook. To not self consciously participate in creating culture may be the most bitter form of irresponsibility. This can be done in a way that avoids heavy-handed “centralized” control.

The role of formal education in creating and recreating culture can easily be exaggerated, but it's just as facile to minimize its role. Certainly, this role is limited by the more informal mechanisms of education wafting through popular culture (online and off).  These include family, religion, and everyday interactions of participation, domination, resistance, diversion, and mutual appreciation, all of which are powerfully influenced by traditions, history, and the assiduous influence of concentrated wealth.

No doubt we all must invest more effort and intentionality in building a culture that supports everybody's opportunity to realize freedom and dignity in meaningful and responsible ways. And just as surely, this is a Sisyphean endeavor. For even if there was ever no chance for backsliding, the daunting slope would inevitably increase exponentially and asymptotically. Such is the "nature" of insatiable humanity. But like Camus's Sisyphus, we must not be discouraged. To the extent we can, we must work to ensure we all have access to the necessities of food, shelter, meaningful occupation, and dignified leisure.

The role of formal education, another basic human "right" is a considerable factor in how cultures and economies evolve to meet (or fail to meet) these needs. The right to life long educational opportunities is now within our grasp. We can continue to build upon the models of public education inherited from the Puritans, Horace Mann, and industrial magnates with an eye toward humaneness as we balance challenge and support for all learners. We can learn from models provided by free online resources such as DuoLingo and Kahn Academy. There are also lessons to be learned from (and about) the Massive Open Online Courses offered now by so many major universities. Schools and colleges all around the world are experimenting with distance and blended learning models of all stripes. All manner of experimentation should be encouraged and supported with a wide range of funding and accreditations backed up with pervasive mechanisms of informal attention and scrutiny.

We are all culture creators even as we are all constantly being shaped (or distorted) by vaster cultural currents. We can responsibly open the institutions of higher learning to all regardless of class, race, or age. And then let's see what we make of ourselves.

Joe Panzica (Author of Democracy STRUGGLES! and Saint Gredible and Her Fat Dad's Mass for which he is seeking an agent . . .)
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The “Sex Recession”

Whenever there’s a buzzing new social panic (now it’s “not ENOUGH sex” . . . ) conservatives blame “liberals” by which they mean leftists and socialists. (Of course sometimes they blame “leftists and socialists” when they really mean liberals.)

And no matter the social problem, we liberals, leftists, and socialists blame capitalism - or the excess of it.

But the term “capitalism”, as used in general discourse, is a vaguely looming label draped over a dynamic complex of relationships, institutions, technologies, conditions, laws, and beliefs.

No wonder we’re so often befuddled and overwhelmed!

It’s only somewhat clarifying to focus on the core elements of capitalism. These center around the ability of a tiny few to make inordinate profits from wage labor by the rest of us. But, as obnoxious as that may sound, capitalism with wage labor is indisputably an improvement over slavery and has allowed for an infinity of progress and freedom compared to other forms of domination.

Meaningful human relationships which promote productive creativity ought to be what we are striving for, but we have so little claim to understanding the actual forces driving us whether they are dynamics of our cultural political economy or somehow intrinsic to our biological existence.

Experience + Reflection = Learning?

I like this. But I hope many people "experience" it through sharp questioning based on BOTH past experiences and other guiding ideas. And sometimes, the best approach is to cultivate visceral disagreements (while still being open to new understandings).

A dumb example: Never having taught kindergarten or elementary school, I am not a big fan of bringing students to gardens. Too many bugs and temptations to trample or scavenge, etc. (Museums, for me, are a another "breed of cat.") My interest is helping students experience reading and writing in their own contrary ways, and that involves a great deal of practice in skill acquisition.

That's not easy, not for learners, and certainly not for me.

Math might be even more difficult, because it quickly gets even more abstract what with fractions of fractions and subtracting negative numbers etc. Of course there are manipulatives to help some learners. And computer/"SmartBoard" virtual manipulatives can be even better.  Whenever I get to radicals and roots, I can't resist dipping into imaginary numbers.  It's more than just a way to review both square roots and multiplying negative numbers.

After struggling to figure out what times what equals negative one, I hope they say it's impossible - or a meaningless question.  Except, not exactly.  Turns out we need negative numbers to do particle physics.  They come up and then they cancel out to give math results that match with experimental measurements down to the 12th digit (or so).  And, imaginary numbers, in many ways, do even more than hint at dimensions impossible for us to think about in any other way  . . . because our senses have only evolved to "experience" three (or four) dimensions.

I'm sure the author had no such intention, but the danger of trying to anchor (hopefully not "everything") in "experience" is not that it runs into the often contrasting experiences of different students, but that it might obscure the more serious purposes of education.

