Why Assessment of General Education Competencies is Entirely Different from Grading

I have been aware for many years that the college where I teach has been doing a poor job with assessing general education. At times over the years I've tried talking to the people in positions of responsibility about the inadequacies of our assessment, but no one has listened. Finally I gave up and just made sure that I did things the right way even if no one else did. 

Ultimately the day of reckoning - re-accreditation - has arrived, and despite our having been slapped on the hand for our inadequate general education assessment and asked to address those deficiencies, those in decision-making positions are still not listening to me. Or rather they heard me and said you're right, but we'll deal with that sometime in the future.  Right now we're just going to do a whole lot more of the wrong thing and overwhelm them with reams of bad assessment data - done up in a pretty new chart that someone at the top thinks makes everything okay. Of course they didn't actually say that, but that seems to be the course we are taking. 

So I've been charged with collating and synthesizing these reams of bad data into some coherent whole (not really possible but I'm trying), and that is what I'm spending my "vacation" doing. As I review all of the assessment reports of all of our faculty, I am aghast at how bad things actually are - far worse than I had imagined.  I would like to be able to put all these people in a room somewhere and explain some things to them, but that is never going to happen.  For one thing, by the time the chickens come home fully to rest and the awfulness of our assessment is fully understood, I will have retired and it will be "not my circus, not my monkeys." 

So instead I'm going to deliver part of my "lecture" here, because I've got to let it out somewhere. Maybe somebody somewhere will benefit from my little rant. 

My college, as well as all other colleges in our system and most colleges in our state, has adopted a general education plan the "Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) Initiative" developed by hundreds of college faculty through the auspices of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU). The LEAP initiative includes 12 essential learning outcomes for a liberal education, including communication skills, quantitative reasoning, information literacy, critical thinking, life long learning, teamwork and problem solving, and several others (https://www.aacu.org/leap/essential-learning-outcomes). To assist colleges and faculty determine whether or not they are achieving these general educational goals, the AACU developed Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education rubrics or VALUE rubrics (Source: https://www.aacu.org/value).  Having spent many years now reading the literature around the LEAP initiative and the VALUE rubrics, it is clear that the students' entire educational career should contribute to the development of these essential skills, and that proficiency in them is something that accumulates over the student entire academic career.  This means that most first semester freshmen taking their first college level courses would not be expected to be fully proficient at most of the learning outcomes, but that one would expect the majority of last semester senior students to be proficient.  

The biggest mistake that most of our faculty have made is to assume that assessment is simply an extension of grading. Having made that assumption, the majority of my colleagues then assume that they can simply use the grade from some test, paper, exercise, project or even the course as a whole, as THE measure of assessment - for a whole host of different general education areas from "inquiry and analysis," "critical and creative thinking," to "life-long learning skills," and "integrative and applied learning." As a result I am seeing faculty with first semester freshman in the first English writing course reporting that because 95% of their students got a C+ or better therefore 95% of their students are fully proficient in written communication. If that is so, then why on earth do we then require them to take a second semester of writing? Because one semester of college writing does not make most people proficient at written communication. Proficiency in writing takes lots of practice in writing, and writing different types of content (history essays, sociology journals, science term papers, etc.). Assessment is not the same as grading.

A grade is a measurement of the student's performance in a particular course. How well did the student complete all the requirements of that course? That's what a grade indicates. Perhaps the easiest way to understand the difference between grading and assessment is to use some thing that most people can understand: studying languages.  A person who wishes to study French will begin with an introductory French course. That individual may study very hard in introductory French and do all of the required work at a high level of skill - for that course - and be rewarded for their efforts with an A.  That's grading.  But then we ask, is that person who has completed a one semester course in French with an A now proficient in the speaking, writing and communicating in French. Of course not. That is assessment. Assessment is about a larger life skill that accrues over time and practice. Moreover, it is entirely possible for a person to take four semesters of French, and get an A in every single class, and still not be particularly proficient in speaking and writing French. However, if that is so, then there's probably good reason to go back and review how the courses were taught since the ultimate goal of the courses is to develop proficiency. Nonetheless we would still not expect proficiency to be the outcome of the first, or even second course, but rather some mile stone measure along the way. 

