This past Thursday, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, warning against what he called the “higher education cartel” in an interview with WisPolitics, suggested that we change the college system in the United States so that our students encounter fewer live instructors, and watch more DVDs. Following is a clip from Inside Higher Ed.
…”We’ve got the internet — you have so much information available. Why do you have to keep paying different lecturers to teach the same course? You get one solid lecturer and put it up online and have everybody available to that knowledge for a whole lot cheaper? But that doesn’t play very well to tenured professors in the higher education cartel. So again, we need destructive technology for our higher education system,” he said.
Johnson added, “One of the examples I always used — if you want to teach the Civil War across the country, are you better off having, I don’t know, tens of thousands of history teachers that kind of know the subject, or would you be better off popping in 14 hours of Ken Burns’s Civil War tape and then have those teachers proctor based on that excellent video production already done? You keep duplicating that over all these different subject areas”…
Really, when you think about it, all we’d need is one good math teacher for all the United States, someone to teach english, and a few Ken Burns DVDs, and we’d be all set. Just think of how much money we’d save! Or, better yet, we could just have kids watch those history cartoons made by Mike Huckabee at home. And then we could turn all of our old schools into high-end shooting ranges! Because, really, aren’t the best teachers the ones that don’t take the time to know their students, but instead just shove facts at them?
[note: The above paragraph was mean to be read as satire.]
When I heard about these comments by Johnson, I was immediately reminded of Buzz, the “student-centered learning platform” purchased by our Governor’s Education Achievement Authority (EAA) for use by some 10,000 students in Detroit’s worst performing public schools. This computer platform, we were told, could achieve what teachers hadn’t been able to, saving us thousands, if not millions, of dollars in the process. This, they told us, was going to be the way of the future. Computer-enabled “Student Centered Learning” wouldn’t just give us incredible cost savings, as it would requirer fewer teachers and allow for larger class sizes, but it would also yield superior results. Of course, as we know now, none of that was true. Buzz was a colossal failure, and thousands of Michigan’s most vulnerable students paid the price.
But, in spite of experiences like this, people like Senator Johnson keep right on pushing the same narrative, telling people that teachers are expendable, and that kids can learn more from watching a Ken Burns DVD than they could from an engaging professor, who actually takes the time to know them, challenge them, and motivate them to do better work, think more critically, and grow as human beings.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, had the following to say about Johnson’s comments. “Leave it to someone from a party led by a reality TV star to confuse videotape with the learning experience of a classroom,” she said. “What Ron Johnson doesn’t get is that education happens when teachers can listen to students and engage them to think for themselves.”
For what it’s worth, I disagree about Johnson not “getting it.” I think he probably gets it just fine. I don’t think he’d consider, for even a minute, putting a child of his own in a school where instructors were replaced with DVDs. He’s smarter than that. He knows that there’s more to education that just reading from a script and conveying facts. But this isn’t about his kids, is it? This is about poor kids in cities like Detroit, who, let’s be honest, don’t really matter. This is just about saving as much as we can on their education before they can be pipelined into the prison industrial complex where they can be paid pennies an hour to pick our produce, sew the clothes that we wear, and staff our call centers.
But maybe it’s unfair to judge all such programs based upon our local experience with Buzz. Maybe we should look at all of the other players in the virtual education field, like University of Phoenix and Trump University. Surely they’re doing good things, right? [note: That was sarcasm. Follow the links for context.]
As Senator Johnson mentioned Ken Burns, and as I just broached up the subject of Trump, here’s a little news item you might not have seen. Apparently, not too long ago, Burns spoke to Stanford’s graduating class and had something to say about the Republican nominee for President. Here’s a taste.
…So before you do anything with your well-earned degree, you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process, divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion, the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much maligned but subtle art of governance; who is against lots of things, but doesn’t seem to be for anything, offering only bombastic and contradictory promises, and terrifying Orwellian statements; a person who easily lies, creating an environment where the truth doesn’t seem to matter; who has never demonstrated any interest in anyone or anything but himself and his own enrichment; who insults veterans, threatens a free press, mocks the handicapped, denigrates women, immigrants and all Muslims; a man who took more than a day to remember to disavow a supporter who advocates white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan; an infantile, bullying man who, depending on his mood, is willing to discard old and established alliances, treaties and long-standing relationships. I feel genuine sorrow for the understandably scared and – they feel – powerless people who have flocked to his campaign in the mistaken belief that – as often happens on TV – a wand can be waved and every complicated problem can be solved with the simplest of solutions. They can’t. It is a political Ponzi scheme. And asking this man to assume the highest office in the land would be like asking a newly minted car driver to fly a 747.
As a student of history, I recognize this type. He emerges everywhere and in all eras. We see nurtured in his campaign an incipient proto-fascism, a nativist anti-immigrant Know Nothing-ism, a disrespect for the judiciary, the prospect of women losing authority over their own bodies, African Americans again asked to go to the back of the line, voter suppression gleefully promoted, jingoistic saber rattling, a total lack of historical awareness, a political paranoia that, predictably, points fingers, always making the other wrong. These are all virulent strains that have at times infected us in the past. But they now loom in front of us again – all happening at once. We know from our history books that these are the diseases of ancient and now fallen empires. The sense of commonwealth, of shared sacrifice, of trust, so much a part of American life, is eroding fast, spurred along and amplified by an amoral Internet that permits a lie to circle the globe three times before the truth can get started.
We no longer have the luxury of neutrality or ‘balance,’ or even of bemused disdain. Many of our media institutions have largely failed to expose this charlatan, torn between a nagging responsibility to good journalism and the big ratings a media circus always delivers. In fact, they have given him the abundant airtime he so desperately craves, so much so that it has actually worn down our natural human revulsion to this kind of behavior. Hey, he’s rich; he must be doing something right. He is not. Edward R. Murrow would have exposed this naked emperor months ago. He is an insult to our history. Do not be deceived by his momentary ‘good behavior.’ It is only a spoiled, misbehaving child hoping somehow to still have dessert…
So, yes, by all means, learn from Ken Burns, and destroy these “retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process.” And, of course, fight your asses off to protect our public schools.
Two more things… One, Ron Johnson says he’ll be supporting Trump for President. Two, it looks as though the good people of Wisconsin are turning on him. [Thank you, Wisconsin.] According to recent polls, the very awesome Russ Feingold may kick his ass come November.
