“Mic-Check”: Verbal Terrorism and Pushback at UNM

Last Thursday evening when my class on Case Study ended, I stuffed my papers in my notebook and hurried across campus to hear Nonie Darwish speak. I expected a good, tightly focused talk by a woman who has experienced the oppression of Sharia Law firsthand. I did wondered briefly as I approached the Anthropology Building from the rear and cut through the side-hallway where the labs are, whether anyone would attempt to block me getting in, but the night was quiet as a brand new moon dropped in the west.

Nonie Darwish is the daughter of Egyptian General, born during the Revolution of 1952, and is now an American by virtue of her passionate love for liberty. She has spoken at many universities, as well as before the United States Congress, the European Union Parliament, and the British House of Lords.

She was brought to the University of New Mexico by two campus groups, the UNM Israel Alliance and the UNM Conservative Republicans, with funding from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and sponsorships from organizations affiliated with local synagogues and churches. Her talk was entitled Why the Arab Spring is Failing and How Israel is Involved.

I walked past a dessert table set up by the Israel Alliance, and took a bottle of water on the way in. I was just in time for the talk, so I did not linger. As I went by the table I noticed a young man standing holding a sign that read: “Stop Israel Apartheid.” I swept past him and sat down next to fellow members of Congregation Albert with whom I share almost no political views except support of Israel. We greeted one another with Shalom’s and Howdy Do’s and settled in as Nonie was introduced.

Nonie came on stage, a small, round woman dressed in slacks and a simple red top, full of energy and passion. From the moment she launched into it, her talk was not disappointing. Her thesis was that no Muslim country can expect anything from revolution other than more tyranny because of the structure of Sharia Law, which dictates all aspects of life for Muslims, including the structure and practices of the Islamic state. Throughout her talk, she reiterated that her hatred was not for Muslim people as individuals, but rather for the Sharia Law that keeps them enslaved to a brutal system, one that openly preaches violence against women and non-Muslims.

At the point where Nonie began speaking about the duties and responsibilities of a Muslim dictator under Sharia, there erupted from the back of the room a chant: “Mic Check!” a small group yelled, “Israel is an apartheid state!” I stood up to get a better idea of who was doing what, and I had a terrible sinking feeling that we, the people who had come to hear Nonie Darwish speak, would see her silenced. This initiation of force against those they wish to silence is a favorite tactic of the left. The call for “mic check!” became a favorite method of the Occupy Wall Street “movement”, who have such a sense of entitlement that they act on the belief that only they have freedom of speech because only they have something to say.

So as the disruptors continued their chant, I began chanting: “USA! USA!” I had learned this tactic to counter disruptions when I was trained to monitor Tea Party rallies. But New Mexicans are so generally laid back that we never had occasion to use our training at the Tea Parties. Other audience members had the same idea, and it seemed like many of us started chanting back at the same time, turning to face the disruptive element at the back of the room.

As we stood there chanting, I looked around for security or the UNM police, but neither were anywhere in evidence. (Apparently no one thought it was needed, because those with opposite views in the past had politely tolerated each other’s events). Instead several older men approached the disruptors in a businesslike fashion, and it looked like they were going to force them from the room. One man tried to grab the script from the hands of the leader, but failed. Another seemed to trip over feet or a chair and landed on some of the disruptors. I saw one female disruptor shout “No violence! No violence!”, as these men forced them whole lot of them out of the room. I remember thinking to myself: Sweetie, you asked for it when you used violence against Nonie’s freedom of speech and our right to hear the talk we came to hear.” She looked like one of the (un)Occupy Wall Street chics I had seen last fall, the one who thought it was not okay to occupy except when she was the one doing the occupying.

As soon as the little barbarians were out of the room, people settled down, and Nonie commented: You must feel sorry for them. They cannot stand to have their prejudices confounded by the truth. They hate anyone who disagrees with them, and call them vile names, but they call me the hate monger.” She then continued her speech.

