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The Didactron
Educators' Lives in a High-Tech Teaching-Learning Space ©
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19. The Student
Hans Cliner had taken a vacation, strongly encouraged by Dean Pete Spring. He returned to his long-taught, well-known class with nearly-original enthusiasm for it and students, all to be met and engaged in teaching-learning intercourse.
There on the first day sat Warren whom he had first seen at The Barn. He had come to know Warren from comments about him by other professors. He was "the challenge of the year," the student who should not be in classes, who was artistically and athletically gifted. He was the teacher's evidence of failure, far out on the tail of the grade curve. He was the possibility for great change. Bright students with test-taking skills can move with little help from a teacher from 90 to 98 on quiz grades (not much improvement). Moving Warren's grade the enormous amount from 60 to 80 on a test was usually possible, but took much extra work by the teacher. To do so was the ever-present challenge, the decision between serving the group or the individual … especially since the mantra throughout The Didactron was "behavioral change." The decision was especially difficult since he knew he could make the changes needed for Warren but that he had unscheduled academic advisees, committee meetings, and a student 'court' he must attend because of some reported illegal student activity. He could get the change, but what of the quality of the change, and at what personal price? Would anyone notice? Who would notice? Are there only personal incentives?
Warren became invisible, a part of the class landscape before him. Hans was teaching the class, not the student.
He said to it: "The learning place here has been captured by the scientific manipulators. Control this; alter that. We're not a group of homunculi, flagellating protoplasms in a temporary cosmic broth. We are hardly individuals; we are group; we are society. We are human unity, inseparable. We are temporarily bounded by a skin, but we were once in someone else; we only continue if we unite with another person and our final dust cycles to become the calcium in the first mouthful of milk at some mother's breast. You are you; you are a human; you are unique -- you vain puffytoads. You are society! You have no real organs; you are an organ of the larger creature!
"But some of you are not organs, merely cells, connective tissue. Some of you are transparent fluid."
He smiled at his little aside. They were spontaneous and occurred while teaching, hardly ever at other times.
"Never mind. Whatever you are, you are part of the social being. You are society. Society is not bounded and pushed around by environmental factors. The Algonkian Indians, for example, who live south of the areas that are usually thought of as lands of the Inuits, have climatic extremes equal to those of the igloo dwellers. Those people have surpassed or suppressed the cold by clothing, tents, fire, and behavioral techniques. Theirs is not a physiological or biological adaptation to their environment. It is cultural! These people, as others, are a cultural entity. They are a social unity as dependent on knowledge of techniques as a tree is upon its roots. They are as dependent upon each other as pines are upon each other to prevent them being blown over by strong winds. People, social forces, group dynamics, religion, folklore, shared work, specific tasks -- these are the factors to be mastered and upon which we must concentrate.
"Control has well known meaning, but for the thoughtful reasoner it means to have temporary knowledge about the conditions related to a decision. The lab scientist " controls" the factors of an experiment, keeping them constant or well recorded so that he or she knows what major factors are at work in influencing the object of their experiment. The better the controls, the more likely the conclusion will match the realities of the thing being studied. In The Didactron there is emphasis, I think over emphasis, on individual measurements to gain such statistical or research control over students. Elsewhere similar studies are growing. Controls are needed, not of the behavior of individuals, but of the knowledge of factors that influence behaviors, most the results of decisions. While some here may work at factors like the litmus color of your saliva, the oxygen of your little finger, or the sugar in your urine, we must clarify and name the social factors for our control.
"Please work now from Handout 233 in your computers. Discuss the meaning of control, scientific control, examples of social influence on individuals, and write for me as many as possible measurable social factors influencing individual behavior. "
He then walked off. He was not going to discuss. He wanted the students to begin resolving. Educators probably call the condition produced 'dissonance,' he thought. It could probably be called a damned good squabble. An assistant handed out the summary assignment. Hans went to a lounge to wind down. He would find out later their specific reactions from results e-mailed to him by class groups, but he inwardly wanted to ease drop. The Heed system suggested he had created in most of them great conflict. He would not give them too long to fret; the next meeting had been scheduled by the computer for Thursday at 6:45 based on the group's optimum learning time index, available space, and prior appointments.
