Sitting ducks

Dear Parents of College Age Students
I notice there is an entire growth industry devoted to mining your fears about your college age children. Please be aware that You are Being Exploited. Your children will succeed or fail depending on your previous experience with them. Other than warning them that you will not be please if they screw up their first semester, leave them alone. The idea of university is Separation--not Lifelong dependence. If they get depressed, or sick, make sure they contact Student Health. Have them talk to their professors if they are screwing up. The idea is to get them to stand on their own two feet--not to have you as props. Freshman year should hurt. Separation should occur. All the rest is exploitation of you as parents.

Talking about music

Writing about music is as futile as writing about sex. Talking about music, however is just fine. Dreaming about talking about music is weird, but powerful. Last night that's exactly what I did. I was talking my way out of getting fired from my teaching job at Seneca, when I gave the lecture of my life. About music. Only music, I said, allows people to escape from stereotype and tell their real stories, and feelings. In my dream I said much more, comparing music to other forms of popular culture where stereotypes rule--illusions that we buy into of ER rooms going to any extreme to help us, and treat us like humans, ditto for CSI (as we learned from the recent kidnapping where no one investigated the sex offender who did it. Jesus, don't they know that step one is to find out what sex offenders are living in the area). But what really grabbed my audience in the dream is when I broke into song. Even my cruel boss had tears in her eyes. Wish I could remember the song. Some astute readers are going to point out how stereotypical many of today's singers and acts are. I'm not advocating anything about the great pop music machine. It squeezes women into stereotype. Some escape, and they are worth talking about.

Manufacturing Kids

The word is that Nadia Suleman has sold her 14 kids for $250 day each to reality tv. Surely, this travesty of child production should inspire a global movement for children's rights. We didn't like the Nazi's genetic engineering--why should anyone be allowed to manufacture children for profit? We close down puppy mills, but allow baby factories? Suleman's freedom must end where her childrens' begins. But children, like American women before the so-called modern age, still have no rights and are property of sick, twisted parents. We even encourage this as entertainment. Remember Michael Jackson.

On Tories and Toronto

I would like to think that the Prime Minister of Canada would ensure his cabinet govern for the good of all Canadians. Instead, the message from Ottawa to Toronto is
"Let them drive cars".
Stephen Harper sees no political advantage to funding streetcars for the city, so to hell with Toronto. Perhaps we should converge on Ottawa and protest our 2nd class citizenship. Harper, Harris and Mulroney seem cut from the same cloth, which has distinct odour of skunk. Shame on them, and shame on Michael Ignatieff for allowing this abuse of power to continue.

Teaching from real books.

'Whom are you?' he asked, for he had attended business college.

George Ade, "The Steel Box", 1898
US dramatist & humorist (1866 - 1944)

I teach at a business college, but my students are not stupid or illiterate. They are open to new ideas. They want to buy real books. They read real books.
It is unfortunate that real book publishers have abdicated so much of the postsecondary market to textbooks.
It is unfortunate that so many professors have abdicated their teaching to textbooks.
Most academics can't write jargon free prose. Few students want to waste their time reading anything that has to be translated from academic jargon to English.
The most important course I took at university while en route to an honours history degree was the History of Economic Thought. In that course I learned to translate economic jargon into English. I learned how language disguises manipulation. I didn't learn this from an economics text, but from a treasure of a book by Joan Robinson on the history of (English) free trade.
In later years, I earned a living translating business writing into trade book language: Strategic Planning, Tax Planning, Investment Strategies. I soon learned that 5 year strategic plans are inherently dysfunctional for any business involving anything except widgets. Colleges do not have to change editions of books every five years or less. We don't have to update our WebCT because business does. The Business Model does not work in education. Instead of partnerships with business, colleges and universities should partner with real book publishers and any cultural "industry" that is not really an industry, but is stuck with that label.
(to be continued)

Educational Fast Food

The new buzz is how schools need to get with the technology. Dreck, shit, here we go again. Educational administrators are either naive or dukes of deception. If we adopt the models the computer consultants are proposing, we are condemning generations of students to educational junk food. Textbooks are bad enough, with their ready made convenience. Now we are buying the idea that everything you need to read can be read online. Because so much of our culture is transmitted orally, through stories, songs, radio, we are in danger of destroying live education. One of my students told me that her generation is so tv and computer based that they don't even think of listening to radio. Now I realize that I need to "teach" radio listening.

Illusions of Freedom

Reading about the tribute to Pete Seeger, I am full of schadenfreude. Of course his life and work should be celebrated, and the energy from the concert may energize us to carry on the struggle. Or will it seduce us into a premature illusion of freedom and victory that will excuse us from the fight? We who believe in freedom cannot rest. Only 15,000 people could afford the fare to the concert. I hope they all consider that their call to ensure that the next concert should be bigger and freer than Woodstock.