I will refer to an earlier post, A Mini-Reflection of the Texas Academy's Failure to Train Citizenship but updated from my Comp 1301 students' responses to the Wingspread Declaration (1998).
My students were assigned to read the Declaration, with its look backward to the intention of American education through the late 20th century, but how the late 20th century redefined education as a marketplace, a place for students to act as consumers instead of building a cohesive citizenry.
I taught a course in the recent past and I collaborated with another colleague. At the end of the semester, the colleague insisted to administer a survey of ... likability ... of the course. This is not different than RateMyProfessor and other ilk -- that students are merely consumers. The survey instrument itself used verbiage similar to "Would you like to recommend this course ..." so typical of late capitalism. In late capitalism, bodies are both the product and the means of marketing efforts, and the classroom is stressed and reflects the neoliberalist economic pressures on all actors, but especially on faculty and the students. Not ironically, however, it's the students who are especially stressed in this market, and my students have discussed this: lack of child care, lack of public transportation, hyperinflation of textbook prices, the increasing technology gap, food insecurity. The students clearly articulate the general working class problem: lack of time and lack of finances to pursue a reasonably achieved college degree (AA or workforce certificate) that reasonable minds can respond to essential behaviorism; that is, we need to believe that our hard work provides modicums (modica?) of positive reinforcement to pursue the labor (The THECB data show that only 18.5% students complete an AA within three years and only 24% complete the degree within four year. Those data, however, refer to those who complete a degree, so this does not reflect those who withdraw (another discussion: how the System and the THECB massage their data where the community cannot see the real low persistence data).
The Wingspread Declaration argues that American higher education is the last opportunity for citizens train for lifelong civic engagement:
My students argue that my own community college (and notice that our college no longer refers to itself as a "community college" (see "About" or any marketing devices (this is another project: students to see the Systems' move from the community to the Texas or even global stage)) does not concern about them individually nor about their communities. The students have rolled their eyes about tokenism initiatives such as Black History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month. One very articulate student argued that she cannot feel committed to extra-curricular initiataves such as civic engagement because the college itself has not created a campus community, and her only plan to come to class, leave class, and transfer as fast as possible. I applaud her very focused plan to transfer. But I also argue that this perspective is both reflective of 12+ years of anti-civic-engagement in schools and the failures of true civic engagement on campus. Bowls of cereal after the Superbowl will not build citizens. Cups of corn will not build citizens. Build a Bear will not build citizens. (Again, this approach to materialism is exactly what we see as students-as-consumers: the Student Life sees students as consumers of food and entertainment, seeing "life" in hedonism and materialism; not civic life).
The Declaration has multiple recommendations on every caste within the academy. I include only one of multiple advice:
My students were assigned to read the Declaration, with its look backward to the intention of American education through the late 20th century, but how the late 20th century redefined education as a marketplace, a place for students to act as consumers instead of building a cohesive citizenry.
I taught a course in the recent past and I collaborated with another colleague. At the end of the semester, the colleague insisted to administer a survey of ... likability ... of the course. This is not different than RateMyProfessor and other ilk -- that students are merely consumers. The survey instrument itself used verbiage similar to "Would you like to recommend this course ..." so typical of late capitalism. In late capitalism, bodies are both the product and the means of marketing efforts, and the classroom is stressed and reflects the neoliberalist economic pressures on all actors, but especially on faculty and the students. Not ironically, however, it's the students who are especially stressed in this market, and my students have discussed this: lack of child care, lack of public transportation, hyperinflation of textbook prices, the increasing technology gap, food insecurity. The students clearly articulate the general working class problem: lack of time and lack of finances to pursue a reasonably achieved college degree (AA or workforce certificate) that reasonable minds can respond to essential behaviorism; that is, we need to believe that our hard work provides modicums (modica?) of positive reinforcement to pursue the labor (The THECB data show that only 18.5% students complete an AA within three years and only 24% complete the degree within four year. Those data, however, refer to those who complete a degree, so this does not reflect those who withdraw (another discussion: how the System and the THECB massage their data where the community cannot see the real low persistence data).
