Thoughts on culture, education, and having been a Canadian in the US

Via a link on someone else’s blog that I forgot to note, I came across this interesting interview with Gerald Graff, author of Professing Literature (1987), a book I like a great deal, and Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind (2003), a book I’ve been meaning to take a look at for some time now. The most interesting part of this interview for me is what he says about the “pseudo-intimacy of the classroom”:

I have long thought that there is something infantilizing about the standard classroom situation, where the very face-to-face intimacy that is so valued actually encourages sloppy and imprecise habits of communication. That is, the intimate classroom is very different from–and therefore poor training for–the most powerful kinds of real-world communication, where we are constantly trying to reach and influence audiences we do not know and will probably never meet. We should be using online technologies to go beyond the cozy pseudo-intimacy of the classroom, to put students in situations that force them to communicate at a distance and therefore learn the more demanding rhetorical habits of constructing and reaching an anonymous audience. We have begun to do this to some extent, but our habit of idealizing presence and “being there,” the face-to-face encounter between teachers and students, blinds us to the educational advantages of the very impersonality and distancing of online communication. Indeed, online communication makes it possible for schools and colleges to create real intellectual communities rather than the fragmented and disconnected simulation of such communities that “the classroom” produces.

I’ve been in discussions over the last couple of years with people who tell me that online communication can never replace the intimacy of the classroom. I like how Graff questions that here. That is something we don’t spend enough time thinking about. How much attention do we pay to what kind of learning occurs in the classroom. I’ve now taught two courses fully online and in both cases I’ve wound up thinking that the students in the online course have had a much better command of the material than the students in the classroom. That may, of course, be simply an illusion generated by the comments every student has to write in an online class. Those students who never say a thing in class may well have as nuanced an understanding of a particular work as those who are very articulate in the course. The problem is that as instructors we don’t have the same way of measuring what they know and don’t know when they are not obliged to comment regularly.

It will be interesting to take all that I’ve learned teaching online this past summer back into the classroom this fall.

Mona and I spent a great weekend in Ottawa so that I could do some research and preparation for my TAP class’ trip to Ottawa in October. We visited many of the most important sites and I snapped a bunch of digital photos that I’ll be using as part of a chaptered podcast about our upcoming class trip.

One of the things we saw at the Canadian Parliament that I’d never noticed before was one of the details at the peak of the archway surrounding the main entrance. Now we know that the beaver is Canada’s national animal. I’m sure many of us might think that’s a bit lame. A few weeks back, I saw a beaver scuttling across the road near our house here in Burlington. Not an animal that inspires admiration at first sight. Industrious? Sure. Clever? Maybe. Noble and awe-inspiring? Ummmmm… no.

Seeing this beaver at the Parliament, though, I realized that maybe whoever thought of using the beaver as our national symbol was thinking of it as a more fierce animal than we might think about today. Just look at this guy! Does he not make you tremble with fear?!

I am happy to announce officially that in my TAP class this fall UVM will be lending all of the students 20g color iPods. This is the result of a $5000 Instructional Incentive Grant I received earlier this spring from the Center for Teaching and Learning, which is enough for iPods and iTalk microphones for 15 students. The College of Arts and Sciences recently came through with additional funding for me that will allow me to outfit all 21 students with iPods and iTalks.

This project will allow us to test this technology as a teaching tool that, hopefully, we will be able to deploy on a wider scale in coming years for courses that would most benefit from access to audio materials. I will be using the iPods in my TAP class on Canadian culture. In this class, which I’ve entitled The Great White North (a reference, of course, to cultural icons Bob and Doug McKenzie), we’ll be looking at Canadian literature, film, comedy, art, and media. Texts we will be using the iPods to access will include a wide variety of Canadian music, readings or lectures from important writers and thinkers, and excerpts from Canadian radio with a particular focus on comedy programs like The Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour, the Vinyl Cafe, and the Vestibules. Because in Vermont we also get CBC television, my students will also be watching a lot of Canadian TV!

Of equal importance will be what the students do with the iPods themselves. As TAP classes are intended to be writing-intensive, first-year seminars, I will be having students write and record audio essays that we will make available on the web as podcasts. One of their assignments will see them podcasting about their experiences visiting Ottawa for the first time. We’ll be headed there on a field trip late in October and it will be interesting to hear their reactions.

I’ll soon be launching a separate blog for the course, that will have the syllabus, student comments and assignments, and a discussion area, all of which are open to the general public. I’ll be using this space on my own blog to reflect as regularly as possible on how this great experiment is going. It’s taken a lot of time and energy to get all the technology lined up and to figure out how we will be using it to distribute content. Now, as the start of classes is only two weeks away, I am suddenly scrambling to pull together the content itself. It’s going to be wild ride!

If you’re looking for some help with blogging at UVM, I’m happy to help. In fact, later this week I’ll be putting in a few hours at the Center for Teaching and Learning offices in the Bailey/Howe Library to do exactly that.

Here are the times at which I will be there and the slots that are still open:

Wed. 8/17

1:30 with Charlie Rathbone

2:30 with Tim Fox

3:30 with Yuichi Motai

Thurs. 8/18

1:30 with Michele Patenaude

2:30 with Dennis Mahoney

3:30 OPEN SLOT

If these times don’t work, or I’m all booked up by the time you check into this, just let me know and I’ll see if we can set up some more slots for Friday or during the following week.

Paul Krugman has a great editorial in yesterday’s NY Times about Toyota’s decision to pass over some southern states and put one of its new plants in Ontario. One of the big lures, as Krugman points out and as many Americans are slowly starting to realize, is Canada’s healthcare system, which “saves auto manufacturers large sums in benefit payments compared with their costs in the United States.”

