The Christmas "Wars"

Most every year my sister-in-law asks me to offer a "toast" at the family Christmas dinner.  This means that I get to negotiate the ground between the brother-in-law who is offended by people who say "Happy Holidays" and the brother-in-law who can't stand it when Christians try "to ram their religion down his throat."  So I try to emphasize how Christmas helps us to remember and honor family members past and present who have sustained us and that we are also honoring the birth of Jesus, the Lamb of God.  Most of all, I try to keep it short.

For me, personally, Christmas has become a profoundly important event, the moment in history when God intervened to restructure radically our relation to the Divine.  But I realize that this is not how most Americans view Christmas or, for that matter, Christianity.

Jesus called upon people to repent and to follow him into a life of radical discipleship and service to God and humanity.  Of course earnest Christians can and will disagree over what that should look 2,000 years later.  But in a world and nation filled with self-preoccupation, injustice, violence, poverty, and ennui, I'll be so bold as to suggest that badgering the beleaguered clerks at Target to say "Merry Christmas" rather than "Happy Holidays" is not high on God's "to do" list.

Overlooked Heroes

As the director/go-fer of Yo Ghana! I spend a fair bit of time visiting schools here in Oregon, including some schools for children who have not succeeded in conventional classrooms.  In fact, just a few days ago I was at such a school.

I am almost always deeply impressed by the dedication of the staff who work at these schools.  These are teachers and administrators who work with very challenging students who often have poor impulse control and other behavior issues.  Yet I'm continually struck by how deeply the staff care for their students--and even a visitor can see that the students apprehend and appreciate this.

These jobs aren't glamorous or high paying.  The people in them are seldom featured in the media.  Few of us notice their work.  But in working with and cherishing students who have experienced a lot of failure and often trauma, they serve and--if we care to notice--inspire us all.

Yo Ghana Near the End of 2013

We have a lot of good news at the end of 2013!  The I.R.S. just approved our application to be a 501(c)(3) public charity.  A set of very dedicated teachers in Ghana and the Pacific Northwest cheerfully and smoothly manage our letter exchanges.  Our brand new board features people raised in diverse places (Ghana, England, Haiti, the U.S., and Canada) and possessed of varied skills (community development, project evaluation, law, accounting, education, Black Studies, economics, computing, engineering).  And we have provided scholarship assistance to students (such as those shown below) whose families cannot afford to send them to school, funds to finish a school’s first library, and electronic equipment such as computers and printers.

            Most of all, we bring Ghanaians and Americans together.  That’s what the students from Morle Junior High School are so excited about in the photograph to the right.  It’s not an athletic contest they are celebrating; they just learned that Yo Ghana! paired them with a school in Springfield, Oregon!

Those schools became our seventh set of partners, and several more are on the way.  Students write about who or what inspires them, family members they miss, their favorite foods, and what goes on outside their classroom door.   They also encourage each other.  As one Ghanaian recently wrote her new American friend: “All that I have to say is that life is not easy at all, but with hard work and dedication things shall be well in the future.”

Please consider a financial gift at the end of the year to help our own “hard work and dedication.”  We are run completely by volunteers both in the U.S. and Ghana, and your donation is tax deductible.  Our website has a Paypal button:            http://www.yoghana.org/   Or contact David del Mar (delmard@pdx.edu)

Passionate, Overworked Teachers

Mr. Essan Weah and I presented a few days ago at the World Council of Oregon "Teach Africa Youth Forum" on Yo Ghana! and came away impressed and inspired by the level of dedication of the students and teachers.

Near the end of our session, one teacher asked us what guidance we had for people trying to select from one of the many opportunities she had been exposed to for a deeper engagement with Africa.  My only piece of advice was to choose a project that she felt passionate about, as she was no doubt already overwhelmed with responsibilities.

I think that's what impresses me most about the teachers Yo Ghana! works with in the U.S. and Ghana.  None of them have the time to take on the extra work of overseeing the writing and sending and receiving of letters.  But they do so anyway.

Teachers in both nations are confronted with a growing list of responsibilities growing numbers of children who need extra attention.  They are also expected to raise everyone's scores on standardized tests that have become the judge and jury as to whether or not their school are deemed good or bad.

How fortunate we all are, then, that so many of these overworked and underpaid professionals are not only willing but eager to search out opportunities for their students to learn about the broader world in ways that will not show up in a test score.

Soccer as a Countercultural Sport

My friend Paul Semonin, long a critic of mainstream American culture, remarked that soccer is a subversive sport.  It has certainly seemed so to me over the past week.

First our Old Nicks team was euphoric over a 2-0 loss.  Why?  Well, we had just two subs and managed to play the best team in the league even for long stretches.  We had a lot of possession and worked hard and smart the whole game.  Also, to be truthful, we are usually pretty happy regardless of the score because it is a joy to play together with people you respect and enjoy.

Then, a day later came the second leg of the Western Conference finals between Portland and Salt Lake City, in Portland.  Portland had lost the first leg, 4-2, and also lost this game, 1-0, so lost 5-2 on aggregate.  But as the end of the game neared and the Salt Lake City players began a long celebration, most of the 20,000+ Portland fans--rather than walking out in disgust or booing-- serenaded the team with a song: "I Can't Help Falling In Love with You."  Click here for a short video.

In soccer, as in life, "winning" can be both difficult to achieve and subjective.  Likewise, "losses" can be transformed by friendship, loyalty, and passion.

501(c)(3) Status Awarded--But Let's Stay Grounded

I am delighted to share the news that the IRS has approved Yo Ghana! as a 501(c)(3) organization!  This has two major implications: 1) Those who donate to us can deduct that donation from their taxes; 2) We have much more legitimacy than before.

