Education: Reflections on Teaching

After the American Century

Today I begin teaching again. The first class I ever taught was at the University of Minnesota, in the fall of 1969. I was a half time instructor in composition (freshman English), and I did not even have my MA degree yet. But there were 200 sections of freshman composition to be staffed, and based on my first year of graduate work I was deemed qualified. 

Now 43 years have rushed by, and I have taught students at many universities, and expanded the range of my (in)competence to a much wider range of courses than composition (which I taught until 1974, when my PhD was completed.) 

I have spent literally thousands of hours in classrooms. Here are some of the things I have learned about teaching.

(1) Every class has its own personality, which develops quickly, certainly within the first three or four meetings. The teacher has some influence on how this collective personality emerges, but less than one might think. An experienced teacher knows what sort of personality a class has quite quickly.

(2) Some classes are dynamic and lively and almost seem to teach themselves. Another class, being taught precisely the same materials by the same teacher in the same semester, is slow and dull and must be dragged along. The students make (or fail to make) the "personality" of the class, but they do not understand this. They think the experience of being together is largely the result of the teacher's personality. The teacher is less central than they realize.

(3) Humor is quite important in the classroom. If students laugh at something I or another student says, they relax and they feel more comfortable. They are sharing a perspective and have become more cohesive. More rarely, and unfortunately, humor can also be a weapon in which a student or group of students is made the butt of jokes. This divides the class in ways that are hard to heal.

(4) As part of the class "personality" students quickly select where and with whom they want to sit. After a very few meetings they almost always go to the same places. If the teacher wants to get them to discuss things, it is a good idea to arrange the chairs to face one another, if a seminar table arrangement does not already do that. It is also a good idea, once in a while, to break up the established micro-groups as part of doing group work.

(5) Students can more easily be passive than active parts of a class. They rather easily fall into the role of observers who feel no responsibility for taking part in discussion. The passive students learn less, because they have not taken a position on a subject and defended it. They are just skating on the surface and are not coming to grips with questions, as they must when speaking. (More recently, those who go on the WEB during class might as well be seeing the class on a television with the sound turned off.)

(6) Student attention spans are limited. Few are willing or able to give their undivided attention to a lecture for an entire hour. A class works better if the teacher shifts activities more often than that.  One needs short periods of lecture, discussion, group work, powerpoint, etc.

(7) Brief conversations during class breaks (or during chance encounters) are quite useful and important. Frequently. there are students who say little during class who are quite willing to talk, one to one, while getting a coffee or stretching their legs in the hall. The Danish practice of having a short break each hour opens the possibility for such informal contacts. During such moments I often find out more regarding whether a student likes or dislikes a reading (and why) than I do during class.

(8) Students need (and like) quite different kinds of teachers. I have colleagues that can reach certain students far better than I can, and I can get on the wave-length of others better than they can. There is no one "ideal" sort of teacher, and certainly no "one best way" to do this job. What works brilliantly for another teacher will flop miserably for me, and the reverse. Ideally, a teaching staff should have considerable variety, and every student will find at least one teacher who seems especially well-suited to them.

(9) Much of what students learn is unintended. The idea that one can lay out a lesson plan and march them through a program is very nice as a theory, but often the student strays off the line of march and reads things not assigned but only mentioned or discovered independently. Because every student comes into class with a much different set of ideas and expectations, they also leave having absorbed much different "lessons."

(10) Often the best hours of teaching deviate quite a bit from the outline I had expected to cover. On those days, perhaps more than others, I was able to engage the students, and their energies and questions moved us in unexpected directions. Too much of this might be a bad thing, but in my experience the problem is not too much such engagement but too little. 

(11) The size of a class is crucial to success. A very small class (say three or four students) is actually quite hard to teach, as it usually lacks the critical mass necessary for dynamism and discussion. But beyond a certain point, somewhere around 25 students, a class becomes less talkative and more passive. This is partly due to shyness, partly due to the time constraints. When I have a class of 50 students for 45 minutes,  if they all speak for an equal length of time each will have less than 60 seconds. That does not permit much dialogue. The larger the class, the more likely it becomes mostly a lecture. This is easier for me, actually, than stimulating and guiding a discussion, but I am convinced the students learn less from lectures, for the most part, my brilliant lectures notwithstanding.