There was one other disruption that came when the President of the Faculty Senate got up and first accused Nonie of hate speech, citing a You Tube video of her speech at a rally honoring an honor killing victim. As Nonie responded that the video had been edited, the dimwit professor went on to interrupt her, and then began to make a speech. The audience was once again on edge, and angry at this professor who had apparently forgotten that the floor was his only to ask a question. There was some booing, but he went on in his ignorant arrogance, until I called out: “What’s you question, sir?” Then another audience member took the microphone from him, and handed it to the next questioner in line.

From that point on, there were no further disruptions, although many questioners disputed Nonie’s talk, and one called her a “bigot.”

Later I learned that the disruptive element came from a campus group, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the (un)Occupy Albuquerque movement. (That familiar looking chic was exactly who I thought she was). Both groups have a very privileged view of rights, believing that they have them because they are right about everything, and nobody else has rights. Therefore, they believe that they have a right to occupy a lecture sponsored and paid for by someone else, and try to shut the speaker down. Of course, the Heckler’s Veto*, as it is popularly called is the initiation of force against the speaker and those who came to hear her. It is violation of the rights of everyone else in the room. As a UC Irvine law professor states:

“You have the right – if you disagree with me – to go outside and perform your protest. But you don’t get the right to come in when I’m talking and shout me down. Otherwise people can always silence a speaker by heckler’s veto, and Babel results.”

Babel did result, but only until the entitled barbarians were forced from the room. No one was hurt, and the men who removed them used only as much force as was necessary to remove them. That force was invited by the disruptive ones themselves, when they initiated force against the speaker the audience came to hear.

This incident leads me to believe that taxpayer money is being wasted at the University of New Mexico. Students there clearly have no idea what rights mean, and believe that they are entitled to shut down a speaker invited and paid for by a campus group because they happen to disagree with her. Others claimed that: “This is OUR university”, to which the audience rightly replied: “No. It is our university. Our tax money built it and funds it.” I would suggest to the dimwit professor who believes he has the right to turn a question into a speech that perhaps he ought to spend his time learning what his contractual responsibilities are, and what the definition of a public lecture is. The event was not a public forum. But even in a public forum, individuals must follow the rules of decorum, taking the floor only when it is yielded and for the purposes defined by the speaker or moderator.

I will be voting no on every bond issue or other allocation of money to UNM until the New Mexico Legislature gets control of the place, and requires all students and faculty to take courses and demonstrate competence in respect for rights, the understanding the difference between rights and privileges (hint: attending university at public expense is not a right, it is a privilege), and in the manners and mores required at public lectures, forums and other events.

I’d say that these kinds of events definitely turn the Town against the Gown. Taxpayers begin to understand why in days of old, the town used to lock the barbarians inside the gates of the University each night at sundown, letting them out on rare occasions and only when they minded their manners and respected their betters—the ones paying for it all.

Hmmm. Maybe we should build a wall around Redondo Drive. A cast-iron gate decorated with gargoyles would be fitting right in front of Sholes Hall.

But until then, I am glad that pushback has started against these barbarian tactics aimed at quashing speech that certain elitist academics have decided must not be heard. And in the process, they demonstrated quite well the truth that Nonie Darwish came to speak.

*This popular notion of the Heckler’s Veto is different than the legal definition, which is the unconstitutional silencing of speech by the government because of a threat of violence on the part of the speaker’s opposition.

____________

A video of Nonie Darwish’s entire speech at UNM may be found here.

End of the Semester Crunch Time Squared

Hold my blogging!

We will be dwelling in that end of the semester crunch time for the next several weeks.
(Quantity squared).

The Boychick is finishing up or has just finished up several major freshman projects. He has done his Inquiry Project for Humanities, and he has given his presentation.
He is working on his Big Ideas Project for Science. This project is cool because the project has to be about Big Ideas and their connections for the Scientific Revolution for the big Medieval Faire the school is having this coming week. He has chosen to explore the connections between the Plague (Pestis yersinius), Galileo and Newton. Ought to be interesting! Newton had repaired to his mother's country estate to escape plague infested London, when he was sitting under the apple tree and observing the waning moon, when he had his AHA! moment that the force that caused the apple to fall to the earth was the same force that kept the moon in its orbit. I know that Newton refined Galileo's ideas about motion, particularly falling bodies, but I don't know how Galileo is connected to the plague! Except that the falling bodies he dealt with were not corpses. They were marbles and cannon balls and oranges from Africa.



