King Midas turned everything he touched to gold. Bureaucrat busybodies turn everything they touch into a pile of steamy, fragrant cowshit.
An example. The most recent craze in higher ed is “sustainability.” Nobody knows what it is but there is a sort of a game we (meaning, institutions of higher learning) are obligated to play. In the game, each school plays for points. You accumulate points by forcing as many educators as possible to mention the word “sustainability” (in any context) on their syllabi, by making professors prove that every class they teach is “a living laboratory,” and demonstrating that 10% of all class time goes to teaching students about sustainability. I’m sure that will be super easy to do in my Spanish 101 class. And obviously, my graduate course on the Short Form will make us a bunch of points. Shorter means more sustainable, right?
Clarissa's Blog 
This is why I don’t like the idea of standarization of the curriculum because in practice it always means placing bureaucratic checkboxes over the judgement of teachers and administrators (and students for that matter).
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And once again, what bugs me the most is that the moment we get this directive to earn points by mentioning sustainability, nobody ever questions it. Everybody just jumps to attention and starts doing these stupid things. I’m starting to wonder whether the folks in Springfield (our state capital) are just placing bets on how high they can make us jump because it’s so fun to watch.
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This is why I don’t like the idea of standarization of the curriculum because in practice it always means placing bureaucratic checkboxes over the judgement of teachers and administrators (and students for that matter).
Quite true, cliff arroyo. It also means dramatically watering down courses so that even the most incompetent instructor can teach them on the same level as everyone else.
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“It also means dramatically watering down courses so that even the most incompetent instructor can teach them on the same level as everyone else”
Yes! Standardization, in actual practice, pretty much always means “regulating things so much that an unqualified person won’t be a total failure if they follow the protocols”.
Again… not to mention but if the nation state is history (which it unfortunately probably is) then taxpayer funded education will be too and the trend in education will be the same as arts in the middle ages – patronage (again, where higher education seems to have been heading over the last 30 years or so).
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“not to mention”
should be
“not to belabor the obvious”
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WordPress doesn’t give me the opportunity to allow people to edit their own comments, unfortunately. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.
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I know! For non-online classes, students must sit in the classroom and interact. This makes the room a “living laboratory” of viruses and bacteria. Exposing students to more bacteria and viruses means they get sick, and getting sick means that about ten percent of the time they are coughing or sneezing or something. Since this occurs in the classroom, it counts as instructional time. And as the number of students who get over their colds and viruses grows, the more hardy the population. So by teaching in the classroom, you’re directly contributing to the greater health of the student body. And people will keep getting sick, so that makes the whole system sustainable!
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Wow. You are GOOD. I see a great future in college administration for you. 🙂 🙂
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I would suck as an administrator. I’d probably see that and save all the professors the trouble by making up a sarcastic paragraph like that to paste into their syllabi. I would fight ridiculous policies through sarcasm and extreme literalism. All the other administrators would hate me for my sarcastic yet logical arguments during meetings, when I spoke at all. My goal would be to use shame and humor to make the current policy-makers look ridiculous. I’ll give cookies to the good policy-makers and no cookies to the bad policy-makers. And then some other administrator would probably fire me because they are a bad policy-maker and think my ideas don’t line up with “the good of the college.” Because I’d actually consult professors and students and give them a representative voice and whatnot.
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“I would fight ridiculous policies through sarcasm and extreme literalism. All the other administrators would hate me for my sarcastic yet logical arguments during meetings, when I spoke at all. My goal would be to use shame and humor to make the current policy-makers look ridiculous. I’ll give cookies to the good policy-makers and no cookies to the bad policy-makers.”
– I’d hire you today. 🙂
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You forgot to work something in about coral reefs accreting from residual chalk dust that the janitors miss. This chalk dust interacts with the microbes in the air forming a “living laboratory” of allergens and dust motes. The dust motes count as organic animations that enhance lectures in addition to the PowerPoint, forming a wonderland of stimulation for visual learners’ growing brains. Since there is no getting rid of dust or air currents or chalk dust, this is sustainable! The motes circulate down to the ocean floor and interact with the organisms living around barrier reefs. Otherwise, A+!
[Bonus: Work in something about Jesus and loaves and fish to teach students about algebra and then start going on about organic compound reactions to add a multidisciplinary flavor to earn points about sustainability].
😛
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In my university’s context, “sustainability” means “We want all of the students who care about the environment to get really excited about composting and recycling and gardening, so that they’ll ignore or forget that the university administration is investing in or accepting donations from GoldCorp and the Tar Sands”.
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At our university, the lights in the offices are on full blast 24/7 all year long. I am extremely curious as to how I can teach students about sustainability when we are wasting electricity in such an outlandish manner. The endless requests to let us control the lights in our own offices have gone unanswered.
Sustainability, my ass.
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Sustainability and its even more evil twin: budget cuts.
What bugs me: active learning and digital humanities.
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Just take the steaming fragrant cowshit out back to compost, then after it has cooled off and fermented some, turn it under the soil surrounding your recently installed mimosa’s rootball – give it a little treat to entice those roots out of the canvas bag!
As for standardization of curriculum, I think that there should be enough standardization so that students can solve ordinary math problems, understand the big bang theory and theory of biological evolution (even if they choose to believe young earth creationism), be able to identify the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights and f understand
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Oopsie. should read….”Bill of Rights and other amendments, and should understand the concept of tripartite government.” and so on – some of the basic general information adult citizens should possess.
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I recently discovered how many adults in the US have no idea what the different branches of government do. The people I talked to kept insisting that the president is the legislative branch. It got to the point where I started yelling “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” And you know what? Nobody knew what the fuck it was that I was quoting.
I love you, Americans, but seriously?
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“WordPress doesn’t give me the opportunity to allow people to edit their own comments, unfortunately”
I could just edit things before I hit “post comment” but….
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You’ll like this one.
“The elimination of 50 faculty is effectively a course correction for last spring, when USM’s former president rescinded the individual layoffs of 12 faculty members. Indeed, who needs those pesky professors with their incessant whining about “transparency,” “shared governance” and “responsibility to students”? Administration is a powerful, majestic stallion annoyed at every turn by these gadflies. Eliminating all faculty would solve a problem that has plagued every administration.”
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/11/university-of-southern-maine-becomes-administration-of-southern-maine-as-students-protest-faculty-firings.html
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Thank you for the great link. The following part just rocks:
So true! Let’s just get rid of the annoying teachers and pesky students and leave the administration alone to bloat unconstrained. And the faculty +students can just go away and be happily together under a tree somewhere, finally free of the monkey on our backs.
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