For
going on 8 years, I taught as an adjunct at South Central College (SCC) in
North Mankato. While I was aware of and agreed with the national outrage on the
use (and misuse) of adjuncts in higher education, I was somewhat immune from
it, too, as I was treated very well at SCC. I had the luxury of being supported
by an administration that appreciated my commitment to learning and supported
me in my classroom endeavors. I was welcomed and encouraged to participate in
discussions and committees on everything from college readiness to the creation
of the Secular Student Alliance. Even though I sometimes wasn’t sure when/where
my classes would run up until the day before they began (normal college chaos,
I think), I was confident that they would, and they did. For years, I taught a
full-time course load at a school that understood its community and its student
population and endeavored to put in place the best people to help those
students and its community. I felt secure, and I was able to pass along the
investment I felt to the disciplines, the students, SCC, and the
community.
I
did not question whether or not my hours in the classroom or online with my
students mattered. I knew they did from the quality of my students’ works and
my interactions with them. I honestly believed that the last, best equalizer we
had in this country was education, and I approached my job with that sincerity
and severity. I meant to help people, many of whom came from extremely
challenging backgrounds, develop a lifelong desire to learn and improve their
lives. And, I felt that my colleagues and the administration meant to do the
same.
On
a swift wind, things began to change. A new administration came in and number
of concerning moves were made with seemingly little real research or thought or
care.
History
is one of my amateur hobbies. So, even as the gales swept through the halls and
classrooms and offices, I accepted that sometimes drastic measures are needed
to repair real problems, institutionalized sexism or racism, for instance. I
also understood that sometimes even the most well-meaning people can become
part of a system that forwards these embedded blights on society. I sincerely
sat back, thought, and asked myself if that’s what had happened at SCC. At the
time, I thought I’d ride these changes out with my head down and wait and see
if the changes, while painful in the present, were going to create a better
future. I taught, I thought, and I read, and I researched.
The
answer was no.
These
measures have nothing to do with lifting up our disadvantaged students.
Instead, they reek of mismanagement, ignorance, and frankly, corruption.
I’ve
seen good teachers and good programs eliminated with the most contradictory
language and nonsensical reasoning. I watched beloved classes, which were
consistently full, get eliminated (then reintroduced after student protests but
at the cost of a good administrator being scapegoated and then terminated). The
new administration refused to support, neither financially nor personally,
SCC’s annual global conference, which, this year, was a celebration and
appreciation of the Hmong population. This administration seems to have a very
narrow definition of what cultural diversity is and demonstrates very little
curiosity about the varied backgrounds of our particular student body. A
student senate member was told to remember his place and not rise above it by
the new president. Many, many colleagues were told to basically sit down and be
quiet or risk being labeled a racist. I’ve seen a concerted effort to divide
and conquer faculty members. I’ve witnessed the sterilization of the union. I’ve
seen and heard intellectual fraud and financial mismanagement.
For
too long, I sat on it.
The
end of last semester, I quit. I now write from the perspective of a former
employee, an alumnus of MnSCU, an advocate of MnSCU students, a friend to many
MnSCU teachers, and a mother to a future MnSCU student. Frankly, aside from a
lot of backlash and potential problems with future employment, there’s nothing
in the following rant that really serves me financially or career-wise.
I
must be serious.
This
new administration has instituted a full frontal assault on the arts and
intellectual curiosity. The implementation of “Charting the Future,” which has
begun at SCC, abolishes the right of every Minnesotan, including rural
Minnesotans, to enjoy a full education, including trade and liberal arts
courses. SCC seems the beginning of the plan, but the strategy will spread to
the rest of the MnSCU campuses with direction from Chancellor Rosenstone,
prodded by special interest groups. In fact, it’s likely that the strategy has
begun in Rochester and Worthington already. Our state college system will be
turned into job training centers that benefit no one except the already wealthy
and powerful.
First,
a defense of the liberal arts, which have been identified as a “problem” by the
forces behind “Charting the Future.”
