Zombie America - Installment 7

It appears that economists have finally glommed on to something that sociologists have been talking about for 30 years: the middle class is disappearing and there is a great divide between haves and have-nots in America. 

MIT economist Peter Temin is getting rave reviews for his new book The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy. While Temin certainly has some updated data, the phenomenon he is describing- the hollowing out of the American middle class and the increasing divide between affluent and those scraping by - has been in progress for decades at least since the deindustrialization of American began in earnest in the late 1970's. Sociologist Katherine Newman aptly described the early stages of the decline of the middle class in Falling From Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence in the 1980's.

Many social scientists, policy makers, and politicians have noted the decline of the "rust belt," but blithely assumed that new industries (especially in high tech fields) would replace the older manufacturing centers. They offered up condolences to industrial communities devasted by the closing of steel mills, automobile factories, and coal mines, but have done little of substance to change the decline of those communities.  The old economy workers who cannot be retrained for the new economy are members of the "unnecessariate" - disposable people who do not figure as workers in the new economy but become the fodder for the careers of law enforcement, prison guards, social workers, doctors, and therapists.  It is not terribly surprising that so many of them voted for the one politician that appeared to care about them, speak to them directly, and tell them they were worth something.

The cavalier abandonment of so many small cities and towns in America, who have not made the transition to the new economy is a major indicator of the rot in our society.  However, the real problem is that the new economy itself is divisive and destructive to American society.

Seattle with its booming tech/internet economy is an excellent example of how economic success contributes to the increasing divide in American society. Not all of the jobs of the new economy are "good" jobs - lots of lower paid, dead end warehouse and service sector jobs come out of the same economic developments that provide high paying tech jobs. Moreover, influxes of higher paying jobs can push up housing costs, tax rates, strain transportation, and other public services, increasing the cost of living on those who do not have the "good" jobs.  Nestor Ramos, a Boston Globe reporter describes the benefits and pitfalls of a booming high tech economy. An article intended as a cautionary tale to those communities that might be bidding for a new Amazon headquarters.

Summer Weight Gain for Children

Ran across this article in our regional paper this morning: "Students get dumber and fatter during the summer." http://www.kentucky.com/2012/07/19/2263552/students-get-dumber-fatter-during.html#wgt=rcntnews

While we probably can blame the decline in academic performance to being out of school, the increase in weight would probably occur in the summer regardless of whether school was in session or not.  Unlike the summers of my childhood in the 1950's, current summers are hotter (yes, climate change), and unlike the homes of my 50's childhood, most people's homes are cooler via the miracle of air conditioning, making outdoor play unappealing.  Unless you have a pool, the attractions of the sedentary indoor life are greater than those of the outdoors in today's summers.

electronic textbooks and textbook costs

College textbook costs have been skyrocketing in the past decade. As a professor who has worked diligently to find the lowest cost books possible, often forgoing textbooks to use quality trade books (at $14 and $15 dollars a piece) in upper level courses, I had not really understood why students were complaining so much about textbook prices. Then I had to foot the bill for my husband's textbooks this semester -- $600 for two classes (anatomy and developmental psychology). No wonder students are complaining, that's simply outrageous.

Textbook companies have been trying to encourage the use of electronic texts, touting them as a solution to the rising cost of textbooks. The use of electronic versions of textbooks in on-line classes has caught on rapidly, and many colleges, such as Northwest Missouri, are experimenting with the use of portable electronic text readers such as Kindle (from Amazon.com) and the Sony PRS-505 e-reader.

There are a number of good arguments in favor of electronic texts (such as the "save the trees" argument), and a number of good arguments against electronic texts (they don't really fit the way students study - jumping from one page to another 20 pages away and back again). But the primary argument in favor of electronic texts -- that they will save students money -- just does not hold water.

Let's begin with the cost of the readers. The Kindle DX (the larger format Kindle suitable for use in reading large format college textbooks like anatomy and development psychology) is $489 plus tax and shipping. Smaller Kindle readers are $279, while the Sony PRS-505 e-reader (same dimensions as the smaller Kindle reader) are $299.