Krugman rightly points out that in the global marketplace the US is becoming less and less competitive because of its lack of a nationally funded healthcare system. The overwhelming cost generated by the private insurance system here costs employers billions of dollars while Canadian employers are, relatively speaking, barely affected by the cost of providing basic health insurance to its employees. The danger to US workers, as Krugman indicates, cannot be exaggerated:

You might be tempted to say that Canadian taxpayers are, in effect, subsidizing Toyota’s move by paying for health coverage. But that’s not right, even aside from the fact that Canada’s health care system has far lower costs per person than the American system, with its huge administrative expenses. In fact, U.S. taxpayers, not Canadians, will be hurt by the northward movement of auto jobs.

To see why, bear in mind that in the long run decisions like Toyota’s probably won’t affect the overall number of jobs in either the United States or Canada. But the result of international competition will be to give Canada more jobs in industries like autos, which pay health benefits to their U.S. workers, and fewer jobs in industries that don’t provide those benefits. In the U.S. the effect will be just the reverse: fewer jobs with benefits, more jobs without.

I really don’t know what it will take for business and people down here to get the message that a public health care system would save everyone tons of money and make the US much more competitive. I really like how Krugman ends his editorial, too:

Funny, isn’t it? Pundits tell us that the welfare state is doomed by globalization, that programs like national health insurance have become unsustainable. But Canada’s universal health insurance system is handling international competition just fine. It’s our own system, which penalizes companies that treat their workers well, that’s in trouble.

As this tends to be something people ask me about a lot, let me just say this: I am really happy to be in Vermont. One of the hardest things about living here, though, is to see how people who don’t have access to affordable health care suffer. For that matter the amount that my employer and I put in to coverage for my family is, compared to Canadian standards, astounding. People here only see that as acceptable because they don’t have a tangible alternative to compare it to in the way that one does having lived in a completely different system. If people here really understood how the health care system in Canada works, they would be calling for the same thing here. Maybe the fear of losing good jobs to other countries will help push things in the right direction.

Thanks to Steve Cavrak for alerting me to this at this bright and early hour.

Now back to my regularly scheduled last-minute writing session for my online course! 🙂

It only gets better!

From Rick Mercer’s Blog: A Nation with too much free time on its hands.

It must be a cold day in hell when Ralph Klein announces that the Alberta government has decided against fighting the new federal same-sex marriage legislation, but that’s exactly what happened yesterday.

While that is great news, what nearly got me blogging about this announcement yesterday was the photo that accompanied the story in the Globe and Mail. It looks as if this news scared the bejeezus out of poor Ralph. Trust Rick Mercer and the readers of his fabulous blog to not let that picture go by without having some fun with it. Take a look at some fabulous new pictures of King Ralph.

Rick Mercer’s Monday Report on CBC will be required viewing for my fall Canadian Culture seminar.

Here’s something that makes me proud to be Canadian today. The Canadian parliament has finally passed long-promised legislation which legalizes same-sex marriage in Canada. This is a great day in Canadian history.

While the report from the Globe and Mail doesn’t show that other Paul Martin acting like much of a visionary — “A right is a right and that is what this vote tonight is all about” — I especially liked what rookie Member of Parliament Michael Savage had to say: “(We are) a nation of equality. A nation of strength. A nation of compassion. A nation that believes we’re stronger together than we are apart. And a nation where we celebrate equality. [. . .] We will send a statement to the world that in Canada gays and lesbians will not be considered second-class citizens.”

It’s about time, or so says this particular Paul Martin….

What’s going to be interesting is how the reaction to this plays out here in the US.

(I should also point out that the bill now has to be passed by the Senate and signed by the Governor General, but it’s looking very likely that this will go ahead by sometime later in July)

I haven’t posted much on the blog of late, but here’s something worth reading if you have a moment. It’s the commencement speech given by Steve Jobs at Stanford last weekend.

Probably the best news of the day for me came via Todd Maffin’s i love radio.org blog. The CBC announced today that they have launched a Radio 3 podcast focusing solely on Canadian independent music.

As Todd points out:

The CBC Radio 3 podcast is special for three big reasons:

• To our knowledge, this is the first all music-based podcast from a public broadcaster — and certainly the first all-Canadian offering.
• It’s chock full of 100% ‘podsafe’ music
• This podcast comes from a special unit at the CBC called Radio 3. Our mission: to showcase new and emerging Canadian music and culture. We’ve got a website at www.newmusiccanada.com, that houses close to 30,000 tracks from more than 6,000 Canadian artists on it (!), and this podcast is full of the best of New Music Canada’s best.

As he also mentions, Canada is receiving attention around the world as one of the current hotspots of great new independent music, so I can imagine this podcast will be of interest to many people outside of Canada as well. CBC Radio 3 remains one of Canada’s best kept secrets and I hope this will help to get it some more attention. They’ve been doing amazing work for a long time now.

Aside from my affection for CBC and Radio 3, I was also excited about this podcast for another important reason: listening to it will become a weekly assignment for my fall seminar on Canadian culture. Todd blogged about this course earlier in the week, and I’m just finally getting around to announcing it here.

One of the exciting things about this course is that I’ve been awarded a grant that will allow me to outfit all 21 students with iPods (well, I have enough cash for iPods for 15 students but am trying to drum up a few more bucks). The iPods will be loaded with Canadian music, course materials, and will be outfitted with Griffin’s iTalk microphones which will allow the students to create their own podcasts about Canada. Their main podcasting assignment will be to document their class fieldtrip to Ottawa partway through the semester.

I’ll be blogging more in the coming weeks about podcasting and the development of my course.