(12) Students do vary from one nation to another, but not as much as one might think or in the ways that might seem obvious. I have taught in the US, Spain, Britain, Holland, and Denmark, and taught guest classes in Norway, Germany, Portugal, Italy, and that is enough of this list already.  But this is a vast subject, so let it wait for another day.

Election 2012: Bland Candidates but Vital Issues

After the American Century

There was a New Yorker cartoon some months ago showing a lawn sign with a caption that ran, as I now recall, "Well, OK, its ROMNEY." It captured the faint enthusiasm for Romney among Republicans, and also suggested his lack of affect, the pasteboard quality of his persona. His wife has tried to breath life into his stiff frame in her speech at the Republican Convention, but can his persona really be changed this late in the campaign?

We have entered a strange political twilight zone where apparently only bland politicians can stand for a year or even longer the overexposure of 24/7 media attention. A strong personality apparently is too much to take these days, and a man with weak convictions who flip flops on many issues and who seems to have no large emotions becomes the nominee. (Instead, the VP nominee, who arrives on the scene in the closing months, has the job of being colorful, dynamic, opinionated.) Imagine Romney laughing with his whole body, a real belly laugh. Or try to imagine him really sympathetic to a poor person. Imagine him telling a story so well that it becomes fascinating. Imagine him without his handlers speaking freely through an open microphone without making a blunder. Hard to do.

By the same token, the 2012 Obama seems more buttoned down and less inspirational than 2008 Obama. His pragmatism and unflappability have been assets in the day-to-day grind of being president, but the lofty rhetoric seems largely to have deserted him. He has more empathy than Romney, but that is not saying much. 

Ideally, candidates should inspire an election debate that focuses soberly on the issues. But instead, we are being subjected to a massive amount of advertising and spin. It is quite possible that this election will be one of the most important in decades, but it may be decided by negative advertising and impression management.

The debates are one of the few times where the voters get a glimpse of these two men in a (somewhat) unscripted discussion. In the second debate, they took off the gloves and had some pointed exchanges. Both were articulate and well prepared. They were by no means bland that night. Their encounter helped to underline the choices the United States must make during the next four years, choices that will have an impact much further down the road.

Will the country return to taxation high enough to pay its debts, or will it follow the Republican program of un-financed tax cuts?

Will the US really regulate banking or not? Right now it does, but Romney would roll that back.

Will the US keep the new health program created by the Obama Administration, or will Republicans dismantle it?

Will the country commit to green energy or remain locked in the carbon fuel economy, and fall further behind the curve and let other economies reap the benefits of being first movers?

Will the US again invest in education or will it fall behind the best systems in Asia and Europe? Already the US is behind in public schools, as measured by the PISA tests, but the challenge is beginning to come at the university level, too.

Will the US definitely reject the use of torture, rendition, and imprisonment without trial, which were routinely denounced under Bush but have become more "normal" under Obama?

These are vital choices that will determine whether the US remains competitive and strong in this new century. Unfortunately, Americans do not seem entirely to realize the situation, and they are being encouraged to think that the election is about such issues as Obama's birth certificate, gay marriage, teaching evolution, immigration, and the supposed "socialism" of the Democratic Party.

What Republicans are (not) Saying at their Convention

After the American Century

By their words ye shall know them. What words have the Republicans been using so far in their Convention? Paying no attention for the moment to the arguments, what are the dominant concerns, the focal points, based on the words alone?  Based on the Transcripts from the Federal News Service, the New York Times has compiled a data base, an interactive one, so we can find out what they are talking about, and also what they are ignoring.

Start with what they are avoiding. There has not been a single reference to the Euro, which might come up, given the difficulties of many European economies. But for the Republicans, the rest of the world does not seem to exist. There have been no references at all to Canada, Britain, France, Russia, China, or Europe, though there was a single reference to Germany.  The word "foreign" has turned just three times, as has "Mexico."

What other topics are Republicans avoiding?
Terror 0
bin Laden 0
Homeland security 0
Mass destruction 0
George Bush 0
Richard Nixon 0
Gerald Ford 0
Tea Party 0
Sarah Palin 0 (as in "Sarah Palin was our VP candidate last time.")
Abortion 0
Gay 0
Homosexual 0
Warming 0 (as in global warming)
Solar 0  (as in "solar energy")
Windmill 0
Detroit 0 (as in "Obama bailed out the Detroit auto industry.")
NASA 0 (as in "NASA is in Florida.")
Lobby 0
Special interest 0
Bubble 0   (as in "Real estate bubble.")
Evolution 0 (as in "The theory of . . . ")

Fear  1
9/11  1
Mormon 1 (as in "Romney is a Bishop in the Mormon Church.")
Social security 1 (as in "We need to privatize social security."
weapon/weapons 1  (as in "weapons of Mass Destruction")
Lincoln 1  (as in "Lincoln's generals invaded the South.")

