A Personal Experience of the Disaster of American Higher Education

I had a problem with windows a week or so ago and had to have the system wiped and reinstalled. Of course, all my internet tabs disappeared, including the one for this blog. I googled my name in an effort to find the address and an old Rate Your Professor site dating from four years ago came up. I quit teaching at the college level because writing instruction for nearly all universities consists primarily of Freshman Composition. When I began teaching in 1993 I quickly fell in love with the Freshman I taught but as time passed that love affair turned as ugly as a 20 year marriage of convenience.

The shift came in 1998. Instead of one or two troublesome students every two or three of years I began having three or four troublesome students per class every semester. By 2001 I was dealing with mass rebellion in ALL my composition classes with only one or two of the brightest students attempting to comprehend the act of composition as the act of selecting and executing rhetorical strategies. The change came that quickly.

The act of composing in writing requires an intellectual athleticism not unlike the physical athleticism of working athletes. And, like working athletes, a successful writer must compose and draft everyday and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite in the same way a working athlete must run and practice, run and practice, and run and practice until every muscle in their body cries for relief. Writing is work and learning to compose a successful and competent text is extremely hard work. Unfortunately, most first year students’ experience of composition instruction consists of relating in text personal experiences or simply recapitulating simple instructions or information. Unfortunately, most first year university writing programs consist of more of the same with a “research” paper as the capstone project (usually on some run-of-the-mill topic, such as abortion, teen drinking, etc., in the name of “Relevance”) Drafting is generally unheard of unless it happens during class.

I expect resistance, but I also expect a full court press effort, which means the student accepts responsibility for their learning. If a student is unclear on a concept or assignment they should ask for clarification. They should accept that not every effort results in outstanding success and that no one gets an “A” for simply putting forth an effort. The “A” comes about as a result of an outstanding performance, which is proof of a student’s effort.

Since I view composing as a process my teaching requires a considerable amount of rewriting, at least three to four rewrites per assignments, with peer reviews and assessments on each draft. Such an approach requires the student to write at least one draft per week. Today’s students rebel at such work. Consequently, days of work are lost because at least 50% and more of each class refuse to draft consistently. In the face of such resistance an instructor has limited choices. Most abandon such a rigorous approach. Those who do not are condemned to student ridicule, abuse, accusations of incompetence, and emotional and intellectual inconsistency. Students are much more adept at manipulating the administrative system and human emotions than their earlier counterparts. They understand that negative finger pointing does not generally need proving in corporately structured environments and the suggestion of discord carries far more weight than the fact of competence or incompetence.

Frankly, I blame outcome based assessment and an unhealthy focus by administrators on student product satisfaction.

Outcome based evaluation is fine if what you wish to measure is a quantifiable amount of information. However, OBE practices are incapable of measuring or quantifying process. Traditional assessment methods of a college student's text consist of identifying a thesis statement, identifying proper citation practices and conforming to standard grammar practices. These markers are clearly quantifiable. However, such markers fail to identify solid process habits, solid research skills, solid intellectual judgment and an effective understanding of rhetorical strategies.

Secondly, education is not a product. It is not a consumable manufacture, like, say, cheese. The well-being of any society, whether political, social or economic, depends upon the quality of the education of those citizens who make the decisions that determine the moral and physical well-being of a society. To propagate the belief that an education is a marketable consumer product is incredibly irresponsible, in my opinion.

A quality college education implies an individual with honed thought skills and a command of an intellectual wellspring of the best thought, practices, and methodologies in human history. Anything less leads the community as a whole into slow disintegration and social disaster.

The Hidden Promise of Death

Earlier in the week I visited a small town about fifty miles away to look at a Geo Tracker for my daughter. The price was within the range I wanted to pay, and the Geo had the airbags and other safety equipment I feel she needs for her and her daughter to feel protected. The address turned out to be a small, post WWII shotgun bungalow with old aluminum siding—the kind of house I grew up in during the early 50s.

The sun had just set, and the only light came from the full moon and the outside porch light left on to help me identify the house. The neighborhood was so quiet that when I pulled up and left my truck the owner of the Geo and his wife were leaving their house to greet me. These look like the people who were my parent’s friends when I was a young child, I thought, blue collar workers with a minimum high school education.

We went through the formalities, and I took the Geo for a test drive. The car had some problems I was not willing to repair, and, as the husband and I stood in front of the SUV as his wife looked on, I asked, “Why are you selling?”

The man looked at the ground before answering and said, “We bought the thing from a woman in Indy a few weeks ago for my wife to get back and forth from the warehouse where she had just got a job. But, she was let go last week. I worked at the stint plant in Bloomington, but I was laid off a few days ago. I had a pancreas and kidney transplant a while back, and we need the money to pay for my monthly medicine.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, “but I’m not interested in the car.”

“I understand,” the man said. “If you know of anyone else looking I would appreciate you sending them this way. My medicine is $800 a month and that ain’t covered by unemployment. I need the medicine so my body won’t reject the transplants.”

“I’ll do my best,” I promised.

Our short conversation has troubled me from the moment it occurred to today. This man and his wife were convinced by the purveyors of modern science that his life would be saved by replacing the dying organs within his body with those from some unfortunate individual who would have no further need of them. I’m sure the surgeon and doctor who administered the procedure informed both the man and his wife of the absolute necessity of taking the antibody regulators regularly and the consequences of not doing so. I’m also equally sure they were not informed of the monthly cost beyond, “the medicine is expensive.”

From all that I could see these were good, if minimally educated, people who were living their version of the American Dream—a small house in a small town with a regular job that financed those very small “luxuries.” I say “luxuries” because in other parts of the world, and in this very spot a little over a century ago, an 800 square foot frame house with aging aluminum siding would have been the equivalent of a mansion on the hill. But, we have a belief in this society that a clean, healthful life is a basic human right, and that belief precludes living in a mud wattle hut or a tin can covered cardboard box. I am also aware that the man and his wife may well be degenerate meth amphetamine dealers corrupting other organ transplantees and giving the prospective Geo sucker/buyer a song and dance designed to pluck at the heartstrings and loosen the wallet. Maybe so, but I think not.

Given that the man was honest, and I believe he was, how can we, as fellow members of an enlightened society, condone giving this fellow human and his life partner the promise of extended life with one hand and then threaten to take it away with the other if he has been denied the means to earn the outrageous monthly cost of the medicine that the promised extension requires? Such an action is truly evil because a promise was made but with hidden clauses that if not met, regardless of circumstance, is tantamount to a death sentence. As a society, we treat serial killers more humanely.