Mon - May 5, 2008
MORE BREAKING NEWS
for those of you who were born
yesterday.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is
reporting that a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon has discovered
that the mood people are in strongly affects how willing they are to follow
advice.
I eagerly await the results of her next study, in which she will attempt to prove once and for all that people really do cry when they're sad.
I eagerly await the results of her next study, in which she will attempt to prove once and for all that people really do cry when they're sad.
Posted at 11:01 AM
Mon - April 28, 2008
FIVE DEGREES OF SEPARATION
after one degree of
stupefaction.
If you were teaching a class -- as I often have --
on how not to apologize, you could hardly do better than to begin with
this
sentence:
I am very sorry that my one action in ratifying a dean's decision in a single situation has had a negative impact on the institution.
That's soon-to-be-former West Virginia University Provost Gerald Lang, proving that, even when you're doing the right thing, you can still manage to do about five wrong ones:
1) Apologize, but qualify your apology into oblivion;
2) Fail to take responsibility for your actions (at least he didn't say he was just doing his job or just following orders);
3) Throw someone else under the bus (a deserving victim, of course, but not one who should have been run over alone);
4) Claim you've done harm -- I mean, had a negative impact -- to a nice, impersonal entity, rather than to the human beings who live and work within it;
5) Place your emphasis -- in this case, twice -- on this isolated incident, as if doing a great and terrible thing once is almost indistinguishable from not having done it at all (You know, as in: I am very sorry that my one action in fulfilling my friend's single request to murder his wife just that one time has had a negative impact on her life.)
Now that Mr. Lang has resigned, the question that every last member of the West Virginia University community should be asking is: How did this guy -- to whom ethics are a joke and personal responsibility a punch line -- ever get the job in the first place?
I am very sorry that my one action in ratifying a dean's decision in a single situation has had a negative impact on the institution.
That's soon-to-be-former West Virginia University Provost Gerald Lang, proving that, even when you're doing the right thing, you can still manage to do about five wrong ones:
1) Apologize, but qualify your apology into oblivion;
2) Fail to take responsibility for your actions (at least he didn't say he was just doing his job or just following orders);
3) Throw someone else under the bus (a deserving victim, of course, but not one who should have been run over alone);
4) Claim you've done harm -- I mean, had a negative impact -- to a nice, impersonal entity, rather than to the human beings who live and work within it;
5) Place your emphasis -- in this case, twice -- on this isolated incident, as if doing a great and terrible thing once is almost indistinguishable from not having done it at all (You know, as in: I am very sorry that my one action in fulfilling my friend's single request to murder his wife just that one time has had a negative impact on her life.)
Now that Mr. Lang has resigned, the question that every last member of the West Virginia University community should be asking is: How did this guy -- to whom ethics are a joke and personal responsibility a punch line -- ever get the job in the first place?
Posted at 04:32 PM
Sat - March 8, 2008
DARKER THAN A BURNING COUCH
or, black clouds over the mountain,
mama.
Great
article on the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this
morning, with a big assist to the Freedom of Information Act, mined from
outraged emails and letters to West Virginia University administrators in the
wake of its Mylan Inc./Heather Bresch/MBA scandal. I imagine it would be
fascinating -- and wildly entertaining -- to read them all, but PG
reporters Patricia Sabatini and Len Boselovic seem to have done a fine job
of choosing excerpts.
The best of the bunch, for both clarity and economy, comes from the angry alum who wrote: I am a member of the class of 2000 and am writing to you to express my embarrassment over the Heather Bresch story. Your handling of this situation tarnishes the name of West Virginia University and calls into question every degree it has awarded. You'd be hard-pressed, I think, to find a more apt or succinct expression of what this scandal means, or could still mean, to the university and its alumni. When you're fabricating records and awarding a degree like a door prize to a well-connected friend of a friend who only completed half her coursework, you have far greater PR problems than a pissing match with your former football coach or the occasional burning of a Grant Street couch.
When you have a whole damned country road of ethical embarrassment running from the business school, through the President's office, around the corner to the governor's mansion, and all the way to the C-Suite of a major, multinational corporation, your alums have a right to be pissed. Though I'm not sure they have grounds for legal action. I plan to sue, wrote one alum who did not, alas, include a preview of the brief. The complainant continued -- My degree isn't worth squat anymore. -- but neglected to include a list of damages sought. I'm guessing it will be a full refund of tuition and fees, plus pain and suffering, punitive damages, and perhaps the fair market value of all the squat he feels his degree should be worth.
But my favorite angry email came from the parent of a current MBA student -- that's right, folks, the parent of an MBA student, who thus immediately qualifies as a whole new Black Hawk model of helicopter parent -- who catalogued the (ahem) child's loans and tuition and finally asked, Should she pay the second $25,000 for a degree that may be considered tarnished by employers? Perhaps a better question would be, Shouldn't she be embarrassed to know that, as an MBA student, her Mommy and Daddy are still asking questions for her? Were I her prospective employer, I'd be far less worried about the tarnished degree than I would be about the still-attached umbilical cord.
In the end, what is most encouraging about these emails, whether they come from reasoned alums or litigious alums or Black Hawk helicopter parents, is that so many people are so moved to outrage and action by this story. What is most shocking, perhaps, is that so many people are so surprised to discover that a business school might massage its ethical decision-making, or that a university might herniate its academic policies and compromise its academic integrity, to curry favor with a couple of well-heeled benefactors and potential donors. That, my friends, is the very educational definition of business as usual.
The best of the bunch, for both clarity and economy, comes from the angry alum who wrote: I am a member of the class of 2000 and am writing to you to express my embarrassment over the Heather Bresch story. Your handling of this situation tarnishes the name of West Virginia University and calls into question every degree it has awarded. You'd be hard-pressed, I think, to find a more apt or succinct expression of what this scandal means, or could still mean, to the university and its alumni. When you're fabricating records and awarding a degree like a door prize to a well-connected friend of a friend who only completed half her coursework, you have far greater PR problems than a pissing match with your former football coach or the occasional burning of a Grant Street couch.
When you have a whole damned country road of ethical embarrassment running from the business school, through the President's office, around the corner to the governor's mansion, and all the way to the C-Suite of a major, multinational corporation, your alums have a right to be pissed. Though I'm not sure they have grounds for legal action. I plan to sue, wrote one alum who did not, alas, include a preview of the brief. The complainant continued -- My degree isn't worth squat anymore. -- but neglected to include a list of damages sought. I'm guessing it will be a full refund of tuition and fees, plus pain and suffering, punitive damages, and perhaps the fair market value of all the squat he feels his degree should be worth.
But my favorite angry email came from the parent of a current MBA student -- that's right, folks, the parent of an MBA student, who thus immediately qualifies as a whole new Black Hawk model of helicopter parent -- who catalogued the (ahem) child's loans and tuition and finally asked, Should she pay the second $25,000 for a degree that may be considered tarnished by employers? Perhaps a better question would be, Shouldn't she be embarrassed to know that, as an MBA student, her Mommy and Daddy are still asking questions for her? Were I her prospective employer, I'd be far less worried about the tarnished degree than I would be about the still-attached umbilical cord.
In the end, what is most encouraging about these emails, whether they come from reasoned alums or litigious alums or Black Hawk helicopter parents, is that so many people are so moved to outrage and action by this story. What is most shocking, perhaps, is that so many people are so surprised to discover that a business school might massage its ethical decision-making, or that a university might herniate its academic policies and compromise its academic integrity, to curry favor with a couple of well-heeled benefactors and potential donors. That, my friends, is the very educational definition of business as usual.
Posted at 10:39 AM
Thu - January 17, 2008
I'M ALSO TIRED OF SELF-ABSORPTION
no matter the color. or the
school.
Here's a shocker: a West Virginia University
professor says she has no record of Mylan executive,
daughter-of-the-governor, and friend-of-the-university president Heather Bresch
ever being in her class. Even though that class was one of the ones added to
Ms. Bresch's reconstructed -- by which I mean, fabricated -- M.B.A.
transcript.
The only thing less shocking than that, at least for anyone who's been following the story and who knows anything about higher education, is that the professor, as yet unnamed by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, manages to make this tremendous breach of ethics all about herself:
The decision to add people to the class list that were never in the class disturbs me greatly. It offends academic freedom.
And maybe it does. But I have news for you, professor: it offends a hell of a lot of other things first. Academic integrity. Professional ethics. Personal and professional responsibiilty. Fairness. Honesty. Propriety. The oh-so-quaint notion that people, even if they are well-born and well-connected, must work for what they earn and deserve what they are given. Just to name a few.
The fabrication of a grade and a roster spot and a couple of credits is not exactly on par with changing a grade or overruling a decision or tampering in any way with how that professor runs her class or marshals her students. And no matter how onerous the process, a little bit of virtual nepotism and revisionist bookkeeping hardly constitutes an infringement upon her academic freedom.
Only a b-school professor -- or perhaps an English professor -- would be self-absorbed enough to pretend otherwise.
The only thing less shocking than that, at least for anyone who's been following the story and who knows anything about higher education, is that the professor, as yet unnamed by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, manages to make this tremendous breach of ethics all about herself:
The decision to add people to the class list that were never in the class disturbs me greatly. It offends academic freedom.
And maybe it does. But I have news for you, professor: it offends a hell of a lot of other things first. Academic integrity. Professional ethics. Personal and professional responsibiilty. Fairness. Honesty. Propriety. The oh-so-quaint notion that people, even if they are well-born and well-connected, must work for what they earn and deserve what they are given. Just to name a few.
The fabrication of a grade and a roster spot and a couple of credits is not exactly on par with changing a grade or overruling a decision or tampering in any way with how that professor runs her class or marshals her students. And no matter how onerous the process, a little bit of virtual nepotism and revisionist bookkeeping hardly constitutes an infringement upon her academic freedom.
Only a b-school professor -- or perhaps an English professor -- would be self-absorbed enough to pretend otherwise.
Posted at 03:55 PM
Mon - December 17, 2007
THE LAST ESCROW
or, something to think about when you see that
next tuition increase.
Interesting tidbit in Saturday's Real Estate
Transactions section of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Carnegie Mellon
University just bought Professor Randy Pausch's old house. For
$689,325.
The property, a single-family home on Ellsworth Avenue in Oakland, several blocks from campus on a street with no other Carnegie-Mellon-owned property, listed in C+ condition with 7 total rooms and 3-and-a-half baths on the Allegheny County web site, was assessed considerably lower. At $288,700.
Here's a photo:
I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that purchase price seems a tad excessive. And that the whole purchase seems a bit, well...
...odd. Untoward. Maybe even unsettling. But then I'm not exactly an unbiased observer.
