Wheat from the Chaff Blog -

Pollution, Productivity and Pundits: Giving Up On Competitiveness?

May 19, 2012 | Author: C. Welch

After years of decrying the productivity gap, Canada’s corporate elite and their media partners are starting to show cracks in their united front. In a remarkable guest editorial by Eric Lascelles, a senior economist from RBC Global Asset Management, we see a sharp reversal of a narrative that’s been spun for well over a decade.

The narrative has long been described as a problem (a poor record of economic productivity and competitiveness) with a reductionist solution (corporate tax cuts, especially to income tax). The problem is that these tax cuts haven’t worked. What we’ve seen in the last decade are massive improvements to the corporate bottom line, but little willingness to invest these profits. In April 2011, The Globe and Mail published an article that debunked the connection between productivity and corporate tax cuts. An examination

of Statistics Canada figures by The Globe and Mail reveals that the rate of investment in machinery and equipment has declined in lockstep with falling corporate tax rates over the past decade. At the same time, the analysis shows, businesses have added $83-billion to their cash reserves since the onset of the recession in 2008.

The official Corporate Canada response to this failed narrative is to remain perplexed. The article above, for example, admits that “there are no easy answers when it comes to measuring the impact tax rates have on job creation”. The TD Bank’s well-known study of productivity in 2010 shows a similar disorientation: “It is perplexing that substantive policy reforms moving in the right direction have been met by slowing business sector productivity growth”.

So, Lascelles’s solution is easy: don’t worry about it any more. Lascelles argues that “[t]here is very little that can be done about Canada’s gaping competitiveness shortfall” and, moreover, “Canada’s poor competitiveness just doesn’t seem to matter very much”.

Except, of course, that billions of dollars have now been removed from the federal government’s coffers… with little to show for it collectively except for rising inequality. One could argue that neo-liberal ideology has failed, but those tax cuts aren’t going to be given back (at least, voluntarily), so the purveyors of this ideological narrative are winners. Yes, they’ve already won, even though their central argument is a self-serving failure.

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Another interesting feature of Lascelles’s article is that it inadvertently bolsters Thomas Mulcair’s current fight with, well, the entire Canadian establishment over the negative effects of tar sand production. Lascelles opines that our productivity gap is unimportant because it is “the unavoidable consequence of being a nation endowed with resource wealth during a commodity boom”. The resource boom inflates our dollar, and therefore almost “three-quarters of the gap is due to the soaring loonie, which is out of our control”.

On one hand, this reinforces Mulcair’s central thesis that oil exports are a major reason for the climb in the loonie, a climb that consequently hurts our value-added manufacturing sectors. However, Lascelles also believes we can’t do anything about this. Yet Mulcair’s point is that we can do something about it, since Canada is choosing not to enforce the true cost of tar sand production costs, including “the cost of the greenhouse gases, the cleanup of the tar sands sites, and the cleanup of the lakes of poisonous residues and the waters of the Athabasca River”. These costs have never been “internalized into the final price of the product”.

I should also mention that Mulcair’s political and media opponents have twisted themselves into pretzels in order to attack his “Dutch Disease” argument. Some have simply flip-flopped their position. For example, Jeffrey Simpson – a long-time defender of the downtrodden Establishment – argues that “Mulcair should drop the ‘Dutch disease’ rhetoric”. Simpson agrees with Mulcair’s analysis “that pollution costs should be factored into the product’s final cost”. But then he decries Mulcair’s supposed divisiveness because Mulcair misunderstands the consequences:

To say, however, that Alberta and Canada are acting like Nigeria in regulating the industry is political nonsense. [Notice how Simpson doesn’t explain why this is nonsense, and is content with a “horse laugh”.] As is his wider critique that Canada is suffering from “Dutch disease,” whereby high prices for commodity exports drive up the Canadian dollar which, in turn, hollows out the manufacturing industries of Central Canada.

This “Dutch disease” analysis is simplistic in the extreme. Worse, for a potential prime minister, it deliberately targets one part of the country for special (and wrong) blame, which is not what a serious national leader should do in a highly regionalized country.

Of course, Simpson has no problem with the Dutch Disease thesis when it helps him bash Ontario Liberals and demand neo-liberal discipline:

For most of the past decade, Ontario’s growth rate lagged behind the rest of Canada. From being an economic motor for the country, capable of sharing its surplus, Ontario became a drag, incapable of sharing but still required to do so by the perversity of various federal-provincial programs.

Worse, Canada entered into a form of the dreaded “Dutch disease,” whereby the currency soars on the back of high commodity prices, thereby diluting the economy’s competitive position. Ontario has suffered from the Canadian version of “Dutch disease”: High oil prices and large oil exports keep the currency high, causing competitive problems elsewhere.

Simpson’s unmitigated hypocrisy is buttressed by the predictable straw man critique that Simpson and other corporate hacks love to use. They imply that Mulcair’s “simplistic” argument ignores other realities. In other words, Mulcair is blaming the entire problem on the tar sands, and this is easily refuted by Simpson:

The reasons for the strength of the Canadian dollar go way beyond the fact that Canada exports oil. It also exports natural gas, minerals, potash, forestry products and hydro, especially from Mr. Mulcair’s own province, Quebec. Those products (except maybe forestry these days) are in high demand, especially in Asia. When demand is high, prices tend to track demand.

