A is For Atrocious

Professor J, 


Hedge's chapter on education was dealing exclusively with issues he sees at the university level. Yet much of what he mentions is a problem all the way through the system. These problems come early and stay late (as in the rest of people's lives). Some things even seem to seep down from higher ed into high school like corporate branding, and as you bring up, the obsession with sports. I was shocked the first time I saw a high school game on ESPN. Just this weekend I saw a basketball coach interviewed. This was his response when asked about how often he thinks about winning a national championship:

"Not that much. Look, my whole thing is it’s about players. I make this statement: If we win a national title, I’ll be happy; but if none of my players get drafted off that team, I’d be really disappointed. The greatest compliment paid to me was by (his state senator). He comes up to me and says, “Cal, how many guys you think will leave early this year.” And I said, “Probably five, maybe six.” And he says, “You’re creating more millionaires than a Wall Street firm.” And I go, “Wow.”

Again we see an "education" viewed as ONLY a stepping stone to earning, in this case not just a living, but a fortune. Did I miss the part about going to classes, studying, and learning something? Are tradition, pride, and a broadening college experience things of the past for coaches to use to entice players? He says it's about the players, but it clearly isn't about the camaraderie that can come from playing as a team. It isn't about building the memories that come from hard work and success.  It isn't about  them forging lifelong friendships. It isn't about them becoming principled and respectable men. Here again success is defined as narrowly as a dollar sign. How sad. Every pro athlete I've ever seen interviewed, when asked about their best memories of playing, it is always those rivalries, conference wins and championships that they mention.


"The football coach is Berkeley's highest-paid employee. he makes about $3 million. Tuition has been steadily rising for decades. U.C. undergraduate students pay 100 percent of their educational costs because the state subsidy has effectively disappeared." (p. 94)

USA Today covered this story a couple of years ago: 

USA TODAY's latest study of compensation reveals that Tedford (Berkeley's coach) is one of at least 25 college head football coaches making $2 million or more this season, slightly more than double the number two years ago. The average pay for a head coach in the NCAA's top-level, 120-school Football Bowl Subdivision is up 28% in that time and up 46% in three years, to $1.36 million  Furthermore, USA TODAY's first comprehensive look at the salaries of assistant coaches finds many approaching and even exceeding presidents' compensation and most eclipsing that of full professors.  (Read the full 2009 article here)

As is so often the case in this culture we pay lip service to things like children and education, then our actions reveal the nasty truth.

Which brings us to Penn State. What has happened to the men in this country? How did we get to a point where a man who happens upon a child being brutalized in the worst way, doesn't intervene immediately? Physically. Doesn't even make his presence known in an effort to stop it? (Though he appears to be trying to change that part of the story now.) After all reputations and prestige must take precedence over the safety and well being of disadvantaged children. Is this what it takes to get us to rethink our priorities? The farther reaching damage that will result from this disgusting scandal and cover up, is that every honorable man who sincerely wants to help coach, teach, tutor, or mentor young men, legions of whom are desperate for male role models, will have to live with a certain amount of suspicion. Or many men may shy away from those roles entirely. A sad ripple in the culture that will go largely unnoticed. Except in the lives of boys that need a real man to come alongside them and help them navigate the path to manhood. There are waves of them.

I have just recently discovered Ken Robinson and initially listened to his speeches with the same excitement as when I discovered Nock's essay ;) What he is saying is so important and desperately needed.  I'm currently reading his book, Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. More to come on that. Here are the links to his two TED speeches: Schools Kill Creativity  & Bring On the Learning Revolution!

There is something  refreshing about hearing someone articulate what many of us have been saying for so long. Once you have successfully educated a child at the dining room table, your view on there being one way to get the job done changes drastically. (And of course, I think he's brilliant since he's agreeing with me. ;))

Sometimes throughout the book Hedges tosses something out that I wish he would give an example of, like this, on p. 91: (after listing some things that took place on university campuses post 9/11) "Right wing students were encouraged to spy on the classes of progressive professors." Where? When? Everywhere? All the time? This was a bit frustrating and sent me to the notes in the back looking for an answer, which I didn't find. I did however, find a fabulous article by William Deresiewicz. The Disadvantages of an Elite Education  from The American Scholar, is a beautifully written article about much of what is wrong with the system, particularly at Ivy League schools and goes along very well with what Sir Ken is saying:

 "The system forgot to teach them, along the way to the prestige admissions and the lucrative jobs, that the most important achievements can’t be measured by a letter or a number or a name. It forgot that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. Being an intellectual means, first of all, being passionate about ideas—and not just for the duration of a semester, for the sake of pleasing the teacher, or for getting a good grade."

"... the life of the mind is lived one mind at a time: one solitary, skeptical, resistant mind at a time. The best place to cultivate it is not within an educational system whose real purpose is to reproduce the class system."
 

 Do you think Deresiewicz has read Nock? :)

 I'm sure our readers will welcome, as will I, the return of your "windbaggery." :)