University ABCs: Let’s Fix This Mess, Canada

This is a modified version of a post I posted on my blog about two years ago, before I joined Twitter.  It’s something I thought some of my Twitter followers–especially those concerned about post-secondary education–might find interesting.  Also, it provides some clues about the graphics featuring strings of letters that I include with many of my Tweets.   Also, I have another reason for ‘reposting’ this now, that  I’ll get to at the end of the piece.  (The original version of this post was in response to a special Globe and Mail series about post-secondary education that ran in the fall, almost two years ago.  I’ve taken out references to that series for this modified version–although the graphics are unchanged.  If you’re interested in reading the original version, it can be found here.)

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The uppermost of the two above pictures is a god-awful mess, wouldn’t you agree?  That’s what happens when you’re tired after a long day at work, trying to produce a graphic for a blog post you want to get up as soon as possible, using graphics tools whose versatility can sometimes be more of a hindrance than a help.  I was ready to delete the picture from my iPad; but, when I looked at it beside the original version, essentially the picture below it (the original didn’t have the oval frame around the lettering), and realized that the two pictures together fit in with what I planned to write about in my post, it seemed worth preserving.

A big problem with so much recent commentary about universities is that the issue of underlying philosophical change in recent decades within Western society–including within our universities and towards universities, from an outside perspective–has been overlooked.  In this period of philosophical transition, there are multiple basic philosophical perspectives towards universities, which differentially affect attitudes towards particular issues.  These include attitudes about what should be taught, to whom, by whom, the methods used to teach, and even how university education should be financed.  Beneath the surface, to those who have given some thought to the issue of philosophical change as it relates to our universities, some coherence may be discerned among the diverse views about our universities.  But, on the surface, this commentary, taken as a whole, is likely to appear to many, if not most, to be an incoherent jumble–and not very useful in helping to further constructive change in our universities.

There are now basically three different philosophical perspectives from which our universities, and aspects thereof, may be viewed.  These three perspectives I’ll call here A, B, and C.  A book chapter could be written about each of these perspectives; but, since this is just a blog post, I’ll stick to the basics.

The A perspective is the traditional elitist view that predominated in Western universities until the mid-20th Century.  Until that time, only a small proportion of the population attended universities, and attendees were almost invariably white males, and from relatively prosperous families.  In the second half of the 20th Century, significantly greater diversity among students, and also ultimately among the professoriate, led to a second basic perspective: perspective B.  This perspective may be summed up as being that of the “academic left”.  Although those from the B camp favour a more inclusive approach to university education than those of the A camp, it should be emphasized that members of the B camp do not question the basic activities conducted within universities.  Members of both groups are likely to support traditional university policies and procedures, such as academic freedom (including freedom from interference from those outside universities), academic tenure (or guaranteed jobs for life) for senior professors, the notion of the all-knowing professor as the source of legitimate knowledge for students, and the emphasis on research in the evaluation of professors with little weight given to teaching ability.

By the late 1970s, the basic dualistic and hierarchical framework of Western metaphysics, that had supported Western universities for so long, was crumbling.  Both perspectives A and B were now being challenged–mostly from outside of universities.  Yet it is worth noting here that, by now, there were many more adults studying in universities than there had been in the past, some of whom, especially those studying at the graduate level, already had achieved mid-career status in their professions, who personally brought the ‘outside’ perspective into our universities.  (I was one such student when I was doing graduate work in education.)  This third basic perspective, or perspective C, is the ‘postmodern’ perspective–with ‘postmodern’ defined essentially as it is defined by Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition.  (You can look it up, if you’re interested.)

If, as I believe is the case, the majority of Canadians now possess the basic C perspective (this distinguishes Canada from the United States) a reasonable reevaluation of our universities has to start explicitly from that position.  This doesn’t rule out the possibility of certain institutions and programs catering to those who possess minority A and B perspectives (a Christian-based university, like Trinity Western University,  generally falls into the A category);  but it does suggest that at least the greater part of funding for such institutions and programs will have to come from somewhere other than general tax revenue.