What do you think? Does that look like a $689,000 house to you? Should Carnegie Mellon be in the business of buying -- much less overpaying for -- homes from its professors? Even if they are terminally ill and much-beloved? Do you think they'd pay over twice the market value for the house of one of their healthy professors? For the house of one of their healthy -- or even one of their terminally ill -- administrative assistants? Groundskeepers? Campus Police officers?
And what do you think they'll do with the home now that they own it? Find some other way to soak up the publicity or rake in the money from Professor Pausch's newfound fame? Keep it as some sort of maudlin, ghoulish shrine to his memory? Turn it into the Remember Randy Pausch and His Last Lecture Memorial Museum, charge admission to see where the poor man used to play with his children, then sell DVDs, t-shirts, and bumper stickers in a gift shop down in the old garage?
Whatever they do -- and they're staying uncharacteristically quiet about it for now -- I'm sure they'll come up with some way to further maximize the buzz and leverage the branding that thisgreat sad story has brought to the coffers
cachet credibility of the university. And if not, well, they
can always raise tuition (yet again) to cover the loss.
The property, a single-family home on Ellsworth Avenue in Oakland, several blocks from campus on a street with no other Carnegie-Mellon-owned property, listed in C+ condition with 7 total rooms and 3-and-a-half baths on the Allegheny County web site, was assessed considerably lower. At $288,700.
Here's a photo:
I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that purchase price seems a tad excessive. And that the whole purchase seems a bit, well...
...odd. Untoward. Maybe even unsettling. But then I'm not exactly an unbiased observer.
What do you think? Does that look like a $689,000 house to you? Should Carnegie Mellon be in the business of buying -- much less overpaying for -- homes from its professors? Even if they are terminally ill and much-beloved? Do you think they'd pay over twice the market value for the house of one of their healthy professors? For the house of one of their healthy -- or even one of their terminally ill -- administrative assistants? Groundskeepers? Campus Police officers?
And what do you think they'll do with the home now that they own it? Find some other way to soak up the publicity or rake in the money from Professor Pausch's newfound fame? Keep it as some sort of maudlin, ghoulish shrine to his memory? Turn it into the Remember Randy Pausch and His Last Lecture Memorial Museum, charge admission to see where the poor man used to play with his children, then sell DVDs, t-shirts, and bumper stickers in a gift shop down in the old garage?
Whatever they do -- and they're staying uncharacteristically quiet about it for now -- I'm sure they'll come up with some way to further maximize the buzz and leverage the branding that this
Posted at 01:13 AM
Sat - November 24, 2007
SHE FELL INTO TWO TRAPS
first pittsburgh's, then
buscomm's.
It is always a great and giddy pleasure to wake up
and see your own writing in the newspaper. The only pleasure to match, and
possibly even to exceed it, is to wake up and see the writing of one of your
friends and former students in the newspaper.
Four years ago, Keyana Farkondepay came to Pittsburgh and fell into its lovely trap. Two and a half years ago, she came to BusComm and fell into my considerably less lovely one. That I did not turn her off to Pittsburgh, to Carnegie Mellon, or to education in general is surely some stroke of luck. That I turned her on -- or, more accurately, re-turned her on -- to the joys and passions and compulsions of great communication, of having something to say and then working your ass off to discover the best way to say it, was surely one of the pleasures of my career. And it continues to be so, not just in emails and phone calls and occasional visits to trash-talk each other through an Eagles-Redskins game, but now in the pages of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where, with a lovely little essay about Pittsburgh's Lovely Trap, she does herself, her adopted city, and one of her old professors very, very proud.
Four years ago, Keyana Farkondepay came to Pittsburgh and fell into its lovely trap. Two and a half years ago, she came to BusComm and fell into my considerably less lovely one. That I did not turn her off to Pittsburgh, to Carnegie Mellon, or to education in general is surely some stroke of luck. That I turned her on -- or, more accurately, re-turned her on -- to the joys and passions and compulsions of great communication, of having something to say and then working your ass off to discover the best way to say it, was surely one of the pleasures of my career. And it continues to be so, not just in emails and phone calls and occasional visits to trash-talk each other through an Eagles-Redskins game, but now in the pages of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where, with a lovely little essay about Pittsburgh's Lovely Trap, she does herself, her adopted city, and one of her old professors very, very proud.
Posted at 10:01 AM
Thu - August 30, 2007
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK, THE MONTH...
...and the career.
Courtesy of John Ciardi, who's long been one of my
literary and academic heroes:
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
Posted at 07:21 AM
Sat - June 2, 2007
THE POINTLESS PROCESSIONS POST
two for the prize of
none.
Also catching my eye and raising my ire in this
morning's Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette was this charming photo from Andy
Starnes...
(You can see a higher resolution version here. You can see more of Mr. Starnes' wonderful work here.)
...and the caption that accompanied it: Christian Adams walks in the procession to the ceremony as 21 students at North American Martyrs Catholic School in Monroeville graduated from kindergarten yesterday.
My thoughts on these things are already a matter of TWM public record, so I will neither repeat myself nor (further) belabor the point. Except to say that caps and tassels are the cherries of absurdity atop the sundaes of stupidity that are kindergarten graduation ceremonies. These kids are six years old; the only caps they should be wearing are these, and the only tassels they should be touching are the ones on their classroom story carpet.
(You can see a higher resolution version here. You can see more of Mr. Starnes' wonderful work here.)
...and the caption that accompanied it: Christian Adams walks in the procession to the ceremony as 21 students at North American Martyrs Catholic School in Monroeville graduated from kindergarten yesterday.
My thoughts on these things are already a matter of TWM public record, so I will neither repeat myself nor (further) belabor the point. Except to say that caps and tassels are the cherries of absurdity atop the sundaes of stupidity that are kindergarten graduation ceremonies. These kids are six years old; the only caps they should be wearing are these, and the only tassels they should be touching are the ones on their classroom story carpet.
Posted at 03:56 PM
Wed - May 2, 2007
NOT-SO-GREAT EXPECTATIONS
from an open-and-shut
case.
Remember my Saturday afternoon post, in which we saw another
example of how so many people in higher education are so full of shit, then saw
how deep it was getting in Durham? Well, this week, it got a whole lot
deeper.
Last week, Tim Dodd, executive director of The Center for AcademicSilliness Integrity at Duke
University -- if you'll permit me a small aside: anytime you hear about a Center
for Anything on a college campus, you can safely assume that its levels of
self-importance and practical impact are inversely proportional, so listen and
judge accordingly -- declared that incidents of cheating on his campus have
declined largely because the community
expects its students to have academic integrity.
This week comes news that the Duke community has either
significantly lowered its expectations or neglected sufficiently to communicate
them to its first-year MBA students, thirty-four of whom cheated on an open-book
-- if you'll permit me another small aside: that's right, folks, these people
were so ethically and intellectually inert that they cheated on a test to which
they already had all the answers -- final exam in March. One failed the exam,
nine failed the course, fifteen failed the course and received a year's
suspension, and nine more face possible explusion. None, apparently, has ever
heard of Tim Dodd. Or learned about Ken Lay. Or read Charles Dickens.
But they have, perhaps, taught us something we already knew: that happy thoughts and great expectations and the power of positive putrefaction, especially when they emanate from an organization that mistakes eight sentences of bullshit bingo for a mission statement, amount to little more than an intersection of wishful thinking and willful ignorance in a world -- or a campus -- full of jaywalkers.
Last week, Tim Dodd, executive director of The Center for Academic
But they have, perhaps, taught us something we already knew: that happy thoughts and great expectations and the power of positive putrefaction, especially when they emanate from an organization that mistakes eight sentences of bullshit bingo for a mission statement, amount to little more than an intersection of wishful thinking and willful ignorance in a world -- or a campus -- full of jaywalkers.
Posted at 09:54 AM
Sat - April 28, 2007
THE SOFT INTEGRITY OF HIGH EXPECTATIONS
or, it's getting deep in
durham.
For our latest example of how so many people in
higher education are so full of shit, we turn to the second-to-last paragraph of
a
CNN.com story about college students using iPods to cheat on
exams:
The music players proved to be invaluable for some courses, including music, engineering and sociology classes, said Tim Dodd, executive director of The Center for Academic Integrity at Duke. At Duke, incidents of cheating have declined over the past 10 years, largely because the community expects its students to have academic integrity, he said.
It is difficult to know whether Mr. Dodd actually believes that, or whether he merely hopes that we'll believe it. And in truth, it doesn't matter. Because whether Mr. Dodd is delusional or merely dismissive does not change the rampant absurdity of the statement. Duke may be doing some good, positive, developmental things on campus. They may be admitting a better, more ethical class of students. They may be failing to police, and so to prosecute, a new, tech-savvy generation of sophisticated cheaters. They may be enjoying some combination of all of these factors. But they sure as hell are not reducing the number of cheating incidents on campus by the sheer force of community expectations. The campus is in Durham, not in Stepford.
If you require proof of that assertion, look no farther than this Rolling Stone article, to which I first directed you a little less than a year ago, in which it is painfully clear that, whatever its expectations for academic integrity, Mr. Dodd's community does not expect of its student body nearly enough moral integrity. Or propriety. Or chastity. Or sobriety. Perhaps he and the rest of Blue Devil Nation could work on those qualities next.
If they do, and if they manage to produce a decline in those sorts of incidents too, then I will, in this same space, issue a public apology to Mr. Dodd and the rest of the university's expectation police. And I'll be happy to do so. If only because they will have by then perfected a radical new technique for solving all the social and cultural ills of our time.
Just think of the possibilities. We could end the War in Iraq by expecting the insurgents to have ideological integrity. We could end the War on Terror by announcing to the world that we expect all IslamoFascists to have some jihadi integrity. We could even end all the partisan bickering and bullshit in Washington by declaring that the American community expects its public servants to have moral and political integrity. And once we get all those big-picture issues out of the way, we could start concentrating on the power of positive expectations for our own personal tastes.
I, for one, would expect the Penguins to have some Stanley Cup integrity. And the Eagles to have some Super Bowl integrity. And the Pirates to have at least one summer's worth of winning-season integrity. But I'd begin by expecting all university administrators to have some rhetorical integrity. And maybe even some student-service fidelity.
The music players proved to be invaluable for some courses, including music, engineering and sociology classes, said Tim Dodd, executive director of The Center for Academic Integrity at Duke. At Duke, incidents of cheating have declined over the past 10 years, largely because the community expects its students to have academic integrity, he said.
It is difficult to know whether Mr. Dodd actually believes that, or whether he merely hopes that we'll believe it. And in truth, it doesn't matter. Because whether Mr. Dodd is delusional or merely dismissive does not change the rampant absurdity of the statement. Duke may be doing some good, positive, developmental things on campus. They may be admitting a better, more ethical class of students. They may be failing to police, and so to prosecute, a new, tech-savvy generation of sophisticated cheaters. They may be enjoying some combination of all of these factors. But they sure as hell are not reducing the number of cheating incidents on campus by the sheer force of community expectations. The campus is in Durham, not in Stepford.