In the meantime, this was my home today, and I will be spending more time there in the next few days. It is Zimmerman Library at UNM. I work there, because the Lobo lab lets me print journal articles for free and because there is a coffee shop right in the Library. (A tired student can take a cup of joe right into certain areas of the reading room, if it is properly covered). I make occasional forays over to Centennial Science and Engineering Library (CSEL) and even rarer trips to the Health Sciences Library and Infomatics Center (HSLIC). Much of what I need can be obtained electronically from the more centrally located (right next to the duck pond) Zimmerman.


My crunch time involves two papers for courses, and doing organizational work, research and editing for a paper to be published.


Today, I did a lot of work finding imaging studies for my Psych 650 (Neuroimaging Analysis). I am looking at two competing theories on visual processing differences in autism. The studies I was interested in finding are to provide evidence to suppport or discount either of them. For Psych 650, my job is to look at the experimental designs and imaging analysis techniques to determine if differences of opinion are the result of different analytic styles, or problems in the data. Overall, however, my research purpose is to become really knowledgable about the "vageries of visual processing in autism" (as one paper is called), because there is a growing consensus that the "deficits" we see in autism may be the result of a very different way of processing sensory input; a way that does not obligate the brain towards global perception.


My other paper is a lit review for Special Education 695 (Readings). I will place what I learn about the neuroimaging results from the Psych paper into a larger look at the recent literature about cognitive theories of autism, and the structure of intelligence in autism viewed through the lens of visual processing differences. I will looking to find the gap between the science and interventions that is the ground for all good translational research.


I will be probably be lurking a bit on my favorite blogs, old and new. But if I am not commenting, don't feel too lonely. I still owe ChristineMM an answer in a discussion sparked by this blog entry weeks ago!

It is, after all, ACT--Academic Crunch Time! Squared.

Years ago in Russian class, our prof, Boris, taught us a delightful little song: "From session to session, a student's life is fine!" A "sessiya" is exam and paper time.

We made up our little ditty to the tune of Frere Jaques:
Ya niznayu, Ya niznayu, na evo, na evo,
Ya n'panimayu, Ya n'panimayu chorosho!
(I don't know, I don't know, from it, from it! I don't understand, I don't understand, at all!)

It's Academic Crunch Time!

See you Mother's Day.

Focus on Visual Processing Development in Three Ways

The UNM began a few weeks ago, and even with everything else that is going on, I am doing some interesting work. In particular, I am interested in how differences in development between what is called the dorsal visual stream (a.k.a. the where stream) and the ventral visual stream (the what stream) may be affected by autism, what symptoms may arise from that, and how such developmental differences may be similar to and different than those in people who are neurotypical visual learners. What I want to do with this information is called translational research--that part of research that focuses on using the basic science to development treatments and educational interventions to help people with ASD use their visual gifts and yet interact with the rest of the world.

My coursework this semester is quite specialized in order to help me delve more deeply into my interests.

The only organized course I have is Psychology 650: Introduction to Neuroimaging Analysis. In this course, we will learn how to interpret data provided by the various neuroimaging techniques: EEG, ERP (event-related potentials),MEG, Positron Emission Tomography (both PET and SPECT), fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging, and MRS (magnet resonance spectroscopy). Each technique has strengths and weaknesses, and each has specific ways to properly interpret the data collected from it. My purpose here is to be able to tell when conclusions made in the original research are warrented or not, and also learn how to analyze and interpret data that I get from my research.

In this class, the professor lectures about a technology--right now we are doing EEG and ERP--and then assigns us papers to critique. The doc students (like me) have the additional assignment of finding papers in their area of interest to critique. EEG and ERP are particular interests for me, because much of the data in my area of interest is gathered from these electrical imaging techniques. However, there is a very specialized vocabulary for interpretation, so that even though I know my neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, and even though I understand the physics of the EEG and ERP methods, I find myself getting lost on the interpretation. The prof did not assign a textbook, and it is hard to tell what sources on the web are reliable and relevant. So I e-mailed the prof and asked about a book. He recommended one, but naturally, our university library does not have it. However, Amazon does, and at a very reasonable price. So I am eagerly awaiting Steve Luck's An Introduction to the Event-related Potential Technique in Cognitive Neuroscience.