But, as you might imagine, Mulcair doesn’t put the entire blame on the tar sands. He argues that it has a major role to play, but is not the only problem:

“The rapid expansion of the tar sands has contributed to a 40 percent increase in the value of the Canadian dollar since 2004, as an artificially high number of US dollars flow into Canada to purchase that heavy oil.”

Call me crazy, but “contributed to” doesn’t sound like the tar sands is Mulcair’s sole target.

In the end, I am enjoying the hornet’s nest that Mulcair has stirred up, and I hope he can continue to pursue economic policy as the NDP’s central agenda. We can learn a lot about our country’s tax policy, productivity and resource economy when progressive leaders are willing to confront the economic myths that have sustained Canada’s elites for too long.

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Here are some other good links regarding Mulcair’s “brouhaha”:

A Brief Manifesto for Economic Reform

February 25, 2012 | Author: C. Welch

With another announcement of a major manufacturing plant moving south – on the premise that highly skilled fabricators should work for $15 (US) an hour – perhaps it’s time that Canada re-examines its industrial strategy. Instead of a corporate tax-cut agenda that worsens competitiveness and employment, or a free-trade mentality that exposes our major industries to pillaging, let us consider a very different approach, one that improves equality, stabilizes ownership, and spreads the entrepreneurial spirit amongst a broader range of Canadians.

The strategy I believe we need to pursue is something called “market socialism” or “co-operative capitalism”. In the version I favour, the economy remains enmeshed in a capitalist system where firms compete with each other based on the standard axes of supply and demand. Both the responsibility for losses and the distribution of profit (savings, investment, research, dividends, etc.) reside solely with each firm. The key difference from our current system is that these firms would be cooperatively owned and controlled by its members; managers – if necessary – would be employees of the workers. I do not favour a conception in which the state owns the firm; my key objective is not just market efficiency but the connection of worker to ownership, and the expansion of flexibility, stability and responsibility that results from this connection. State ownership does not accomplish these goals, but worker ownership does.

So, what exactly are some of the unique benefits of this approach to co-operative capitalism?

Cooperative ownership would help address the worsening moral and economic crisis of inequality. It would redistribute wealth – not just income – because a much greater proportion of citizens would be direct owners of capital and assets, and it would reduce the negative effects associated with forced income redistribution.
Cooperatives are usually able to tolerate lower profit margins. Unlike enterprises built on the assumptions of shareholder capitalism (e.g. that ever greater profit margins are the sole reason for operating), cooperative enterprises are usually built on the assumption that sustained shared ownership is its raison d’être. As such, lower profit margins are not a reason to panic; there will be no sudden urge to close the shop and move the business to China or Bangladesh. Its existence is the most important thing, not increasing profit margins. Profit is necessary to provide other ends, but is not the chief end-in-itself. And given a future where outsourcing will surely guarantee lower profits for all internationally competitive businesses, I think we need to promote those types of firms that are comfortable with lower margins.
Worker-owned businesses are not likely to move out of the country. Workers, unlike investment capital, are tied emotionally and culturally to their country and community. It’s difficult for them to move to another province, let alone another country. As such, they will provide the long-term stability that foreign-owned corporate subsidiaries cannot. And investing in them is less of a risk when you know they are motivated to stay.
In times of economic turmoil, cooperatively owned enterprises will be able to compromise more easily. Given the motivations above, and direct access to the enterprise’s key financial information, we’re likely to see workers agree to reduced pay, shared work and other sacrifices for the sake of the collective good. We don’t see this in traditional North American businesses because management-union relationships are usually too hostile, and management rarely shares its information with workers or unions. As such, workers in current businesses are not normally willing to make sacrifices when management asks the workers to “trust them”. Actual ownership is the best way to build trust.
If the entrepreneurial spirit is a virtue, then why not maximize it? I do believe that taking risks and shouldering economic responsibility is a powerful path to maturity. But in a system like we have now, so many of our workers do not taste this tempering agent of entrepreneurial responsibility. So I say, let entrepreneurialism flourish! Let us renew our commitment to the entrepreneurial spirit, but demand a much broader definition of the concept. Admittedly, cooperative ventures might not capture the imagination like the old captains of industry once did, but rugged individualism is surely not the only path to economic maturity. And working together in a common venture can also expand the scope of democracy, which in turn increases the engagement and loyalty of a nation’s citizens.

Some other things will need to change if our economy and culture is going to fulfill this vision of the future .

Unions may need to play more of a “midwifery” role, helping to organize its workers to take on a greater share of power and control. [I do not favour anarcho-syndicalism, as this usually implies large organizations of unions, which – to me at least – means just another form of the hegemonic, hierarchical corporation.] As a result, traditional unions may eventually be obsolete, and this will be a major challenge for any progressive political party willing to make market socialism part of its platform.