Second there is the terms and conditions under which students rent textbooks -- yes, RENT not buy. My husband's hardback traditional copy of Anatomy and Physiology, 5th Edition by Saladin cost $200 from the college bookstore. It would cost $98.50 from CourseSmart.com (one of the lower cost etextbook sellers). However, for this fifty percent cost reduction, the student only rents the book for 360 days. That's not even a full year. Many e-textbooks rental period is for 180 days or less. At the end of the rental period the textbook becomes inaccessible.

Most of the students taking Anatomy and Physiology (like my husband), are planning to take the second part of the course which uses the same book. If they can fit the two parts of the course into two sequential semesters, the 360 day subscription might be sufficient to get them through two semesters. But should something interfere with taking the classes sequentially, they would have to re-purchase the electronic text to have it available for the second semester. That means they have to pay $98.50 TWICE to rent the same book. Now there is no price advantage to the electronic version at all.

At our college, most students taking Anatomy and Physiology are also doing so as preliminary to entering an allied health field (nursing, respiratory therapy, radiography, and physical therapy are the fields at my college). Students going into these fields frequently keep their anatomy textbooks to use for reference while pursing their career courses. Electronic textbooks cannot be "kept" -- they expire in 360 (or 180) days.

Those students who do not keep their texts for reference almost always sell them. While the payback on selling textbooks is not 50 percent of the cost, it still does lessen the overall cost. eTextbooks cannot easily or readily be sold to others. Electronic texts on readers like Kindle and the Sony PRS-505 e-reader cannot be transferred from the device. Electronic text that are purchased on-line can be viewed from many machines, but what student with any sense would want to purchase a rental agreement that could make the book inaccessible before the course is over (or even before the course has barely begun).

This last fact (the inability to sell your electronic book) leads inexorably to the most important way in which a shift to electronic textbooks would negatively impact the overall cost of college textbooks -- the entire supply of used textbooks, that many students depend upon purchasing to reduce their costs, would dry up. All students would have to buy "new" in an all electronic textbook world.

Since all students would be buying "new" textbooks, textbook publishers would no longer have an incentive to come out with new editions every two years. This practice is almost entirely driven by the desire to limit the sales of used books which cut into textbook publishers profits.

Textbook publishers will have a steadier, more reliable stream of revenue (no competition from the used book sellers), and substantially lower costs. Publishers won't have to pay faculty to write new editions as often, they will eliminate many resource costs (paper, ink, presses) and transportation costs. While this may prevent textbook costs from rising quite as quickly, chances are, businesses being what businesses are, most of the publishers' savings will become publishers' profits rather than student savings.

social issues: obesity and air conditioning

Obesity may have once been an individual trouble (to use C. Wright Mills' terminology), that was the consequence of individual decision-making and behavior, but today it is a complex social issue that is the result of patterns of modern economic and social life. Mills distinguished between troubles (which were purely individual or interpersonal in origin) and social issues which were created by the structure of society.

The media (as well as the government) has recognized obesity as a social "problem" largely because the many of the costs of obesity in medical expenses and lost work days are born by society. There has also been some recognition of social factors contributing to obesity -- such as the pervasiveness of candy and soda machines in schools. However, for the most part, while recognizing the social consequences, government decision-makers and the media are blind to the social causes of obesity, focusing perversely on individual behavior and individual decisions about food and exercise.

Each semester I use the topic of obesity as a way to engage students in SOC 101 in the sociological imagination (C. Wright Mills); getting them to move beyond individualistic thinking to sociological thinking. Asking them to explore questions about how work, school, transportation, community design, and many other aspects of social life contribute to the problem of obesity. We talk about things such as how the occupational structure of society has changed (away from active blue collar to sedentary white collar work), how the cost of living has changed (from the family wage earned by men, to the dual pay-check family), how the layout of communities have changed(from walking friendly to car-essential designs), and so forth.