The Wingspread Declaration argues that American higher education is the last opportunity for citizens train for lifelong civic engagement:
Civic engagement is essential to a democratic society, but far too many Americans have withdrawn from participation in public affairs. Higher education can contribute to civic engagement, but most research universities do not perceive themselves as part of the problem or of its solution. Whereas universities were once centrally concerned with “education for democracy” and “knowledge for society,” today’s institutions have often drifted away from their civic mission.Instead of preparing students (and retraining faculty) with civic engagement, the neoliberal academy has become individualist, and turn towards their own goals or their discipline's: "Cultures of research-oriented schools have become increasingly competitive, individualist, and characterized by the 'star system.' Faculty identities are drawn away from the local civic community and toward national and international disciplinary and sub-disciplinary reference groups."
My students argue that my own community college (and notice that our college no longer refers to itself as a "community college" (see "About" or any marketing devices (this is another project: students to see the Systems' move from the community to the Texas or even global stage)) does not concern about them individually nor about their communities. The students have rolled their eyes about tokenism initiatives such as Black History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month. One very articulate student argued that she cannot feel committed to extra-curricular initiataves such as civic engagement because the college itself has not created a campus community, and her only plan to come to class, leave class, and transfer as fast as possible. I applaud her very focused plan to transfer. But I also argue that this perspective is both reflective of 12+ years of anti-civic-engagement in schools and the failures of true civic engagement on campus. Bowls of cereal after the Superbowl will not build citizens. Cups of corn will not build citizens. Build a Bear will not build citizens. (Again, this approach to materialism is exactly what we see as students-as-consumers: the Student Life sees students as consumers of food and entertainment, seeing "life" in hedonism and materialism; not civic life).
The Declaration has multiple recommendations on every caste within the academy. I include only one of multiple advice:
- For students: Campus co-curricular activities on and off campus offer multiple opportunities for students to get engaged in community projects that enhance the civic welfare and common good, to register to vote, and to participate actively in political campaigns and other change-oriented activities. Further, such activities create space for constant reflection about how such experiences might shape their future careers and life work.
- For faculty: Faculty teaching includes community-based learning and undergraduate action research that develops substantive knowledge, cultivates practical skills, and strengthens social responsibility and public identity for citizenship in a diverse democratic society.
- For staff: Staff build upon and receive recognition for the often extensive ties that many have with the local community, seeing such community knowledge and connection as a resource for community-university partnerships, for student learning, for engaged scholarship, and for the broad intellectual life of the institution.
- For administrators: It will mean that the president and other leaders give consistent and sustained voice to the broad public purposes of our institutions. This will involve articulating the philosophical and intellectual meaning of research universities as agents of democracy, helping to highlight the specific and unique quality and character of their particular institutions, and making visible the public work and contributions of faculty, staff, and students.
One situation demonstrates how this college has resisted civic engagement. The current campus Civic Engagement Committee has invited our county executive, Judge Lina Hidalgo for an on-campus Q&A for students. When the committee started the paperwork, the System resisted, saying that they had wanted to bring Judge Hidalgo as the graduation speaker. Notice how the System sees other bodies (Judge Hidalgo) as a marketing act: her fame, her political power, her vibrancy (she's the first Latinx to elected to the county executive position since 1836, an immigrant, a bilingual) as a token, to stand on a stage in an awful arena with awful sound, in an evening where students are really attending to celebrate with their families, not with any politician. Notice that if Judge Hidalgo were to actually meet with the students, within feet to talk with, Q&A, see her not as a celebrity but as an amazing success of first-generation migrant completing her degrees and using her focus on the students' actually community concerns. The difference of mingling within celebrities (Hidalgo, the college admins, other System chiefs that students do not know) vs. spending real time with the students with their voices. Which one is more civic? Which is more tokenism?
I need to close this down. My parentheticals for (another project:) should be examples of when the audience wants to stop reading. But I am concerned about the college's whole approach to civic engagement. I see more mimicry of civic engagement as merely faculty's personal discipline favoritism (exactly what the Declaration decries) where we see civic engagement as opportunity for lecture after lecture, film after film. The students will never learn to engage when sitting for a lecture. The faculty will never learn to engage when they act as the sage on the stage. The obvious systemic (local and state) inertia of silencing the communities will never learn to engage with communities ("leaders" talking to "leaders" but not walking the streets of Aldine and Greenspoint, for example). When we are concerned with enrollment and persistence numbers, but still relying on corporate-like marketing to communities who have lost the confidence in the college, we should not be confused. We have lost our mission as a community college. My students feel that.
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