[FRIAM] "certain codes of conduct"

Wed Jul 29 00:49:06 EDT 2020

Nick, the "ire" is perfectly fine. I didn't need to couch my statement in
that way, and doing so obviously opened me to Merle's response.

Merle,
I think the social criticism is generally valid, but as a critique of
college in particular it is feeds a general confusion about what college
should be about, which ultimately speeds the fall of the system it seeks to
reform.

One of the obvious legitimate functions of college is indoctrination into a
profession. If you don't want to be indoctrinated into a profession that
college indoctrinates people into, then college probably isn't for you.  If
you get out of college not-indoctrinated-into-a-profession, something has
gone wrong. For example, if you want to get a degree in psychology, you
need to learn to write in some reasonable semblance of APA style. That
includes its own horribly arbitrary set of grammar rules, formatting and
the like. It is screwed up, in some sense, but it isn't imperialist
oppression aimed at minorities. Arbitrary norms are found in all
professions, and conforming to them is part of being "professional". Also,
if you got a degree in psychology, without anyone forcing you to learn how
to approach problems, write reports, criticize articles, etc., in the
manner that professional psychologists tend to do those things, something
has gone wrong. If you want to think about psychology-related stuff in the
way you already think about those things, then don't go to college. If you
want to learn to think about them in the way the professional community
does, then college might make senes. (Note, I'm *not *saying you have to *agree
*with how the professional community does things, just that you should be
able to replicate, with some reasonable accuracy, the standard professional
approach.) Where you start from doesn't really matter; though the
curricula *should
*be more adaptive to the starting place of the various students, by the end
you should be professional indoctrinated, that's the whole point.

In addition, college functions to indoctrinate people into a certain part
of society... or at least it used to. Because, traditionally, most college
graduates don't get work in exactly the thing they studied, this "hidden
curriculum" has often been more important than the obvious curriculum.
College graduates should be able to read, write, and math at a certain
level, generally think through problems at a certain level, be able to
present ideas to an audience in spoken or written form, be able to adapt to
arbitrary assignments with a certain level of comfort, be a team leader, be
a pro-active follower, etc.  Here again, colleges *should *be more adaptive
to the starting place of the various students, but that doesn't mean their
end point should be abandoned. Here you see big differences between
colleges, based on what they are preparing you for. A college like
Swathmore or Bucknell is preparing you to be able to do those things for
different audiences than Oberlin or Penn State. If you are at a school that
is well designed to prepare you for something you don't want to be prepared
for... that's not imperialist oppression, that's your having made an
unfortunate choice of  where to go.

Frankly, most colleges currently suck at those two goals, and most other
functions you might want them to have.  It is easy to find studies showing
that lots of people graduate college without high school level reading,
writing, and math abilities. It is also easy to find students who graduate
with almost no indoctrination into the field of study they were purportedly
pursuing.

Under those conditions, it is not surprising that people view a college
degree as largely symbolic marker, required for entry into the job market
or some such nonsense. However, the solution shouldn't be to make college
degrees even less indicative of having attained particular skills. The less
a college degree indicates having a certain variety of skills, the less
value is provided to employers to select based on the presence of a degree,
and the less value it gives a college graduate to have a degree. Returning
to the indoctrination thing, we can see the (potential) flaw in the
criticism of the curriculum. It doesn't make a lot of sense to say, "I
really want a degree from Rutgers, because employers value degrees from
Rutgers, but I also think Rutgers should change its curriculum to not be so
strict in only letting people graduate if they actually have the skills
employers value." The value of the degree, particularly to a person trying
to get out of a bad situation, is entirely based on its reliably indicating
some set of skills, and the ability to write in a semi-formal manner is one
of those skills (to return to the more narrow original context).

If you formed a solid college curriculum around mastering skills other than
those traditionally trained in college, that would be fine (and I think
that is what Nick is struggling to get at). And if those skills were valued
(economically, or merely for personal growth) then a degree from that
college would be a reliable indicator of that specific valuable
achievement. But that is very different than allowing students to get
through college with whatever skills they arrived with, just because you
are afraid that enforcing *any *strict requirements might make you an
imperialist monster. The former creates a marketplace for students to
choose from, while the latter just guarantees that college degrees continue
to become less and less valuable, particularly to the people who most seek
to benefit by getting them.

(Sorry, that ended up longer than intended.... but it's late... I don't
think I can get it tighter right now... and your question deserves a
reply.)

On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 11:21 PM Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com>
wrote:

> And why, O Eric of a deep understanding, are you not a fan?
>
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 8:17 PM Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Clearly the implicit bias is that all of these reading requirements were
>> written by White men.  In an attempt to redress this problem I have noticed
>> lately that the NY Times book review seems to be bending over backwards to
>> review books written by women of color.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 7:03 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm trying to remember my freshman English class.  Every other Friday we
>>> had to submit a five hundred word essay on the class readings. On alternate
>>> Fridays we had to write an in-class paragraph or two on those readings.
>>> The readings included the following:
>>>
>>> Catcher in the Rye by Salinger
>>> Victory by Conrad
>>> The Republic by Plato
>>> All the King's Men by Warren
>>> Brave New World by Huxley
>>>
>>> Numerous essays on personal integrity by various authors.
>>>
>>> I don't see that any of those had to do with unconscious racism or
>>> implicit bias unless the personal integrity essays did.  I think I had to
>>> read The Invisible Man by Ellison but that may have been in a later year in
>>> a political science or US history class at Berkeley.
>>>
>>> All this was 54 years ago.
>>>
>>> Frank
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Frank C. Wimberly
>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>>
>>> 505 670-9918
>>> Santa Fe, NM
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
>> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
>> emergentdiplomacy.org
>> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>>
>> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
>> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
>> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
>>
>
>
> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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