This summer term (today in fact) one of my students mentioned something, that caused a proverbial light bulb to go on in my mind. She said that kids today don't want to go out in the heat during the summer. She didn't realize that she was bringing up something that represented a change. Indeed she pronounced this as if it were an unchanging element in American life: indoors was always cooler than outdoors during the summer. I immediately recognized that the relative comfort of indoors and outdoors during the summer months is something that has changed drastically in the past 50 years, and could be an important missing piece of the puzzle for understanding the development of the obesity epidemic during that time.

Practical home air conditioners were developed in the late 1920's, but until forty ago, air conditioning was extraordinarily rare in homes. It wasn't until the early 1970's that air conditioning reached more than fifty percent of American homes (by 1978, only 45 percent of American homes did not have air conditioning). In the 1950's only the most affluent had air conditioning. Even fans, which were made of metal and relatively more expensive were not within the reach of many people.

The need for air conditioning of course varies geographically, but in much of the U.S., sweltering summer heat and humidity forced people, and especially children, out of doors, to seek summer breezes and shade and cooling sources of water. I spent part of many childhood summers in Virginia and a vivid part of those childhood memories is smothering damp heat, and the various ways we attempted to stay cool, with cool drinks and splashing in water (lawn sprinklers, wading pools, creeks and streams). Riding bicycles, roller skating, even running around in the shade of the back yard was cooler than sitting still inside.

The heat and humidity affected how we cooked and ate. Few people wanted to heat up the house even more by using their ovens for extended periods. One also felt less like eating a heavy meal on the hottest days. Of course, in addition to air conditioning, the microwave has changed how we view summer cooking.

Air conditioning has made the indoors far more attractive than the outdoors during the summer for scores of Americans. Coupled with an explosion in fun things to do indoors (computers, video games, Tivo, DVD's) and with the ability to easily microwave highly processed meals and snacks, it is not surprising that there has been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of obesity in America.

restructuring the economy

Current U.S. Department of Labor figures show that in July 2008, the number of involuntary part-time workers (in jobs formerly full-time but cut to part time due to "Slack work or business conditions") was 4,174,000 compared to only 2,693,000 one year ago (July 2007). While the change from 2007 to 2008 was unusually large, it is part of a longer historical trend to a greater reliance on part-time and temporary workers across the economy.

The trend to greater reliance on part-time workers is one for which high education has unfortunately been in the forefront. Universities, colleges and community colleges have shifted more and more of their teaching responsibilities to adjunct faculty, who teach part-time, have few if any benefits, who frequently are given no office space and who have little contact with students other than in the classroom. Community College's in particular have grown more and more dependent on part-time adjunct faculty. Research by Grace Banachowski shows the trend:

According to Lombardi (1992), part-time faculty constituted 38.5% of the instructors in 698 junior colleges in 1962. This number increased moderately to 40% in 1971, and three years later grew to nearly 50%. By 1980, nearly 60% of the faculty in two-year colleges were employed part-time, and 65% in 1993 (National Center for Education Statistics in American Association of Community Colleges, 1995).

As community colleges deal more and more often with under prepared students needed extensive developmental (or as they used to be called remedial) course work to be ready for college work, the trend towards relying on adjunct faculty is troubling.

Yesterday (August 7) was the annual first meeting of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) Faculty Senate. Representatives from the 13 college districts around Kentucky gathered at the KCTCS offices in Versailles, Kentucky. At the end of the morning general sessions there was an unscheduled appearance by the KCTCS president Michael McCall. McCall offered general remarks of encouragement and optimism for the upcoming academic year, then opened the floor for questions.

The first question from the assembled faculty and academic deans dealt with the rising percentage of instruction being done at KCTCS college's by part-time adjunct instructors. The speaker raised concerns about the impact this was having on the quality of instruction. McCall's response was vague and general, full of platitudes about serving students and maintaining quality. McCall ended his response with a suggestion that individual colleges within the system would need to "examine" the balance between full-time and part-time instruction. [Notice this says nothing about changing the balance, or reversing the trends, only "examining" the balance.]