Climate 2   (as in climate change, etc.)
Cuba 2  (as in "There are many Cuban-American voters in Florida.")
Iraq 3  (as in, "George Bush invaded Iraq.")

There are the usual patriotic words.
America 189
American  111
Country 90
Nation 47

Most of the focus has been on the economy. 
Work  142
Business 136
Jobs 130
Success 65
Economy 58
Note however:  
Banker 0
Bank 0
Bonus 0
Bankrupt 1
Foreclosure 2

A cluster of terms concerns family life
Families 81
Children 53
Life 33  (as in "right to life")
Father 12

There is some focus on religion, usually in a vague way
God  62
Faith 12

A cluster of terms deal with the future, hope, and the like:
American Dream  36
Hope 24
Change 28
Opportunity 27
Promise 7

What leaders do Republicans mention, other than Romney, Ryan and Obama?
Reagan 5
Clinton 2  (either Bill or Hillary)
Kennedy 2
Kissinger 0
Gingrich 0  (as in "Gingrich led the opposition."
Eisenhower 0
Roosevelt 0
Goldwater 0

So far, hapless John McCain, the GOP standard bearer in 2008, has not been named even once.

If corporatations are people, then hostile takeovers are corporate rape

After the American Century

The Republican syllogism

1. Corporations are people
Mitt Romney famously said that "corporations are people, my friend," a view common among businessmen and lawyers. This view is enshrined in American law, and it means that corporations can enjoy all the rights that the American Constitution grants to individuals.

2. Abortion is wrong in all its forms
Republicans also have a plank in their party platform (approved at their Convention) that opposes abortion, without noting any exceptions. This platform therefore applies to corporations.

3. Corporate abortion should therefore be outlawed.

The syllogism applied to the economy

1. Hostile takeovers are corporate rape. But if they produce offspring (profits, new companies, assets), then the rape was legitimate, as a corporation that resisted takeover would not be fertile.

2. Divisions sold off after a hostile takeover have a right to life, for they are people too.

3. A corporate takeover of Medicare or Social Security, if approved by a Republican Congress, would not be a hostile takeover or a corporate rape but a profitable arranged marriage.

4.  Government regulation of any market, like contraception, is a violation of nature. It strangles economic growth, and is therefore a form of corporate birth control and in many cases corporate abortion. Regulation leads to economic murder.

Paul Ryan May Hurt Romney's Electoral Vote

After the American Century

Updates added the day after the election in this color.

A VP nominee must bring more than competence and an ideological profile to the ticket. He or she is also from somewhere, usually a place there the presidential candidate needs help. John Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson, who brought with him the considerable prize of the Texas electoral votes, as well as credibility in the rest of the South. 

When Romney chooses Ryan, he is embracing not just an ideology, but also reaching out to a region, in this case the upper middle west. Wisconsin voted for Obama last time, but is a swing state this time around. Ryan, the Republicans are calculating, ought to be able to bring Wisconsin into their voting column. Not only that, but Ryan looks and sounds familiar to voters in the crucial swing state of Ohio. Romney lost Wisconsin.

The choice of Ryan has some clear risks, however.

(1) He wants to privatize the social security pension system and medical care as much as possible. This might be attractive to some younger voters, but for those who are now retired or anywhere near retirement, it is anathema. They have paid into the current system, and they will not like the idea. In electoral terms, this will hurt Romney in the largest swing state, Florida, which has a disproportionate number of pensioners.  Romney lost Florida

(2) Ryan is militantly against abortion. Romney already had trouble attracting women voters, and partnered with Ryan he risks scaring many moderate women away.  This will hurt the Republicans most among urban and well-educated voters. Romney did not do well with educated voters.

(3) Ryan wants to cut back severely on federal employment. This will alienate those who are on the US payroll, notably in northern Virginia, a swing state that Romney really needs to win. Romney lost Virginia, and he did so in northern Virginia.