Governments will also play an important role. As a gradualist, I cannot see this evolution of the work place occurring without serious government involvement, particularly if tax breaks and other government incentives are to play a role in the gradual pre-eminence of worker-controlled capitalism. Workers themselves may need protection from other workers, or from businesses that only pretend to be worker-owned (WestJet comes to mind) and the government’s essential role as legal referee will probably need refinement as the legal needs and issues of cooperatives multiply. And, of course, the state will still need to play a role in providing social services and providing checks on enterprises (cooperative or not) that transgress the rights and entitlements of all citizens.

To bring this to a conclusion, I hope this brief sketch makes sense. I’ve certainly missed a lot of pieces, but perhaps I can add them in later posts. At the very least, I want people to know that progressives are not simply about defending social programs. [Does that make the NDP conservative? Hmm…] There are some interesting and constructive policies that can make a difference, and provide a substantive counterpoint to the self-serving policies of pro-corporate political parties.

…………

Books on this topic:

Robert Dahl: A Preface to Economic Democracy

John Stuart Mill: Principles of Political Economy, 3rd Ed. (1852)

Is online education cheaper?

January 29, 2012 | Author: C. Welch

One of the major debates in modern education is whether or not online/distance/distributed learning (DL) is cheaper and more efficient than traditional “brick and mortar” education. If it is cheaper, then obviously it becomes a useful option in a neo-liberal world where public education expenditures are shrinking. [In BC, for example, “the proportion of the GDP spent on public education decreased from 3.6% to 3.1%” between 2002–03 and 2007–08.”]

To be honest, I really don’t know if DL is more cost-effective, but I am comforted by the fact that the “experts” aren’t totally sure, either. I came across a recent study from the American Fordham Institute that believes online education is generally cheaper. It argues that regular schooling, which averages about $10,000 per student in the US, is certainly above the costs of online or blended learning, which ranges “from $5,100 to $7,700 for virtual schools, and $7,600 to $10,200 for the blended version”. Nevertheless, even this study’s pro-DL authors concede that “much better data on both costs and outcomes will be needed for policymakers to reach confident conclusions related to the productivity and efficiency of these promising new models”. The problem, as they admit, is that there are too many models of DL to confidently compare DL to brick and mortar public schools, particularly with comparisons of quality and outcomes. And what about the hidden costs of DL education, in which parents are obliged to pick up the tab formerly assumed by regular schools? The Fordham study doesn’t recognize them.

One thing I can provide is my own experience. I taught at a large, asynchronous DL school for over eight years before moving back into the classroom in September. I arrived in 2003 as the DL school was moving away from traditional paper correspondence education and moving toward online delivery. In those years I came to the following conclusion: online education, if done well, is not significantly cheaper than regular brick and mortar schooling; as such, it is not a panacea to our neo-liberal woes. One major reason it’s not cheaper is that asynchronous education – where students work individually at their own pace – is very inefficient. And the more labour-intensive and inefficient it is, the better it is. In other words, inefficiency=quality. Instead of working with 25 to 30 students per class, a teacher deals with one student at one time; in terms of working with students and marking their assessment as a group, everything is a “one-off”. The Fordham study ignores a very simple reality: you can’t achieve economies of scale. The conversation you have with one student is of little use to another student because she’s working on a completely different assignment, and the essay you’ve just marked was the first of its kind in three months – and it took you a while to remember it! Moreover, each assignment is received, saved, processed, assessed, processed again, recorded, and sent back (with comments) individually. This is great for the student who wants individual attention, and this is where our DL school did (and does) it right. But we can’t pretend this is an ultra-efficient model. [Thank goodness not all of my 200-250 students were working at the same time!]

This inefficiency hit home when we offered a synchronous DL summer school back in the mid-2000’s; students would complete an entire course (with some reductions) in four weeks, one module per week. On one hand it was a great success; our completion rates rivaled brick and mortar schools, and the rates were much better than our mainstream, asynchronous 10 month school. However, aside from the grouping of assignments, the inefficiencies were still there, and try as I might I could never handle more than 20 English 12 students at a time. I would work flat out for 8-10 hours a day, and yet I could still only teach 2/3 of a regular classroom load. Translated into an entire year, I could really only handle 130-140 students working at the same time if I wanted to provide a quality educational experience.

I don’t have all the answers, but it strikes me that these inefficiencies need to be part of the calculation of DL costs. If they are – because we truly care about a good education – then we might not see online education as a transformational silver bullet.

Riffing on MacLennan: The Two Solitudes of Education

January 19, 2012 | Author: C. Welch

After participating in today’s Twitter conversation (#bcedplan) with the Minister of Education, I’m more convinced than ever of the two solitudes in modern education.

The ascendant group is made up of the so-called progressives. They seem naturally drawn to modern technologies, and, as a result, are over-represented on Twitter. The other group, what we might call the traditionalists, are very under-represented on Twitter.* And there were very few traditionalists participating in today’s discussion.

This is a shame, because most of the changes in the Ministry of Education’s EdPlan are currently geared towards the secondary level. In my experience, most of the teachers at the secondary level believe in the importance of direct instruction, and therefore might loosely be described as quasi-traditionalists. They also tend to ascribe to the liberal arts ideal, an ideal that is at odds with much of the “21st century” rhetoric . Yet I don’t think these teachers realize the severity of the changes that appear to be coming.