The next question Dr. McCall fielded was about on-line instruction and the new KCTCS Virtual Learning Initiative (VLI). The VLI is working to translate several KCTCS degree programs into a format in which all courses are offered in self-guided modules. Each course would be divided into smaller units, that could be taken in a week or two. Entry into modules would be 7 days a week, 365 days of the year, on demand from students. Because courses in the VLI program are detached from the traditional semester structure, and offered for fractional credit, all instruction for the program will be done by part-time instructors. Even full-time faculty who decide to participate as instructors will do so as overloads to their normal loads, but the plan is that most of the staffing will be done by new, part-time instructors, who will be paid on a per student per credit basis.

McCall's response to the question made it clear that he believes that this new model of on-demand education should replace all other forms of education in the KCTCS system. While he noted that we would have to wait to see how successful it the Virtual Learning Initiative was, he expressed the belief that it would be successful and that this model was preferable to the traditional model based on semesters.

Given McCall's response to this second question on the Virtual Learning Initiative, it is likely that when he said that KCTCS college's should "examine" the balance of full-time to part-time instruction, he really meant that they should be thinking in terms of moving entirely to part-time instruction!

social construction of the nomos and antinomos

Language is what separates humans for the other animals. Language isn't just communication. Lots of animals communicate. My dog sends greetings to other dogs in the neighborhood. She loudly announces that there is a suspicious vehicle in the neighborhood that requires our attention. She voices her approval and encouragement to the neighbors' dog Mr. Tuggles as he harasses one of the neighborhood cats. But my dog can't communicate about things that happened yesterday, things that happen outside the range of her sight, smell or hearing, or things that might possibly happen tomorrow. Only humans with our symbolic language can do those things.

One of many the ways that humans use language is to define what is part of the acceptable order (nomos) and what is outside the acceptable order (antinomian). In this day and age, we have the technological capacity to disseminate our attempts at defining the nomos and antinomos to thousands of people in a short period of time through the Internet. Many e-mails are sent everyday designed to convince readers to view the world in particular ways, to define somethings as within the order of the nomos, and other things as antinomian.

This week I received such an e-mail, from one of those acquaintances who rarely sends personal messages, but has decided, without a by-your-leave, to include their entire address book in mass mailings; a behavior which, by the way I consider rude in the extreme (why I make an issue of this will become apparent below). This particular e-mail, like many was designed to call attention to antinomian action, and thus galvanize its readers into action to support and protect the nomos. What that action might be, other than forwarding the message on to everyone in one's own address book, is left suitably vague. The subject of the e-mail? A woman, an ordinary citizen with a good singing voice, was invited to perform The Star Spangled Banner at her local (Denver) city council meeting. In a move that was ill-advised but hardly sinister, the woman substituted the song Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson. Both songs speak of liberty, freedom, God and love of country. [Click here if you are unfamiliar with Johnson's song,and click here if you can't remember The Star Spangled Banner -- as many Americans cannot.]

The incident was discussed on local radio, where the Governor of Colorado defined the woman's actions as "actions were 'wrong' and 'outside the bounds.'" In other words the governor labeled the actions antinomian -- against the nomos. Local papers picked up the story, pointing out that the song Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing "is also known as the 'black national anthem.'" This is technically incorrect; the NAACP adopted the song as "The Negro National Anthem" in 1919, and it was entered into the Congressional Record in 1990 as "African American National Hymn." Unlike the phrases "Negro National Anthem" and "African American National Hymn" the phrase "Black National Anthem" conjures in some people's minds the wraith of "Black nationalism," a separatist movement that arose in the late 19th century, and which has been associated with militant movements in the twentieth century. There is, of course, no connection what so ever between this song and that movement.

The e-mail I received strongly suggested that the actions of the singer were seditious (although the vocabulary of the e-mail was far cruder), an attempt to subvert the legitimate government, through a plot to replace one national allegiance with a foreign - non-American - allegiance. Curious, I did some Googling, found the original story (which included the lyrics). I wondered if the people who sent the e-mail, who seemed so incensed about this anti-American action, were at all familiar with the words. So I hit "reply all" and mailed the lyrics back to them (and everyone on the list of course).

