Tag: politics

My own story includes a career working in higher education so I suppose that is mostly responsible for my reactions to what now seem to be the attacks on my occupation. I always want to point out one fact. The state through the legislature and the budget controlled by the legislature fund less than a third of the cost of state institutions. Yet, legislatures can pass laws that dictate how these institutions function. Most revenue necessary to run institutions must be generated by the institutions through tuition, grants, and donations and institutions must compete for these resources.

Two of the issues that some states want to control are the curriculum (what is taught) and tenure. These two issues are interrelated in this way. Tenure protects faculty members against even their own institutions. Since tenure gives a professor job security for decades, undercutting it is one way conservatives can more easily change campus culture, experts say, as well as fight against the liberal values they claim have taken over schools. For example, In Indiana, legislation is being proposed to review tenured professors every five years based on “free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity.” Tenure is intended to be based on productivity and teaching quality, but the practice is being challenged because of what is being taught rather than issues of quality performance. 

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released data showing that in the fall of 2021, only 24 percent of faculty in U.S. colleges held full-time tenured appointments, compared to 39 percent in the fall of 1987. Rather than hire for tenure-track “lines”, more and more institutions are hiring adjunct faculty and more and more instruction is being delivered by adjunct faculty members. I saw this happen in the department for which I once served as chairperson and I thought this approach created a divisive class system. Tenure is already a probationary period with no commitment to the long term and all of us know profs who simply were let go because there was a financial challenge rather than a performance issue. 

Anyway, this post is really about the motivation for eliminating tenure which despite other issues seems most basically about political control of institutions. The core complaint seems to be that college faculty are too liberal (or progressive whichever you prefer) which is proposed to be relevant because these values are being passed on (indoctrination is a common description) to unwary or cowed students. Efforts have been made to determine the accuracy of the first claim and seem to show few students actually claim they feel pressured. The second issue is more difficult and I think really breaks down into two underlying claims; a) liberal values are taught beyond what would be the appropriate information for a course, and b) students are afraid to voice opposition when issues of opinion as opposed to facts are discussed or are penalized in some way when they do challenge opinions or facts. 

Party affiliation versus values:

Complaints when it comes to what is being taught seem to come primarily from one party. Why? Party labels seem far less helpful when reacting to accusations than specific values. I doubt many educators focus on party when teaching their content, but values and facts related to values could sometimes be the focus of instruction. I am not so naive to argue that party affiliation and values are not at least moderately correlated, but even knowing this I think a lot about why this is the case. Shouldn’t values be more important and what are the specific values taught that Conservatives reject?

I think people hide behind general labels. I assume that values determine party affiliation and not the other way around. Declared party affiliation could also be associated with combinations of values. Owning up to specific values and beliefs is what is really important. Owning up to the beliefs professed by your party is also at least important to consider. It seems cowardly to say there are too many Democrats on college faculties rather than to claim you object to the discussion of the causes of prejudice, inequity, and privilege or whatever other values you find objectionable. 

PEW has done a lot of data collection on values and party affiliation in trying to provide data about education and other issues. They have a simple questionnaire about specific values allowing anyone to compare their specific values to political categories from extreme progressive to extreme conservative. I encourage you to take it for two reasons: a) see where you fall on the political continuum and b) consider the issues raised in assigning you to a given category and why they could be interrelated.

Pew Survey

I fell toward the end of political spectrum PEW classified as embellishment liberal (13% fall into this category). 

PEW summarizes folks like me in the following way. 

“They hold liberal positions on nearly all issues and support an expanded role for government and a larger social safety net. They also hold liberal attitudes on issues of racial and ethnic equality. Establishment Liberals are more likely than any other group to say that compromise is how things get done in politics. About half say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country today, and an overwhelming majority say they approve of the job Joe Biden is doing as president.”

However, what I think is more important is what I think about specific items PEW used to arrive at these generalities. 