I see the two groups as solitudes because, whenever I talk to people in either camp, they react with incredulity as I describe the other side. There is, shall I say, a certain incommensurability between the two sides. Showing documents and dialogue (from official documents, Twitter or blogs, for example) doesn’t change things. Surely these people aren’t representative? When I suggested today that the average mid-adolescent is not driven by an innate love of learning, many progressives were incredulous. How could you disrespect kids so much? Of course, I believe I see these adolescents – who are very different from seven year-olds – in a realistic light. That is respectful.

But I digress.

My chief point is this: we better get past the point of incredulity, or education reform will be wrecked on the rocks. We need to get past the vacuous slogans that seem to dominate education reform, and understand that people in the trenches care deeply about kids. However, that care, especially at the secondary level, is based upon a very different perception of human nature and society.

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*[I’ve commented before about my strange identity as an education “traditionalist”, given I normally list to port!]

Examining Paul Veyne’s Foucault: Chp. 6

January 19, 2012 | Author: C. Welch

I’ll be honest – I am no expert on Heidegger. So I’ll have to take Veyne’s account of Heidegger, entitled “Notwithstanding Heidegger, Man Is An Intelligent Animal” at relatively face value. Veyne’s central aim in this chapter is to distinguish Foucault from Heidegger. Though Veyne won’t admit this, many have lumped Foucault in with the erstwhile Nazi; to the refined palettes of philosophers like Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, and to Foucault himself, a relationship with Heidegger is not a negative association, but to liberals it is a grave sin. Generally speaking, I think Veyne succeeds in making the distinction, but, once again, he falls into the Rationalist trap by insisting on an objective ledge from which Foucault can steady his gaze. Perhaps Veyne’s own reflexive liberalism is breaking forth.

Foucault as an Empiricist and Skeptic

For all that our eyes perceive or ever will perceive are singularities that are partially repeatable: hence, among other things, the exact sciences, but also the practices and knowledge about our daily and our understanding of one another. We have thus learnt that the sun rises every day. Foucault and Hume faced the same struggle . . . (66)

[Quoting Nietzsche] And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life. (67)

Nietzsche’s philosophical novel, telling of humanity’s education, cannot hope to reach any conclusion (but, never fear, that will not stop it forging on; the human mind is never annihilated and besides, human history does not depend on the history of philosophy). (67)

Veyne covers familiar territory. As an empiricist and sceptic, Veyne’s Foucault does not see beyond the horizon, but, just like a pet cat or iguana, the lack of theoretical ambitions does not paralyze him. People exist within and between singularities, just like all other “intelligent animals”, and continue to live, function and multiply. I am reminded of Aristotle’s use of technê, shorn of its connection to theoretical grounding. Knowledge is seen as useful knowledge, whether or not it leads to the Absolute. I’m also reminded of A. R. Louch’s well-known argument that the social sciences cannot move beyond ad hoc explanations of human behaviour. Any observations about human existence and policy are “piecemeal, the conclusions tentative, and dependent upon a [particular] moral point of view”.

Veyne’s Summary of Heiddeger

Having slipped into my bullet-proof vest, I venture to suggest that Heidegger, that original thinker, set out to restore to an age that had forgotten all about transcendence an equivalent of what used to be called Spirituality which was refined enough to be acceptable…

In an age in which history and truth stand in opposition, he proposes an Absolute whose sudden and unexplained appearances introduce a new age yet are ‘historical’ in their discontinuity. Heideggerism constitutes a vast historical landscape illuminated by flashes of lightning that are so many ‘events’, Ereignisse… a new age makes its presence felt to us, each with its particular communities, works, cultures (ours is technological) and religious beliefs. Dispersed and divergent though they are, these events all have a common origin and that origin is an Absolute that imposes upon us, not truth, strictly speaking, but its unchallengeable Presence… (68)

Let me dare to name it: Dasein is a soul. This soul will be authentic so long as it does not forget its mutual and immediate relationship with Being; it will be inauthentic if it forgets that relationship and dissipates itself amid the day-to-day multiplicity of things that characterizes a scientific approach. This high-flying gnosis is a theology without God… (69)

His was one of those souls that have a sense of something elevated, oceanic, endlessly blue, beyond that which is verifiable. That presentiment explains how it is that some of Heidegger’s partisans are so fervent, or indeed aggressive. Many people, maybe most, have to some degree that presentiment of a blue sky beyond the sky that we see. No one is obliged to believe them, but it would be ridiculous to condemn them (rather, they are to be envied for that gift). But with dechristianization, they no longer know how to feed their desire for that blue sky. (70)

If Gestell, technology, is our destiny today, thanks to the opening up of an Ereignis, must we resign ourselves and wait fatalistically for that to come to an end, when there will be a subsequent Sending? (71-72)

If a human being thinks about this and listens to the Dasein within him, he will discover that any transaction with things – ideas, perceptions – is only possible for a being such as himself, who transcends nature and comes into direct contact with Being, the Absolute. This, according to Heidegger, should be the basis of all philosophy.

This hews closely to my own take on Heidegger, though my understanding is admittedly pretty pedestrian. Heidegger talks of “eruptions”, or Ereignis, that lead to unique and incommensurable stages in human history. Yet behind these discontinuities lies a Spirit that binds us together. [Sorry, I don’t want to be too flippant, but on the few occasions that I’ve read Heidegger, I always think about Obi Wan Kenobi and the “force”.]