Access
to and choice of art and history and photography and race relations and geography
and creative writing and psychology and history and philosophy and speech classes
don’t distract students from carpentry and mechatronics and agriculture and
nursing classes or, for crying out loud, graduation or future, gainful
employment. Rather, the liberal arts enhance those classes and vice versa.
Filling
the community with workers who also entertain thinking, reading, understanding,
musicianship, artistry, creating, inventing, and criticizing is a positive
undertaking. Not only that, but our students want courses that develop these
attributes. Of course they require good employment, but they also aspire to
enjoy their lives and think deeply and be constructive assets to their families
and communities. The students desire a complete experience.
Our
goal in higher education, even in community college education, is not simply to
produce workers for the present demands of fickle CEOs of billion-dollar
industries, as this administration intends to do with the “Charting the Future”
initiative. Rather, the goal of higher education is to develop citizens who can
work, yes, but also adapt to changing stimuli, to be skilled and interested in
many areas so that WHEN the economic needs change, those individuals can move
and bring their knowledge and craftsmanship to other careers. Higher education
isn’t about landing an entry-level job only. It’s about a lifetime of inquisitiveness,
empathy, healthy living, healthy relationships, and productive citizenry. The
liberal arts foment those goals.
“Charting
the Future” intends to disable these classes and the programs.
Despite
the claim that the original tenents of the “Charting the Future” initiative
were not influenced by the Itasca Group or McKinsey and Company (as though the
exact same ideas and language spontaneously erupted at the very same time, like
the pyramids of Egypt and Mesomerica!), this is obviously a misremembering of
events. If you really want to raise the hair on the back of your neck, read one
of the documents that sheds light on the ideas that shaped “Charting the Future,”
the McKinsey and Company report, “Game Changers: Five Opportunities for US
Growth and Renewal” to the National Governor’s Association in which they
identify five areas of opportunity, the first being fracking and the fifth
being higher education and in which they discuss all the political maneuverings
they’ll have to put in place to develop these areas for optimal financial gain.
McKinsey has been delivering variations of this plan throughout the country
since at least 2011.
In
the meanwhile, they, Chancellor Rosenstone and crew, have to convince us that
nothing in higher education is currently working because that’s what McKinsey’s
research told them. Therefore, “bold” change is needed, implemented by “strong”
leaders because that’s what McKinsey’s research told them. They have to
convince us that our graduates aren’t skilled enough for the present needs of
industry because that’s what McKinsey’s research told them.
Really?
Everywhere I turn I see a glut of highly intelligent, highly skilled
individuals.
Perhaps
these CEOs, McKinsey’s very narrow sample group, need to keep better company.
Perhaps
if the CEOs raised their wages, the resumes from qualified individuals would
crash their computers and crush their desks.
Or,
perhaps the CEOs hope to flood the state with even more workers, all skilled in
the exact same way so that corporations can keep wages suppressed and thwart
any attempt at new inventions, new ideas, new small businesses, new competition.
Who,
exactly, was McKinsey’s sample group? Who, exactly, did they interview? Since
when is a question such as “Are you concerned about the skills of potential
employees” considered real research? Since when do you change an entire education
system based on the close-ended responses of a self-interested sampling group? We
don’t even allow composition students to get away with that kind of shoddy
research. Administration can package this crap up in tidy powerpoints and
binders, get some suit who appropriates our own language to deliver it, but
those gilded trappings don’t make the research credible.
With
some real research, McKinsey might have noted that a major component of
“Charting the Future,” giving students credit for skills they already possess, is
already in place. Every semester, many of us at SCC assess the incoming skills
of students and sometimes forward a deserving student onto the next level.
Heck, MSU was doing this back in the early 2000s, when I was a
six-months-pregnant undergrad passing out of physical education by taking a
swimming test.
That
said, I must add that even when a student comes to a higher-level course with
mastery skills, good instructors (of which MnSCU is fortunate to be drowning
in) adapt the curriculum to further challenge the student. The syllabus should
never be a “one-size-fits-all” stone tablet. We do and should always adapt
curriculum to the knowledge, the needs, and the learning styles of our
students. For high-functioning students, more to investigate exists and can be
discovered with guidance from a teacher who invests in him or her. These kinds
of adaptations can’t take place in the system proposed by “Charting the Future”
where uniformity and cold objectivity is the way.