If you require proof of that assertion, look no farther than this Rolling Stone article, to which I first directed you a little less than a year ago, in which it is painfully clear that, whatever its expectations for academic integrity, Mr. Dodd's community does not expect of its student body nearly enough moral integrity. Or propriety. Or chastity. Or sobriety. Perhaps he and the rest of Blue Devil Nation could work on those qualities next.
If they do, and if they manage to produce a decline in those sorts of incidents too, then I will, in this same space, issue a public apology to Mr. Dodd and the rest of the university's expectation police. And I'll be happy to do so. If only because they will have by then perfected a radical new technique for solving all the social and cultural ills of our time.
Just think of the possibilities. We could end the War in Iraq by expecting the insurgents to have ideological integrity. We could end the War on Terror by announcing to the world that we expect all IslamoFascists to have some jihadi integrity. We could even end all the partisan bickering and bullshit in Washington by declaring that the American community expects its public servants to have moral and political integrity. And once we get all those big-picture issues out of the way, we could start concentrating on the power of positive expectations for our own personal tastes.
I, for one, would expect the Penguins to have some Stanley Cup integrity. And the Eagles to have some Super Bowl integrity. And the Pirates to have at least one summer's worth of winning-season integrity. But I'd begin by expecting all university administrators to have some rhetorical integrity. And maybe even some student-service fidelity.
Posted at 04:40 PM
Mon - April 23, 2007
Sat - March 3, 2007
MEN AND WOMEN DON'T HAVE TO HAVE SEX
not even if they live in the same
apartment.
The big story on the Carnegie Mellon campus this
week was the university's decision to run a pilot housing program in which
students, sophomore-level and above, who choose to live in the Shady Oak
Apartments can also choose to room with students of the opposite sex. The
university's official name for this option is
gender-neutral
housing, which no doubt pleases the lawyers and
the liberal fundamentalists but which sounds to me like a plan to put eunuchs
and hermaphrodites in the same room and not take sides when they inevitably go
to war. But I digress.
The story spawned a front-page, lead-headline story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a typically droll Reg Henry column, a typically hilarious Carbolic Smoke Ball post, and a predictably hysterical, set-your-watch-and-your-moral-high-horse-by-it letter to the editor from some prissy woman in White Oak, bemoaning how the university has stooped to a moral level below excellence. Not especially typical or predictable but certainly regrettable were the public statements and justifications provided by university officials, whose abilities arrogantly to defend bad policy and ineptly to explain good policy suggest that, should they tire of work in higher education, they could always go into politics.
First came the benchmarking defense, which is the de rigeur, higher-ed equivalent of telling your parents that all your friends' parents have already given their permission. (But Mom, Swarthmore and Haverford are allowed to do it! Why can't I?) Then came the We want to find out what our students want defense, as if there is no greater nobility in letting nineteen year-olds decide responsible university policy. (What's next? Kegs in every room and bars in every common area? If so, we could call it alcohol-positive housing.) Then came the head-scratching, brain-hurting, logic-twisting gay, lesbian, and bisexual students may not want to be forced to share a room with a same-sex student defense. This, of course, is intended to make the university seem sensitive and inclusive and progressive, but it just makes us sound sort of stupid. I'm all for making sure that everyone on campus is comfortable, but do we really think that gays and lesbians are so sensitive and/or so sex-obsessed that they can't possibly share space with a student of the gender to which they are naturally attracted? (Just to be safe, bisexuals should only be offered single rooms.) After all, isn't that the same "logic" and "reasoning" that raging homophobes use when they want to exclude gays and lesbians from sports teams and locker rooms and social organizations? (I don't want them looking at me, because, you know, they just won't be able to control themselves!) All this from administrators at one of the top academic institutions in the country. It boggles the mind.
Don't these people have anyone to teach them how to communicate? Aren't there any on-campus experts who could coach them on what to say, what not to say, and how to or not to say it? Doesn't anyone around there know and value the importance of ... oh, right. Sorry. I digress again.
What truly boggles -- but by now does not surprise -- the mind here is that everyone, from well-intentioned administrators to uptight letter writers, looks at this policy and sees only sex, sex, sex. Straight sex, gay sex, gender-neutral sex, whatever. Everyone's imagining it, assuming it, presuming it, thinking about it, worrying about, or running from it. They're like all those kids in John Cleese's classroom in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, leaping straight for the clitoris (or the penis, or both) like a bull at a gate. As if friendships and platonic relationships do not exist. As if a straight man and a straight woman are not capable of sharing the same living quarters without eventually devolving into a scene from Caligula. As if two gay men, or a gay man and a straight man, could not possibly live together without finally taking a trip to Brokeback Mountain. As if straights and gays and lesbians and bi-sexuals and all sorts of gender neutrals, positives, and negatives, even at an age when hormones do admittedly rage, see each other only in terms of genitals and orifices. As if freedom of choice with your friends and in your housing options is not a good and clear and simple and (ahem) adult enough reason to enact, to embrace, to defend, and not to attack this policy.
How surely and sadly we forget that, even when doors are closed and beds are close, men and women do not actually have to have sex. And that oftentimes, the defenses of housing directors and the grumblings of grandmothers aside, they don't even want to.
The story spawned a front-page, lead-headline story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a typically droll Reg Henry column, a typically hilarious Carbolic Smoke Ball post, and a predictably hysterical, set-your-watch-and-your-moral-high-horse-by-it letter to the editor from some prissy woman in White Oak, bemoaning how the university has stooped to a moral level below excellence. Not especially typical or predictable but certainly regrettable were the public statements and justifications provided by university officials, whose abilities arrogantly to defend bad policy and ineptly to explain good policy suggest that, should they tire of work in higher education, they could always go into politics.
First came the benchmarking defense, which is the de rigeur, higher-ed equivalent of telling your parents that all your friends' parents have already given their permission. (But Mom, Swarthmore and Haverford are allowed to do it! Why can't I?) Then came the We want to find out what our students want defense, as if there is no greater nobility in letting nineteen year-olds decide responsible university policy. (What's next? Kegs in every room and bars in every common area? If so, we could call it alcohol-positive housing.) Then came the head-scratching, brain-hurting, logic-twisting gay, lesbian, and bisexual students may not want to be forced to share a room with a same-sex student defense. This, of course, is intended to make the university seem sensitive and inclusive and progressive, but it just makes us sound sort of stupid. I'm all for making sure that everyone on campus is comfortable, but do we really think that gays and lesbians are so sensitive and/or so sex-obsessed that they can't possibly share space with a student of the gender to which they are naturally attracted? (Just to be safe, bisexuals should only be offered single rooms.) After all, isn't that the same "logic" and "reasoning" that raging homophobes use when they want to exclude gays and lesbians from sports teams and locker rooms and social organizations? (I don't want them looking at me, because, you know, they just won't be able to control themselves!) All this from administrators at one of the top academic institutions in the country. It boggles the mind.
Don't these people have anyone to teach them how to communicate? Aren't there any on-campus experts who could coach them on what to say, what not to say, and how to or not to say it? Doesn't anyone around there know and value the importance of ... oh, right. Sorry. I digress again.
What truly boggles -- but by now does not surprise -- the mind here is that everyone, from well-intentioned administrators to uptight letter writers, looks at this policy and sees only sex, sex, sex. Straight sex, gay sex, gender-neutral sex, whatever. Everyone's imagining it, assuming it, presuming it, thinking about it, worrying about, or running from it. They're like all those kids in John Cleese's classroom in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, leaping straight for the clitoris (or the penis, or both) like a bull at a gate. As if friendships and platonic relationships do not exist. As if a straight man and a straight woman are not capable of sharing the same living quarters without eventually devolving into a scene from Caligula. As if two gay men, or a gay man and a straight man, could not possibly live together without finally taking a trip to Brokeback Mountain. As if straights and gays and lesbians and bi-sexuals and all sorts of gender neutrals, positives, and negatives, even at an age when hormones do admittedly rage, see each other only in terms of genitals and orifices. As if freedom of choice with your friends and in your housing options is not a good and clear and simple and (ahem) adult enough reason to enact, to embrace, to defend, and not to attack this policy.
How surely and sadly we forget that, even when doors are closed and beds are close, men and women do not actually have to have sex. And that oftentimes, the defenses of housing directors and the grumblings of grandmothers aside, they don't even want to.
Posted at 10:45 AM
Wed - February 14, 2007
OUR HEART IS IN OUR WORK, BUT OUR HEAD IS IN OUR ASS
or, where's a homestead strike when you
need it?
More than six inches of snow fell yesterday.
Freezing rain fell atop that snow all evening and through the night. It is
snowing again this morning, with two to three more inches expected before the
storm finally moves off to the east. A Winter Weather Advisory, in which the
National Weather Service discourages unnecessary travel, remains in effect until
1pm this afternoon. More than 10,000 homes in the county are without power.
Ice coats trees and power lines and roads and sidewalks all across southwestern
Pennsylvania. Portions of Interstate 79 have been shut down, re-opened, and
shut down again. The Light Rail system is out of servce because of extreme ice
build-up on tracks and overhead lines. The Parkways East and North are in many
places snow- and ice-covered. The HOV lanes are closed. Some state roads have
only one passable lane. Streets throughout the city are covered in snow and
ice. State offices in the region are closed. All public and private schools in
the region are closed. Day-care centers and public-access services and
Meals-on-Wheels programs are closed. Every university in the region is either
closed or opening at noon. Except
one.
That's right, folks. It's business as usual today at Carnegie Mellon University, where we are so great and so smart and so technologically advanced that our employees can teleport to work and our students have cars or shoes or bicycles that enable them to hover, landspeeder-like, a few inches over any treacherous terrain, where sidewalks never freeze and feet never slip and bones never break, where we are so dedicated to intellectual inquiry that we can neither stop nor stoop to be troubled by physical reality, where the safety of our people is never as important as the sanctity of our schedule, and where our hearts are always in our work but our heads, especially on snow- and ice-ravaged days in the middle of February, are sometimes in our asses.
That's right, folks. It's business as usual today at Carnegie Mellon University, where we are so great and so smart and so technologically advanced that our employees can teleport to work and our students have cars or shoes or bicycles that enable them to hover, landspeeder-like, a few inches over any treacherous terrain, where sidewalks never freeze and feet never slip and bones never break, where we are so dedicated to intellectual inquiry that we can neither stop nor stoop to be troubled by physical reality, where the safety of our people is never as important as the sanctity of our schedule, and where our hearts are always in our work but our heads, especially on snow- and ice-ravaged days in the middle of February, are sometimes in our asses.