Returning to Foucault: Do we need that ledge, Paul?

For an empiricist such as Foucault, that Being is a verbal phantom provoked, I imagine, by what is claimed to be an intellectual intuition, a phantom that can be made to say whatever one wants…If human beings constantly make mistakes, that is because they never accede to the truth itself but can only reach it through the ‘discourses’ in which it is buried, ‘discourses’ that are never the same from one period to another. (73)

Surely that was a generalization, even a proposition of philosophical anthropology! So what happened to his skepticism? It is true that, at that point, his skepticism had just reached its limit. Foucault’s declaration that is cited above states a truth that is the last word on the human condition: there is an ultimate truth and that, disappointing as it is, is it … arguably, everything is relative, but the assertion that everything is relative is not relative. (73)

Like I’ve argued before, Veyne appears bound to the traditional objectivist critique of relativism / post-modernism / perspectivism / historicism / empiricism / skepticism – that truth claims made about the nature of truth must themselves be grounded in something immutable. Like a ledge above the abyss of nihilism, Veyne is convinced that Foucault must ultimately come to ground here, since it requires “the objectivity it purports to deny“. Foucault’s generalization about the relative nature of truth must itself, in order to be coherent and convincing, be anchored to a foundational assertion.

But doesn’t Veyne contradict his own discussion from the beginning of the chapter? Doesn’t he seem to lose his nerve? Isn’t he now saying that human existence does “depend on the history of philosophy”? As I wrote in my Chp. 3 analysis, “I think a more elegant solution is is to argue that all truth claims, including meta-claims about truth claims themselves, are contingent and provisional. Doubting doubt is not self-cancelling; it is, indeed, entirely consistent.” Moreover, how are contingent meta-claims any more paralyzing (or not) than first-order claims?

So Foucault has written an anthropological generalization. But that anthropology is empirical, since it did not stem from reflection upon any transcendental subject that holds the key to the world; and Foucault wrote it after meditating on historical facts. (73)

I don’t find this Humean defence a particularly convincing answer to the Kantian double-bind!

Veyne’s Summary: There Is No External Totality Available

The conclusion must be that man is not a fallen angel recalling the heavens; nor is he the Shepherd of Being, as Heidegger claims. Rather, he is an erratic animal about which all that can be known is his history… Consequently, if, for us humans, there are no true truths other than those that are empirical and singular, that is because a physical or mental event is the product of conjunctions of a variety of causal series, conjunctions that are just another word for chance, as we all know. (73)

However, for Foucault, nothing is a reflection of an ideal; each policy is simply the product of a concatenation of causes; there is no external totality available; it expresses nothing more elevated than itself, even if we do drown its singularity in noble generalizations. (76)

We must not panic at the idea of not being able to cling on to the skirts of fully satisfactory truths. Our faculty of knowledge is more than equal to that possessed by animals which, like ourselves, may make mistakes but nevertheless by and large manage to cope with the details of their existence… We know many little truths and empirical singularities, we act upon whole series of phenomena, which we are able to study and manipulate. We can achieve practical or even scientific results in both the exact and the human sciences. (76)

Veyne’s use of the word “practical” is intriguing. It sounds a lot like Rorty’s pragmatism. I wonder: should my next book be Foucault’s The Hermeneutics of the Subject, or Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature?

Same Coin, Two Sides: Resurrecting the Liberal Arts Ideal

January 14, 2012 | Author: C. Welch

There are truths on this side of the Pyranees, which are falsehoods on the other.

~Blaise Pascal

————-

Have you noticed that the same behaviour can be described in diametrically opposed ways, depending on different people’s perspectives? For example, if you were taught, “If you have nothing good to say, then don’t say anything at all”, couldn’t you also be accused of being “passive aggressive”? Or maybe you’re an introvert who thinks best when thinking alone, and often finds the banter of your colleagues trivial; you’ll probably find people accusing you of poor social skills. A man who is careful with his money becomes a miserly cheapskate, a confident woman becomes a bitch, and an optimistic person becomes a pollyanna. And so on.

I find the same thing in education.

According to leaders of the progressive camp like Ken Robinson, modern public schools are “factories” where young people are dehumanized and forced into categories that betray each young person’s unique character. According to Seth Godin, “Large-scale education was never about teaching kids or creating scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system.” A central villain is the lack of choice; each student is compelled to learn what other people are learning, regardless of whether he or she finds it interesting or relevant. And teachers reinforce factory discipline by lecturing from the front, demanding that students listen and regurgitate.

But when I see that same school system, my perception is very different. I don’t see the straw man above. The upside of this vilified institution is the liberal arts ideal. The idealists of the past who built the system of the present viewed the liberal arts as the ideal. (I haven’t found many who consciously wanted a factory.) In my opinion, our current system is at its best when it emulates this ideal. Unfortunately, this ideal has receded from popular consciousness as the progressives’ negative “factory” critique has gained popularity.