I am also taking hours for Psychology Problems 550 with my second major advisor, Dr. C. These problems involve the neurodevelopment in visual processing and also differences in cognitive switching, and will result in my name going on two published papers. I am currently finding and reading papers on the trajectory of cortical development as measured by the thickening and thinning of the cortex of the brain in normal children, intellectually gifted children, children with ADHD, children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and other developmental differences. Here is where the class on analysis is paying off already, even though my understanding is still at the novice level. Now when I read papers, I can at least begin to understand why two different papers using the same technique can come up with very different results. Much of that has to do with how differently they collected their data, and how they interpret it.

Finally, I am also taking Special Education 595: Indepedent Readings in Special Education with my first major advisor, Dr. N. I am meeting with her tomorrow in order to determine a direction for my readings. I am proposing to look into the connection between visual processing and deficits in working memory for people with ASD. This also involves the development and functioning of the two visual streams. I am hoping to agree upon writing a Literature Review on this, using information from cognitive testing to bridge the gap in understanding between the basic science and methods for helping with working memory.

Working memory is the cognitive ability to temporarily store and mentally manipulate limited amounts of information in order to guide behavior. (Behavior here can mean anything from mental math activities to choosing what to pay attention to and what to ignore). Auditory working memory is known to be deficient in ADHD, and certain forms of ASD. New evidence is now coming out that suggests a link between visual processing and attention, that seems to also affect visual working memory. And I have a great interest in this area, as I explained above.

What is really good about my coursework this semester is that each one contributes to and reenforces the others, and all of them allow me to focus on my particular area of interest. This is how a Ph.D. progresses. Coursework starts off broadly, working off the master's degree, but as the doc student progresses, it increasingly narrows towards the dissertation interests. All the papers read, all the knowledge gained during the coursework phase prepares the student for Comprehensive Exams. These are exams that test the student in the areas of interest important to the dissertation topic, and assure the candidate's committee that she is conversant in the narrow field. Once the comprehensive exams are completed, the student then begins the often lonely process of finishing the research and writing the dissertation. Good advisors try to help their students maintain a narrow focus in a particular area, so that the dissertation actually gets written before old age sets in! Once the dissertation is finished and successfully defended, the new Ph.D. has joined the community of scholars by virtue of expertise in a narrow area and by expertise in the research process. Then the new scholar can once again attend to broad areas of interest to the field.

I have very good advisors. Whenever I want to go off on a tangent, both of them sit me down and force my attention strongly encourage me to get back on track.

I am going to be much closer to the dreaded Comps after this very focused semester!

Catching the Rhythm of Spring 2009

Oy.

Ragamuffin Studies has missed two Nearly Wordless Wednesdays in a row!!
It may return next week, or another type of weekly photo post will be substituted.

It has to do with scheduling nightmares.
And with catching my rhythm as the new semester begins.

Last week, I returned to my tutoring job at the COE Graduate Writing Studio. I changed my GA from .5 (20 hours per week) to 0.25 (10 hours per week) because I found that I needed much more time for managing the Boychick's education, working on my dissertation proposal and studying for my classes. I set up my 10 hours over two days, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. These were also class days for me, so that I have three week days that I donn't have to drive into town.

The courses I had signed up for were Functional Neuroimaging (For Behavioral Neuropsychology), and Doctoral Seminar (for Special Education). Alas, when I signed on to my account last Tuesday, I had a message: the Doctoral Seminar class was cancelled. That would have been fine with me, except that I need six hours to keep my GA. Sigh.
So it was back to Loboweb, where the course catalogue turned up nothing in Special Education that I wanted/needed to take. So I arranged with my Special Education major professor to take a course in directed readings that would follow the plan, more or less, that I had been developing for the Doctoral Seminar. It took some effort to get a hold of Dr. N to get this all done, as she was traveling to Washington D.C. to attend the Inauguration. By Thursday, however, the necessary waiver had been made, and I was able to register.