Posted at 07:59 AM
Mon - January 22, 2007
SOMETIMES IT'S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW BUT WHO YOU DON'T
or, more adventures in knowing your
audience.
One of the core tenets -- in fact,
the core
tenet -- of my Business Communication classes at Carnegie Mellon is a
(deceptively) simple three-word tenet:
Know Your Audience.
I introduce it on the first day of class, and
not a day goes by all semester that we do not revisit, consider, or otherwise
expand upon it. Some days, of course, we demonstrate it more vividly than
others.
Like today.
To illustrate a point about the situational dependence of rhetorical credibility, I like to get my students talking about Albert Einstein; once they agree that, as one of the modern era's bona fide geniuses, he has unimpeachable intellectual ethos, I ask if that means he would be their first choice to teach a sociology class. Or a computer programming class. Or perhaps to be the next offensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers. They generally put up a half-hearted argument about how a genius is a genius is a genius, realize the error and folly of the rationalization, and understand quite neatly that professional credibility, like rhetoric, always greatly depends upon the context in which it must work.
Today, the fourth day of class for the semester and so long enough, I like to think, for my students to have figured out at least some of my rhythms and gotten at least some sense of my sense of humor -- which is to say, at least gotten to know their professorial audience well enough to know when he's being silly for effect -- we were talking about Einstein and about his work when I hesitated and smiled and said, That's right, he was the father of modern physics, and he's most famous for figuring out that equation, you know, E equals MC something or other.
Long before the final r sound had trailed away into the ether, an attentive, too-earnest-by-half young woman in the back row blurted out, Squared! E equals MC squared! It was clear that, despite my joking demeanor and my reasonable intelligence and my status as a Carnegie Mellon University professor -- teaching those soft, silly communication skills, of course, but a CMU professor nonetheless -- she thought I didn't actually know the equation. It was also clear that she wanted to impress me with what she knew and how quickly she could prove it by practically ejecting from her seat when she said it. And thus was it also clear, as if I did not know this already, how sadly humor- and perception-impaired, at least at the beginning of the semester, so many of my math-and-science-focused minds at Carnegie Mellon can be.
I occasionally get this sort of reaction, though not usually about such famous and obvious material. When I do, I normally smile and laugh and suggest that, Yeah, I knew that, but gee, thanks for helping me out, as the cross-sections of the class that are neither humor- nor perception-impaired laugh at the silliness of the whole situation. But this morning's class period had already gotten off to a rocky start, and the young woman was at least paying rapt attention, so I down-shifted and decided I would not tease her about it. I smiled and nodded, figured she got the message, and moved on.
A few moments later, as we continued to discuss Einstein's pedigree, I made another reference to the equation, thinking it might be an opportunity to share a now-inside joke and let us all laugh with her, instead of at her. But it didn't quite work that way.
ME: ...and after all, he did come up with that E equals MC cubed thing.
SHE: Squared!
I stopped. I smiled. A few students laughed. And then I realized that I should have just kept talking.
SHE: Squared! It's E equals MC squared!
I turned to my TAs. I laughed. I shook my head. When they had nothing for me, I turned back to the class.
ME: Yes. Squared. That's right.
I thought the tone this time should have made it pretty obvious that I knew it was squared, that I knew all along -- indeed, since before she was born -- that it was squared, and that she might, even as she tries to show off what she knows, try to know her audience at least a little better than she did. Apparently it did not. Because a few moments later, when we were comparing Einstein to Homer Simpson and George W. Bush (don't ask), I referred to the equation as E equals MC to the seventh power, and, though she held her tongue, she screwed up her face and twitched a time or two in her seat, looking for all the world like someone who, confronted with a person who just will not grasp the obvious or ever learn his lesson, has decided just to give up and let that little bit of ignorance be its own bliss.
And for the first time all morning, trying to calculate how many more classes it would take before she finally learned that what you know is not nearly as important as what you don't know about to whom you want to tell it, I understood exactly how she felt.
Like today.
To illustrate a point about the situational dependence of rhetorical credibility, I like to get my students talking about Albert Einstein; once they agree that, as one of the modern era's bona fide geniuses, he has unimpeachable intellectual ethos, I ask if that means he would be their first choice to teach a sociology class. Or a computer programming class. Or perhaps to be the next offensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers. They generally put up a half-hearted argument about how a genius is a genius is a genius, realize the error and folly of the rationalization, and understand quite neatly that professional credibility, like rhetoric, always greatly depends upon the context in which it must work.
Today, the fourth day of class for the semester and so long enough, I like to think, for my students to have figured out at least some of my rhythms and gotten at least some sense of my sense of humor -- which is to say, at least gotten to know their professorial audience well enough to know when he's being silly for effect -- we were talking about Einstein and about his work when I hesitated and smiled and said, That's right, he was the father of modern physics, and he's most famous for figuring out that equation, you know, E equals MC something or other.
Long before the final r sound had trailed away into the ether, an attentive, too-earnest-by-half young woman in the back row blurted out, Squared! E equals MC squared! It was clear that, despite my joking demeanor and my reasonable intelligence and my status as a Carnegie Mellon University professor -- teaching those soft, silly communication skills, of course, but a CMU professor nonetheless -- she thought I didn't actually know the equation. It was also clear that she wanted to impress me with what she knew and how quickly she could prove it by practically ejecting from her seat when she said it. And thus was it also clear, as if I did not know this already, how sadly humor- and perception-impaired, at least at the beginning of the semester, so many of my math-and-science-focused minds at Carnegie Mellon can be.
I occasionally get this sort of reaction, though not usually about such famous and obvious material. When I do, I normally smile and laugh and suggest that, Yeah, I knew that, but gee, thanks for helping me out, as the cross-sections of the class that are neither humor- nor perception-impaired laugh at the silliness of the whole situation. But this morning's class period had already gotten off to a rocky start, and the young woman was at least paying rapt attention, so I down-shifted and decided I would not tease her about it. I smiled and nodded, figured she got the message, and moved on.
A few moments later, as we continued to discuss Einstein's pedigree, I made another reference to the equation, thinking it might be an opportunity to share a now-inside joke and let us all laugh with her, instead of at her. But it didn't quite work that way.
ME: ...and after all, he did come up with that E equals MC cubed thing.
SHE: Squared!
I stopped. I smiled. A few students laughed. And then I realized that I should have just kept talking.
SHE: Squared! It's E equals MC squared!
I turned to my TAs. I laughed. I shook my head. When they had nothing for me, I turned back to the class.
ME: Yes. Squared. That's right.
I thought the tone this time should have made it pretty obvious that I knew it was squared, that I knew all along -- indeed, since before she was born -- that it was squared, and that she might, even as she tries to show off what she knows, try to know her audience at least a little better than she did. Apparently it did not. Because a few moments later, when we were comparing Einstein to Homer Simpson and George W. Bush (don't ask), I referred to the equation as E equals MC to the seventh power, and, though she held her tongue, she screwed up her face and twitched a time or two in her seat, looking for all the world like someone who, confronted with a person who just will not grasp the obvious or ever learn his lesson, has decided just to give up and let that little bit of ignorance be its own bliss.
And for the first time all morning, trying to calculate how many more classes it would take before she finally learned that what you know is not nearly as important as what you don't know about to whom you want to tell it, I understood exactly how she felt.
Posted at 12:56 PM
Thu - September 28, 2006
THERE MUST BE SOME MISTAKE
to humble me like this.
BusinessWeek
magazine this week published the results of a
survey -- part of their first-ever undergraduate business program rankings -- that identified the top twenty-two
favorite undergraduate business professors in the country. I don't know if
there were some mistake, if the editors or the students they surveyed were drunk
for large parts of the process, or if my grandmother somehow found out about it
and used the last of her retirement fund to pay off the selection committee, but
for some inexplicable reason, I made the list. And even got a nifty, full-page profile for the honor.
This is humbling and flattering and ultimately sort of mystifying. I'm proud of what I do, and I think I'm pretty good at it. But it's still difficult to imagine that I deserve to be mentioned with, much less keep the company of, the other professors on the list. That this honor comes, as it does, from the students themselves -- from the people who sit in my classes every day and so are the best possible evaluators of how well and how much I teach them -- suggests that, most days at least, my hopes and passions, my efforts and energies, my teaching and wordsmithing and occasional madmanning, really do inspire my students to think and work and learn, and so to improve their lives.
And that's the most high and wonderful praise any teacher could ever want or hope to hear.
This is humbling and flattering and ultimately sort of mystifying. I'm proud of what I do, and I think I'm pretty good at it. But it's still difficult to imagine that I deserve to be mentioned with, much less keep the company of, the other professors on the list. That this honor comes, as it does, from the students themselves -- from the people who sit in my classes every day and so are the best possible evaluators of how well and how much I teach them -- suggests that, most days at least, my hopes and passions, my efforts and energies, my teaching and wordsmithing and occasional madmanning, really do inspire my students to think and work and learn, and so to improve their lives.
And that's the most high and wonderful praise any teacher could ever want or hope to hear.
Posted at 09:27 AM
Thu - September 21, 2006
WHEN STUDENTS CHEAT, WE UNDERSTAND
that it's just an unfortunate byproduct
of their essential self-exploration.
Got an interesting little flyer/primer/newsletter
in my mailbox yesterday, courtesy of the good folks at Carnegie Mellon's Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence. The
title/subject/core question was: Cheating
and Plagiarism on the Rise? The
answer/explanation/not especially helpful or enlightening conclusion was:
Well, we're not sure. But if it is, we
have no idea what to do about it. Worse still
was the tone, which vacillated between resignation and rationalization, between
the mildly amusing implication that we're already doing, short of this two-page
precis, about as much as we can to deal with it, and the far more infuriating
suggestion that cheaters and plagiarists are just smart kids making foolish
choices.
If you can overlook the awkward, inelegant syntax -- The Carnegie Mellon Code sets the highest standard for our community regarding personal integrity -- the document begins clearly and simply enough. But it quickly heads for the ditch, kicking up an unfortunate cloud of touchy-feely gobbledygook and developmental doublespeak: However, in the midst of self exploration, struggles with fear of failure and the high demands of a challenging academic environment can create situations where some students have difficulty exercising good judgment.
Oh, those poor, plagiarizing dears. It's not their fault; it's ours. And their parents'. And their academic environment's. They're just the victims of a sad and sorry set of circumstances, sufferers to some otherwise well-intentioned self-exploration -- note the need for the hyphen, Eberly Center proofreaders -- and their compromised senses of ethics and honesty and academic integrity are just collateral damage in the high-pressure war to get their grades and meet our demands and exceed their own lofty expectations. To paraphrase Mick Jagger: what can a poor boy do, except to cheat for a C-M-U grade?