Warren didn't know what one was, but thought that he did not like to be called a puffytoad. He did not like the group within which his seating choice that day resulted, and he had left his computer locked in another building. He somehow made a connection between Prof. Cliner's remarks today with a critique he had read of teachers who lecture and those who give discussion assignments to students. He wanted more direct help, more teacher performance, because that's what he thought his family was paying for.
* * *
Rus occasionally remembered the attach on his proposed Alternative 16 by Pete Spring. Even where logic is honored, few people attack an idea or argument. They attack a person. Argumentum ad hominem simply means "get the bastard." Rus thought that Pete's reaction had been outlandish, an over reaction. He had been wrong, for there were worse reactions to follow. He had no idea that such a proposal would be heard and action on it begun. Action on such proposals is rare. He had hoped for it but discounted the possibility and risks down to zero. He had imagined open discussions and debates and maybe a conference, but not an actual suit and certainly not a governor's committee investigation, especially not one involving Brenda.
Brenda became a frequent visitor, a persistent interruption, a one-person embodiment of the governor's committee, and a full-time, voluntary CEO of her own personal not-for-profit effort. She developed what could be labeled 'wrath' toward an admixture of The Didactron and higher education. Their transformation was now her cause, her baby.
She had alerted several lawyers dealing with education issues about the coming suit. They quickly realized that their conference call was too brief and so they arranged to meet with three university administrators, their lawyers, and select faculty to discuss the effects of the suit, if it were successful, to universities in the region. They sensed that they had to bring this suit under control, to find a resolution 'out of court.'
* * *
Students had gotten to the classroom on time. They were angry that Prof. Chance Carrow was not there and waited a few minutes until they were told by a secretary that he would not be in for a week. They mumbled about getting their money's worth but took great delight in having extra time for studying for mid-term exams and seeing a performance in The Barn. Three of them did not have to get "excused absence" from him for missing class to participate in a bike race. One needed more time to rehearse his lines in a play.
Chance would not be on campus because there had been a major attack on The Orchard and three of the buildings had been torched. The plight of small rural communities had been made too clear by the too-near successes of the people there within the Didactron-influenced community with the local people. The openness and pleasant spirit of the reformed criminals and their families was inadequate to suppress the anger and resentment of the local people surrounding the reclaimed mine areas. To the native citizens, there was no equality, no seeming fairness. There were clear "haves" and "have-nots." They were citizens and they were very mad. They had fought in wars for "their country" and that country was theirs and it had become translated into a mysterious ownership of the land around them. They had served the labor union; they had served the company, even risked the deep mines for it. They had been very well paid, but had mortgages and few savings. They bore the remaining burden of assuming that mining and associated wages would continue forever, that limited education was sufficient and would be…forever, and that if not, welfare checks and health services would be adequate and uninterrupted …forever. Then to that load was added the seeming realization that the first people of The Orchard were crooks! They were convicted, evil people, funded by us " the local tax payers" (who paid few taxes), and were living a pretty good life. The new stone-walled houses were much better than their trailers and leftover company-houses, and their roads had been recently graveled. Those guys with the badges weren't needed just because Malcolm and his drinking buddies caused that ruckus one night. The anger, ignorance, illogic, poverty, and anguish for their children spewed out that night.
Chance despaired. He saw the cause, had started helpful efforts and planning among the surrounding people, but knew well that the problem was beyond him. It was national, somewhat global, for the mining companies were owned internationally and he was to work with their residues, mine spoil that is both earthen and social. He knew this event last night was the spark now smoldering in the national dis-economy, the extreme differences between the lives of the rich and poor seen nightly on TV.