It would seem to be enormously helpful if commentators on our universities would preface their commentary with some reference to philosophical change in our universities. Better yet, it would be fantastic if influential commentators (like the Globe and Mail newspaper) publicly endorsed a postmodern position.  That could be the stimulus Canadians need to really get down to the serious business of reevaluating our universities, and reconstructing them within a non-dualistic, non-hierarchical, framework. But I’m not optimistic.  Generally speaking, our influential commentators seems too beholding to those who support the A perspective–or who at least who pretend to support that perspective–for any such thing to happen.

Which brings me to my final point here.  I’d love to be able to devote more time to this kind of work.  But, for that, I need MONEY.  Is there perhaps someone out there reading this who has more money than they need who might be able to help me with this?  Or perhaps who knows someone else with money who might be sympathetic to my views?  It probably can’t hurt to ask–although I could loose some of my Twitter followers by being so blunt . . . Oh, hell,  I’ll post this anyway.

 

UART (in Canada, 2014): Advice for Canadians Thinking of Going to Art School

My general advice to Canadians thinking of pursuing studies in the fine and applied arts at the postsecondary level is that they should attend a reputable, practical oriented, art college. If they want to obtain a university degree, they should do this separately, at a university that offers a full range of university programs, before or after their art studies. At such institutions, they will have the option of taking courses in a variety of subject areas and, if they are so inclined, of majoring in something other than art.

Apart from possibly taking some individual, practical, courses taught by part-time instructors who work primarily outside of these institutions, I would suggest steering clear of those art schools that offer university degrees. This includes even those venerable old Canadian art schools that, in the past decade, have become accredited niche universities–including, in Vancouver, the Emily Carr University of Art and Design (formerly the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and, before that, the Vancouver School of Art) and, in Toronto, where I lived for many years, OCAD University (formerly the Ontario College of Art and Design).

I strongly disagree with those institutions having been turned into universities, and I regret not having spoken out about the transition when it was occurring. I hesitated mainly because I then still considered Emily Carr, at least, as a potential employer, and didn’t want to alienate anyone associated with the institution. Also, I then didn’t have a blog in which I could readily express my views. I’m speaking out now in part because I recently applied for an administrative job at a relatively new, very interesting, private art college here in Vancouver, that DOESN’T aspire to be a university, so speaking my mind may now help me more than hurt me professionally. Also, I now have this blog.

Lest anyone reading this blog post suspects that the views I’m expressing here about Canadian art schools being turned into universities are not my legitimate views, and are merely what I think a particular potential, non-university, employer might want to hear, these views are fundamentally consistent with the views I have earlier expressed in this blog about the humanities in Canadian universities today and about the ongoing bid by the local private Christian university, Trinity Western University, to have its own law school. Also, even if I don’t get that job I’m after (I should know within a couple of weeks), I’ll leave this post up. It’s high time I came clean.

I’m not rehashing here everything I’ve said earlier in this blog about the ongoing philosophical transition in Canadian post-secondary education in recent decades, and about the problems experienced by many Canadian university students in recent decades related to philosophical intransigence and inconsistencies in our universities. (If you are interested in learning more about my views in this regard, you may wish to check out some of my earlier posts in the UABCs category of posts.) But I will point out that artists, and those with a good knowledge of the fine arts, seem to be among those who are most sensitive to these issues, and most negatively impacted.

For example, as part of my graduate work in Education, I took a course called “Aesthetics and Education,” in which most of the students were artists and art educators. (In the latter group, several had been employed as primary or secondary school teachers for many years.) Virtually all of the students in that class were very familiar with postmodernism in the Arts, and themselves possessed postmodern perspectives. Unfortunately, the professor for the class (a failed classical pianist, nearing retirement age) was far less familiar, and most of the students balked at what she taught and her requirements for student projects. The one student in the class who, in one candid moment, out of earshot of the professor, admitted he knew nothing about art was, in that class, the “star pupil.”

It’s bizarre that some of our most prominent art schools have made the move to become universities at this critical juncture, when they should have stayed basically the way they were, and set an example for our universities. This move wasn’t made in the interests of Canadian art students–or of industries that hire art school graduates. It seems to have been made mainly because a university degree is likely to lure in certain naive foreign students with little knowledge of Canada and Canadian education, but with ample money that can help sustain these institutions. But sustain what?