I read that sentence once, twice, thrice, trying to convince myself that it wasn't nearly as mincing nor as mealy-penned as it seemed. But it was. It is. In fact, it's so bad that it's almost self-parody, like a Rush Limbaugh monologue conception of ivory tower moral relativism, in which the high-minded liberal elite effetes can't bring themselves to fault anyone for anything, from murder to rioting to plagiarism, because some greater social or cultural cause must be to blame. It's like something you hear and ignore Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly spouting and sputtering and pontificating about, because you're sure they're just twisting the words or maybe even making the whole thing up.
But they're not.
Two paragraphs later, the document asks, What is the institution doing to address cheating and plagiarism? Two days later, I'm still waiting for the answer. Because all I got was this:
We know that our academic environment places high demands on students, and we understand the pressures some of them are under. However, we also provide students with ample support services to thrive academically without dishonesty. Among these services are faculty and TA office hours, review sessions, tutoring, supplemental instruction, help in navigating cultural and second-language issues, and counseling services. In addition, we clearly define our standards for academic and personal integrity, and definitions of cheating and plagiarism are clearly stated (in the student handbook, among other places) and widely available to students.
So we're doing essentially what every other university -- er, institution -- is doing. We're teaching, we're tutoring, and we're defining. We're providing support services. And now we're publishing informational pamphlets that don't really address the issue. To paraphrase Dr. Phil: How's that workin' for us?
Not well, apparently. Though the pamphlet hopes to do better with six simple things faculty [can] do to prevent cheating and plagiarism before they occur.
The first -- Create unique paper and project assignments -- is sound and reasonable advice. The third -- Provide examples of how and when to credit others' ideas -- is also sound and reasonable advice, albeit much more so if we're teaching seventh- or tenth-grade English students. And the fifth -- Inform students about the support services listed above -- is only helpful if you really do believe, which I do not, that plagiarists are just the academic equivalent of poor people who, beaten down by forces beyond their control, steal food because they have no other way to feed their self-exploring families. And not because they're just lazy or ignorant or would rather play beer pong at frat parties than actually do hard, thoughtful, intelligent work. But I digress.
My three favorite strategies, the ones even in sequence but odd in suggestion, are:
• Explain your policy regarding cheating.
This is, I suppose, to distinguish between those professors who do allow cheating and most of the rest of us who don't. Just for clarification. So that our students, when tempted to cheat -- I mean, when they find themselves trapped in situations where they will have difficulty exercising good judgment -- will know for certain whether they're allowed to do it. This time. On a campus that sets the highest standards of personal integrity. But can't seem to articulate them. Or defend them. Without sounding like the world's worst indulgent, permissive, apologetic, liberal nightmare stereotype.
• Inform students about the support services listed above to which they can turn for help.
Alright, kids. Listen up. Should any of you, due to fear of failure or the high demands of our challenging academic environment, and while in the midst of self-exploration, have difficulty exercising good judgment, or should you just be too lazy or worthless or amoral actually to do your own work, you can always talk to me. Or your TAs. Maybe attend a review session or talk to a counselor. We don't yet have a plagiarism hotline or the services of academic assault advisors, but I'm sure we have something to help you out in your time of need and ethical failure.
• Ask students to sign a statement of academic integrity for particular assignments (verifying, for example, that the work is their own, or crediting co-workers).
Oh, yes. Nothing works quite like securing the sworn statement of a cheater and a liar. Because Lord knows that once someone has signed his name and pledged not to cheat, the thought of plagiarizing never crosses his mind again. Perhaps, if we wanted to be extra careful and particularly proactive, we could have students take their documents to be signed and sealed by a Notary Public. If it works for driver's license applications, I'll bet it'll work for academic integrity statements too.
The only thing missing here is a Just Say No campaign.
I can see the first ad now: This is your brain. This is your brain in the midst of self-exploration. This is your brain having difficulty exercising good judgment. Any questions? And then a series of bumper stickers: Mothers Against Bad Judgment. Students Against Self-Exploration. Deans Against Fear of Failure. And the satisfying but sure-to-be controversial: Professors Against Idiot Plagiarists.
The document concludes by assuring all of us in the non self-exploring, non-judgmental institutional community that:
If we want students to understand the seriousness of our commitment to academic integrity, we need to work hard to both prevent cheating and plagiarism, and to respond appropriately when it does occur.
We surely do. Even if this document, and many of the assumptions that inform it, surely do not. But it seems to me a good place to start would be to speak -- especially in our institutional, developmental, campus-wide pamphlets -- clearly and directly and honestly about an offense that everyone, by the time they get to college, whether or not they're in the midst of self-exploration, and even when they're struggling with the fear of failure that follows from a challenging academic environment they chose to join, knows damned well is always wrong.
If you can overlook the awkward, inelegant syntax -- The Carnegie Mellon Code sets the highest standard for our community regarding personal integrity -- the document begins clearly and simply enough. But it quickly heads for the ditch, kicking up an unfortunate cloud of touchy-feely gobbledygook and developmental doublespeak: However, in the midst of self exploration, struggles with fear of failure and the high demands of a challenging academic environment can create situations where some students have difficulty exercising good judgment.
Oh, those poor, plagiarizing dears. It's not their fault; it's ours. And their parents'. And their academic environment's. They're just the victims of a sad and sorry set of circumstances, sufferers to some otherwise well-intentioned self-exploration -- note the need for the hyphen, Eberly Center proofreaders -- and their compromised senses of ethics and honesty and academic integrity are just collateral damage in the high-pressure war to get their grades and meet our demands and exceed their own lofty expectations. To paraphrase Mick Jagger: what can a poor boy do, except to cheat for a C-M-U grade?
I read that sentence once, twice, thrice, trying to convince myself that it wasn't nearly as mincing nor as mealy-penned as it seemed. But it was. It is. In fact, it's so bad that it's almost self-parody, like a Rush Limbaugh monologue conception of ivory tower moral relativism, in which the high-minded liberal elite effetes can't bring themselves to fault anyone for anything, from murder to rioting to plagiarism, because some greater social or cultural cause must be to blame. It's like something you hear and ignore Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly spouting and sputtering and pontificating about, because you're sure they're just twisting the words or maybe even making the whole thing up.
But they're not.
Two paragraphs later, the document asks, What is the institution doing to address cheating and plagiarism? Two days later, I'm still waiting for the answer. Because all I got was this:
We know that our academic environment places high demands on students, and we understand the pressures some of them are under. However, we also provide students with ample support services to thrive academically without dishonesty. Among these services are faculty and TA office hours, review sessions, tutoring, supplemental instruction, help in navigating cultural and second-language issues, and counseling services. In addition, we clearly define our standards for academic and personal integrity, and definitions of cheating and plagiarism are clearly stated (in the student handbook, among other places) and widely available to students.
So we're doing essentially what every other university -- er, institution -- is doing. We're teaching, we're tutoring, and we're defining. We're providing support services. And now we're publishing informational pamphlets that don't really address the issue. To paraphrase Dr. Phil: How's that workin' for us?
Not well, apparently. Though the pamphlet hopes to do better with six simple things faculty [can] do to prevent cheating and plagiarism before they occur.
The first -- Create unique paper and project assignments -- is sound and reasonable advice. The third -- Provide examples of how and when to credit others' ideas -- is also sound and reasonable advice, albeit much more so if we're teaching seventh- or tenth-grade English students. And the fifth -- Inform students about the support services listed above -- is only helpful if you really do believe, which I do not, that plagiarists are just the academic equivalent of poor people who, beaten down by forces beyond their control, steal food because they have no other way to feed their self-exploring families. And not because they're just lazy or ignorant or would rather play beer pong at frat parties than actually do hard, thoughtful, intelligent work. But I digress.
My three favorite strategies, the ones even in sequence but odd in suggestion, are:
• Explain your policy regarding cheating.
This is, I suppose, to distinguish between those professors who do allow cheating and most of the rest of us who don't. Just for clarification. So that our students, when tempted to cheat -- I mean, when they find themselves trapped in situations where they will have difficulty exercising good judgment -- will know for certain whether they're allowed to do it. This time. On a campus that sets the highest standards of personal integrity. But can't seem to articulate them. Or defend them. Without sounding like the world's worst indulgent, permissive, apologetic, liberal nightmare stereotype.
• Inform students about the support services listed above to which they can turn for help.
Alright, kids. Listen up. Should any of you, due to fear of failure or the high demands of our challenging academic environment, and while in the midst of self-exploration, have difficulty exercising good judgment, or should you just be too lazy or worthless or amoral actually to do your own work, you can always talk to me. Or your TAs. Maybe attend a review session or talk to a counselor. We don't yet have a plagiarism hotline or the services of academic assault advisors, but I'm sure we have something to help you out in your time of need and ethical failure.
• Ask students to sign a statement of academic integrity for particular assignments (verifying, for example, that the work is their own, or crediting co-workers).
Oh, yes. Nothing works quite like securing the sworn statement of a cheater and a liar. Because Lord knows that once someone has signed his name and pledged not to cheat, the thought of plagiarizing never crosses his mind again. Perhaps, if we wanted to be extra careful and particularly proactive, we could have students take their documents to be signed and sealed by a Notary Public. If it works for driver's license applications, I'll bet it'll work for academic integrity statements too.
The only thing missing here is a Just Say No campaign.
I can see the first ad now: This is your brain. This is your brain in the midst of self-exploration. This is your brain having difficulty exercising good judgment. Any questions? And then a series of bumper stickers: Mothers Against Bad Judgment. Students Against Self-Exploration. Deans Against Fear of Failure. And the satisfying but sure-to-be controversial: Professors Against Idiot Plagiarists.
The document concludes by assuring all of us in the non self-exploring, non-judgmental institutional community that:
If we want students to understand the seriousness of our commitment to academic integrity, we need to work hard to both prevent cheating and plagiarism, and to respond appropriately when it does occur.
We surely do. Even if this document, and many of the assumptions that inform it, surely do not. But it seems to me a good place to start would be to speak -- especially in our institutional, developmental, campus-wide pamphlets -- clearly and directly and honestly about an offense that everyone, by the time they get to college, whether or not they're in the midst of self-exploration, and even when they're struggling with the fear of failure that follows from a challenging academic environment they chose to join, knows damned well is always wrong.
Posted at 09:35 AM
Mon - August 28, 2006
GOOD MORNING
to a good semester.
There are precious few days in the year filled with
as much hope, as much promise, as much skittish, nervous, joyous energy as the
first day of classes.
On this dark and cloudy but still bright and shining morning in western Pennsylvania, here's to the glory and passion and possibility of them all...
On this dark and cloudy but still bright and shining morning in western Pennsylvania, here's to the glory and passion and possibility of them all...