Classes began yesterday, and so I came in to work and then was planning to attend the first meeting of Functional Neuroimaging. It was scheduled for 2-4 PM in the afternoon. However, when I signed in to my account, I had a new message. The course had been rescheduled, the students had been dropped, and we all had to sign up again. The new time, 3-5 PM could not have been more incovenient. But I really need this class. So just for yesterday, I had to leave work early in order to go up to the Boychick's school and drop off his Taekwondo bag, then swing by home to let the dogs out. Then it was back to campus for class. The Engineering Geek was persuaded to leave work early to pick up the Boychick and take him to Taekwondo. It worked out, but I had 10 minutes to inhale my lunch on my roundtrip to the East Mountains and then back to campus. We're going to have to figure something else out for the rest of the semester.

Did I mention that I really, really need this class?

When I went to the class, I found out that all of this was done at the behest of the Department Chair in order to accomodate undergraduates. This course is a 650 level course. I hope it doesn't get watered down like the course I took last spring. It was similar in that it was orginally a graduate level class, but then changed to accomodate undergraduates. And it meant much less depth for those of us taking the graduate version.

I am skeptical. But did I say I really, really, really need this class.

Of course, life outside the Ivory Tower continues. The Boychick needed a root canal and now the general dentist cannot finish it because the site is still draining. So tomorrow, it is off the consult with an endodontist. I have been at a dentist's office twice last week (once for the Boychick and once for me), and with tomorrow's appointment, it will be twice this week. We have been working on the Boychick's IEP. And getting him settled into a routine for school and scouts and Taekwondo.

I hope next week we'll catch the rhythm. And I'll figure out when to do the Nearly Wordless Wednesday post!

The good news: the days are getting perceptively longer!

Writing, Politics, and the Great Pumpkin

When I was a kid, I used to watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on television every year around Halloween. I thought the shows were fun and I loved the jazzy piano music by Vince Guaraldi. In fact, whole seasons of my life as a child seem to be set to the Guaraldi music.

But what I didn't realize at the time was that I was also learning some important philosophy from the Peanuts gang. Some of it was common-sensical, like the admonition to stay away from kite-eating trees and beware of Lucy with a football. And some was good advice for getting along with people; advice quite useful to a child with undiagnosed broader autistic phenotype.

I have had cause to consider this sterling piece of advice from Linus in the past few weeks, as I have started a GA in the UNM College of Education Graduate Writing Center:

Linus: There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.
(From: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and quoted on Wikipedia).

Only I think that in the "Arts" parts of the College of Arts and Sciences Linus needed to amend his advice to say "politics that's not on the far left." And I imagine that since one can discuss almost anything else, including deviant sexual practices, the Great Pumpkin is probably not off limits, although religion--at least the western ones--are.

What is interesting about my experience outside of science, is that I am not a conservative. I am neither "paleo" nor "neo", but my views also cannot be defined by the current understanding of the word "liberal." I find the two-party, tennis-court-congress definitions of left and right as restrictive as a straight jacket. My political stances are probably best defined as libertarian with a small "l".

But what I have discovered is that what passes for political discussion in the Liberals Arts is not reasoned argument, or concerned discussion, but rather a frantic mission: define and destroy any idea that does not agree with the TRUTH. And Truth here is defined as something to the left of FDR. In this atmosphere, even asking reasonable questions causes the defenders of the doctrine of Republican Evil and Democratic Socialist Righteousness to start shouting.

For example, in a discussion of the coming storm in unfunded government obligations (Social Security and Medicare), I asked a question: "Where will the money come from?" Simultaneously I had the righteous indignation of three people shouting at once:

"Where are you getting your information!" (I had said that G3 books are not reported to the public).
"Why in my country (Brazil) we take care of everybody!" (If I could have gotten a word in edgewise I'd have asked about their deficit and how much monetary and defense aid they get from the US).
"People are going to have to work more and pay more taxes!" (If I could have gotten a word in edgewise I'd have asked what this person--who is old enough to know better--thinks will happen when our children are paying taxes so high that it is no longer worth it for them to work).

