Hildegarde

I’d like to start out here by saying that I was never not talking to any of you.  I was just not talking.

But, some notes on the discussion thus far:

1) In terms of fundamental differences in intellectual ability by race, what may or may not be observable at, say, MIT or Caltech, is largely irrelevant in the places I teach.

In fact, one of the constant frustrations of teaching remedial students in classes like mine is the fact that minority students are quite often significantly brighter than the white students who outperform them.

The achievement gap is not being caused, on this level, by any innate differences in intellectual ability.

It is being caused by the fact that, when students are not taught thinks like standard English usage and a wide range of general knowledge at school, then those students whose families and who pass it on will automatically do better than those students whose families do not have the same background and resources.

That’s why that principle–I wish I could find the reference, but at the moment I’m coming up blank–at a high school offering AP classes tried to lay down a rule that students could not bring AP work home, or ask their parents about their assignments.   After all, some students might have parents better able to help than others, and resources in the home (like computer access and encyclopedias) not available to others–and that wasn’t “fair.”

2) One of the things that is exacerbating all of this is our increasing reliance on a single conduit to employment and opportunity.

No matter who you are or what you want to do, the assumption is that you are “qualified” for the job only if you have the right academic paper, and that somebody with such academic paper is automatically “better qualified” than somebody without.

My brother got his first ever job–at fifteen, as a mechanic–from a guy who had watched him work on cars since he was ten.  He was still in high school and had no formal training in automechanics–and he never would.  He was, however, a near genius with automobiles.

Today, the chances are good that that man would not be able to give my brother that job, and especially not be able to give it to him if there were competing applicants with less talent but more academic credentials.

The employer would have to prove that he was not discriminating in any way when he hired my brother over a “more qualified” somebody else with academic credentials.  “I’ve watched this kid for three years and he’s the God of getting clunkers back on the road” isn’t going to cut it if the EEOC or a lawsuit comes calling.

And yet the simple reality is that there is nothing about being an auto mechanic that requires an academic degree, or even an academic credential.  And that’s true of a lot of other things.

Every year, kids with athletic talent that rivals anything you see in the pros are condemned to lives on the streets make the grades to get into a college–why, for heaven’s sake?  Does it really require academic training to play football?  Or basketball?  Or hockey?

And yes, I know that most pro ball players have short careers and end up broke–but isn’t it at least arguable that that it is preferable to give them the shot and see what they make of it than just telling them, no, you can’t do history papers, you just have to rot?

Credentials do sometimes–and in some fields–indicate that you know something, but far too often they represent nothing but certification that this kid could sit still and follow directions while being bored out of his skull for two to four years.

A lot of times these days, it doesn’t even mean that.  I reference Judy and grade inflation.

3) I’ll stick to “the Feds are going ballistic.”   They’re just not going ballistic over the things Robert wants them to go ballistic over, and they’re the wrong Feds to be concerned with those things.

A lot of this will make more sense if you look at what the Department of Education Bureaucrats actually want, which is not educated Americans but Congress off their backs.

Congresspeople are looking at skyrocketing costs for all those college students, at federally guaranteed student loans with default rates in free fall, and with constituents and supporters who want to know what we’re going to do about all this money.

They then light on a fact that is true enough, but doesn’t mean what they think it means.

Students who complete their college educations are more likely to repay their student loans than students who do not.

Obviously, they think, the answer is to make sure more students complete their educations.

They begin demanding that more students complete their college educations.  The Department of Education hands down regulations requiring colleges and universities show that they are really trying, very hard, to keep kids in school until they graduate.

This results in knew bureaucratic departments of things called “the office for student success” and “the learning center” and whatever.  These chiefly monitor student progress, haul students in for pep talks or required tutoring sessions, and all the other things that are largely beside the point.

Student retention rates do not rise much, because the efforts being made are irrelevant to the  problems causing the low retention rates.

A few years go by and Congress is yet again made aware that retention rates are really low and that the debt is getting even bigger and tuition rates are rising into the stratosphere (you’ve got to pay for all those extra administrators somehow) and that students who don’t graduate are more likely to default on their loans than students who do.

So Congress starts leaning on the Department of Education, and the Department of Education begins leaning on the colleges and universities and also on the states, which of course run large public university systems.

The states and the universities then turn around and say–you’d damned well retain more students, or the Feds are going to take their money away.

This is, in fact, everybody in the system going ballistic.  They’re just not going ballistic about educating students.

Their problem, as they see it, is not that students aren’t being educated.  They don’t care a damn whether students are being educated or not.

Their problem, as they see it, is that their access to Federal money will be reduced or eliminated if they don’t produce a specific result:  more students graduating.

Since we live in a world where we simply assume that if a credential is conferred it means that the student upon whom it is conferred has a certain set of knowledge and skills, forcing the kids through by grade inflation or the complete collapse of standards is just fine. 

Of course, a few years down the line we will reach a point where the lack of skills and knowledge can no longer be ignored,

But, hey.  That’s a few years down the line.

Remember:  the first job of any bureaucracy is to keep the institution functioning, even if that means harming or completely destroying the purpose for which the institution was founded.

4) The bottom line is that students are not being educated because nobody is trying to educate them, except a few of the teachers on the ground who are attempting to do the impossible.

The system is a gigantic scam to transfer wealth from largely poorer students to largely more wealthy administrators, and that is true of all parts of the system: publicly funded, nonprofit and for profit. 

The flap about how awful the for-profit universities are and how they produce too many students with “worthless degrees” is a smokescreen.

Students are graduating with degrees just as worthless from every state college system in the country.

5) Professionals are still professionals when they are required to show that their work does what they say it does.  But professionals are NOT professionals when somebody else controls the hours they work or the organization of the content of what they do.

Public school teachers are not professionals because their hours of employment are set by others, their teaching is often controlled by lesson plans and other dictats set down by others, etc.

On this level, college teaching is also rapidly losing its status as a profession.