The PEW survey presents items as a forced choice. See the following example:

Once, you have completed the survey, the system reviews your responses and compares your answer to the probability of others in your assigned group and to all respondents. So. in the following example, 61% of all those responding and 80% of the others assigned to the Establishment Liberals category agreed with my choice. 

I recommend the PEW survey as it could recommend a level on which discussions could occur. I can explain why there are specific areas in which I think the country could benefit from government oversight and a safety net. You might disagree, but at least that would offer something concrete to talk about. Isn’t the level that a discussion should occur in a political science classroom. 

Party affiliation among higher education educators.

Efforts to get academics to claim their party orientation do indicate that there is a general progressive orientation. Such data sources also show that political orientation varies significantly with discipline.

Perhaps the concern of the Republicans is more driven by the increasingly progressive leanings over time. This time difference is consistent by discipline (see above) and quite abrupt in recent years. Notice the shift beginning in 1997 or so. Initially, this shift seemed to be marked by fewer Conservatives toward more Liberals with a later shift from Moderate toward Liberals. The makeup of higher ed faculties changes gradually so it seems unlikely this rapid shift was the result of hiring alone. 

Analysis

There is an expression sometimes applied when commenting on software applications – Is it a feature or a bug? Does the system contain an error or is the system doing what it is doing by design? Perhaps my rephrasing gets to the real issue here. What is the purpose of higher education and education in general? You have a sense of this issue when you hear some politicians complaining higher education does not focus enough on employment and has too many majors that are not directly tied to specific jobs. Why are there so many liberal arts requirements and so few STEM requirements? Do K12 and college students really need to learn about the history of slavery and continuing inequities related to race, gender, and generational differences in wealth? I happen to think so and these facts are relevant to the content I taught. Maybe those in math, physics, and coding don’t, but an important argument can be made relevant to these areas of study as well. Consider the present questions and reflection raised by the movie Oppenheimer. There is even the question of bias that keeps popping up because AI ends up statistically replicating the existing biases in the mathematics and algorithms generating the responses to AI prompts based on the corpus of content used to construct large language models (LLMs). Instead consider the old CS saying – garbage in, garbage out. Perhaps we need to recognize that it is now skewed values in, skewed values out. Values cannot be isolated by job category and why need to be concerned with the development of values in everyone. 

I write this post in response to comments made during last evening’s Republican debate during which several participants were very negative in response to the discussions on the Israeli/Palestinian situation occurring on many college campuses. The tone advocated that university officials shut down students voicing their concerns that the military actions of the Israelis were indiscriminately killing a large number of Palestinians innocent of any aggression toward Palestinians and voicing recognition of the abuses the Israelis had visited upon those of other faiths in the West Bank and the region. Of specific concern in these vocalizations has been the complicity of leader Netanyahu in using the support of leaders of Israeli extremists in order to gain political power. I support this concern of the students and see little hope for the region unless the overreach of all extremists in the region are not eliminated.

I think students are idealistic and see the hypocrisy in the positions taken by many politicians. Whether these politicians see their position as pragmatic or not is not the issue for me. Pragmatism can easily become a way to ignore legitimate complexity that is acknowledged by others. You do not have to condone atrocities to understand that people placed in impossible life circumstances are easier to convince they have no choice other than to resort to violence. My point is that the students recognize that simplifying a complex situation to justify a given response is unlikely to have long-term success.

In reacting to the simplicity of the Republican candidates in reacting to the present world situation, I happened to read an NYTimes piece by opinion writer Thomas Friedman. Thomas Friedman is one of the few authors who generates content I find so valuable that I purchase any book he writes. This interest goes back many years. I have found his commentary on globalization, climate, and education very insightful. Before these topics were integrated in what I think of his “World is Flat” books, I read his books about what I have always called the Middle East and I believe this area of the world and his experiences covering issues related to this region established him during his early career. One can find posts on this blog going back many years based on my reading of one Friedman book or another. 