The hullabaloo would have been downright funny except for the sensory-overload feeling I was getting. It was a classic attempt to herd me into the Vision of the Anointed. There was no way to reasonably answer their arguments because there was no way they were going to let me finish a sentence, let alone a complete thought. However, I did have the chance to make two observations about this behavior that will serve me well in the future.

The first is that when people have the TRUTH with a capital "T," they will place you into one of two categories: 'with us' or 'against us.' And there is no straying from these positions. If, for the sake of argument, a person supports gun rights, then she must also be for the death penalty, and against the environment. This need for polarity on the part of the ideologues extends right down to where a person lives. If a citizen lives in a rural area, then that person just has to be poor, white, and "clinging to god and guns."

The second is that if one does not agree with the TRUTH, then one must be at best, unintelligent and uninformed, and at worst, evil. Therefore, it is appropriate to skip over reason and move right to expressions of hatred for "the other side." There is no room for honest differences of opinion among intelligent people. There is no meeting place where different experiences in life can be brought to the table for discussion. This second is probably the most important contribution to shouting down the opponent. Shouting is not an argument, it replaces any argument. But then, there can be no argument with the TRUTH.

Thus, in their attempts to herd me into line with right thinking, the most telling statement was: "Most people are too stupid to run their own lives."
This was really said, and it was said baldly and without apology or equivocation.
That one really made me laugh inside. A wonderful headline for the Daily Onion occurred to me at that moment:

EDUCATED IDIOTS OF THE IVORY TOWER TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

Too bad I do not have the comedic talent to actually write the spoof.
I can see it, though, staring Dan Akroiyd and Chevy Chase as the profs--rubbing their beards and trying to figure out how to survive out there in the "real world" a la Ghost Busters.

That was fun, but I digress.

The need to polarize issues and the refusal to listen to one another is rampant across what is left of the political spectrum of ideas in the United States. Some say that it is generational. Some think that it has to do with the formation of wholly separate value systems. I suspect it is both. And.

This is why, although I have certain reservations about John McCain, and there were certain issues that worry me that were not addressed in his speech last night, I found that I was very hungry to hear what he said about bringing a wide variety of competent people into his administration. Even Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, when opinions were extremely divided, understood this need.

What I don't know is, will the Anointed on the Right be too rigid to accept that?
What about the anointed on the Left?

We have a lot of big fish to fry in this country at the moment. Listening to the rhetoric, I wonder if we can focus our attention on those or if we will become even more atomized by wrangling caused by our convictions that our side has the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth.

I worry for the future of the American experiment.

But I have learned that Linus was right. From now on here in COE, I will consider religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin are out of bounds.

But secretly, as Halloween approaches, I am on the lookout for a Pumpkin Patch that is Sincere.

The Merely Difficult

"The merely difficult we do at once,
the impossible takes a little longer,
miracles by appointment only!"
--unofficial Seabees Motto

Today marks the end of the first week of the fall semester at UNM.
Getting into a routine this week has been remarkably hard because each evening of the week we have had some reason to go to a meeting. Monday was Scouts--which was expected. Tuesday was the Scout troop council, which was not. I work late on Wednesday, and last night was East Mountain High School's Open House. The good thing is that the Boychick was a good sport through all of this and did his homework--including math--with no complaint. The strain on all of our routines has been exacerbated by the chaos in the hallway and the fact that the Boychick is currently sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the Chem Geek Princess's room.

But we are managing.
Even though all of us--proud carriers of the Broader Autistic Phenotype--get mighty cranky when our routines get disrupted. When there is no routine we snarl a lot.

Dealing with UNM Bureaucracy makes me positively grumpy.
On Monday, as I was leaving the COE Graduate Writing Center for lunch, my supervisor stopped me at the door to Tireman Library. "You've got to go to OGS (Office of Graduate Studies) right away!" she informed me. "'The Platform' is saying that you are not eligible to place for your GA."

In any normal place, one might figure that it was a small snafu, but here at New Mexico's Flagship University--the same University that ceded territory temporarily to Mexico last September--students and faculty automatically assume the worst.