In
another flawed bit of logic, this administration and “Charting the Future,”
again guided by the findings of McKinsey, place the blame for dragging
degree-completions and too-high drop-out rates on the curriculum, on the
classroom methods, on teachers, and on schools’ selfish noncooperation and
competition for students.
I
don’t think so.
With
some real research, perhaps McKinsey might have learned that present financial
suction is at the heart of our students’ college fatigue. Nothing would do more
to improve the learning and skill-development and degree-completion of the
present college population than food-secure and housing-secure lives and an
immediate raise in wages, which would buy the students time to concentrate on
developing their minds and their abilities rather than splitting their days
between long-houred, low-paying jobs, school, and family.
Although
no one needed to spend two million dollars for them to do it, Chancellor Rosenstone,
with McKinsey’s enlightenment, did stumble upon a real problem in higher
education: student loan debt. But, they misidentified the solution. Racing
students through standardized tests delivered electronically is not a solution.
Interestingly, that strategy will only boost the profits of corporations who
create standardized tests, corporations like, say, McKinsey. Student loan debt
is a cultural problem. Student loan debt is a symptom of our collective
messed-up priorities. Since we, as a state and nation, have decided to cut
subsidies in the form of grants, students have had to take on larger loan
burdens. Since we, as a state and nation, have decided that we don’t want to
provide universal health care for all of our citizens, colleges have passed the
rising costs of health care for their employees onto their students in the form
of rising tuition. We need to reconsider what we care about in this country. Do
we want our tax dollars to continue to be poured into defense and write-offs
for special interest groups? That’s a decision we have to make with the ballot.
Another
thought on completion rates: I wonder what would happen if students were
encouraged to pursue scholarship that interested them. Hm. Here’s, admittedly,
a heart-tugging scenario for you: let’s say it’s 3 am, and your child erupts in
red pox and seeps from every orifice. You rush him to the emergency room, of
course. Who would you rather have help him? The nurse who chose nursing and
skated through with a B- average because that’s where the jobs were even though
what he really wanted to study was the migratory routes of orcas? Or the nurse
who chose nursing because she loved the health sciences and loved helping
people and earned top notch scores in every preparatory course?
I
wonder if McKinsey accounted for the fact that “employees” actually have
desires and preferences, minds and hopes of their own.
OK,
for a minute, let’s just humor this administration and McKinsey and their
brainchild “Charting the Future.” Let’s say their research is solid (*choking
cough*). Fine. But, since when do we implement drastic changes based on the
requests of corporations without requiring some reciprocation from these
corporations, one that translates into REAL benefits for our students, one like
“we promise to provide paid internships” or “we promise to pay entry-level
employees x% above minimum wage,” for instance?
In
the past, McKinsey’s brand of leadership and research has contributed to
insider trading prosecution (Pavlo “Former McKinsey and Co. Boss, Rajat Gupta,
Guilty of Insider Trading”), the Enron fiasco (Chu “McKinsey: How Does It
Always Get Away With It”) and the AOL-Time Warner merger (Sternbergh “Book
Review: The Firm by Duff McDonald”). The
American talltale of epic failings is charged with guiding a “bold” plan for
education reform to correct “failing” schools? At the very least, this is
ironic, right? I’m sure there are some success stories, too, guided by
McKinsey. But, as Sternbergh, in his Bloomberg
Businessweek book review of McDonald’s expose on McKinsey and Company writes,
“For every
positive McKinsey achievement—its consultants urged the newly elected President
Eisenhower to create the position of White House chief of staff—there are at
least as many failures.”
The
point is, McKinsey routinely suggests risky gambles with other people’s money.
Are we going to turn higher education into a casino with taxpayer dollars and
student loans?
I
could go on. I haven’t even broached the link between McKinsey and Company and
the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). But, you can google that
frightening relationship at your leisure.
