Naomi Rockler-Gladen's Blog
Posted by Naomi Rockler-Gladen
Eight a.m. classes, bad professors, financial aid nightmares. Let's face it: there are days that college sucks. There are serious problems with the system, and there's nothing wrong with whining and venting about college now and then. However, on days that aren't so bad, I also hope that you take the time to appreciate your college education. College education is a privilege. It may not feel that way during that 8 a.m. midterm exam, but it's the truth.
Here's some basic statistics Only about 28% of U.S. Americans over the age of 25 have a bachelor's degree. That's a little more than 1 in 4. You might come from a family and a neighborhood where everyone around you has a college education, but that's deceptive. The opportunity to earn a bachelor's degree already places you at an advantage over 70% of the population. And worldwide, the number of people with a bachelor's degree is less than 1%. Yes, you are among the privileged elite.
If you are a woman or a minority, another reason to appreciate your education is that others before you fought long and hard to get you there. Women now outnumber men on college campuses in the United States, but only after years of legal and social battles to give women equal access to education. My grandmother was the valedictorian of her high school class and was an exceptionally bright woman, but she never considered going to college. There were four boys and four girls in her family, and the limited resources paid for college education for the boys, but not the girls. African Americans only have to look back to the early 1960s to find examples of college students fighting through mobs for an opportunity to register for classes. Minority groups have struggled and continue to struggle to break down segregation and economic barriers to higher education.
And if you're lucky enough to have parents who are able or willing to fund you college education? Thank them. Thank them often. They are giving you a treasure that most people do not get. Just look around campus and you're likely to see a single mom struggling to get through school, or someone who has to work over forty hours a week to pay for tuition, or someone who is worried about having to drop of school if there's a tuition hike.
Look, you don't have to appreciate your college education every moment. But the next time you're on your way to that 8 a.m. class and feeling sorry for yourself, try to put things in perspective. An awful lot of people, past and present, would love to be walking next to you into that classroom.
Posted by Naomi Rockler-Gladen
College seniors, is it your last semester and are you running out of steam? Here are some New Year's Resolutions for College Seniors to help get you through to graduation. And here are the:
Top Ten Signs that You Have Senioritis
- You start imagining jail bars on the windows of your classrooms.
- Your professors all sound like Charlie Brown's teacher.
- When you wear your backpack to class, you have visions of pushing a giant boulder up a mountain.
- The pond on campus starts to resemble an eternally burning lake of fire.
- It no longer even feels worth it to press the snooze button.
- You have nightmares that it's Groundhog Day of your last semester over and over again and you never graduate.
- You wonder why there are so many children running around on campus, and then you realize that they're freshmen.
- You start imagining that your professor has a hand puppet like Mr. Hat.
- Your last 143 blog entries are about boredom.
- When someone mentions graduate school, you feel nauseous.
Posted by Naomi Rockler-Gladen
Need some suggestions for some realistic New Year's Resolutions? Here are some suggestions.
- New Year's Resolutions for Students
- New Year's Resolutions for Teachers
- New Year's Resolutions for Freshmen
- New Year's Resolutions for Seniors
One of the cool things about being a student or a teacher is that you get two semester breaks a year to take a deep breath, evaluate how things went last semester, and start fresh. Everyone else just gets the big "resolution" time once a year.
Happy New Year students! Have a great 2007.
Posted by Naomi Rockler-Gladen
Looking for a fascinating television show that goes beyond the gimmicks of reality TV and offers an intelligent discussion on diversity and social issues? Looking for an educational resource that encourages students to think about these issues and identify with the perspectives of others? Teachers and students, check out the new television show by Morgan Spurlock, the documentarian best known for Supersize Me. The program is called 30 Days, and it's being shown on the FX Network.
The premise of 30 Days is this: a person takes on a new identity for 30 days in order to see the world through a radically different perspective and to illustrate the complexities of a social issue. In one episode, a devout Christian moves in with an American Muslim family for 30 days and participates in their everyday activities, including prayer. In another, a young, all-American straight man moves in with a gay resident of San Francisco's Castro district for 30 days and accompanies him to gay softball games and bars. In the pilot episode, Spurlock himself spent 30 days in a prison. Other issues covered in the program include illegal immigration, binge drinking, and the minimum wage.
What makes 30 Days an effective and appropriate classroom resource is Spurlock's approach. Yes, Spurlock has an obvious political agenda, not all that different than the agenda of the more controversial documentarian Michael Moore. Unlike Moore, however, Spurlock does not condemn the folks he disagrees with, like the homophobic straight guy and most of the other participants in his documentaries. While Moore mocks and vilifies the "enemy," Spurlock presents them as sympathetic. As the philosopher Kenneth Burke argued, persuasion is most effective and most humane when the "other side" is presented not as evil, but as mistaken. (Burke called this the "comic frame.") Viewers who disagrees with Spurlock's position are given a sympathetic protagonist with whom to identify, and thus may be more likely to consider Spurlock's arguments.
The creative and non-confrontational approach of 30 Days makes it a great educational resource to use during classroom discussions about social issues. Perhaps teachers can invite students to imagine where they might spend their own 30 days, and what they might learn from this experience.
Posted by Naomi Rockler-Gladen
I have to confess that until this year, I had never used Wikipedia. Now, I often use the world's largest interactive online encyclopedia at least once a day. Whenever I have a random thought, like about what the history of Velcro might be, I consult Wikipedia. I've used Wikipedia to research political candidates, corporations, software, and even to learn about my favorite South Park characters. Yeah, I admit it, I'm kind of a Wikipedia junkie. So I can imagine that for the Generation Y college students of today, Wikipedia must provide a fabulous research tool to aid in their education.
However, not everyone is enthusiastic about Wikipedia, and I was surprised at how skeptical my students are about this phenomenon. Wikipedia raises eyebrows because unlike traditional encyclopedias, anyone can edit it. The idea is that if an expert with knowledge on a topic reads a Wikipedia article and wants to elaborate, the expert can add his or her knowledge and share it with the world.
As you can imagine, this system can be abused easily. Wikipedia does employ people to keep track of changes, and volunteers help by reporting and deleting abuse, misinformation, and spam. However, as Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert demonstrated in his now famous "Wikiality" prank, content is not above manipulation. To demonstrate the socially constructed nature of knowledge on Wikipedia, Colbert encouraged viewers to incorrectly edit the Wikipedia page on elephants with "information" on how the world population of elephants has been increasing rapidly. (Actually, they are in danger of extinction. Poor elephants.) Hundreds of people messed around with the article, which Wikipedia finally closed to edits because of "vandalism" (which is as good a word for it as any, I suppose).
So, the argument goes, Wikipedia is not a credible source because its knowledge can be manipulated by anyone and can be altered if enough people insist that a point of view is true. I ask, however, how is this different than any other documentation of knowledge? How do we know that a newspaper is accurate? Or a college textbook? It used to be "true" that the world was flat, remember? Knowledge has always been socially constructed and manipulated by individuals, cultures, and interest groups. One of the amazing things about Wikipedia is that it has made this social construction of knowledge visible. Now, this construction of knowledge is documented as users can read a log of how articles are changed over time.
As far as students go, I'm jealous that they have Wikipedia as a source to refer to throughout their education. If a topic sparks their interest in class, there's a place to go for more information. Yes, students need to be a little skeptical of the information in Wikipedia. But the thing is, they need to be skeptical of the information that comes from everywhere. Perhaps the awareness of this need for skepticisim is one of Wikipedia's greatest gifts.
