I am Matthew Williams and You are Not

Oh how things seem to always come back.

A report issued in 1906 detailed how many young men were caught in dead end industrial jobs and unable to advance because they lacked specific skills. However, most of them reported leaving school because they felt it had very little to offer them. We must remember that at this time, "education" was mostly an endeavor set up as a sort of "finishing school" for the elite in which they learned good manners, social graces, and in general how to make the most of being part of the elite ruling class. For anyone not born into money, education typically had very little to offer.

But, with the burgeoning industrial revolution, calls were made that education needed to be extended to not just the moneyed and the elite, but that education should directly serve the needs of those headed into the industrial working class. In a sense, it was the true beginning of the fulfillment of the Morrill Act of 1862.

It is at this time that we see the first articulation of THE question of education in an industrial, capitalistic society: Do we educate students to fit into a system as it is or do we educate students to change a system?

There were those who advocated a "dual" system of education in which the elite and moneyed would continue on as normal and a second system would educate the "working class" for their eventual role as laborers in industrial manufacturing.

John Dewey saw this as the worst possible solution. As Westbrook writes of the "dual" system in which the two are separated (vocational and liberal arts), "He (Dewey) feared, above all, that the kind of vocational education favored by businessmen and their allies was a form of class education which would make the schools a more efficient agency for the reproduction of an undemocratic society" (175).

This leads me to one of my all time favorite Dewey quotes: "The kind of vocational education in which I am interested is not one which will adapt workers to the existing industrial regime; I am not sufficiently in love with the regime for that. It seems to me that the business of all who would not be educational timservers is to resist every move in this direction, and to strive for a kind of vocational education which will first alter the existing industrial system, and ultimately transform it. [...] I object to regarding as vocational education any training which does not have as its supreme regard the development of such intelligent initiative, ingenuity, and executive capacity as shall make workers, as far as they may be, the masters of their own industrial fate" (MW 8:412, my emphasis).

And yet...this is the question that I fear we often forget to ask. Every time an administration makes a claim on retention rates or job placement, this question lurks in the background. Every time a department revises curriculum to "fit the needs" of students, this question serves as the unspoken (and even unrecognized) backdrop. Every time we claim to uphold "quality" and "rigor" at the unstated expense at access, it is this question we are failing to answer.

Posted by Matthew Clark Williams at 5:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Disclaimer: I rarely if ever post things to this blog in "rough" form, but I've been stewing over this for a few weeks now and finally want to eject it out into the world. If anyone out there in academia would like to collaborate to further aspects of this, I am completely game. These thoughts are admittedly rough, but I feel have potential somewhere.

Even though the phenomena is nothing new, recently there has been a spate of commentary concerning...well...commentary on the internet. The problem is that it isn't working. Any look at the comments section of nearly any online publication will reveal that actual discussion is not taking place. Instead, it is mostly a pit of name calling, racism, shouting, and worse. This puts a damper on many of the hopes we had for the internet. It was supposed to be democratic. It was supposed to provide space for more voices to be heard. It was supposed to increase our awareness of issues. It was supposed to, in short, make the world better. And, in some small isolated ways, these things have occurred. But on a large scale, these hopes have largely proven to be a mirage of an oasis. Increasingly, we have begun to reach the oasis promised to us only to find more sand in a desolate environment.

Where educators, journalists, web advocates, technologists, bloggers, and nearly everyone else have erred is a misunderstanding of the role of the body in discourse. In short, the body matters. To remove the body from the equation removes the possibility of communication. The body is its own powerful and absolutely necessary rhetoric. Without the body, it is not discussion or communication that occurs, but rather pure routinized performance of big "D" Discourse.

We can explain this phenomena in even simpler terms. Any look over the un-moderated comments of a newspaper online will reveal little to no listening. In place of that, we have pure replication of "talking-points" that are often appropriated wholesale from other sources from media outlets to community values to racist, sexist, and classist convictions. Additionally, these comments are not employed in order to interact. Instead, these comments are employed and exist simply to be seen, hence their monologic character. The danger of this is extreme. Instead of discussion and hence public opinion rapidly modifying itself to adapt to current situations, we have static opinions and beliefs that prevent adaptation to new situations. Instead of entering into conversation and discussion so that we may change our own ideas as well as those of others, we simply seek to shut out all competing ideas. We become trapped by the past in a radically different present.