Of
course, there’s always the possibility that McKinsey was chosen precisely for
their nefarious strategies and connections. Perhaps someone or something else
is behind this swift and opaque change? Because of the density of the
implementation, it’s difficult to go down that road without sounding like a
conspiracy theorist. However, I only have to look at our neighboring state to
the east to get a shiver.
In
its defense of “Charting the Future,” administration claims to have consulted
students and faculty about its tenents.
Right.
None
of my colleagues was consulted before the implementation began. In fact,
they’ve been told to sit down and shut up time after time. Which they’ve mostly
done because they fear for their jobs and their ability to continue their good
work in their classrooms.
No
one in my classes was consulted either.
If
they had been, administration might have learned that many of my Somali
students come from agrarian backgrounds. Might they not have had something to
say about their skills for potential employers, perhaps to one of Minnesota’s
hugest corporations mentioned in the McKinsey and “Charting the Future” reports,
Cargill? About how to grow crops in very, very challenging conditions, for
instance?
Might
not have my many, many children of Latin American immigrants known a little bit
about food production, too, as their parents are the backbone of this country’s
agricultural and food production labor force, as they come from the people who
domesticated our most profitable, subsidized, and ubiquitous commodity, corn? Might
they might not have known something about how to adapt when political
freewheeling and corporate gluttony annihilate your livelihood in the blink of
an eye causing a mass economic catastrophe and a subsequent exodus from your
country?
Perhaps
my droves of low-income students feeding families on the barest of necessities
could have provided some insight into the ingredients they need and want to put
on their dinner tables. Might not have Dr. Parker and Chancellor Rosenstone and
McKinsey and Company and any of the businesses consulted benefited from talking
to these students?
Any
idiot should understand that not only are these students the next economy’s
employees, but they are also its consumers.
Ask
them what they want the world to look like. Don’t tell them what you require
from them to keep your coffers full. Your presumptions stink of pretention and
entitlement and classism and elitism.
Teaching is not only about
preparing students for job skills and throwing money into the economy.
Oftentimes, the classroom is about providing a safe place for conflicted or
wounded people to begin reflecting and healing for the benefit of families and
communities.
Bear with me. Here’s a long story,
but it does have a point:
This past semester, full of
interesting events, culminates in this: two Somali students both wrote their
final persuasive argument papers on female circumcision. One was a young woman of
18 who experienced the procedure at seven. She was very skeptical of me in the semester’s
beginning. Gradually, though, I earned her trust. Finally, toward the end of
the semester, my students had to choose a persuasive argument topic. She
couldn’t decide, so I sat with her after class one night and probed her about
her interests outside of school. And, then, she looked at me and said, I think
I’d like to write about circumcision.
The other paper came from an elder
Somali gentleman who confided that he was interested in broaching this topic
but that it was taboo for him to do so and that he was embarrassed. This was
his second, different class with me. And, because I had developed a good
rapport with him over a couple of years, I challenged, and I pushed him to
write the paper. I told him that it was his responsibility to make bold
proposals when he sees wrong in the world. I told him he was in a position of
power within his community. He did.
Because of my own liberal arts
education at Minnesota State University, Mankato, which included courses in
Postcolonial African literature, women’s studies, and Geography, I knew how to
help these students. Also, in my time at SCC, I had developed a strong
relationship with one of my colleagues and officemates, an adjunct like me, who
had spent years working with Sudanese and Somali immigrants. Through her, I gleaned
a wealth of information about the challenges these populations face in Mankato.
As a student, I took many practical
pedagogy and curriculum instruction courses at MSU, which were intended to help
me get a job, but it was my liberal arts courses, those frivolous flights of
fancy according to McKinsey and “Charting the Future,” and my work-place
relationship that prepared me for helping these particular students.
I hear stories like this one from
my colleagues all the time, ones that prove to me over and over again that
schools and teachers have to understand the needs of their particular
communities, their particular students, which will be eliminated with the
implementation of “Charting the Future.” What works in Worthington, where my
teacher friends might have to develop specialized knowledge on the unique
challenges of student athletes, does not necessarily work in North Mankato.
Tell me the kinds of strategies
employers have in place to deal with the many, many trials this generation of
the poor, of the PTSD-laden, and of demoralized immigrants possess.