In most courses at a community college (the first two years of college), such as where I teach, we should not be looking for proficiency in most courses, but rather from evidence that students have started along the way to a particular skill or ability - for milestones.  While the development of such skills and abilities should be part of grading, they are often not the most important element in the grade even on a single assignment or activity. So grades often are poor indicators of the development of general education skills.  Assessment requires a separate set of judgments about where a student lies in the development of a body of knowledge or a set of skills.   That separate assessment could be included within the grading criteria as a percentage of a score or grade, but is unlikely to encompass all of the things that go into the grade. 

A good example is developing the skills of life long learning. Reading the AACU's material and VALUE rubric on life long learning, some years ago, I realized that a project that I always have my Social Problems students do was something that could - if tweaked just a little - contribute to developing life long learning skills. The actual grade that I give students for this project (identifying a social problem specific to their home community, and following through with research, contact with others addressing the problem, and thinking about solutions for their community) depends on many different factors, such as how well they have learnt and used the terminology of sociology, how well they write, and only a small percentage of the grade is related to life-long learning skills.  A student could get an A (low A) on the project without having exhibited higher levels of life-long learning skills.  The Life Long Learning Value rubric has five dimensions. One of those dimensions is initiative, and the lowest level (scored as "1") on the rubric for initiative is "completes required work." The second level (scored "2") is "Completes required work and identifies opportunities to expand knowledge, skills, and abilities;" and the third level (scored "3") is "Completes required work, identifies and pursues opportunities to expand knowledge, skills, and abilities." 

I set up the project in such a way to create a climate where students are encouraged to identify and pursue opportunities to expand knowledge.  I use extensive feedback in the early stages of the project, making many suggestions to students about additional information sources, and avenues they might explore. Students who do so rank high on the Life-Long Skills rubric that is used for assessment. But students who do not, have still "completed required work," which is the primary basis for the grade on the project. 

Faculty often bemoan the students for whom the grade is the end-all and be-all of college. But sometimes we get blinded by same type of narrow minded thinking - grades are not always the best measure of learning. 

college students today....

College professors have always complained about college students. The complaints usually starts with the phrase "the trouble with college students today..." and usually also contains the phrase "when I was a student..."

The fact is that college students today are different from the past, in a whole host of ways. Let's look at the demographics: in 1966 the total number of undergraduate college students of all ages was 6,085,000 which represented 3% of the total U.S. population, in 2008 the total number of undergraduate college students of all ages was 14,955,000, which represented 5% of the total U.S. population ; in 1966 39% of college students were 18-19 years old, 15% were age 25 or older, 94% were white and 5 percent were black, 38% were women and 62% were male; in 2008 22% were 18-19 years old, 37% were age 25 or older, 77% were white and 13 percent were black, 55% were women and 45% were male. In the year 1970 (first year for which the government collected data on this) the percent of all undergraduate students attending community colleges was 27%, in 2008 that had risen to 36%.

As discussed this past week in the Chronicle of Higher Education most of the increasing numbers of college students in the last couple of decades have gone into the community colleges, and to a lesser extent into less selective four year colleges (public and private). More selective colleges and universities have used the increased numbers of students applying to become more selective, more choosy.

Family income which impacts college choices due to rising costs, also has a strong positive correlation with standardized test scores and to a more moderate correlation with high school grade point average. Other aspects of social class, such as parental educational levels influence students' selection of or assignment to courses of study in high school. [The college educated parent is more likely to know that taking algebra in summer school before high school can put their child on a fast track to advance math classes in high school making him or her more attractive to selective colleges and universities.]

As a result of the confluence of increased selectiveness and rising costs, social class and income stratification between colleges has increased steadily over the past twenty years. Students from poor and working class families are becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of elite, selective colleges and universities, while community colleges become the primary educational institutions for poor, working class, and even lower middle class families.