His optimism had always returned in the past. Maybe tomorrow would be better. He knew no one to whom to turn.
* * *
Sympathetic to Prof. Cliner's lament in their conversation in The Mine, Allen Karr grew despondent after his wife died. He had no children and his life, all of it, was devoted to teaching, the psychology of it, and its evaluation. His latest paper on the advantages of students teaching students and of Internet-based post-graduate teaching teams had been delayed, silently, for over 6 months by an editorial team. He read a study, one adding to and summarizing other similar studies, reporting on the great success of employing actors as teachers. The studies found that students learned (based on their test results) better from presentations by subject-matter-ignorant actors than from professors. That night he mailed a letter to Dean Spring describing the advantages of hiring actors…and gave away the rest of his life.
* * *
Hans had met Dray Buffington in The Mine. Dray did not like it there, or anywhere it seemed, and always was figiting as if to leave. "We always want remedial courses for the students in our classes, or else to modify the curriculum to have prerequisite courses, or we just moan over the ineptitude of the public schools and home-taught students. We've been doing that for years and what has it gotten you and me?" said Hans
"We're really good at teaching you X if you already know Y.
"What's wrong with that? I'm good at windows if you are good at walls." agreed Dray.
"It's not just a matter of sequence or precise structural units as it is for windows. It is not like building a wall with bricks. It's a matter of passing grades, adequate knowledge, and the way that course content changes. We don't talk to the public schools and only know what they do or intend to do in their work from a sampling of a few students of various, usually inadequate competence. We teach based on what we think students have been taught, and the schools change that before we have time to figure out a clear thought. We cannot tell them what we want any more than we can tell our colleagues what they should teach …or what they should require before they launch into their teaching responsibilities. Responsibilities assigned are about as limp as 'teach Course 4444' and are as un-supervised or un-monitored as a whore house…about which I know nothing.
"I'll tell you my bad experience some day." said Dray with a grin.
"We've got to stop bitching all of the time.
"The public schools and others blame the parents for their educational difficulties; the college and university teachers blame the grade schools; the graduate schools blame the undergraduate schools (and add parents, grade schools, and undergrad work); and the agencies and corporations who hire graduates blame the graduate schools and throw in 'Your students lack real-world experience!'"
"What is your problem today?" waving for a waiter for another beer.
"I'm tired of bitching and hearing everyone else bitch. We have to find a solution to this snarled backlash. I'm not smart enough to do it alone. I want your help. I think the solutions are within The Didactron and an attack on gaining more access to public education on television. I think we can provide financial and other incentives for people to master content via the Internet or its offspring. We have to start with genetic knowledge (and generic too)" he said to a quizical look.
"…And then go to parenting, then move as intensively as possible with the expanded role of The Shop.
"I'm too old, and bitching is normal, part of being a professor. I'll be back in a moment; I have to find that waiter. "
"But bitching has to lead somewhere …other than to a waiter." he said to his back.
* * *
A parent had heard twittering between her daughter and a friend from another university about drugs used to enhance learning. She had only heard 'drugs' and 'enhance' and, not getting any conversation from her daughter, called the police. And so Fran's office and laboratory were rushed by the authorities and a TV crew. All substances and papers were in perfect order. There were no violations or suspected ones.
She was not making progress in gaining faculty support for her work. Her papers were being published and she was getting rave notices within the university press coverage and tenure and promotion committees. She had won a teaching award and student applications to work with her on her grant ideas were stimulated more by her ideas than by her supply of funds. The visit was unwarrented, disruptive, embarrassing, and required written responses to telephone inquiries and insults from people more ignorant of the meaning of 'drugs' than the concerned parent making the false report. Now she got police visits every 6 months.
An announcement of a job opportunity in another university for an educational pharmacologist was noticed, so she applied. 'Quality time is money' she reminded herself.