(4) Ryan and Romney together are Catholic and Mormon. This may not appeal to Bible-Belt protestants. Part of the Republican base is happy Ryan was chosen, but does this apply to the fundamentalists and the evangelicals? Romney and Ryan roughly split the Catholic vote with Obama and Biden.

(5) This ticket will not do well with Hispanic voters. The heated Republican debates about how hard to punish illegal immigrants had already taken their toll. I doubt Ryan will appeal much to this, the largest of American minority groups, because he voted to build the fence along the Mexican border and he is on record as being against amnesty for illegal immigrants. Since Hispanic voters can be found throughout the country, and not just in the Southwest, this could hurt Romney in many close races, Romney got less than 30% of the Hispanic vote.

On the whole, choosing Ryan was a bold, but perhaps dangerous choice. It polarizes the election, and provides a clear choice in ideological terms. Despite an enormous war chest of more than $1 billion, Romney certainly could lost the election. Romney lost.

But if Ryan can deliver Wisconsin and Ohio. . .
Romney both of these states. Ryan added nothing to the ticket in electoral terms.

Technology: A European Patent Office, 222 Years Later than the US

After the American Century

The first patent issued by the US government was approved July 31, 1790. The document was signed by George Washington himself. In the early years one of Thomas Jefferson's duties as a member of the cabinet, was to supervise the patent process. It soon became too great a burden and people had to be hired to do this work full time.

The first US patent, signed by George Washington in 1790

That first patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins for a process for making potash and pearl ashes to be used in fertilizer.For a largely agricultural nation, this was an appropriate beginning.

Since then, more than six million patents have been issued in the United States, and each of them has enjoyed the protection of federal law in all of the individual states. In contrast, Europe has long struggled to reach the place where the United States was in 1790. Patents are more costly and much harder to defend in Europe, even today, because of the multitude of national jurisdictions, varying regulations, different languages, and complex procedures. 

During the last year, the EU finally drew up an agreement that will help solve some of these problems, by establishing a more coherent system. The negotiations have lasted 40 years. At the end of June, the three biggest economies in their usual squabbling way carved up the court into three parts, with the pharmaceutical patents to be issued from London, the mechanical ones from Munich, and all the rest from Paris.

This division is silly, and assumes an absurdly neat division of intellectual property with no fuzzy boundaries, but it is evidently the best the EU can do. The new system will create specializations and potential differences between the three sites. Law firms will need to have offices in all three cities if they want to offer full service to corporate customers. In short, the result will not be as efficient or as inexpensive as it might have been with a single location.

Still, it is an improvement. For the first time, inventors in many European nations can get just one patent that protects their discoveries in all the other member states. One would have thought such a clearly good idea would have been part of the original EU treaty, or at the very least that it would not have taken 40 years to negotiate. 

So, the EU is still not where the US was in 1790, when all patents were issued from one office. But it is a big step in the right direction. It almost looks like the EU wants to be competitive.

Negative Ads Dominate Campaign, Obscuring the real issues

After the American Century

Last week in Virginia, just one week, more than 4,000 negative campaign ads were on radio and television. They came from both the Obama and Romney campaigns. Each clearly has decided that they have the best chance to win if they can undermine their opponent.  But the result of such campaigning is that voters lose respect for the political process and do not want to see or hear the advertisements. More and more people become convinced that the candidates are exaggerating or lying. Indeed, some people  get disgusted and will not vote at all. The candidates know they are driving some voters away, but nevertheless continue their negative advertising. 

There are basically two kinds of negative advertising. The first stays focused on an opponent's political activities, particularly how he or she voted, their relationship to special interests, and any evidence of flip-flopping on important issues.  The second makes personal attacks (veiled or otherwise), suggesting that the candidate is not a good person. So far, we have mostly the former, but there are hints of the less acceptable advertisements, and these are more likely was we come closer election day.

One would think that after four years a president's image would not easily be challenged, though that is what Romney is trying to do. Surely most voters have formed an opinion about a sitting president, but apparently Romney thinks he can convince people that Obama is not a good American - this apparently being the line of attack in some of the ads. Such attacks seem just plain stupid to me. These two men differ in their views, but I do not think either one of them is insufficiently American.

It is time to have a real debate about issues - accompanied by detailed policy proposals. Where do these candidates stand on the following issues?

-  Is it possible to institute some form of gun control, to protect the public from massacres like the recent one in Colorado?