The flood of new college students into community colleges and less selective four year colleges, is made up primarily of poorer, working class and lower middle class students who are the first in their family to go to college. Educational pundits have pointed out the impact of this on the level of college preparation -- a large percentage of these new students were shunted by their high school advisers into non-college preparatory tracks or classes. They did not take the mathematics, science or even English, history, etc. usually taken by college bound secondary students. Pundits have also made much about the lack of monetary resources of these students, and the high percentage of them that have jobs (all of these things have been discussed extensively in The Chronicle of Higher Education in recent weeks and over the last few years).

One thing that has not been discussed at all, that is painfully obvious among our poorer and working class student body at my Kentucky community college, is the impact of poor health and health care problems on students. Our students themselves have a very high level of health problems, including diabetes and its complications, heart disease, other obesity related conditions, back problems, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and a frighteningly high level of cancer for a relatively young population. As many health problems as my students have, their families -- spouses, parents, grandparents, mothers- and fathers-in-law, siblings, aunts and uncles, have even more. Because in lower income communities, people are highly dependent on family and kin for aid during crises, students often are primary care-takers for ill family members, providing emotional support, transportation, and nursing care at home or in the hospital. [These days with nursing staffs stretched so thinly -- especially in poor rural areas like this -- some one needs to be present in the hospital with a patient to insure proper nursing care.]

This semester I had one student providing physical, household, medical/nursing, and emotional support for her mother with cancer and her mother-in-law with congestive heart failure (the mother-in-law died just before the end of term). An other student spent weeks in the nearest research hospital (3 hours away from her home) providing support for her long term partner who was dying, and then came home to her own diagnosis of heart disease and need for heart surgery. At least a dozen other students in my classes (I only teach about 75 students a semester) had serious health issues for themselves or family members this term, and this was not an unusual semester.

All these forms of illness have a higher incidence among lower income and working class populations. On top of that, are the burdens imposed by lack of good health coverage. Many of them have the additional struggle of having to worry about mounting medical bills that they may never be able to pay off. If they have assistance from Medicaid or from the local public health department, they often have very little control over the times of appointments and have to invest more time than some one with insurance would have to invest.

Just this week as I was getting my mammogram I overheard the following situation -- a woman with a suspicious lump had been referred by the public health department to a private physician to order a diagnostic mammogram and had authorized payment for that mammogram. The physician however, had decided that an ultrasound would provide him with more information and wrote an order for an ultrasound. The woman showed up at the radiography department for her appointment, only to be told that she would have to return to the public health department, so that they could write a new authorization for payment for the ultrasound, and then go back to the physicians office for a new order to go with it, and have to reschedule the mammogram for a day later in the week. It was obvious from the conversation that her husband who accompanied her, had taken off from work and was losing pay, and would have to take off yet another day later in the week to accompany her for the second go-round.

Poor health and poor health care are huge obstacles to successful college completion for lower income and working class students.

playing with numbers

I teach statistics. I'm a sociologist, but I'm also sort of a math geek -- always have been. That's not what people expect when they think about social scientists.

The other day when I was trying to find something to do to avoid working on fixing all the dates in my on-line class (the most truly boring aspect of teaching on-line), I thought of something I've been meaning to do for years: getting data on electricity use and temperature for my classes to learn about the difference between an association between two variables and a correlation between them.

What I wanted was a spreadsheet with a column for how many kilowatt hours we have used every month for the past few years and a column for the average temperature for our region for each month for the same period. The kilowatt hours used is easy -- the utility company prints the last 12 months of actual kilowatt usage on each bill. So I just had to locate the bills for January in the past several years. Getting the average monthly temperature was a little trickier. But the College of Agriculture at the University of Kentucky has growing season data that provides monthly averages. Some months the information is more detailed and actually breaks down the data by climate zone, but since that was only available half the time (and because I saw little difference between the overall averages for Kentucky and this region) I went with the mean temperature for the state of Kentucky.

I actually took two days to gather the temperature data, since I had to read through separate narrative descriptions for each year and each month to ferret out the relevant data. Once I had all data for the past three years, I created a scatter plot of the points. It didn't look right. There was slight, about r = -.40 linear relationship between the two data sets, where there should have been a strong curvilinear relationship. Then, duh, it hit me. The temperatures were for the correct month, but the electricity usage was off by one month -- one gets the bill for May usage in June not May. So I moved the entire column of figures up by one month, and viola! Here's what the scatter plot looks like:

Exactly as one would expect. Because we don't have whole house air conditioning (only in two rooms, and we only use fans at night) the upturn for warmer months is much less than one would expect in a home with a heat pump.