When I got to OGS--still unlunched--the work-study could not find me in the computer.
"You'll have to wait for Edwina to return from lunch," she said, snapping her bright blue bubble gum. "Please have a seat right over there."

Oh, no! Not Edwina. When you have to see Edwina it's really bad. I remember that much from my TA and RA days in the biology department. Edwina is the administrative assistant of last resort.
Being a Nervous Nelly, I was certain that I was headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. Or worse. I mean, it's bad enough if G-d forgets your name, but when the UNM computer doesn't know who you are do you even exist? Now there was an existential question for me to ponder as I waited for Edwina for return from lunch.

Fortunately, before Edwina returned from fortifying herself for an afternoon of unsnarling gnarly bureaucratic messes, another COE Graduate Writing Studio GA came in with her passport. While putting the GA's info into the computer, the work-study looked at me and said, " I found you!" And she was able to tell me that I had not submitted my demographic data form. (That's the really important form that lets UNM reassure itself that I am " female" and "other" and that UNM is therefore "inclusive"). For this reason, they had discarded --shredded, I fervently hope!--all my other hiring paper work. Could I please submit it again? Post-haste? Of course I could. But not being in the habit of carrying around my passport (needed for the I-9), I took custody of a bunch of forms to "bring back tomorrow."

Which is why I was at UNM on Tuesday normally a day I am scheduled to study at home.
Since I had driven to campus suffering from sinus pressure due to the drop in altitude anyway, I decided to find out how to do a dual-disciplinary Ph.D. I had sent an inquiry to OGS last week, and received a response on Monday. Bill at OGS wrote that I needed to talk to the Psychology department head and their Grad adviser about requirements.

That was easy.
The department head e-mailed separately to tell me that she was very interested in my work and that I should talk to the adviser so that I could get started. The adviser started by telling me that I am crazy. We laughed. Everyone on campus is certifiable, after all, and here we were sitting in the Psychology building. Oh, she continued, and had I taken the GRE in the past five years? Since it was longer ago than that, I'd have to take it again. It's not the the Psychology Department wouldn't accept old scores--they tend to be remarkably stable for people my age--it's that ETS would not release them. A money-making ploy, no doubt. Sigh.

Then it was back to OGS to see how to inform the university of dual status.
I waited to see Doug. When I sat down in front of his desk, I briefly told him what I wanted to do.
He said, "You can't do that. There's a policy in place because at the Ph.D. level we don't want students to become scattered."

Or think outside the box.
Innovation, thy name is not the Ivory Tower.

I smiled, and leaned forward. I said, "So you're telling me this may be more than 'merely difficult?'"
He got the reference. He asked for my ID number.
I couldn't see what came up on the computer--it had one of those privacy screens--but I was fairly confident of what it would show.
He asked me to describe to him how my research would require the bringing together of two disciplines. I began talking and waving my hands. (I can't help it, it's genetic).
I told him about my background in the biological sciences.
I told him about the brain research that I want to do.
I told him about the gap between what we know about genetics, epigenetics, development and interventions for very high functioning kids with ASD.
I asked for a pen. He handed me a blank piece of paper as well.
I drew a diagram showing how the two disciplines come together.
Finally, he handed me a form for petitioning the Dean of Graduate Studies for a variance from policy.
He said: "You have my interest. Anyone can petition the Dean. If you succeed, you will be breaking new ground. Things change slowly in universities. But they can change."
And he told me what I'd need to do in order for the Dean to take my petition seriously.

I am going to have to rethink some of my other commitments.
I have scheduled the GRE.
I have a 0.5 FTE GA.
I have 3 research hours.
I have 3 seminar hours.
I am a mom.

Everything else will have to wait.

This is going to take a little longer.

But Is It Education?

So, I've got the angst off my chest. Sniffle. I feel much better now.

And while surfing the homeschooling blogosphere, I happened upon an interesting post by Dana over at Principled Discovery about higher education and what has been termed the "educational industrial complex" by none other than Paul Peterson, Harvard's Education Policy and Governance chair.