Continue reading "Disembodied Discourse and the Failure of Internet Discussion" »

Posted by Matthew Williams at 5:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1. A revision of "core curricula." In the next 50 years, attention will have to be paid to what exactly constitutes the core of what is "taught" in schools. The 4 traditional categories of "english," "science," "social studies," and "history" will need to undergo extensive criticism and reconstruction if schools are to remain viable in terms of helping students come into society as productive members. Areas such as sustainability as a subject, consumer education, critical literacy, and energy politics must be taken seriously and written into part of the overarching goals of schooling, even if it means supplanting "traditional" subjects.

2. The local production of knowledge. With the decline of petroleum as a cheap and abundant source of energy, much of society that has been built on the assumption of the availability of plentiful energy will begin to change. Suburban life and all of its ideologies will be forced to undergo a painful and potentially violent rapid decline. Distribution networks that depended on cheap oil to be centralized and non-regional will no longer be economically feasible, and this will include informational networks. For instance, the internet and the ways in which we utilize and rely on it are heavily dependent on ideologies that issue from unsustainable distribution networks (information on the internet does not necessarily hold true to all geographic locales, so growing methods of one area may not match other areas). Part of our ability to survive this transition will be our ability to rebuild local distribution networks of goods, services, as well as information. Schools will have to attend to enabling students to produce knowledge that comes from a functional awareness of local interdependencies of land, people, intergenerational relationships, and local business. This stands in stark contrast to our current "wal-mart" model in which resources are pooled by large, non-regional agents that transport things over long distances and are widely available in places that things should not be. Further, educational researchers will have to take seriously the notion that -- like race, gender, and class -- housing and regional design (i.e., suburban/urban, high density/low density, cul-de-sac/grid, etc) are sources of knowledge and information that colors how we make meaning of the world.

3. A de-emphasis on a static oriented mindset when it comes to conceiving of sustainable pedagogy. Part of the implicit assumption concerning "standardized skills" education is that the world is, in large part, static and stable. Further, skills training is adequate because the questions we face do not change. Obviously this is false and severely diminishes our chance of success in transitioning from a globalized culture and economy built on oil dependency to a local, regionally based eco-sustainable economy. In short, it won't be the ability to retain facts and figures but rather our ability to re-conceive of their meaning that will enable us to face unforeseen challenges.

4. An educational model that rejects isolationistic and individualistic models of learning. As economies becomes smaller and more regional due to increases in energy expenses, the need for members of society to be able to productively interact, work, and live with those immediately around them will become increasingly important. The goal will become finding ways to help students learn to live with those around them as opposed to students learning to live against those around them as we see now in our hyper-competitive economic culture.

5. A vision of social, cultural, economic and political problems as educational problems. As it is now, the problems we face are seen as separate, isolated, disciplinary problems to be solved by specialists in various areas. This model of informational growth is not sustainable. For society to be responsive to a world in which change increases at an exponential pace, schools must be employed as responsive institutions themselves to address these very problems. This includes de-coupling the goals and methods of education from "universal standards" and their accordant ideologies. Pedagogy itself must be realized as social, cultural, economic, and political. To think it can ever be neutral is itself a learned ideology. Schools must be able to seek new avenues of understanding, even when they directly confront and challenge status quo modes of living. Schools must become a source of critical questioning and not merely a repository of value-free information.

Posted by Matthew Williams at 6:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anyone in the blogosphere, the media, or academia who tries to apply old terms and faction names to the current political reality unfolding before us does not get it.

Just now I saw a report on MSNBC in which a commentator tried to explain how Obama pulled off the "progressive dream" of having the youth turn out and that explains his victory.

Except, it doesn't. He also got out the vote with women. Across the board. Against a woman.

Again, attempting to use old frameworks and semantics to describe what is happening is futile. We are now in a period where the lines that have hardened over the past 40 years no longer matter. Both left and right.

And one further thought on all this: I don't think Obama created this. But, in this climate, he has been anointed by a pervasive social and political climate as the leader of what is to come. The times demand something else, and no one has control of that right now.