Posted at 07:44 AM
Tue - August 8, 2006
LIVE FROM EAST HARTFORD...
...it's tuesday night!
I’ve sung the praises of the program and its people and its deliriously, deliciously intense
FAST Week classes many times before. Enough that regular
readers know I never pass up a chance to teach a room full of Tepper School Flex
Mode students, either via distance-learning technology to sites as far away as
Sunnyvale, California, or, on long and wild and crazy days in May and January,
on campus here in Pittsburgh. But tonight, I’ll be breaking new ground on
the Flex Mode frontier, heading north and east to teach a class and explore some
territory at the Pratt & Whitney headquarters in East
Hartford, Connecticut. Going on the road and in the air and over the river and
probably even through some woods to get to a place that, for the faces I'll see
and the feelings I'll know, for the teaching I'll do and the learning I'll find,
for the presenting and the decision-making and the simple joy of spending
two-and-a-half hours in a room full of twenty-seven people waiting to work and
wanting to share my passions, will feel as much like home as you can get when
you're one day and five hundred miles
away.
The trip is for work. But the work is a calling. And when it's answered by people and places like these, it somehow seems like a vacation. Like fun and play and privilege. Like one more wonderful reward for teaching and communicating and believing so deeply in the blessed importance of both.
The trip is for work. But the work is a calling. And when it's answered by people and places like these, it somehow seems like a vacation. Like fun and play and privilege. Like one more wonderful reward for teaching and communicating and believing so deeply in the blessed importance of both.
Posted at 06:54 AM
Wed - June 14, 2006
THERE'S STILL SOME WISDOM IN THE SANDPILE
or, all we really need to know we learned
at kindergarten graduations.
Anyone remember the days when you finished a grade
in school, got your report card, and were simply wished a good summer? It was a
smile, a pat on the back, and a see ya
next year. And that was it. Because everyone
knew that another year had passed, that another year was coming, and that all
you'd done was what you were supposed to do anyway. It was a reason to rejoice
-- hello, summer vacation!
-- but not an occasion to celebrate, because you
had a hell of a lot more grades ahead of you, and because everyone with straight
Ds on his report card did too. The feat was acknowledged, appreciated, and
forgotten; it was neither exalted nor amplified, because you and everyone else
understood that you don't ennoble mediocrity, that you don't treat a first
inning lead like a ninth inning victory, and that you don't declare achievement,
much less honor your own greatness, when you finish another one-thirteenth of
your work.
But now, at every possible turn, and at the end of every conceivable grade, you have to have a graduation ceremony or a commencement ceremony or, if the school has at least some sense of restraint, a promotion ceremony. You have them for children who finish pre-school and nursery school and kindergarten, for children who finish fourth grade or fifth grade or sixth grade, for children simply going on to elementary school or middle school or high school. It's no wonder kids are so disaffected by the time they become high school sophomores; for some, it's the first year of their lives that their extended family hasn't been invited to their school's auditorium (or gymnasium, or cafetorium) to cheer and hoot and holler for some simple rite of passage that used to be honored with a high five and a bus ride and maybe a few extra minutes added to your bedtime. The phenomenon is as sad as it is silly and, in an early twenty-first century that seems hell-bent on elevating the innocuous, as silly as it is inevitable.
It was a little bit of all three today, when Ethan and fifty-five other kids at Linden Academy concluded a year of kindergarten, capping off one-hundred-eighty days of work and play with forty-five minutes of pomp and circumstance. It was an assembly, a reception, and a promotion ceremony all rolled into one, an extravaganza staged, like most dog-and-pony-shows masquerading as children's school ceremonies, almost solely for the benefit of immature, impatient adults who can't or won't or just don't want to wait to celebrate until their children actually achieve something meaningful. So we took our seats near the back of the room and resolved to endure it all: two speeches, three songs, a couple of readings, and a parade of rainbow-decorated diplomas on stage, with a Hallmark shop's worth of cards and balloons (my favorite: Congratulations, Grad!, a word the kid can't read followed by a word the kid can't be) and gifts in the audience, more flash photography than a royal family wedding, and an orange-drink-and-cookie stampede afterward. It was all nice and sweet and, as these things go, reasonably restrained. Best of all, it was mercifully brief.
The principal, a kind and thoughtful woman who seems to find far more joy in her job than do most of her peers, kept her remarks short and simple and appropriate. She talked about learning, she praised the kids for their good work, and she read a little Robert Fulghum (including my favorite line: Be aware of wonder). One teacher spoke briefly about her class, laughed and smiled a lot, and got right to the business of handing out the packets, the stuffed animals, and the Barnes & Noble gift cards. (In what may have been the high point of the day, the children were more excited by the cards than the toys; there is, perhaps, hope for a literate future yet.) The other teacher, a woman clearly born to teach German and to keep her children's educational trains running on time, spoke at least as long as the other two women combined, told us nothing we didn't already know, and proved what we'd all already suspected: that her favorite vowel is I. In the end, every child got a name call, a handshake from the principal, and a round of applause from the audience — which was, considering the alternatives, not especially excessive. And was, truth be told, maybe even mildly enjoyable.
Perhaps because those kids, who at six are still young and innocent enough to find joy in most everything they do, this year found fresh, fulfilling joy in the simple pleasures of a kindergarten classroom. They took great pleasure in word problems and book reports and homework folders, in small desks and loud lockers and tiny, hard-to-open milk cartons in a crowded cafeteria. They came to a place many of us once could not wait to leave and, finding delights we'd forgotten or forsaken, realized they would be more than happy to stay. They carried those joys, those pleasures, those gentle, unassuming delights into their songs and smiles and laughter today, for a ceremony that was but one more new experience in a year chock full of them. Most of the adults wanted to take pictures and give presents and obsessively capture the moment; the kids just wanted to talk to their friends, eat some cookies, and get ready to go home. In their happiness for the day, and in their indifference to the event, they seemed to be teaching us all a lesson in the little things; they seemed to understand, better than most of the adults in the room, that these sorts of moments and days and years are just beginning, that the end of kindergarten is only the start of first grade, and that, no matter how much their parents or teachers or principals try to hurry them, they will learn and grow and maybe even one day actually graduate, but always in their own sweet time.
But now, at every possible turn, and at the end of every conceivable grade, you have to have a graduation ceremony or a commencement ceremony or, if the school has at least some sense of restraint, a promotion ceremony. You have them for children who finish pre-school and nursery school and kindergarten, for children who finish fourth grade or fifth grade or sixth grade, for children simply going on to elementary school or middle school or high school. It's no wonder kids are so disaffected by the time they become high school sophomores; for some, it's the first year of their lives that their extended family hasn't been invited to their school's auditorium (or gymnasium, or cafetorium) to cheer and hoot and holler for some simple rite of passage that used to be honored with a high five and a bus ride and maybe a few extra minutes added to your bedtime. The phenomenon is as sad as it is silly and, in an early twenty-first century that seems hell-bent on elevating the innocuous, as silly as it is inevitable.
It was a little bit of all three today, when Ethan and fifty-five other kids at Linden Academy concluded a year of kindergarten, capping off one-hundred-eighty days of work and play with forty-five minutes of pomp and circumstance. It was an assembly, a reception, and a promotion ceremony all rolled into one, an extravaganza staged, like most dog-and-pony-shows masquerading as children's school ceremonies, almost solely for the benefit of immature, impatient adults who can't or won't or just don't want to wait to celebrate until their children actually achieve something meaningful. So we took our seats near the back of the room and resolved to endure it all: two speeches, three songs, a couple of readings, and a parade of rainbow-decorated diplomas on stage, with a Hallmark shop's worth of cards and balloons (my favorite: Congratulations, Grad!, a word the kid can't read followed by a word the kid can't be) and gifts in the audience, more flash photography than a royal family wedding, and an orange-drink-and-cookie stampede afterward. It was all nice and sweet and, as these things go, reasonably restrained. Best of all, it was mercifully brief.
The principal, a kind and thoughtful woman who seems to find far more joy in her job than do most of her peers, kept her remarks short and simple and appropriate. She talked about learning, she praised the kids for their good work, and she read a little Robert Fulghum (including my favorite line: Be aware of wonder). One teacher spoke briefly about her class, laughed and smiled a lot, and got right to the business of handing out the packets, the stuffed animals, and the Barnes & Noble gift cards. (In what may have been the high point of the day, the children were more excited by the cards than the toys; there is, perhaps, hope for a literate future yet.) The other teacher, a woman clearly born to teach German and to keep her children's educational trains running on time, spoke at least as long as the other two women combined, told us nothing we didn't already know, and proved what we'd all already suspected: that her favorite vowel is I. In the end, every child got a name call, a handshake from the principal, and a round of applause from the audience — which was, considering the alternatives, not especially excessive. And was, truth be told, maybe even mildly enjoyable.
Perhaps because those kids, who at six are still young and innocent enough to find joy in most everything they do, this year found fresh, fulfilling joy in the simple pleasures of a kindergarten classroom. They took great pleasure in word problems and book reports and homework folders, in small desks and loud lockers and tiny, hard-to-open milk cartons in a crowded cafeteria. They came to a place many of us once could not wait to leave and, finding delights we'd forgotten or forsaken, realized they would be more than happy to stay. They carried those joys, those pleasures, those gentle, unassuming delights into their songs and smiles and laughter today, for a ceremony that was but one more new experience in a year chock full of them. Most of the adults wanted to take pictures and give presents and obsessively capture the moment; the kids just wanted to talk to their friends, eat some cookies, and get ready to go home. In their happiness for the day, and in their indifference to the event, they seemed to be teaching us all a lesson in the little things; they seemed to understand, better than most of the adults in the room, that these sorts of moments and days and years are just beginning, that the end of kindergarten is only the start of first grade, and that, no matter how much their parents or teachers or principals try to hurry them, they will learn and grow and maybe even one day actually graduate, but always in their own sweet time.
Posted at 10:28 PM
Thu - May 11, 2006
THE THIRD CUT IS THE LONGEST
to teach, and so to
write.
Today, it rained cats and dogs and all the hungry
hounds of hell. Yesterday, the sun shone like a little piece of heaven had come
to Pittsburgh for Fast Week and decided to stick around, all blessings and
grace, for a slow, sweet writing exercise: one of my favorites, already
explained and explored for the first time here last April, revisited now once more, this
time with MBA students from all across the country who came and saw and captured
the famous Carnegie Mellon Cut in all its green-grassed and gold-bricked glory.
Some of theirs, perhaps, will appear later. One has already arrived on another blog. And mine unfurls here, now, on a night after a day when we could have used another dry, warm, sunny place to sit and think and let our letters dance across our blank blue pages.