Now I have great data for my statistics class to play with -- only trouble no one is enrolled for statistics this fall. Enrollments in all our classes are way down, probably due to issues with the economy. Gas prices are up here as elsewhere, as are food prices, and tuition prices are up, too; but unlike elsewhere in the nation, employment in the coal industry is up. Coal companies are hiring, therefore so are other types of businesses in the region. Young people faced with rising costs and better employment opportunities. They choose work over school, and the wives of working husbands, stay home from school to reduce gas costs. Bad news for community colleges.

How should sociology be taught?

I feel as if I have spent the last few days being battered from all sides by the "nattering nabobs of negativity" (credit to William Safire for the quote -- uttered publicly by Spiro T. Agnew).

I don't really have any idea what a nabob is. N.A.B.O.B. is the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters; another definition I found on-line is "nabob -- a wealthy man (especially one who made his fortune in the Orient)." Certainly ole Spiro T. didn't mean either of these; if memory serves he was complaining about the "liberal" media who was criticizing the Nixon administration.

Actually I can't really say that the folks nattering negatively at me these last few days are "nabobs" in any sense -- what they are is sociologists, and as sociologists they have valid concerns about plans by the Kentucky Community and Technical College system to carve up Introductory Sociology into "bite sized" modules of academic content.

David Nickell, sociologist at West Kentucky Community and Technical College, said:

"as a teacher who has spent years trying to get students to think in terms of larger social systems and structures, I’m very concerned about trying to treat the subject matter as a collection of discrete and isolatable [sic] parts. For instance, how can you really get at the concepts of stratification, inequality, deviance—or any of those core components—without first having an understanding of the role culture plays in shaping our social landscape? How can you cover culture without addressing socialization? Or socialization without stratification, inequality and deviance?
So, my question is how the fractionalization can be handled without losing the sense that the fractions are components within a larger whole. How do you take pieces from a hermeneutic system and not lose their essence?"

Leon Lane Jr., sociologist at Bluegrass Community and Technical College, followed up David's comment with the following:

"Introduction to Sociology is about helping students see the connections between social institutions and how this impacts their life. As such it should be taught as a single unit so they can see that human social life is about individuals, living in societies consisting of interrelated social institutions, made possible and governed by culture they learned through the process of socialization. If you separate it out into components then you lose the most important learning outcome of this class."

While I share David and Leon's view that sociology is at it's heart about the inter-connectivity of all social life, about the hermeneutic between individual, social group and society; I think those are principles that can be learned (or taught) in small pieces, as well as large chunks. David and Leon talk about the necessity of a "whole" course in Introductory Sociology to make the point of these interconnections. But what is a "whole" introductory sociology course?

I don't know any two sociologists who include all the same topics in their introductory course, or include them in the same order, or with the same emphasis. I have a whole unit on "the family," my husband John, also a sociologist does not (of course he talks about the family in other ways). Some sociologists have a special unit on deviance and crime, I don't; although deviance and crime are important themes in several other topics that I do cover (such as culture, socialization, and inequality). I always devote a day or two just to the topic of poverty; for other sociologist, this is a minor topic within the discussion of inequality in general. Some sociologists devote entire units to religion, medicine, and sport, others leave integrate some elements of those topics into others, or leave them out entirely.

There is no authority in sociology that dictates absolutely what must go into an introductory sociology class. Sociology lacks a single unifying paradigm, but is rather a multi-paradigmatic discipline. And those that teach sociology are quite adamant that they do not want some one else telling them what should and should not be included in their introductory sociology course.

And what's so magical about a 15 week (or 16 or 14 week) semester in teaching introductory sociology? I know at least one 4 year liberal arts college (Oberlin) where for many years "introduction to sociology" was a two credit course for half a semester, paired with a second two credit course of the student's choosing on one of the areas of specialization within sociology. On the other hand, the Virginia Community College system considers "introduction to sociology" to be two 3-credit courses that cover two semesters. As sociologists we should recognize that the semester and the "introductory sociology" course that we are accustomed to teaching are cultural products of a particular moment/place in human history, cultural products which apparently have become reified, or some might say "calcified."