- Should the US continue to use killer drone planes in Pakistan and other countries? If so, what are the limits for using such weapons?

- Do women have the right to an abortion? (An issue especially important given that several Supreme Court positions are likely to open up due to retirement during the next four years.)

- Are banks now sufficiently regulated, or does the new scandal (centered in Britain) suggest tighter controls are needed to prevent them from defrauding the public?

- Should the Bush II tax reductions for wealthy people end or not?

- How should the United States finance university education? Its price tag has increased more rapidly than wages during the last thirty years, and the nation risks becoming uncompetitive with countries where tuition is low or even non-existent.,

- What is the best foreign policy for the future, as the US economy declines in relative size compared to the world economy as a whole?

- To what extent, and how, is the US going to pay off its enormous national debt?

- As evidence accumulates that global warming (and Greenland's melting) are very real, what is the US going to do to reduce its contribution CO2 emissions?

This is only a partial list of important issues. Negative advertising focusing on individuals will not address them. The voters deserve better.

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The Offshore Candidate: Romney and the Cayman Islands

After the American Century

Perhaps Romney should run for president of the Cayman Islands. He has millions of dollars invested there. How many millions we cannot know because he refuses to release his financial records. Does he tithe more money each year to the Mormon Church than he pays to the US government in taxes? Again, we have no idea. 

Candidates usually are open about their taxes, because they want to convince the public that they have nothing to hide. Later on, if elected, they may become less open, as a measure of secrecy comes with high office.  But it disturbs me that Romney is secretive and evasive about his wealth.

What do we know at this point?

1. Romney has kept large sums of money in off-shore accounts, including Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.

2. Bain Capital, that Romney long worked for and that still is paying him, has 138 investment funds organized in the Cayman Islands, where Romney also has millions of dollars, how much we do not know, much of it in 12 of these Bain investments.

3. Money deposited in the Cayman Islands, or invested in funds located there, avoids US taxation. This is apparently legal, but it is not the behavior voters expect of a president.

4. Romney has released only his 2010 tax return, and even that raises questions. In contrast, all recent Republican candidates have released a plethora of information, including all recent tax returns.

5. Romney claims to have deposited much of his wealth in blind trusts, either in his name or his wife's name. But it turns out one of these "blind" trusts has invested in their son's company, and the trust itself is run by one of Romney's close friends. How blind is that?

What do we (know that we do) not know about Romney's finances?

1. The full extent of his fortune, rumored to be about $250 million.

2. The extent of his wife's fortune - much of it transferred from Romney to her.

3. Romney's annual income and the tax rate he has been paying, apparently about 15%, which is a much lower rate than that of the middle class.

4. Any financial  relationships between Romney and the Mormon Church, for which he served as a missionary and is now a Bishop. Does he tithe 10% of his income to the Mormon Church, which it asks of all its members?  Does Bishop Romney pay more money each year to the Mormon Church than to the US government in taxes? We have no way of knowing. Without financial disclosure, we cannot judge Romney's priorities. Does he put is money where his mouth is?

5. To what extent has Romney's wealth increased due to the illegal interest rate-fixing scam that is now coming to light? Mr. Diamond, who was running Barclay's Bank and has had to resign in disgrace, has organized contributions to the Romney campaign, and it seems there may be complex financial ties between some of the banks who illegally manipulated loan rates, Bain Capital, and Romney. Again, full disclosure would clear this up.

Paul Krugman put the larger question this way; "Has there ever before been a major presidential candidate who had a multimillion-dollar Swiss bank account, plus tens of millions invested in the Cayman Islands, famed as a tax haven?" Is an extremely rich man who takes millions of dollars out of the country to avoid taxes the sort of fellow we want running the federal budget, appointing Supreme Court justices, and deciding who ought to be on the Federal Reserve Board? 

Post-Modern Waiting Room

After the American Century

I am sitting in a new emergency room, where I have taken my mother-in-law, because she has broken her thumb working in the garden. She insisted that she could cut the hedge while smoking a cigar at the same time, but fell over a bush. I did not see it, as I was up on a ladder with my back to her. That is another story, not to be told here. But for almost four hours I have been sitting in this curious public space, where many ailing people come through, all of them ambulatory. Those who are more seriously injured or ill come in by ambulance and by-pass this room. 

In fact, if I did not know what this place was, I might have difficulty deciding what it is.