READING (& WRITING) DAY
2:52pm . 5.10.06
On the cut. Bright sun, cool breeze. Persistent techno beat. No melody, but I don’t really expect one. The percussive, concussive groove fits well enough for this day, this week, this life.
Frisbee games left and right. On the left, two Frisbees – blue and white – trailing like crosswinds blowing beyond the fence. On the right, one white, caught and tossed and caught again amidst a cloud of dust: ten guys, back and forth, round and round, playing Ultimate. This time of the semester, maybe it should be penultimate. Either way, I’d rather be sitting here thinking. Writing. Enjoying.
On the bench. Dark brown, peeling paint. Weeds and stones and bricks and butts beneath. Messy. Imperfect. And so perfectly Carnegie: diverse, discarded, half-hearted and somehow home. The pre-commencement cleaning crews haven’t gotten here yet. They’re too busy, perhaps, repainting orange sidewalks.
I look up. Laura and Kate, intent, intense, turned at angles; if I didn’t know better, I’d think they were arguing and refusing to look at each other, turning cold shoulders and hot pens to scribble away their anger. Both stare away, scrunch their faces, turn back to their pages, madly, happily writing. Laura’s a lefty. I like the alliteration.
Under the tree, Gladys. Lisa to her left, Christine behind. The men have, apparently, scattered, like good nomads, hunters and gatherers and communicators. The women are close. That would make Brian, who must be here somewhere, happy.
Left-side Frisbee game has a new twist. One guy – shirtless, shoeless, clueless – playing while talking on his cell phone. Chat. Catch. Release. Sigh. This is CMU, after all. I should be happy he’s not using his laptop.
The breeze blows still and low, but not up high. The flag droops and slumps on its pole, twitching, barely alive to the beauty of the day. Behind it squats the pile of dirt and rock from which seven silly skywalkers soon will spring. Surrounded by orange fence and yellow tape, it looks like a crime scene. In a way, I suppose, it is. That beautiful expanse of blue sky and green leaves, that natural horizon I see and savor will soon be violated, bisected by a bad idea borne of bad gifts and worse intentions.
On the fence, puke green and red. Not a stout combination. Women in music, with five bad notes and one brittle treble clef. Mr. Yuk is green. I suppose he is today. And I cannot lie. Neither can I; your fence design blows.
Guy with blue backpack shuffles by, hands thrust in his pockets, not really in a hurry to get where he’s going. On a day like today, I can’t blame him.
Ultimate Frisbee continues, quieter now but still kicking up dust. The CFA Lawns bears it all, a field for all sports, a mall for all seasons, stretching all the way to Hornbostel’s great hall.
In its shadow, in the shadow of a great sycamore tree, Brendon and Ricky sit and write. The boys are back. Behind them, in the niches, two other guys – undergrads, I guess, by their clothes and their agitated expressions – read and write and prepare to doze, startled now by the afternoon’s first bleats from above. One, two, three, like a dying whale or a farting trombone. The difference, to my ear, is indistinguishable.
On the lawn, orange cones. Where the hell did they come from? Have they been there all along? How did I miss them? Why do I care?
More bleats and farts. Conversation ambles by: Those movies from our class, you know. I don’t. I turn to see to whom she’s talking, but there’s no one else to see. Cell phone babble. Of course. Does anyone talk face-to-face anymore? When they do finally see each other, what’s left to say?
Another woman walks by. Black bag, orange letters, says informs. At first, I thought it said, worms. I sort of wish it did. Regenerating segments are my kind of fashion statement.
A third woman – must be some kind of record for CMU – limps this way, confused, face gnarled like a closed fist, like a pug with lipstick and sunglasses.
Hard rock now. Big speakers behind the little blue tent. Too much bottom end. Nice bass line, but the guitar’s a little shrill. Tinny. At the table behind, an idle conversation and a laptop sighting. The first of the day. Also, perhaps, a record. A happy surprise. This must be a reading day.
And for this lovely, lonely half hour at least, it’s a writing day too.
Some of theirs, perhaps, will appear later. One has already arrived on another blog. And mine unfurls here, now, on a night after a day when we could have used another dry, warm, sunny place to sit and think and let our letters dance across our blank blue pages.
READING (& WRITING) DAY
2:52pm . 5.10.06
On the cut. Bright sun, cool breeze. Persistent techno beat. No melody, but I don’t really expect one. The percussive, concussive groove fits well enough for this day, this week, this life.
Frisbee games left and right. On the left, two Frisbees – blue and white – trailing like crosswinds blowing beyond the fence. On the right, one white, caught and tossed and caught again amidst a cloud of dust: ten guys, back and forth, round and round, playing Ultimate. This time of the semester, maybe it should be penultimate. Either way, I’d rather be sitting here thinking. Writing. Enjoying.
On the bench. Dark brown, peeling paint. Weeds and stones and bricks and butts beneath. Messy. Imperfect. And so perfectly Carnegie: diverse, discarded, half-hearted and somehow home. The pre-commencement cleaning crews haven’t gotten here yet. They’re too busy, perhaps, repainting orange sidewalks.
I look up. Laura and Kate, intent, intense, turned at angles; if I didn’t know better, I’d think they were arguing and refusing to look at each other, turning cold shoulders and hot pens to scribble away their anger. Both stare away, scrunch their faces, turn back to their pages, madly, happily writing. Laura’s a lefty. I like the alliteration.
Under the tree, Gladys. Lisa to her left, Christine behind. The men have, apparently, scattered, like good nomads, hunters and gatherers and communicators. The women are close. That would make Brian, who must be here somewhere, happy.
Left-side Frisbee game has a new twist. One guy – shirtless, shoeless, clueless – playing while talking on his cell phone. Chat. Catch. Release. Sigh. This is CMU, after all. I should be happy he’s not using his laptop.
The breeze blows still and low, but not up high. The flag droops and slumps on its pole, twitching, barely alive to the beauty of the day. Behind it squats the pile of dirt and rock from which seven silly skywalkers soon will spring. Surrounded by orange fence and yellow tape, it looks like a crime scene. In a way, I suppose, it is. That beautiful expanse of blue sky and green leaves, that natural horizon I see and savor will soon be violated, bisected by a bad idea borne of bad gifts and worse intentions.
On the fence, puke green and red. Not a stout combination. Women in music, with five bad notes and one brittle treble clef. Mr. Yuk is green. I suppose he is today. And I cannot lie. Neither can I; your fence design blows.
Guy with blue backpack shuffles by, hands thrust in his pockets, not really in a hurry to get where he’s going. On a day like today, I can’t blame him.
Ultimate Frisbee continues, quieter now but still kicking up dust. The CFA Lawns bears it all, a field for all sports, a mall for all seasons, stretching all the way to Hornbostel’s great hall.
In its shadow, in the shadow of a great sycamore tree, Brendon and Ricky sit and write. The boys are back. Behind them, in the niches, two other guys – undergrads, I guess, by their clothes and their agitated expressions – read and write and prepare to doze, startled now by the afternoon’s first bleats from above. One, two, three, like a dying whale or a farting trombone. The difference, to my ear, is indistinguishable.
On the lawn, orange cones. Where the hell did they come from? Have they been there all along? How did I miss them? Why do I care?
More bleats and farts. Conversation ambles by: Those movies from our class, you know. I don’t. I turn to see to whom she’s talking, but there’s no one else to see. Cell phone babble. Of course. Does anyone talk face-to-face anymore? When they do finally see each other, what’s left to say?
Another woman walks by. Black bag, orange letters, says informs. At first, I thought it said, worms. I sort of wish it did. Regenerating segments are my kind of fashion statement.
A third woman – must be some kind of record for CMU – limps this way, confused, face gnarled like a closed fist, like a pug with lipstick and sunglasses.
Hard rock now. Big speakers behind the little blue tent. Too much bottom end. Nice bass line, but the guitar’s a little shrill. Tinny. At the table behind, an idle conversation and a laptop sighting. The first of the day. Also, perhaps, a record. A happy surprise. This must be a reading day.
And for this lovely, lonely half hour at least, it’s a writing day too.
Posted at 08:06 PM
Wed - May 10, 2006
52 PICK-UP
more scenes from fast
week.
One of my all-time favorite poems, and one of the
all-time great examples of how a small collection of seemingly simple words can
pack enough thought and power and music and might to keep you thinking and
talking and puzzling for hours, is Randall Jarrell's now iconic
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.
My MBA FlexModers took to it with gusto, then
took to their follow-up assignment -- to write a little piece of flash fiction,
or flash non-fiction, with the same paltry number of words (52) that Jarrell
packed into his poem -- with even greater gusto and good humor. I enjoyed them
all and was duly, truly impressed with the efforts. Four of the finished
products charmed and pleased me enough to post them here, for your late
Wednesday night,
still-pissed-that-Chris-Daughtry-went-home-so-you-need-something-to-cheer-you-up
pleasure...
First, the dull death of a long grass cutter:
The grass is long.
I know this. My dog whines about this.
The machine is ready: fueled and lubricated.
Two-thirds the height is the goal.
Pull the cord, push the lever, begin to walk.
Through the yard, back and forth, over and over,
With nothing but Johnny Cash to keep me company.
Then the famous death of a long tall leader:
The remaining glass of Bordeaux,
Adorning a stained tablecloth, scattered with broken glass,
Sat completely ignored by the bustling crowd.
Excitement mixed with surprise and sorrow,
The preceding silence demolished by the crash.
A mournful moment, historically hallowed,
Punctuated by crimson liquid spilling about.
Few noticed Mr. Booth making his way out.
Then the slow death of a great big drinker:
Sitting in class. Not again.
It is a never ending cycle.
Quenching the dryness
Fresh, crisp, sweet taste
Bubbles, liquid, and sugar
Rushing down, down, down
Filling, peaking, reaching a limit.
Not again.
Don’t be rude, be patient.
Think of a desert, not a storm.
Too late now, I have to go...
And, finally, the sudden death of a solo student flyer:
My mentor, my friend, opened the door and got out of the plane.
It was my time now.
I taxied to the end of the runway, glanced at the windsock and took a big breath.
Throttle forward, the bird began to breathe.
Quickly, sooner than I expected, she leapt into the air.
These students, like that plane, have taken to the sometimes thin and often demanding air of these assignments sooner and more splendidly than I could have hoped. That they trust me enough to follow these sudden, foolish flight paths, that they will, left-brain pilots all, enter so freely and happily into right-brain air-space, honors them and humbles me. And, I hope, entertains you.
First, the dull death of a long grass cutter:
The grass is long.
I know this. My dog whines about this.
The machine is ready: fueled and lubricated.
Two-thirds the height is the goal.
Pull the cord, push the lever, begin to walk.
Through the yard, back and forth, over and over,
With nothing but Johnny Cash to keep me company.