What in my view was a very serious mistake does, however, seem to bode  well for other Canadian art schools (like the private art college to which I recently offered my professional services) that stick to a more practical approach, consistent with a contemporary Canadian outlook.

URAD: You Are a Dunce . . . or Maybe Not

The way I usually look at things, nobody in this world deserves to be called a ‘dunce’, or a ‘dummy’, or a ‘moron’, or an ‘idiot’.  But when somebody is intellectually, and ethically, stuck in a position in which they see humankind divided into two groups, smart folks and dunces, and has been stuck there for many years (if not decades), and when they behave as if they are members of the former and you are a member of the latter, it’s time to shift perspectives–at least for rhetorical purposes.  There seems to be no way to get through to such a person–to have even the mildest impact on their egomaniacal, destructive, behavior–except to firmly place the dunce cap on their head.

I didn’t actually do it; but I sure was tempted.  Let’s just say I didn’t have the greatest Christmas this year.

After having had a couple of weeks to calm down, rather than resorting to petty tit for tat, without naming any names or getting into any other particulars, I’m going to try to present my position clearly in this blog post–or at least as clearly as a short blog post will allow.  All of this seemed to have a great deal to do with education, and with university education in particular, so I’m including this post in the “UABCs” (or “University ABCs”) series of posts in this blog.

People who have experienced academic success through the years–a group in which I include myself–tend not to be pretentious.  This is especially true of those who have gone through the education system in recent decades, since the hierarchies formerly associated with Western education began to crumble.  I definitely encountered a few pretentious university professors over the years, trying to defend old academic values during a period of great change within academe; but very few of their students chose to emulate them.  Not behaving in a way that used to be considered “high status” or “smart” is no longer necessarily an indication that one is “low status” or “dumb”—unless one truly is … I won’t say it, although I’m extremely tempted.

It’s one thing to be knowledgeable in particular areas and to employ that knowledge wisely, and with sensitivity to the social setting in which one finds oneself. To me, in our postmodern age, these are the hallmarks of intelligence and having had a good education. It’s quite another to impose a shaky knowledge–including things one must surely know are untrue, in other words fabrications and lies–on others in order to gain social status, within a hierarchy that no longer exists.

To those who never did well in our education system (I said I wouldn’t name any names), I would say I’m very sorry about your lack of success.  But keep in mind, I wasn’t the one who was putting you down.  (I did all I could over the years to provide you with encouragement in areas in which you had real talent.)  It’s you who’ve been putting yourself down.  If you can’t see that–if you can’t fathom the basic philosophical perspective from which I and so many others who have been academically successful now view the world–you may truly be a DUNCE. 

But maybe, now, you can see …

UkNOw: Canadian Universities THEN

I apologize to anyone who has arrived at this blog post hoping for information about the Vancouver art scene, or about pizzas, but I haven’t written anything in this blog about universities for the past couple of months, and I feel it’s time I got back to this subject.

Until quite recently, with the exception of programs in the natural and applied sciences, and allied professional programs like Medicine, I’d pretty much given up on our universities. Except in those areas mentioned, Canadian universities had not kept pace with the philosophical and political changes in Canadian society in recent decades, and it seemed very unlikely that things would change, ever. Yes, ever.

Hiring practices within our universities had reduced the probability that innovative thinkers and doers would rise up from within our universities to virtually nil.  On the academic side, although it used to be said that there would be a major hiring boom for academics when the large number of university professors who were hired in the 1960s and ’70s retired, the hiring boom never materialized.  Faced with financial cutbacks, universities reduced full-time faculty members, and those jobs that were available to new academics, mostly part-time and without job security, went to applicants who were unlikely to rock the boat, whose basic views conformed with the views of the professors doing the hiring.  With respect to the non-academic, ancillary, positions within our universities, the unions that I myself had supported when they first sprouted up in many of our universities, beginning in the 1970s, had become a major obstacle to innovation.