In the liberal arts ideal, public schools exist to introduce young people to a variety of disciplines and ideas that they’ve probably never encountered or considered. “Exploratories” is a virtue – students experience a variety of courses in academics, business, trades, performing arts and physical education. Yes, students may not like basketball, woodworking or reading Shakespeare, and they may employ that classic of resistance, “it’s boring”, but school might be the only place they ever get to expand their “zone of relevancy”. Unlike the progressive demand to teach what’s “relevant”, the liberal arts ideal asks, “If they’ve never tried it, how do they know they won’t like it?” I remember hating Technology 8 at the beginning of the year, but by the end I found woodworking and drafting to be wonderfully creative activities. My preconceptions would never have allowed me to find these passions without being “compelled”. In the early years of my Bachelor of Arts degree, I discovered a passion for political philosophy; my preferred choices, history and English, became my minors. And I was grateful that I had to take algebra right to Grade 12; otherwise, my university economics courses would have been much more difficult. (When I was a teenager, I was sure that math was irrelevant. I was wrong.) So, I am grateful for the need to take a wider range of courses beyond my initial preferences.

A liberal arts education also believes that a broad exposure to a variety of disciplines provides a general education. This general education, in turn, forms the basis of creative and critical thought. As Professor Robert Harris has said, “Knowledge of many subject areas provides a cross fertilization of ideas, a fullness of mind that produces new ideas and better understanding.” Content isn’t “factoids” or “information”, as the progressives like to (mis)characterize it; content is the very essence of what we use to think comparatively, critically and creatively. [Thus, if we have to look it up in Google, the thought has probably passed us by.] The distinction between skill and content, as I’ve argued before (here and here), is simply unsustainable.

Finally, the liberal arts ideal views the teacher as an active leader at the center of the class discussion. It’s probably close to the “sage from the stage” approach that the progressives so dislike. Ideally, the teacher engages in a Socratic dialogue with his/her students. Through continual questioning and discussion, students learn to explain and understand their beliefs and knowledge, and potentially change their mind in the face of other points of view. It’s not a comfortable practice, to be honest. Nobody likes to hear ideas that contradict their own. But it does make young people engage in conversations that they might otherwise not participate in.

Do public schools (and my own teaching practice) always reach this liberal arts ideal? Of course not! But it seems to me that this ideal – an ideal that goes back to antiquity – would be a better model for school improvement than what the progressives have been promoting since the days of Rousseau. Since we don’t know what we might be doing in 20 years (a meme that all progressives seem to accept), isn’t a broad, liberal arts education better than allowing adolescents to personalize their education based on a narrow range of experience?

Personalized Learning = Pre-Packaged Learning

January 7, 2012 | Author: C. Welch

Last year, when the notion of “personalized learning” started to become a popular topic here in British Columbia, I questioned its practicality. I asked how a secondary teacher could possibly create, supervise and assess 200 or so separate learning programs for his or her students. I concluded that teachers couldn’t possibly pull off such a feat – a feat that would almost defy the laws of physics – and that schools would have to offer pre-packaged curriculum from providers such as local distance education schools, Open School, or private sector education companies like Pearson. At best, students would get photocopied worksheet packages from their teachers… but how is that progress?

Yesterday, an interesting letter was published in the Victoria Times-Colonist. The writer, a teacher named Werner Liedtke, explained his observations of a personalized learning program in Alberta. The program used a “canned” program from the United States called Individually Prescribed Instruction (IPI), a program that dates back to the 1960’s.

Liedtke’s opinion of the program is not positive. He argues that teachers are reduced to clerks: “The teacher and four volunteers that I observed in one classroom did nothing but mark tests, record results and direct students to the next tests.” He concludes that students lose out as well, since the possibility of group interaction is eliminated.

And, really, how can it be otherwise? If learning is personalized, teachers can’t possibly create (or co-create) individualized programs for each child; they have to rely on pre-built curricula. And teachers’ time has to be consumed by the administration of a very inefficient system, because a student’s particular program needs to be administered, by definition, on a one-on-one basis. One-on-one sounds great, but how can it compete with the efficiency of one-on-thirty?

If my prediction is correct, and the government doesn’t change its mind about “net zero” funding, then we arrive at a very attenuated conception of personalized learning. Students might learn at their own pace, but they would still be learning from the same packages as everyone else (unless the school system, or parents, can afford supplementary curriculum). In addition, unless we open the deadlines for course completion beyond the standard end-of-June finish date, even individualized pacing really isn’t significant; all we’ll see is a massive crush of students desperately trying to finish in the last few weeks. In the distance education world this last minute “jamming” is a well known phenomenon. On the whole, pacing doesn’t come close to the promise of personalized learning, and may itself be cancelled by deadlines and the lack of interaction inherent in any system where students learn at their own pace.

So thank you Mr. Liedtke. You have provided another example of why the allure of personalized learning doesn’t satisfy the demand for realism.

Examining Paul Veyne’s Foucault: Chp. 5

December 31, 2011 | Author: C. Welch

Chp. 5 of Paul Veyne’s Foucault, entitled “Universalism, Universals, Epigenesis”, is another short chapter, and a partial detour away from his analysis of Foucault. The main purpose of the chapter is to demonstrate that Christianity, despite its universalist aspirations and pretensions, is a discursive formation riven with scattered intentionalities, unpredictable origins, and unintended alterations. This chapter is an exercise in genealogical analysis, and reveals the localism and contingency inherent in the Foucauldian worldview.