* * *
A retired professor, brother of the local newspaper editor, got free publicity, invited the head of the state department of education, and promised a randomly drawn big financial prize to someone attending his lecture on 'The Death of the Modern University.' Dean Spring went, reluctantly, for he thought he had heard it all before. He was surprised by how few empty seats there were in the auditorium.
"Physician, cure thyself! and or course he could not. University, reform thyself, and of course it could not.
"I bring you sad tidings tonight, ladies and gentlemen, for there is throughout our society the cry for help -- even as little as a curative drop of cool water to dry lips. When the anguished face of society is turned to the university for wisdom, the quiet inner light is hidden by garish advertising, changing spotlights, buffoonery, and doubt cast by discovered evil deeds. The needs of the living must be responded to by the living.
"A key characteristic of life is constant adjustment. That is almost its definition: acceptable performance, adaptation, a progressive, punctual, preoccupation with the present. There is little of such life in the university. What little exists is too difficult to find, insufficient for society.
"The only possibility that now exists is to treat the university as if it were pure structure, an empty building in service of society, now and for the future, and to re-fill it only with :
More tediously than needed, he commented on each, weaving in reasons and structures of:
He concluded : "I said at our opening that we needed to treat the university as if it were pure structure. We must renovate it, for it has been 'beat-up,' become shoddy by use, mismanaged, and taken over by well-intended, well-funded, faddish activity. As we renovate, we must refit it, re-equip it to regain its former sound purposes. Our vital society needs new life in the university, now. "
* * *
Sam Fraze left the lecture with all that he needed he thought. Months before, he had heard Prof. Rostock's lecture and believe in what he had said. He grasped Alternative 16 as if rescuing a child. The next day he had met with two friends that weeks ago had made little speeches in The Barn about the 16th need. He had heard 'lawyer talk' all of his life at the dinner table and knew his mom would be proud of him for getting involved. This might be the good extracurricular activity in which the family had pestered him to become engaged.
With family help, they quietly began preparing a civil suit. There is little that is quiet among teen-agers with phones all within a family of boisterous young children. There is little secret in the conversations of a perplexed university librarian being asked for help on a rare legal issue, or those of an inquisitive, bored patron standing in line at the copy center looking as trashed papers. Soon word of the possibilities of a suit were in the governor's office and more quickly into Brenda's hands.
One of Sam's friends, Hank, now on Alternative 16 Attack Team One had felt that he had a good friend among the administrators and had visited him. In the friendly spirit of the student-faculty dialog he had discussed with him the needs for improving education, the importance of educated citizens in a democracy, and the unique dimensions of The Didactron. The administrator had listened in recent conversations as the details of the possible suit against the university of The Didactron emerged: false advertising, breach of contract, mis-allocation of federal research funds, abuse of staff, conflicts of financial interest in research results, and false reporting of time and attendance. In the last dark meeting he had assured Hank that he would never graduate if he persisted in this suit.
Sam and his other Team member struggled with the claim that the board of directors of the university was not fulfilling its fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the students who were in a contract for an education. They also claimed that the citizens were shareholders who had invested their taxes in various direct and indirect pathways for superior education, and that the Board of The Didactron and its parent university had a fiduciary duty to them. They tried to be brief about their perception of the special obligation the board had to students' best interests, their trust in the implied contract for access to quality education, for cost effectiveness, and for continued exercise of discretion on behalf of students as the client over that benefitting the university. The law seems to forbid the fiduciary, the Board, from acting in any manner adverse or contrary to the interests of the client.
One parent, reviewing a draft of Sam's notes, said that the Board probably was honorific and had not knowingly signed on to a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the students. The students entering college probably did not even know there was a Board and could not have engaged in or agreed to forming such a contract. Another wrote in return that there was a lasting, on-going implied contract, one that was intergenerational.