Further, Obama himself might not actually, in reality, be what people want. He might be just as much of a sneaky politician as anyone in the campaign. In substance, there might not be much difference. But this is not about the "reality" of Obama that makes this interesting. Rather, and I cannot stress this enough, it is what the caucus goers in Iowa committed themselves to believing what is true.

That is, what voters have decided to believe is what matters the most. Whether or not Obama truly represents this is a secondary concern.

The question remains, how will this affect liberal arts education, which for better or worse, have become the safe haven for critical theorists and post-structuralists in America. There will be those in denial, but it seems this era is starting to fall apart.

Posted by Matthew Williams at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This has been the debate in my head lately: Do I include a link to this blog in my email signatures or do I not? On one hand, I hope that if nothing else, the ideas that I work through on this blog give the readers I have something to think about. They may not agree with me, or they may think I just don't know what I'm talking about. But this is much better than not having ideas at all, or theorizing stuff but never telling anyone. And if this is what I believe, the increase in readership can only be positive.

Yet, there is that phrase I just used: "ideas that I work through on this blog." Even though the words and tone may mask it, there is a high degree of uncertainty in everything I say on here. This truly is a place for me to roll out ideas that pass through my mind, regardless of how rudimentary, over-generalized, and academically naive they may be. I am the first to admit that blog entries on here are the start of the intellectual investigative process, definitely not the end. I have so much to learn still. Sometimes, I am fearful of my colleagues finding this blog for the sheer reason that what I say here is so debatable (even within myself) that I don't want to be seen as that person "who believes X" (or Y, whatever).

It occurred to me today while talking to Geoff Sirc that in this internal debate in my mind, there is something to be realized or understood about blogging. What I was beginning to understand is that there is a very large rift between how academia views public displays of thought and how the blogosphere understands it. This rift, in a sense, might mark the loose thread that will someday start to unravel some very closely held ideas and assumptions. Additionally, it points to many signs that how we view "drafts" in composition classes is entirely off the mark for the new generation of students filling our classes.

Continue reading "Blogging is not Publishing; Publishing is not Blogging" »

Posted by Matthew Williams at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Psst. You. Yeah, you…the person reading this. Want to know a secret? Of course you do. I have a Facebook account. Yep, in the summer of 2004, a mere 4 months or so after Facebook was started at Harvard, I had myself an account. Want to know another one? In 2003 I came across a tiny site run by man named Tom. I signed up for that one, too. I have been a member on Myspace ever since, for better or worse.

While admitting you were a member of such sites in public was once as taboo as admitting to placing a personal ad in a newspaper, it is near impossible now to walk into a coffee shop near any campus and not hear the words "facebook" or "myspace." The meteoric rise of such websites have earned them a near permanent place in contemporary culture. The have also helped to expose an astonishingly rapid increase of the size of the "digital divide" between instructors in Universities and the students that are in their classes.

Continue reading "Myspace and Facebook: What higher-ed can learn from social computing." »

Posted by Matthew Williams at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (3)

Ahh, fall time in Minnesota. Fall is truly one of those times where I really get dreamy. The cool breezes in the morning that lift orange and yellow leaves off the ground for short distances while others wait to fall beneath stunningly crisp blue skies. The afternoons where you can lay in soft green grass under partly cloudy skies feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin. The evenings and the inevitable smell of burning leaves mixed with roasted coffee, pumpkin pies, and an occasional whiff of impending rain. And the nights where the sounds of gentle rain fall on soggy leaves creep through cracked windows and somewhere in the distance is an error message that reads something like "WebCT is currently experiencing technical difficulty, please try again" that is followed by an anguished scream.

If you, or someone you love, has used or will be using WebCT, the above scenario is one that you are probably familiar with (in particular, the last part). If the statistics at the U of MN are correct, somewhere around 2,000 classes use WebCT in some form or another. That's a lot of classes. And, I should mention this to you now, for the last two years my own classes have been a part of that number. For my part, I have exposed at least 100+ students to that thing we all call WebCT. Yep. I had students take quizzes over WebCT, submit papers, engage in discussion. And, not to brag, but I'd say my ventures in WebCT-land were moderately successful. There are things I wished had gone better, but for the most part, WebCT did what it was designed to do. And that is why I am never using it again.