This morning I received a reply from my acquaintance. She acknowledged that "It is a beautiful song but when someone is asked to sing a specific song and they agree, they should not change the song without asking those who extended the original invitation. All politics aside, it is just rude."

My response to her: Yes. I agree, it is rude and it is inappropriate when you are asked to provide a specific service to substitute another service (regardless of quality) without first asking. She should not have done it without asking first. [Just as people should ask the folks in their e-mail address book whether they wan to receive mass mailings.] But if my acquaintance (who lives no where near Denver), or the governor of Colorado, or Fox news, or anyone else who has promoted and forwarded this story, thought that the problem was "rudeness," then there would never have been a story. Because I guarantee that rude behavior happens at city council and town council meetings nation-wide on a regular and recurring basis, and never gets further than the local media -- if that. Rudeness is annoying but it doesn't warrant a nation-wide flurry of communications to warn folks of attacks upon the nomos.

Here's my bet -- if this woman had substituted Amazing Grace for The Star Spangled Banner how upset would these same people be? Would it have made a national news story? Or if a white woman had sung these exact same words, with no one mentioning the phrase "black national anthem" wouldn't these same people be defending her against the ACLU for bringing God (mentioned 4 times in Lift Ev'ry Voice and only 1 time in The Star Spangled Banner) into a political arena?

LeapFrog gone wrong

This should be filed under "did they really do that?" category. I'm not sure what bothers me most about LeapFrog's latest television advertisement for their TAG reading system: the ad itself or the possibility that there are actually parents out there who would be swayed by the commercial.

The commercial shows an adult standing next to a child sized table with two books and a line of children waiting to have access to one of the books. The adult attempts to interest the first child in line, a boy, about 7 years old in one of the books, a beautifully illustrated book on nature. The most prominent illustration is a gorgeous, realistic, detailed painting of a frog. The book is clearly a book about nature and animals. The child contemptuously turns his back on that book, in preference for the second book, illustrated with the crude, primary colored Sponge Bob characters because this book comes with the "magic" TAG stylus that will read the words in the book out loud to the child. The thrust of the advertisement is to convince parents to buy the "magic" book and stylus (the TAG system) for their kids.

I find this commercial disturbing. First, I am disturbed that anyone would wish to encourage children to prefer a simplistic book with crude illustrations of a commercial cartoon characters over a beautiful, artistic, realistically illustrated and scientifically informative book. Second, the more I think about what the TAG system does, the more I suspect that it discourages learning to read on ones own.

I don't doubt that the TAG system and other technology like it helps children with word recognition. The child can see the word and hear it pronounced. There are also interactive games in many of the books, in which an adult voice asks the child to touch a specific word, and thus promote word recognition. But the development of reading skill is involves far more than word recognition.

The TAG system is marketed for the age range from 4 years to 8 years. While perhaps appropriate for 4 year old, the TAG system seems woefully out of touch with what 8 year old should be doing with reading -- devouring entire books on their own. The television commercial features children at the upper end of this age range, rather than the lower end of the range.

I think about how I became interested in reading and developed proficiency. My parents, especially my mother, selected books from the library to read out loud. Some of the books I remember her choosing include Beverly Cleary's Henry, Ramona and Beezus stories, Travers' Mary Poppins series, Heinlein's Red Planet, Baum's Oz books (our favorites were the less familiar books, like Ozma of Oz), and many others. My mother would read only one or two chapters each night. While this was fine when I was 4 or 5, as I got older, I became impatient to know more. My mother neither blocked nor encouraged me, but simply had the books available in the house, where I could find them on my own during the daytime, to read ahead. By the time I was 8 years old, I was consuming entire books on my own, regardless of whether they were "age appropriate" or not. For example, I read the entirety of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women the summer between second and third grade, when I was 8 years old. This was followed in short order by The Five Little Peppers and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm as well as other young people's classics.