Although it’s only logical, until I was looking for ancillary work in unionized universities and colleges myself after completing graduate work in Education (I was looking for academic jobs, too), I had never considered that, in unionized environments in general, during a recessionary period when there are more layoffs than hires, mid-career applicants who are not union members are basically wasting their time.  Virtually all the hiring that is done during such periods is done at the most junior level, at the lowest pay scale, and any job that involves more than basic knowledge and skills goes to existing union members.  In unionized academic environments, there are certain jobs that are an exception to this rule, generally involving specialized technical skills.  However, I’ve yet to come across a description for a job within academe, either ancillary or academic, that identified as a specialized job requirement “an excellent knowledge of philosophical change within Western society in recent decades, and some good ideas about how to bring our universities more in line with this change”.

Yes, certain accommodations were being made to a changed philosophical and political climate, such as an increased prevalence of internships outside of universities as part of university degree programs, and a greater emphasis on practical work in certain university classes. However, I had to wonder if such accommodations ultimately did more harm than good, since they may have misled many students into thinking that most, if not all, of their university programs would be philosophically consistent with internships, and so on.  A philosophical mishmash (like what I described in an earlier post in this blog, dated October 19, 2012) is likely to be harder to deal with than philosophical consistency–even if the consistent philosophical outlook in question isn’t one’s own.

Until quite recently, I wasn’t at all optimistic that serious change was coming.  But things have happened lately that have made me more optimistic–and I’ll be discussing them in my next post.

UAUBUC x 2: A Comment on the Globe and Mail Series on Universities

Through the past couple of weeks, the Globe and Mail newspaper has been running a special series of articles about Canadian universities–none of which, at least as of today,  have been by Margaret Wente, although Wente was back on October 11, after an absence of two weeks, with a column about US politics, to which she appended a short apology about the ‘plagiarism’ issue.  (It’s good to see Wente back!)

Readers of the articles have been invited to comment in a special comment section on the Globe’s website, and I considered it.   But, after checking out the comment section and seeing the myriad of comments there, I feared anything I said there would get lost in the slew of words and varying opinions.  Besides, what I had to say was more substantial than the comment section would allow. This post therefore comprises my ‘comment’, not just about one article but, rather, in very general terms, about the series of articles as a whole.  My comment consists of both words and pictures–the inclusion of the latter being another advantage of commenting here and not on the Globe’s site.

The uppermost of the two above pictures is a god-awful mess, wouldn’t you agree?  That’s what happens when you’re tired after a long day at work, trying to produce a graphic for a blog post you want to get up as soon as possible, using graphics tools whose versatility can sometimes be more of a hindrance than a help.  I was ready to delete the picture from my iPad; but, when I looked at it beside the original version, essentially the picture below it (the original didn’t have the oval frame around the lettering), and realized that the two pictures together fit in with what I planned to write about in my post, it seemed worth preserving.

A big problem with the series is that the issue of underlying philosophical change in recent decades within Western society–including within our universities and towards universities, from an outside perspective–has been overlooked.  In this period of philosophical transition, there are multiple basic philosophical perspectives towards universities, which differentially affect attitudes towards particular issues such as what should be taught, to whom, by whom, the methods used to teach, and even how university education should be financed.  Beneath the surface, to those who have given some thought to the issue of philosophical change as it relates to our universities, some coherence may be discerned among the diverse views about our universities presented in this series of articles.  But, on the surface, the articles as a whole are likely to appear to many, if not most, Canadians to be an incoherent jumble–and not very useful in helping to further constructive change in our universities.

The only contributor to this series who has addressed philosophical issues at all has been the University of Toronto philosopher, Mark Kingwell, in his piece published on October 13.  As would be expected from a philosopher employed in a university philosophy department, Kingwell puts forward a very traditional philosophical, and pedagogical, view of universities–although, interestingly, Kingwell does mention in the article that, even in his introductory philosophy course, he exposes students to the ideas of certain ‘outliers’ (his term), including Jean-François Lyotard, author of the highly influential The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Education, first published in 1979.  If one is familiar with this book, and knows that Kingwell also is familiar with it, and even exposes his student’s to Lyotard’s ideas, one might suspect that Kingwell’s personal perspective is less traditional than he is prepared to admit.