Taking a traditional semester long sociology course, and breaking it into smaller learning units, does not automatically undermine the goals of helping students understand "the complex and perspectival nature of human situatedness." [That's my husband John's favorite quote from some post-modern theorist in religious studies.]

One of the very best introductory sociology "texts," that does everything an introductory course in sociology ought to, was a tiny little book (5" X 8" and only 160 pages) called The Forest For the Trees by Allan Johnson. Unfortunately it has long been out of print (because it didn't have the big profit margin that 500 page glossy textbooks do). I have yet to find any other source, of any length that did as good a job of getting across the "holism" and "connectedness" of sociology. It was a book that students could read in one week, and really grasp what sociology was truly about. It didn't cover everything in sociology, but it got key points across, far better than any traditional textbook. If one 160 page small paperback book can do all that, why can't two or three week units of sociology do the same thing -- if they are crafted with care and understanding?

You see, I am stuck with the task of creating a modular version of introductory sociology. It's not a task I asked for, it's not a task I particularly relish. I didn't sign a contract, but I agreed to do it and I think a person's word ought to mean something. I agreed to do it as a favor to my college's president, and because I care deeply about the same issues that David and Leon care about. I want to make sure that any sociology course offered by Kentucky Community and Technical Colleges provides students with a quality opportunity to learn about sociology.

The real jobs for the twenty-first century!

On Monday this week, my Kentucky Community and Technical College System newsletter carried a story from Inside Higher Education entitled "University Training in the Skilled Trades" by Elizabeth Redden.

West Virginia University recognizing from their own difficulties in hiring skill trades workers (including carpenters, electricians, heating, ventilation and air conditioning mechanics, and plumbers) decided to create their own four year "apprenticeship program [that] pairs each apprentice with a mentor, and includes 1,600 hours of on-the-job training per-year and 145 annual hours of classroom training (to be conducted through a combination of classes at a local technical college, distance education and instruction from West Virginia staff)." Redden points out that West Virginia is hardly alone in this, "the University of Virginia...just celebrated its 25th anniversary for its apprenticeship program in July [2007]."

Many colleges across the country are facing difficulties in recruiting and hiring skilled trades workers, a situation, likely to increase as large numbers of skill workers move into retirement in the next decade.

The key element of the programs that Redden discusses is the apprenticeship. The lack of apprenticeship opportunities is one of the major stumbling bottlenecks in the development of a new generation of skilled workers, as there must be employers willing to employ apprentices and provide appropriate supervision for them over a period of several years.

While most Kentucky Community and Technical Colleges provide training for electricians, plumbers, carpenters, and HVAC workers, only one college in the system -- Jefferson CTC -- has apprenticeship programs and only in carpentry and millwright work. Other KCTCS programs appear to stop short of apprenticeship, providing at most preparation for the journeyman examinations such as in plumbing.

Skilled trades jobs will never be outsourced to India or China. They require workers to be physically present. There will always be a need for carpenters, millwrights, plumbers, electricians, masons and bricklayers, gardeners and landscape specialists, and auto repair workers in the American economy. Yet Kentucky community and technical colleges seem to be more interested in producing exactly the kind of worker whose job will be outsourced -- the digital worker. Certainly every 21st century worker, including or even perhaps especially those in the skilled trades, needs to be technologically savvy and have strong computer skills. But it is a serious mistake to focus on the kinds of technology (e.g., programming) and office (e.g., medical transcript) jobs that are already being outsourced to India.

The allied health professions are a focus of Kentucky community and technical colleges, and appropriately so. Nursing, radiography (unlike radiology), and respiratory therapy cannot be outsourced. These health care workers have to be physically present with the patient, wherever that patient may be.

The skilled trades do not hold the allure and status of allied health professions, but they do promise as good or better job opportunities, and should not be overlooked. More energy needs to be invested in developing business partnerships and apprenticeship opportunities in the skilled trades. Why let universities (like West Virginia and Virginia) take over the historical mission of community and technical colleges? Community colleges in other states (such as Michigan and Wisconsin) have far more extensive apprenticeship programs. KCTCS wants to be the very best community college system in the nation, here's an opportunity!