The parent who reads to the child a book that is interesting, but just at the upper edge of the child's reading ability, encourages a curiosity and models the skill of reading. By failing to satisfy fully the child's desire to hear more of the story, and being unavailable to read out loud every time the child is interested, parents create a situation in which children must must stretch themselves to satisfy their craving for more story.

So I wonder what happens, when the child can satisfy that desire to hear more of the story read to them at any time? If they don't have to wait for mom or dad to sit down and read to them, but can use their TAG stylus, what impetus is there for them to read on their own. Moreover, the library of books developed for use with TAG are, at this point, focused on popular cartoon characters with simplistic vocabulary and stories. Books that feature Sponge Bob, Disney's Little Mermaid, the Cars from the animated feature film, Kung Fu and Diego from TV dominate the book line up. There is one classic story (the Little Engine Who Could). I must admit that Walter the Farting dog is quite entertaining, and what child (or adult) could resist being able to produce fart noises from a book! But none of these picture books provide the challenge to stretch and learn for an eight year old.

Most of my community college students can read a sentence, or a short paragraph, and they can look for answers to question that are specific, factual, and phrased in exactly the same vocabulary as the text. But few can generalize or summarize from readings longer than a page or two, and are likely to give you a blank stare if you ask them "what is the book about?" I can't help but fear that technologies like LeapFrog's TAG will produce more rather than fewer poor readers.

Ideas worth spreading

Thanks to a post by John Hodgman, I was introduced yesterday to TED.com. TED (which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an organization that focuses on finding new, inspiring, cutting edge ideas in science, business, the arts and the global issues facing our world, as well as technology, entertainment and design and once found spreading those ideas freely as widely as possible. So there are many videos on this site, that are free for download. This is a great resource for educators.

How tech savvy are today's college students?

When I go to pedagogically oriented conferences or workshops, or participate in some of my community college system's work groups I frequently hear claims that today's young people are technologically savvy, and that it is necessary for us (teachers) to engage them through technology or lose their attention. I read (in on-line sources) how today's college students spend all their time developing their "Face Book" or "My Space" pages and instant message with friends, and play computer games.

Yet when I get in the classroom, I find that many of my students (even the young ones) sit blankly in front of the computer, unable to negotiate key government websites (Census Bureau, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics) to find the answers to relatively simple factual questions. When I deal with my on-line students, I find that many of them have no clue (even with detailed instructions) how to navigate through the course, and move from one activity to another. [My classes have been repeatedly vetted for clarity of instructions and navigation, even netting me a statewide award for excellence in on-line instruction].

Most of my students have heard of "Face Book" but have never used it, and prefer their cell phones to instant messaging, being far more comfortable with verbal over written communication. All the cute abbreviations of instant messaging and texting seem to bewilder many of them; when some of them post to discussion boards their writing degenerates into broken English, not computer speak. When using the computer for class work, they prefer to learn the bare minimum necessary to use the computer as a tool, and have no interest in exploring short cuts and new techniques. When they run into new situations or problems they give up rather than problem solve. Teach them to use one version of a piece of software, and then give them a slightly newer version, and many of them freeze up.

So today's Chronicle of Higher Education had a blog entry The Myth of the Techno-Wizard Freshman really caught my eye. I thought perhaps some one had finally documented my experience. The article, while interesting, dealt with something different than technological savvy -- it dealt with information processing skills. The research is very interesting [follow the links in the article above] demonstrating that a high percentage of today's college freshman do not know how to evaluate the quality of information, determine the relevance of information, or how to define or narrow a search for information. These are indeed important skills that they should have, but they are not really "tech" skills, but rather old fashioned intellectual skills. Yes the computer is the tool being used, but the same skills were necessary when I was in college looking for information in magazines, newspapers, books, and journals, using printed indexes and reference sources.

I'd really like to see some one do a real survey of technical skills, to find out if our college freshman really are as technically savvy as pundits believe, and to see if such skills exhibit the social class divide that I strongly suspect given my experiences at a community college.

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.

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.