One of those should be to broaden and extend student's life experience with burgeoning imagination and critical capacities. A related, but separate, purpose is to help them understand there is so much more wonder and possibility in this crazy world than their current experience (however broad, deep, or disturbing) can ever encompass.

Reading, Math, and Writing are all "experiences" in and of themselves.

Of the top of my head I have no quibble with the Dewey equation, but that's probably because I'm lazy minded.

The Future is Ours To Create

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The Future is Ours to Create

 

 

 

What is the greatest challenge to democracy in the early 21st century?

• The overwhelming power of the capitalist elite (economically, culturally, legislatively, politically, judicially) to craft domestic laws and the rules for a global economy?*

• Naive ideas about democracy, power, and participation in a complex society where concentrated wealth must be wisely managed?

Perhaps they're equally dangerous? Perhaps one is the result of the other? Perhaps they are mutually reinforcing phenomena?

 

Certainly, naiveté and lack of information prevent far too many of us from being aware of the very shallow roots of institutional democracy which, despite the checkered example of Ancient Athens, reach back only as far as circa 1789.  On the other hand, we all share a deep-seated resistance to domination. This may even be “hard-wired” by evolution into our species. But on Tevye’s other other hand . . . our species seems (almost) disturbingly adaptable to all types of harsh conditions - including those imposed by the most ruthless of our “brothers and sisters” who will ceaselessly seek to test all limits - including those of mutual decency. But, then again, the milk of human kindness and the thrill of solidarity (especially when infused with music) count among the most rapturous of all human experiences (excluding, perhaps, chocolate and sex). And yet, we are also so very prone to fine distinctions leading to intense jealousies and resentments even among those who are most similar to each other and who largely share the same interests. Finally, do all these questions lose any possible salience for someone - once he is no longer tempted to wonder how it would be:

 

“If I were a rich man, yaha diah dia dia dumb”?

 

Complexity, scale, and the ever-important need to avoid overly concentrated power, all militate for a pluralist menagerie of robust institutions including those somewhat like modern corporations. Historical naiveté also plays a huge role here. Western corporate forms can be traced back to medieval towns, universities, and construction projects. But this institutionalized quest for profit is a modern innovation not really much older than the institutional roots of modern democracy. Joint-stock companies originally had a "built-in" limited liability. Then after the Tulip Bubble (1637) and The South Sea Bubble (1720), the early modern ruling class was shocked into a chronic allergy to corporations, speculations, and insider trading. Both sentiments and laws regarding corporate charters earnestly sought to ensure corporations would only be established to serve some well-defined public interest. This was accompanied by reasonable allowances for certain ventures to be able to reclaim legitimate investments in roads, bridges, canals, etc. along with a fair profit - with the expectation that they should then be dissolved. A similar philosophy guided the establishment of early copyright and patent laws.

 

Anyone with a sense of history should be passionately alarmed by the ongoing radical growth in corporate power and greed. They should “literally” feel the shocking danger of this - as if it were freezing their very blood. The obscenities of corporate personhood, immortality, along with razor-sharp allegiance to short term stockholder benefits began in earnest only in the late 19th century but, as if on a well-greased sled on a very steep slope, these perils are only accelerating. As it crashes forward, this juggernaut accretes ever-increasing powers over public functions and human needs.

 

As this is being written, the advisors surrounding the president* of the United States are seriously considering privatizing US military operations even more radically than allowed for under current patterns of profitable corporate contracts. The benefits and dangers of allowing corporations to profit directly from the carnage and destruction of war are certainly being discussed with due lamentations and foreboding.  And no doubt(?) there will be widespread public concern about the prospect of rapacious corporations equipping themselves with feudal armies capable of overseas(?) regime change. How much attention should be given to the possibility of this proposal is, at least in part, motivated by the difficulty of recruiting US citizens to risk their lives in uncertain foreign adventures with doubtful motivations?**

 

In the meantime, corporations already have an overweening degree of control over who has access to medicines, therapies, and all forms of healthcare. Their self-interested influence over our educational systems extends well beyond textbooks and prepackaged curricula. Increasingly they are owning hospitals, running jails, and providing security forces that rampage in the public streets.

 

And the profit motive routinely routs much-needed campaigns to control poisons (like tobacco) and environmental contaminants (like excess greenhouse gasses).

 

Civic control over corporations and their weaponized concentrated wealth will be critical not only for democracy but for the future of humanity.  

 

Eventually Cassandra was proven right.

 

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* When is da powitical pawties gonna GIVE us choices we wike?

**Shouldn’t that be considered a form of us “voting with our feet”?

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