Alternative Futures?

This past weekend, I attended the Campus-Community Partnership for Sustainability's second annual Earth day conference held this year at Eastern Kentucky University. For more about the partnership check out the website: http://www.greencampusky.org/

Before returning home, I swung up to northern Kentucky, to the Gateway Community and Technical College Boone Campus in Florence, KY for a meeting of the KCTCS Educational Technology Solutions work group. We were treated to a demonstration of some really kick-ass technology that literally brings images bouncing off the screen at you.

Both the conference at EKU and the work group meeting at GCTC involved dedicated educators and other serious-minded individuals concerned about what the future holds for Kentuckians and how best to prepare for that future. But beyond that broad commonality, it was if these two events were held in different universes, not simply different towns in the same state.

In Richmond, at the Sustainability conference, sessions focused on issues such as how do we develop localized networks to grow and supply food, to supplant our reliance on international food chains which depend heavily on fossil fuels (and are vulnerable to problems such as the melamine contamination of grains that caused the recall of pet foods). In Florence at the Educational Technology Solutions (ETS) workgroup meeting, we talked about how to use high technology to integrate our students into a global job market.

At the Richmond conference there was a session (presented by EKU students) that focused on plans for bike paths and walk ways to make it easier for folks in Madison county (where Richmond is located) to leave their cars behind and walk or ride to work, school and shop. In Florence, one participant described plans to provide all the top administrators at his college with the latest generation of high definition video conferencing in their offices and predicted (in all seriousness) that not only would the administrators use this to connect with people all over the world, but that it would allow them to talk to each other without the inconvenience of getting up and walking to the other end of campus.

You see -- different universes!!

I do not believe that the concerns of these two groups are necessarily totally at odds with each other. The work of the Campus-Community Partnership for Sustainability and the work of the Educational Technology Solutions work group, could benefit each other, could inform each other. That is it could if we could break them out of their separate universes and see that they are both trying to get a handle on the same future. Right now, even if the members of the two groups were to meet, I suspect that they would talk right past each other.

The Partnership for Sustainability people are talking about "how shall we live?" While the Educational Technology folks are talking about "how shall we get a living?" Neither group really recognizing that the two questions are inseparable from each other.

The real education for a "flat world"

I submitted this to the Lexington Herald-Leader as an Op-Ed piece, but the events of the last 8 days pre-empted its printing. So rather than let it go to waste, I'm going to post it here. Particularly since I have a lot more to say on the subject of education and the future. So here it is:

The young people of Kentucky face an uncertain future. No one really knows what the jobs of the future will be, or what types of knowledge will be required to do those jobs. To be workers in the twenty-first century Kentucky youth require and deserve an extraordinary education. They deserve the kind of education I was privileged to receive. They must receive an education that goes beyond training in technical skills. We have to teach them how to think for themselves. This kind of education takes time, it takes talented, knowledgeable teachers who love their work and are well rewarded for it.

Since I began working, in 1967 at age 16, I have held nine full-time jobs and more than a dozen part-time jobs. I have been a babysitter, waitress, library assistant, a field hand, secretary, office manager, bookkeeper, and library circulation manager; in the academic world I have held five different research assistant positions, been a teaching assistant, and a college teacher at a total of four quite different institutions. During my 28 years as a teacher, I have prepared and taught twenty-six different courses in sociology, anthropology, education and statistics. During my academic career, I have also been paid for writing newspaper columns, research and consulting for community groups, writing book chapters, reviewing, and writing poetry.

During the forty years of my working career, I have seen office work go from manual to electric typewriters, to correcting electronic typewriters, to computers, to a host of digital devices. The first time I ran a computer program I handed a pile of punch cards to an operator in a huge room filled with a single computer, then waited an hour to receive my printout. Now I do far more complex analyses in minutes on my notebook computer while sitting on my front porch.