Then the famous death of a long tall leader:
The remaining glass of Bordeaux,
Adorning a stained tablecloth, scattered with broken glass,
Sat completely ignored by the bustling crowd.
Excitement mixed with surprise and sorrow,
The preceding silence demolished by the crash.
A mournful moment, historically hallowed,
Punctuated by crimson liquid spilling about.
Few noticed Mr. Booth making his way out.
Then the slow death of a great big drinker:
Sitting in class. Not again.
It is a never ending cycle.
Quenching the dryness
Fresh, crisp, sweet taste
Bubbles, liquid, and sugar
Rushing down, down, down
Filling, peaking, reaching a limit.
Not again.
Don’t be rude, be patient.
Think of a desert, not a storm.
Too late now, I have to go...
And, finally, the sudden death of a solo student flyer:
My mentor, my friend, opened the door and got out of the plane.
It was my time now.
I taxied to the end of the runway, glanced at the windsock and took a big breath.
Throttle forward, the bird began to breathe.
Quickly, sooner than I expected, she leapt into the air.
These students, like that plane, have taken to the sometimes thin and often demanding air of these assignments sooner and more splendidly than I could have hoped. That they trust me enough to follow these sudden, foolish flight paths, that they will, left-brain pilots all, enter so freely and happily into right-brain air-space, honors them and humbles me. And, I hope, entertains you.
Posted at 10:06 AM
Mon - May 8, 2006
TOYING WITH WORDS
they lego their
inhibitions.
In the first few minutes of class today, to make a
none-too-subtle but still, I think, salient point about the need to believe in
the power, the potential, the sheer imaginative possibility of what we can do
and build and produce with our words, I reverted my class of 31 MBA students to
their eager, innocent youths; I gave them a tub of Legos from which to pick and
choose and finally to create whatever beings or buildings they fancied. I got a
name (Lisa), a letter (G), a dragon that looked like a dog, a referee, an
outhouse, a skier in the starting gate, and a grand assortment of cars and jets
and ships and forts and robots. When they'd finished building, and before I'd
divulged the moral of the exercise, my budding MBA architects had to write a
short essay that either explained and animated their creation or described their
favorite childhood toy. A few of my favorite excerpts
follow.
First, from an ode to a slinky:
Shuuurinnngg.
Shuuurinnngg.
Shuuurinnngg.
Shuuurinnngg.
Crash! I never could get a Slinky to keep going for more than a few stairs, but I was always mesmerized by the mechanics. Holding a Slinky in your hand, you relieve all stress in the mindless motion, and, as only a budding engineer would, you consider the physics and mathematics that underlie the constant waves. Maybe as important is moving the Slinky just one more time after your mom says she's gonna wrap that stupid contraption about your neck for annoying her.
From a wistful, war-toy remembrance:
The tank ran on batteries and was the kind that reversed and corrected course when it bumped into an obstacle. I wish war policy was more like my toy tank.
From a tribute to a toy that held more toys:
This was a suitcase that held rocket ships, race cars, the robot from Short Circuit, bridges, buildings, cities, and often entire worlds... a suitcase full of shiny plastic pieces of imagination.
From a tribute to Voltron:
He was my biggest toy by a pretty good margin. Hence, he could obviously defeat the others, particularly the smaller Transformers and my helpless Pound Puppies. Each of Voltron's appendages alone were usually enough to defeat a small country of toys; he'd only assemble himself when it was time for a full-on war.
The great, in medias res first line from the story about the dragon/dog:
The almighty stair dragon searches for food.
And, finally, from The Legend of Lego Man:
As he trudges through the forest carrying his rifle in his hand and his backpack on his back, Lego Man traverses the wild wilderness of Holbrook Canyon. He knows that bears, lions, and ugly people abound in this uncharted territory, and all he has to survive are his backpack, his gun, and his trusty dog Sam.
It's going to be a long week. There aren't a lot of ugly people, but there is plenty of uncharted educational territory to explore, so it's a good thing I'll have my laptop, my pen, and my trusty FlexMode student scribblers to help me survive. And to keep us all entertained.
First, from an ode to a slinky:
Shuuurinnngg.
Shuuurinnngg.
Shuuurinnngg.
Shuuurinnngg.
Crash! I never could get a Slinky to keep going for more than a few stairs, but I was always mesmerized by the mechanics. Holding a Slinky in your hand, you relieve all stress in the mindless motion, and, as only a budding engineer would, you consider the physics and mathematics that underlie the constant waves. Maybe as important is moving the Slinky just one more time after your mom says she's gonna wrap that stupid contraption about your neck for annoying her.
From a wistful, war-toy remembrance:
The tank ran on batteries and was the kind that reversed and corrected course when it bumped into an obstacle. I wish war policy was more like my toy tank.
From a tribute to a toy that held more toys:
This was a suitcase that held rocket ships, race cars, the robot from Short Circuit, bridges, buildings, cities, and often entire worlds... a suitcase full of shiny plastic pieces of imagination.
From a tribute to Voltron:
He was my biggest toy by a pretty good margin. Hence, he could obviously defeat the others, particularly the smaller Transformers and my helpless Pound Puppies. Each of Voltron's appendages alone were usually enough to defeat a small country of toys; he'd only assemble himself when it was time for a full-on war.
The great, in medias res first line from the story about the dragon/dog:
The almighty stair dragon searches for food.
And, finally, from The Legend of Lego Man:
As he trudges through the forest carrying his rifle in his hand and his backpack on his back, Lego Man traverses the wild wilderness of Holbrook Canyon. He knows that bears, lions, and ugly people abound in this uncharted territory, and all he has to survive are his backpack, his gun, and his trusty dog Sam.
It's going to be a long week. There aren't a lot of ugly people, but there is plenty of uncharted educational territory to explore, so it's a good thing I'll have my laptop, my pen, and my trusty FlexMode student scribblers to help me survive. And to keep us all entertained.
Posted at 11:19 PM
ON Q
with or without u.
Before we get to MBA education, I feel a need to
linger for a moment over kindergarten education.
This morning, with his inimitably bubbling joy from the backseat, Ethan began singing about how Q is the laziest letter and the weakest letter because it always needs one of its friends, the letter U, to help it do anything. After a bit of gentle poking and prodding, I learned that this song and its rather nasty, demeaning little insults come from a reading and spelling cd-rom with which Ethan has been working at school. This information shocked and appalled me. I can't believe that such bitter blasts of discrimination have been sanctioned by our educational community.
What sort of example does this set? What kind of cruel lesson does this teach? A poor little letter needs some assistance to reach its full potential, so we're all allowed to taunt it and tease it? That hardly seems like the sensitive, inclusive thing to do. We should be encouraging and enabling it. We should be building its self-esteem and helping it to achieve all of its alphabetical goals. Q is not a weak or a lazy letter. It's a special needs letter. It's a phonically impaired letter. It's an independently challenged letter. It deserves our help and our support, not our hurt and our scorn. We must all, with or without U, show our love to Q.
This morning, with his inimitably bubbling joy from the backseat, Ethan began singing about how Q is the laziest letter and the weakest letter because it always needs one of its friends, the letter U, to help it do anything. After a bit of gentle poking and prodding, I learned that this song and its rather nasty, demeaning little insults come from a reading and spelling cd-rom with which Ethan has been working at school. This information shocked and appalled me. I can't believe that such bitter blasts of discrimination have been sanctioned by our educational community.
What sort of example does this set? What kind of cruel lesson does this teach? A poor little letter needs some assistance to reach its full potential, so we're all allowed to taunt it and tease it? That hardly seems like the sensitive, inclusive thing to do. We should be encouraging and enabling it. We should be building its self-esteem and helping it to achieve all of its alphabetical goals. Q is not a weak or a lazy letter. It's a special needs letter. It's a phonically impaired letter. It's an independently challenged letter. It deserves our help and our support, not our hurt and our scorn. We must all, with or without U, show our love to Q.
Posted at 11:00 PM
Sun - May 7, 2006
TOMORROW, WE WRITE
tonight, i wait.
This past Thursday, the Carnegie Mellon Spring
semester came to a merciful, masterful end. Tomorrow, another
Fast/Special/Certifiably Insane FlexMode mini-semester begins, jam-packing seven
long weeks of class into one week of long afternoons. As I did this past January, and as I did the January before, I am once again wildly and
happily wading into the deep end of the Fast Week teaching pool, spending what
would have been my first week off with thirty-one of my new favorite students, a
collection of brilliant young minds and eager young souls that have flown from
as far away as Fort Worth, Texas, East Hartford, Connecticut, and Sunnyvale,
California, for the pleasure and the privilege -- or is that the folly and the
foolishness? -- of subjecting themselves to my teaching, my wordsmithing, and my
madmanning assortment of assignments, exercises, and experiments.
It will be fun and fast and furious. And it will become, for me as well as for them, an awfully exacting, demanding, time-consuming couple of days. Which means that TWM, already reeling from the mad rush of the end of the semester, may well resign itself to another week of quick hits and short bursts, to posts that possess the virtue of economy but not always the value of luxury. But it could also mean that, fueled and inspired by the efforts of a room full of writers, TWM takes a resurgent, divergent path, finding a whole host of educational dispatches and compositional doo-dads from which to choose and post and enjoy. If there's any magic to be made this week in Posner Hall 152, if any rhetorical rabbits are pulled from any pedagogical hats, you will see the proof and read the results right here.
Stay tuned...
It will be fun and fast and furious. And it will become, for me as well as for them, an awfully exacting, demanding, time-consuming couple of days. Which means that TWM, already reeling from the mad rush of the end of the semester, may well resign itself to another week of quick hits and short bursts, to posts that possess the virtue of economy but not always the value of luxury. But it could also mean that, fueled and inspired by the efforts of a room full of writers, TWM takes a resurgent, divergent path, finding a whole host of educational dispatches and compositional doo-dads from which to choose and post and enjoy. If there's any magic to be made this week in Posner Hall 152, if any rhetorical rabbits are pulled from any pedagogical hats, you will see the proof and read the results right here.
Stay tuned...
Posted at 11:09 PM
Tue - April 11, 2006
DO THE RIGHT THING
and get suspended.
I understand why schools have zero
tolerance
policies for students who possess weapons. And
I support them. But after reading this story, I also support zero tolerance
policies for administrators who express
stupidity.
Someone at Stoneybrook Middle School needs to learn the difference between right and wrong, and it's not the kid with the knife in his hand. It's the principal with the stick up his ass.
Someone at Stoneybrook Middle School needs to learn the difference between right and wrong, and it's not the kid with the knife in his hand. It's the principal with the stick up his ass.
Posted at 10:58 PM
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Published On: May 05, 2008 11:07 AM
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Published On: May 05, 2008 11:07 AM