Board members got word of the students' work on a possible suit, one that would possibly expand among universities, and they began telephoning each other about one sentence about 'high standards of honesty' and especially about the full range of meaning of 'not obtaining a personal benefit at the expense of the client.' They were furious, bewildered by the lack of appreciation for the time they had spent for the universities, fearful of damage to their reputations (a main reason for agreeing to join the Board), and fearful of interpretations after release of records of the Board's costs for food, drink, lodging, gifts of gratitude-for-service, and special travel. One of them seemed to think only of the financial losses he and his friends would experience from a major shift in the spectator sports available. Another called the president and quite pointedly suggested that he 'take care of it.'
Jane, the last to join Sam's Team, was called from class for a chat with the president. Briefly, and in a plush room equipped at costs equivalent to that of developing four major distance-learning units, she was told of the importance of research, the latest faculty discovery, studies proving that teaching and doing research when practiced together are good, and the increasing costs of fuel to heat the campus. Assured that her suit, if continued, would be very costly to the university and that students admitted from her high school, especially the soccer team, would definitely have to be cut, Jane got the message. He assured her in parting, that he would have a committee look into separating or blending activities called 'teaching' and 'research.' Jane should have been assuaged but she already knew the impact and fate of presidential committees.
Sam Fraze was now alone with a pile of papers, facing a mid-term exam, and he was called to Dean Spring's office. He had been there before, once to interview him for a biography note in the campus news. He was nervous, for he had heard from Jane and Hank that they had lost interest or seemed to be too busy to work on Alternative 16. He did not know why he had been called to the office. He had never learned or been taught how to exit a meeting graciously. It lasted 90 minutes! He heard of needed changes in faculty to meet changing social needs but being blocked by tenured faculty not being replaceable. The dean could get money from faculty patents on discoveries but that too was blocked. There were poor teachers but he could not get rid of them. Even when he tried, testimonials came out of the woodwork describing the faculty member's everlasting salutary effects on a few articulate alumni. Even in The Didactron where the conditions existed for teachers to be at their best, to be as innovative as their imagination, many continued to teach in traditional, proven-ineffective ways. Even in the classes of the superior teachers, using great innovation, there were still students that did not or could not learn. An education is an opportunity to buy-in, maybe to join the world of knowledge, certainly not a 'deliverable.'
"It's just so diverse; just imagine the permutations of courses and events over a four-year program…unique total events for each student," said Spring.
The dean walked some as he talked, sat on the desk, walked some more, glanced at the clock, and looked out of the same window at which he had scolded Rustock. Sam stirred, in some pain. Spring continued describing how every lecture or presentation in class is a rehearsal for the next reasonable lecture. For 5 years that may be ok, but after 5 years the subject matter and orientations change to "outdated" so that the last presentation in a 5-year series, the best presentation, is still bad. He then launched into part of his genuinely inspirational we-have-to-find-a-way-to-improve-education speech given to faculty interviewees.
He said to Sam, "Perhaps with you as one of the messengers, we can then carry our message to other schools about educational efficiency. Educational opportunities need to be fairly distributed. It's only fair. We can do this. Right here! Now, independently, charting our own course, in-house, for our fame and your advancement as well as providing a strong, sound, progressive education model for our state, the nation and, yes, the rest of the world."
Dean Spring knew Fraze's marginal grades, the courses in which he was enrolled, and the timing of midterm exams. The long meeting had cut out critical study time. Its ideas, and Sam's hunger for personal attention had had lasting effect on study efficiency. His semester grades dropped. Ten days later a smoke bomb, 'a mere sophomoric prank' went off in Sam's room and the water damage to papers, computer, and class notes from seemingly-necessary fire control was extensive. Sam put aside work on the suit. In the university, to get a delay is to win, for salvos fired at the university from antagonists are, at worst, those from units of a passing parade that exit every 3-4 years.
"My job is done" was the message the dean left for the president, and he grabbed his coat to go to an ulcer-producing lunch with a church synod committee set on closing down the Mutualists. He passed Brenda in the hall.
The End
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Last revision April 7, 2008.