The Accidental Nature of The Christian “Universal”:

The first Christians became universalists only in the narrow sense of the word and without deliberately deciding to. (60)

So what is the explanation for Christian proselytism? … Jesus the prophet was not his own hero (he spoke in the name of his heavenly Father). But, fascinated by his charisma, between AD 40 and 100, his disciples and preachers constructed a religion in which he was the hero. (60)

The stroke of genius was that invention of a man-God, a man like the rest of us, real, with a date, a guru or doctor who was also a deity, a true one, not some mythological figure. Christianity thus became an emotive metaphysical novel about love, in which the deity and humanity loved one another passionately… (61)

In another stroke of genius, Jesus of Nazareth preached, not observance of the Sabbath and the other commandments of their Law, but an internal ethic, a morality for the way one thought… (61)

And it has the air of a morality for the whole of humanity. But that was not Jesus’ intention, for he was preaching solely to his own people. To us, his lofty language seems universalist because it claimed higher ground than Jewish legalism. However, when Jesus spoke in a less elevated mode, he reverted to being the Jewish prophet that he was… However, after his death it was his more elevated, popular and new message, that relayed by the synoptic Gospels, that his disciples were to preach to their Jewish compatriots. (61-62)

Temperament and Circumstances

Should proselytism be considered a natural inclination and an anthropological universal. No, it is always a matter of temperament and the circumstances. In each disciple’s soul waged an unconscious battle between ambition, laziness and devotion to the Law of his people; and sometimes one of those elements won out, sometimes another. For, behind a man’s consciousness and elevated reasons, impulses are at work. (62)

Universalism was not introduced into Christianity by an intrusion of Reason or Spirituality. It reflected a shift on the part of ambitious, non-elitist temperaments, an inclination which, de facto, then became customary. (63)

Origins are Seldom Beautiful

In the space of three decades, the admission of non-Jews into Christianized Judaism led to a split between ethnic sects of circumcised Judaeo-Christians and the new religion that reached out to all and sundry. Platonic metaphysics and certain pagan superstitions (ex-votos, prayers for rain, etc.) or new ones (involving relics) contributed to the formation of Christian doctrine and pious practices. Origins are seldom beautiful; realities and truths develop through epigenesis; they are not pre-formed in any seed. To speak of the Christian roots of Europe is not just mistaken, but simply nonsense: in history, nothing is pre-formed. At the very most, Europe possesses a Christian patrimony; it lives in an old house whose walls are hung with old religious paintings. (64)

The present-day West possesses a vast and precious architectural, artistic, literary, musical and even phraseology patrimony that is largely Christian, but there is no longer anything Christian about its morality and values. (64)

Ever since the 1891 encyclical on the conditions of the working class, Christianity has acquired modern roots. And the 2,000-year-old history of dogmas, piety and interpretations of the Holy Books show that Christianity, as it has developed (through epigenesis), has never ceased to construct itself and adapt. (65)

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*Veyne, Paul. Foucault: His Thought, His Character. Malden, MA: Polity, 2010.

The Rise of the Electives and the Smorgasbord Kids (And Why Trades vs Academics is Obsolete)

December 30, 2011 | Author: C. Welch

One of the most common dichotomies in modern education is “trades vs. academics”. Supporters of one (often the trades) will decry the predominance of the other, and demand equal consideration from educators, government and society as a whole.

However, I think the debate is clichéd and misses something important.

One of the most noticeable trends I have witnessed in my 19 years of teaching in BC is the growing hegemony of secondary level electives. In grades 11 and 12, and particularly in larger urban and suburban schools, it’s really quite amazing the number of electives a student can choose from. Presumably, the explosion in electives is a response to the BC Ministry of Education’s reductive and counterproductive obsession with improving the graduation rate.

I hesitate to offer specific examples of these electives as I have taught some of them, and I fear the homicidal wrath of many teachers whose careers depend on these courses. (Yes, Serious Education Types, that was a joke.) Suffice to say, most of these courses are… ahem… not particularly rigorous. And that’s just fine, if you take one or two. The problem is that many students – a significant minority in the schools in which I’ve worked – embrace this smorgasbord and consume a diet almost completely composed of non-academic and non-trade electives.

This growth in these “third way” courses has been aided and abetted by a change in BC’s graduation requirements. In my opinion, these requirements have become so loose and flimsy that once you make it to senior secondary, it’s really quite difficult to fail if you choose the “right” courses, come to class every day, and do the work in class. [To be fair, some students face such atrocious personal lives that even this minimal set of expectations is beyond them.]

So what you have is an explosion of electives, many of which ~~fulfill~~ replace the so-called academic course requirements, and a grad plan that sets the bar so low you barely have to raise your feet.