Friedman’s argument seems to me to encapsulate the position of the students and reflects a more nuanced and I would suggest an informed analysis of the crisis. His position seems captured in his title – To Win the War, Defeat Hamas and Stop Settlements [I think this link should work whether or not you have a digital subscription to the NYTimes]. I think of this argument as suggesting that to solve a problem of this nature you need to assure all participants that you are willing to put yourself in the position of taking the moral high ground. The crisis will not go away until there is a legitimate two-state solution and the extremists in Israel recognize and eliminate their abuse and aggression toward others who have legitimate rights to exist in the region. This is not a matter of determining which side has committed the most egregious acts, this is a matter of suggesting that wrongs exist on both sides and conflict will continue and be defended by one side as long as this is the case.

I think of myself as an education blogger, but I admit I have been preoccupied and less productive in generating content directly relevant to this field for the past two years. I feel a strong commitment to exploring the classroom integration of technology, but I don’t apologize for my recent neglect. I have only so much time and I regard my two-year foray into political activism as the response to a higher calling. Education is a broad topic extending beyond technology and beyond the classroom. What I see as systemic problems in the governance of this country have undercut the core mission of educators and have offered all learners flawed role models on which to base their character and priorities. I hope the future election provides a reversal of recent trends.

The election is now behind us. Whatever your pre-election orientation, it is time to take a hard look at President-elect Obama’s plan. The Obama/Biden web site does a great job of identifying key issues by area.

The top three education challenges include:

Reform No Child Left Behind

Invest in early childhood education

Improve the affordability of a college education

There is a great deal of information on this site. The word “technology” does not appear on this page. Neither does the word “research”. I liked what Sen. Obama said about parental responsibility. As long as the challenge to institutions and teachers extends to parents and students, count me as a supporter.

As I suggested yesterday, the vast digital collection of promises and priorities will hopefully represent a type of contract.

Today, Grand Forks’ Valley Middle School participated in the Mock election.

Students were given individual logins, connected to the polling site, cast votes for national and local contests, completed a survey on important issues, selected priorities issues to be addressed if funds are tight, and selected a miracle president for the next 4 years by selecting among presidents of the past.

I ran across a post on LifeHacker describing an interesting election season technology project. The basic idea was to identify links leading to conservative or liberal sites. Conveniently, the add-on color codes the links (blue, pink, red). 

The colors don’t necessarily represent each blogger’s personal views or biases. It’s a reflection of their linking activity. The algorithm looks at the stories that bloggers linked to before, relative to all other bloggers, and groups them accordingly. People that link to things that only conservatives find interesting will be classified as bright red, even if they are personally moderate or liberal, and vice-versa.

The project is described at Waxy and is based on a three-month collection of link history borrowed from Memorandum (a political web information portal). The technique is interesting to read about and I think I might even understand how it works if I spent a little more time. Think of it this way – the approach defines an orientation by the associations (i.e., links) they keep. You can play with an exploration tool they make available. As I understand it (and from my limited experience using it), the tool calls upon the database they have created and will color code the link if that link is in the database. Don’t expect to explore your local newspaper to determine which direction it leans. The Memorandum site works the best because this was the basis for the project. 

I happen only to have Safari on the machine I was working on when exploring this site. The add-on available from Waxy does not work with Safari, but a link to Daytime Running Lights provided a bookmarklet that does. This post also suggested that the exploration of Google News.

The following screen capture will give you an idea what applying this tool (to Memorandum – the ideal target) generates.

It occurred to me that this tool could be the basis for some interesting classroom activities. The Bionic Teacher must also read LifeHacker because I was not the first with this insight. 

What an opportunity to consider some topics in digital literacy (e.g., media bias). Just for kicks I did a search for Fox News in Google and then applied the tool. Nearly all of the links turned red. “Fair and Balanced” and red. I searched for CNN and found that nearly all links turned blue. NPR – mostly blue. 

Cool!