There are now basically three different philosophical views towards our universities, all of which have been represented in the series–and all of which are also present inside our universities, in varying degrees, in different institutions and different programs within institutions.  These three perspectives I’ll call here A, B, and C.  A book chapter could be written about each of these perspectives; but, since this is just a blog post, I’ll stick to the basics.

Kingwell’s perspective represents–or at least ostensibly represents–the A perspective.  This is the traditional elitist view, associated with Western metaphysics, that predominated in Western universities until the mid-20th Century.  Until that time, only a small proportion of the population attended universities, and attendees were almost invariably white males from relatively prosperous families.

In the second half of the 20th Century, significantly greater diversity among students, and also ultimately among the professoriate, led to a second basic perspective: perspective B.  This perspective may be summed up as being that of the “academic left”.  Although those from the B camp favour a more inclusive approach to university education than those of the A camp, it should be emphasized that members of the B camp do not question the basic activities conducted within universities.  Members of both groups are likely to support traditional university policies and procedures, such as academic freedom (including freedom from interference from those outside universities), academic tenure (or guaranteed jobs for life) for senior professors, the notion of the all-knowing professor as the source of legitimate knowledge for students, and the emphasis on research in the evaluation of professors with little weight given to teaching ability.

As early as the late 1970s, when Lyotard published his book–and when I was completing an undergraduate degree in Communications at McGill University–the basic dualistic and hierarchical framework of Western metaphysics that had supported Western universities for so long started to crumble.  Both perspectives A and B were now being challenged–mostly from outside of universities.  Yet it is worth noting here that, by now, there were many more adults studying in universities than there had been in the past, some of whom, especially those studying at the graduate level, had already achieved mid-career status in their professions, who personally brought the ‘outside’ perspective into our universities.  (I was one such student when I was doing graduate work in education.)  This third basic perspective, or perspective C, is the ‘postmodern’ perspective–with ‘postmodern’ defined essentially as it is defined by Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition.

If most Canadians now possess the C perspective–which is to say a Canadian POSTMODERN perspective–which I suspect is now the case, a reasonable reevaluation of our universities has to start explicitly from that position.  This doesn’t rule out the possibility of certain institutions and programs catering to those who possess minority A and B perspectives, but it does suggest that at least the greater part of funding for such institutions and programs will have to come from somewhere other than general tax revenue.

For the sake of greater coherence in the Globe and Mail series, it would have been enormously helpful if the series had begun with a basic discussion of philosophical change in our universities, similar to the discussion here.  But, better yet, it would be fantastic if the Globe and Mail publicly endorsed a postmodern position.  That could be the stimulus Canadians need to really get down to the serious business of reevaluating our universities, and reconstructing them on a non-dualistic, non-hierarchical, framework.

There is still time for that, even in the context of the special series, which is continuing for at least a couple of days.  But I’m not optimistic.  Generally speaking, the Globe and Mail seems too beholding to those who support the A perspective–or who at least who pretend to support that perspective–for any such thing to happen.  I wish they would prove me wrong.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, FINALLY!

Since I designed this blog to have three distinct kinds of posts–some about education, some in which I discussed A Few of My Favourite Things (or AFOMFT), and others that were about miscellaneous subjects of interest to me–I had thought that, after two posts about education, this third post in my new blog would surely be about something other than education.  For several weeks, I’d been thinking about including in this blog a post about my visit in late August to Crescent Beach–where the tree in the header graphic for this blog is located.  In addition to the picture of the tree, I took a panoramic shot of the  beachfront, using the 360Panorama app that I downloaded onto my iPhone shortly before the visit, and wanted to show off the picture, and beautiful Crescent Beach–where our family lived, right on the beachfront, for a couple of years when I was a young child.  But, once again, something related to education has come up about which I felt compelled to write.

At this rate, it may be well into winter before I write a complete post about Crescent Beach–or about anything other than education–so I’ll include at least a link to the panoramic shot in THIS POST.

The link is: http://occipital.com/user/83a5-478101/pam-third