The first work telephone I answered had a dial, one line and no “hold.” Now the computerized VoIP phone on my office desk is capable of hundreds of functions. As a teacher I have gone from cranking out mimeograph and ditto handouts, to photocopies, to pin-dot printers, to full color desk jet printers that also scan and fax documents. In the classroom I’ve gone from 16 mm movies with projectors to video cassette recorders to DVD players. I’ve gone from film strips to overhead projectors, to PowerPoint, to Smart Boards. After decades of teaching in classrooms with chalkboards, I have adjusted to teaching students simultaneously at multiple sites through interactive television, to telecouses and Internet courses.

The changes I have experience in the work world are typical for many workers of my generation, but they pale in comparison to the changes that young people starting in the work place today will face.

Like most workers many of my job changes over the years were not voluntary. Businesses went bankrupt, research projects ended or lost their funding, tenure and promotion was denied, and it was necessary to find a new job. Yet in forty years, the total amount of time that I have been without any employment is three weeks, and the longest single period of unemployment I ever had was five days during the recession year of 1973. Some of it has been luck and some sheer perseverance, but primarily I ascribe my ability to adapt, change and adjust successfully to the changing work world to a superior education.

The education I received in high school, but most especially in college, did one thing extraordinarily well – it taught me how to think and how to learn – about anything. Sure, I remember some of the content of the courses I took: the novels of D.H. Lawrence; the revolutionary designs of Frank Lloyd; the beauty of the poetry of the Bhagavad-Gita; the problems of urban renewal in the 1960’s; the problems of the Greeks in the Peloponnesian wars; the differences between the programs of Trotsky and Stalin. But content wasn’t really the point of my education. The point was developing the skill of reading and comprehending extremely complex information, and learning how to summarize it, analyze it, synthesize it and use it in new ways. I learned how to take any subject and learn what needed to be learned, then to apply that knowledge to new and unique situations.

This is the kind of education that we must invest in for the next generations of Kentuckians. This is a price we must pay to ensure all our futures.

What kind of American workers does business really want?

I happened across a news story today: https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6224183.stm
Article entitled $100 laptop project launches 2007. In this article, Negroponte, the leader of this project, had the following to say about schools in AFRICA (not the U.S.):

"In fact, one of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary school computer labs (when they exist in the developing world), is the children are being trained to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint," Mr Negroponte said.
"I consider that criminal, because children should be making things, communicating, exploring, sharing, not running office automation tools."

If "running office automation tools" is inappropriate learning for elementary school children in developing nations in Africa, should it not be inappropriate for college students in American community and technical colleges -- if what we really want to do is prepare our students to compete in a "flat world"?

I teach (sociology and statistics) for Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College, part of the statewide Kentucky Community and Technical Colleges System (KCTCS). At Southeast, and I suspect at all the KCTCS schools, only a very tiny number of students who take programming courses learn the kinds of skills Negroponte is talking about. Those who learn to use the computer at all learn to use Microsoft Office.

[Since I teach in a severely economically depressed area, the students don't come into college with much more than the ability to use a browser and instant messaging. What they primarily seem to use the browser for is shopping. They also are quite adept at using Google to hunt up websites to plagiarize in place of doing their own rudimentary thinking about reading assignments. I ask students to read a short essay or article, then to summarize its main points and reflect upon them in relationship to some of the sociological terminology they are supposedly learning. Not an especially demanding intellectual exercise. But many of them immediately rush to Google, and turn in mindlessly cut and pasted papers. ]

No one has ever seriously contemplated the idea that the majority of students that pass through our doors should be computer competent enough to be Linux users and able to do some programming of their own. Yet this is exactly what is needed if our students are to have any chance at competing for jobs in Friedman's "flat world."

By the way, I quite agree that the world is getting flatter, but, I highly skeptical of the degree to which that is empowering individuals as Friedman so optimistically claims. I strongly suspect that what the "flat world" has done has made is easier for larger multinational corporations to run-rough shod over more people faster at less cost!

Given the insistent focus that our community colleges have on students learning to use the latest Microsoft product, it makes me wonder whether the business community (and hence the community colleges which bow down to the business community) really wants the kind of creative, innovative, self-directed, wired worker that all the flat world rhetoric extols.