I have had some grave concerns about the differences between my own college education, and the college experiences that my daughters' generation is having. I have thought for a long time that such universities have neglected undergraduate education and have forgotten their mission to truly educate students at that level. In my experience listening to and mentoring young people in college, I have learned that the university bureaucracy, which is mitigated for the sake of graduate students, has become a daily ordeal for undergraduates; sucking up their time and their money, it often costs them extra semesters of study to get their degrees because of adminstrative lack of concern and sheer, unadulterated incompetence. Harsh words I know, and certainly not applicable uniformly upon all adminstrators, and yet how else does one explain advisement by administrators rather than professors, or the frequent, repeated loss of paperwork?

But in my opinion, what is even more damning in the 'Educational-Industrial System' is the lack of understanding by those who ought to know better about what teaching really means at the level of "higher" education. Instead of being a mentoring process that nurtures and challenges young minds, higher education at the undergraduate level, like K-12 education, has become a conveyor belt in which thinking has been replaced by the reflexive desire to treat unequal things equally.

And we all know the result of such an education for conformity:




Mind-sausage.

In talking to young students that I know and mentor, I hear stories on a regular basis of upper division classes being taught by first-year graduate students, many of whom do not know the content they are expected to teach the students with no supervision from professors. I hear tales of professors who refuse to meet with students that want to know why they did poorly on exams and papers. I have heard of professors who spend class time discussing their political views and thereby making short shrift of the content the students have paid to learn. In the eyes of many of the young people I have talked to, therefore, a college education has become a series of hoops to jump through as efficiently as possible rather than an opportunity to participate in the Great Conversation of our culture.

Being in an academic setting, I have heard professors lament that "students these days" do not care for the knowledge that they could take home, but only for the points needed to make the grade and graduate. But I seldom hear these professors lament the lost opportunities to teach their students to think differently. The undergraduate system is set up in such a way that students must care about points more than knowledge.

Among many university professors, there seems to be an attitude that "raising standards" means acting as gatekeepers to diplomas, rather than mentoring students to help them achieve their best work. This spring, a number of students, some of whom are academically quite talented, were refused graduation under rather unreasonable circumstances. For example, a student who choses a difficult and challenging course for this last semester of the college career, and who struggles with the material early on, may earn an A on a cumulative final and still fail the course.

During my college days, such a thing would not happen. A professor who is truly concerned about students would consider that, yes, the student struggled at first--but the learning curve is logarythmic--rising slowly at first, and then reaching an inflection point and then taking off to heights previously unattainable. (This is how Dr. Reiter, my P-Chem professor explained it to me when I wanted to drop the course back in 1980). If you aced Dr. Reiter's cumulative final, you would pass the course, even if you had flunked a test at the beginning. This was so not because he was giving an undeserved grade. Nor was it because he did not care about "standards." It was because a person who can ace a cumulative final has mastered the material in the course and has earned a passing grade. So I was taught--mentored--by my old chemistry "prof" not to be afraid to take difficult courses and learn very difficult material.

Students now are afraid of the hard courses. And with good reason. Lose one too many points out of the total, and no matter how much one may have learned, it doesn't matter. A person could have spent much money and lost many opportunity costs, only to come out with nothing except the label failure after four years.

When I was responsible for student grades as a graduate instructor for genetics, I thought of it this way. Two people climb a mountain. Maybe one starts out at a different point than another, and encounters a more difficult course. That one slips, slides, groans and gets back up, trying another way. And maybe another. Both reach the top of the mountain. Both has "mastered" the mountain. But which one knows that mountain better? It may very well be the one that struggled, and fell numerous times, scraping his knees, losing skin from his hands on the ropes. That one left pieces of himself on the mountain and received pieces of the mountain into himself. Likewise, it is the student who struggles who often knows the content of a difficult course the best.

These are the students who, like Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman (z"l), (who almost did not complete his Ph.D.), often have the most contribute to the field. Thank goodness Feynman had a mentor who did not dismiss him as a failure; instead he entered into a discussion with him, and they walked it through to completion.

But what of the Feynmans of tomorrow? They cannot afford to risk four years, all the money and opportunity costs, and thus may play it safe and do what is easy and predictible.

And those who do take risks may very well be labled failures for the very characteristics that give them the most to contribute to their fields.

Yes. It's still college. But you can hardly call it an education.