But what does this have to do with the aforementioned dichotomy between trades and academics? Well, I view successful academic and trades students as belonging to the same group: they tend to be motivated and focused students who are generally willing to work hard for their future. Their course selections may be different (though not as different as you might think), but they are very similar in their focus on the future and their willingness to invest in themselves by working “beyond the minimum”. Collectively, they contrast with a third and growing group, a group of students who have a poor work ethic and want to get through school with as little effort as possible.* For this third group – the “smorgasbord kids” as I call them – the phenomenal growth in elective options has been a godsend. They quite consciously “game the system”, and choose courses and teachers in order to minimize work. And they are quite open about it. When I talk to some of them in my remedial language arts class, they agree, without trepidation, that they should be in a regular English class. But they’ve consciously chosen the easier path. For one bright young man, it is a desire to avoid homework. For a second, it’s a desire to work full time. And for a third, I kid you not, it’s because he wants more time to play video games. Not surprisingly, most of these students tell me they avoid vocational programs because they’re too much work.

I worry a lot about this third group. Many of them are quite bright and engaging, but they are doing themselves a terrible disservice. When they realize (sometime in the future) that those nagging teachers were right after all, and that a minimum wage job may not cover all the bases, it can be a dreadful struggle to make up for lost time. The classic example is a young man in his early twenties who I recently taught in a political science class at our local university. He was in my office, almost in tears. His writing was extremely poor and he had trouble articulating a coherent and sustained argument. His essays barely earned him a “P”. I asked him what courses he took in high school, and, no surprise to me, it was a jumble of non-rigorous electives. He narrowly passed English 12, but did very well on his other courses. Apparently his GPA was very high when he graduated, yet he was completely unprepared for university when his desire for betterment finally arrived. He wasn’t ready for academics, and he wasn’t ready for the trades. He also wasn’t ready for business or the fine arts. He frankly wasn’t ready for anything.

So the contrast isn’t between academic kids and trade kids; for me, the most crucial distinction lies between those who are willing to work hard for their future and those who aren’t. Should we continue to empower the latter?

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*It should be noted that many non-teaching educators and Ministry of Education apparatchiks deny these young people exist. The doctrine that adolescents naturally love to learn is so pervasive amongst the cognoscenti that any contrary notions are simply ridiculed and ignored. And if the upwardly mobile acknowledge that these kids exist, it’s obviously the fault of teachers. Set them free from the factory, so the argument goes, and adolescents will naturally choose challenging and enriching course work rather than the easiest way out. I’m sure that describes the teenagers you know.

There Are Costs Associated With Choice and Flexibility

December 29, 2011 | Author: C. Welch

The following is a recent contribution I made to the BC Edplan website; the government is using the site to gather feedback for its current forays into “21st century learning” and “personalized learning”. Admittedly, the site is probably also being used to legitimate any future policies that may turn out to be controversial, but I’ve always believed that one needs to engage directly with those in power. Otherwise, they will do what they want anyway, and your silence will only make their conviction stronger.

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I think those who are excited about the possibilities of more choice and flexibility in education need to think about the consequences.

For example, at the secondary level (let’s say Grades 10 to 12), can we imagine individualized learning without an “open campus”? Almost every proposal I read seems to require an institution where students arrive and leave at different times, and where they may not come at all. In this kind of situation, “attendance” becomes a meaningless term. As a secondary teacher, I would personally welcome an open campus, but it comes at a cost. Schools will no longer be responsible for student safety in the same way they are now. How could they be? With students here, there and everywhere, how could a school possibly track all of its students like it does now? And, if I’m right about an open campus, are parents and the surrounding community willing to accept the responsibility for the safety of hundreds of 15 and 16 year-olds? It’s easy to decry the “factory” model of schooling, but at least a factory has the capacity to track and therefore take on the responsibility for its employees.

Here’s another question: If learning is to be truly personalized, and become largely one-on-one, what will happen to the students who are not conversing with teacher-mentors but are still in the building? More specifically, who will supervise them? If the kids hang out like they do at lunch time, the noise will make any meaningful dialogue or work impossible inside the classrooms. So supervision costs will likely rise significantly.

I also think we’re going to have to accept much lower completion rates. If more of the responsibility is placed on students, we will have to accept that many will not meet the challenge. The belief that we can offer educational autonomy to adolescents and expect excellent completion rates at the same time is, in a word, naïve. I don’t know a single secondary teacher who thinks otherwise. The distributed learning world certainly provides evidence of this problem, particularly as the degree of student autonomy (and asynchronous leaning) increases. Again, on a personal level, I don’t think lower completion rates are a bad thing, as I believe that failure – however it’s measured – is an invaluable tool that teaches lessons that may not be otherwise teachable. But is the community prepared to accept lower completion numbers? Will the education apparatchiks, who think the only good thing is a thing measured, survive the shock? ;-)

If you’re willing to treat adolescents as adults, and face the consequences, then I say, “Have ‘atter!” But don’t think there won’t be serious challenges in the world of “21st century learning”.

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Can you think of other potential problems?

I wonder about transportation costs if schools are opened earlier and closed later. Would school districts have to offer more buses? Or, would parents have to pick up the proverbial tab? If the former, you’ll have an extra district-based cost, and if the latter, parents would shoulder the extra costs.

Also, how would teachers prepare 200 individualized programs? I’ve mentioned the practical difficulties around this in an earlier post.

Wheat from the Chaff Blog