Corporations don’t even want to train their own employees anymore. They want
schools to do it. They want students to take out student loans to get job
training. That is not in the best economic interest of students. That is not a
cost-saving measure for students. That is a cost-saving measure for companies.
Remember when employees used to get paid for job training on the job? Are we
just going to shuffle these students through school without real, compassionate
teaching and feed them to business lords who care nothing for them?
I do not want to do that. I did not
become an educator to do that.
Schools are for communities.
Schools are not for corporations.
Something
has gone bad.
“Charting
the Future” isn’t really about students and higher learning. It is not about
what’s best for Minnesota. What this administration and its CEO advisory
committee have implemented is a system that is perfectly poised to get as many
people as possible into students loans, privatize education as much as
possible, suppress organized labor, further corporate agendas, dumb down
citizens, develop curriculum with industry-supporting propaganda, move students
away from areas of potential environmental exploitation, get their hands on and
extract the life out of our two most valuable resources in Minnesota: our young
people and our environment.
Sincerely,
Sources
Chu, Ben.
"McKinsey: How Does It Always Get Away With It?" The Independent, 7
Feb. 2014. Web. 22 Dec. 2014.
Lund, Susan, James Manyika, Scott Nyquiat, Lenny Mendonca
and Sreenivas
Ramaswamy. “Game Changers: Five
Opportunities for US Growth and Renewal.” N.p.: McKinsey Global Institute, July 2013. Pdf.
Pavlo,
Walter. “Former McKinsey and Co. Boss,
Rajat Gupta, Guilty of Insider
Trading” Forbes, 15 June 2012. Web. 22 Dec. 2014.
Sternbergh,
Adam. “Book Review: The Firm by Duff
McDonald.”
BloombergBusinessWeek,
5 Sept. 2013. Web. 22. Dec. 2014.
Thank you Nicole Helgert. I strongly urge you to edit this down to op ed size and submit it to the Strib, the Pioneer Press, or Minnpost. It is crucial. I deeply admire your intelligence, courage, and passion. We will win the struggle for truly democratic higher education in Minnesota and the United States. You are not alone. We will win it together!
ReplyDeleteThis is heartbreaking. I left shortly after the new administration had come in. I heard that some teachers/programs were eliminated, but I had no idea things were this way. Thank you for your courage in posting this and standing up for all students. That's what the teachers at SCC were always all about.
ReplyDeleteNicole, I'd love to have a version of this for the anthology I'm putting together, Teaching Poor: Voices of the Academic Precariat. The CFP is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FuGEh2wXk2WRNPhLG2h-TL5I5asC3X47I2k1_juKL3Y/edit?usp=sharing
ReplyDeleteAh, Nicole, from my heart to yours, thank-you. It is a huge feat to convey the personal/local to the state/national situation, all with passion and evidence. I commend you for standing by your truth. How might I reach you to say more? You are welcome to Facebook friend me, where you can see my own history. I've shared and tweeted your blog and I suspect many other colleagues will as well. I think Google is going to show me as unknown here (not my choice), so I will sign off with my real name: Linda Lade
ReplyDeleteThank you for speaking out about what is happening to education. I went to college for k-12 ESL licensing and short of a thesis a master's program for literature and I saw this all over. The whole pushing students into majors that would guarantee a job and security not passion or enjoyment combined. So many departments weren't able to help their students see how the skills they wanted to learn could translate into the job market to make them qualified for the job, it was all about fitting students into what the employer wanted them to have. The tests just prove that kids can memorize things, it doesn't help them apply knowledge. It takes a lot of strength, passion, and anger directed at the right people to come out to say the above! THank you
ReplyDelete"Charting the Future" BY NAME says it all. If you think about it, none of our futures were ever "charted." Rather, they unfolded it fits and starts, surging ahead whenever we encountered great teachers and mentors who opened our minds to new ideas, and new possibilities of becoming. The goal of public education is not to "chart" anyone's future, but to provide them the opportunities, the confidence, the vision, so that they can do it themselves.
ReplyDelete