Continue reading "The case against WebCT" »

Posted by Matthew Williams at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(in the most random presentation possible!)

* Technology should never be used for the sake of using technology.

* There is a philosophy behind every piece of technology. Understand this and make sure it is identical to your preexisting teaching philosophy.

* You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. Similarly, you can build message boards, but you cannot make students participate. In both cases, you have to make them thirsty for the satisfaction of engaging in the activity.

* Never expect that students are digitally literate. It is a skill that must be acquired like anything else.

* Don't expect that students will get this training somewhere else.

* Being able to surf the web and correspond via email does not mean a student is digitally literate (even though even these small tasks are difficult for some faculty)

Continue reading "Manifesto concerning technology in the classroom." »

Posted by Matthew Williams at 12:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In 1995, Robert B. Barr and John Tagg described what they felt was a paradigm shift happening in universities; a shift from what they called the instruction paradigm to the learning paradigm (Change Magazine. Vol. 27. No. 6). However, in the 11 years since that article, the learning paradigm still seems to be forever "stuck on the horizon." Postsecondary instructors who buy into student centered learning are still "radicals" on campus in many locations. Were Barr and Tagg wrong?

Continue reading "Mapping the educational paradigm shift..." »

Posted by Matthew Williams at 12:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While eating dinner with a good friend of mine, the discussion turned to RSS feeds and what not. And I got to thinking of how all this relates to the classroom...blogs, podcasts, etc etc etc.

I think right now, this whole blog thing has become the darling of the technoheads. The people that I have seen use these for classes have, more times than not, used them just for the sake of using technology. This is, obviously, a dead end road to some sort of sustainable research development in education.

Its too early (or late...does that make it earlate?) in the morning to really think about this. I had better thoughts earlier. Maybe more will follow on this later.

For now..questions in my mind:

* What relationship should there be between technology usage and teaching philosophy? How can this best be articulated?
* Are there seperate goals and objectives we should be considering when implementing technology in the classroom?
* If so, what are those goals and to what ends are they being met?
* How does all of this relate to the position Universities now occupy in contemporary culture?

More later, tomorrow I'm off to Denver!

Posted by Matthew Williams at 2:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just some bullet points I found in a notebook that I had forgotten about...

• Up until now the theory laden field of composition has merely been trying to reinvent the wheel so to speak…trying to feign innovation that merely serves to mask a continuation of the old paradigm of writing instruction.
• Regardless of how you package it, the majority of writing instruction still boils down to the singular act of the instructor commenting on the students writing and handing it back to them. This is nothing more than a different version of content transmission from instructor to student.

Continue reading "Creative Writing, Comp, and the New Paradigm of University Education" »

Posted by Matthew Williams at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Quotes I have found to be poignant in Dewey's Democracy and Education.

p5.

"Individuals do not even compose a social group because they all work for a common end. The parts of a machine work with a maximum of cooperativeness for a common result, but they do not form a community. If, however, they were all cognizant of the common end and all interested in it so that they regulated their specific activity in view of it, then they would form a community."

p6 (cooperative learning vs collaborative)

"It may fairly be said, therefore, that any social arrangement that remains vitally social, or vitally shared, is educative to those who participate in it. Only when it becomes cast in a mold and runs in a routine way does it lose its educative power."

p6 (on the need for collaborative learning)

"In final account, then, not only does social life demand teaching and learning for its own permanence, but the very process of living together educates."

Thought…

Society is defined by education, and not vice versa…especially if education is taken to mean both formal and informal modes of education. However, the goal of formal education is to help inform informal education when and where it happens.

Marx…The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

Me....The educators have only perpetuated the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

I used to have a professor at UNI when I was there...David Morgan...what a swell guy. Anyway, he was a former member of the communist party, and offered the only marxism class in the philosophy department. I remember really vividly talking about Marx's theses on Freuebach...and David mentioning that whenever he got to the 11th one...chills would run down his spine.

I know what he means now.

The idea that teaching is not political, or is apolitical is naive and shameful. Everything is political. To not bring politics in it is as much as a political decision as to bring politics into it. Just like deciding to not decide is a decision as well.

So let's get on with it. Instead of a passive system of pedagogy, lets activate it.

Posted by Matthew Williams at 6:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)