That said, several of our board members have already been warning me not to lose sight of the importance of accounting for every penny of what is donated to us, even as those pennies start becoming a bit easier to come by.  We shall continue to be an all-volunteer organization, with our funds going to facilitate both connections between schools in Ghana and the Pacific Northwest and to strengthen the educational prospects of Ghanaian students.

It is always tempting to try to solve problems by "throwing money" at them, and this is especially so in Africa, where needs can seem overwhelming and local resources meager.  But more and more informed people are arguing that the best development incorporates local ideas, labor, materials, and money.  Hence Yo Ghana! will seldom, if ever, simply fund 100% of a given project or scholarship.  We will expect our local partners--schools as well as students--to continue to blend our resources with their own.  In fact many Ghanaians tell me that the best thing Yo Ghana! can accomplish in a given school or community is to encourage local initiative--which is often the exact opposite of what a big wad of cash from an outside NGO does.

And, by the way, if you are interested in contributing to an organization that is trying to help in a way that respects local initiative, there is a Paypal button on our website: http://www.yoghana.org/.  I promise that we'll do our best to make sure that your gift is used not only with good intentions, but with good results.  Not only that, but your gift is--and I have the pleasure of at last being able to say this with certitude--tax deductible.

From Neighborhood Teammates to High School Rivals

For me, as a parent, watching Jesuit play Central Catholic tomorrow in the 6A boys' soccer championship game will be bittersweet, at best.

 

From second through eighth grade my son, Peter, and my wife and I were part of a shifting group of families who almost all lived within a couple of miles of each other in NE Portland, whose sons shared an unusual level of interest and skill in soccer.  As parents, we not only enjoyed watching our sons play, but we also became good friends.  There was always some turnover, but not much until they started playing classic soccer in grade five--essentially a year-round commitment.  Julius, our fastest player, decided to run track year round and has been very successful.  Sam, a fabulous midfielder and distributor, went off to become a star quarterback, just as I told his mother he would.  And some didn't leave by choice.  Classic soccer is like a family in which you get booted out if your son reaches puberty late or has a bad day during try-outs or there aren't enough players for two teams.  But other neighborhood players joined, and we had quite a cohesive and strong classic team by the time the boys were in eight grade, one that--in part because of the close relationships--was occasionally able to knock off the big suburban clubs that drew most of their players from across the Portland Metro Area rather than from two or three elementary schools.  Northeast United, our club, stopped at high school, but from a young age many of us had talked about our sons playing soccer together as young men in high school and club.  It hasn't turned out that way.  Most of the players and their parents headed to the big suburban clubs that we used to so relish beating, and the great majority of the young men divvied themselves up between three high schools: Grant, Jesuit, and Central Catholic.  Now juniors, there are three each on the Jesuit and Central Catholic varsity teams.  A few days ago, former NEU teammates also faced off when Jesuit played Grant.  Seeing each other at such events has become a bit like seeing someone you promised to go to college with, start a business with, or keep in touch with--but didn't.  There's a lot of history and warmth there; but time has intervened.

Does this much bother the young men?  I doubt it.  They are resilient, probably even take a little extra enjoyment in playing people they know well, especially when they win.

But it's hard on us parents.  While watching Henry lay the ball off to his midfielders I'll of course be hoping he makes a mistake while also remembering what an unselfish player he was even five, seven, nine years ago.  Mostly, I'll be thinking of how quickly everything changes.

The Humiliations and Gifts of Foster Parenting

One of the most important events in my life occurred more than a quarter century ago, when for three very lively months I was a single foster parent.  Which is to say that I quickly moved from being a laid-back, easy-going guy to a man constantly confronted by his short comings.  If you want to believe you are a saint, never, ever, ever, ever become a foster parent.

It soon became clear that my seemingly sweet foster son had been through hell (extensive physical, sexual, and emotional abuse), that he was full of anger and hurt, and that before he would trust me he would test and test and test me.  Parenting strategies learned from books and working in a day care were quickly exhausted, and I was revealed to myself and to my boy to have much less empathy, love, and patience than I had thought.

I decided that all I had going for me was a determination to stick with my foster son until I was carried out of our little apartment in a pine box--or a straight jacket.  And there was something wonderfully liberating about that, about realizing that all I really had to offer my traumatized boy was a promise to never give up on him.  And that seemed to be enough--in no small part because he chose to love and trust me, notwithstanding the many betrayals and cruelties that adults had already inflicted on him, and my own many frailties.

We seldom approach perfection.  There are many days when mere competence eludes us.  But we can just about always choose to hang in there.

I soon lost touch with my son of three months as he moved on to what I hoped would be a permanent family.  I like to think that I offered him a little, albeit far from flawless, bridge from a life of trauma to one that has been full of healing and accomplishment.  I know that he offered a great deal to me.

Josh Swiller's Peace Corps Memoir and Dissolving Identities

I've long been impressed by The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa, by Josh Swiller, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zambia in the 1990s.  The book featured in my piece on the Peace Corps in Africa published two years ago in African Identities, and I recently re-read the book as part of my work in writing what I hope will some day be a book on American views of Africa since 1945.

Swiller found what he was looking for in Africa, "that place past deafness," as he put it in a 2007 interview with Peace Corps Writers.  The Zambian villagers didn't think much about his deafness, and Swiller soon felt integrated into village life in a way that he never had been back "home."

But, like most PCVs, he also found a lot that he hadn't bargained for.  He gradually became alienated from most of the village, and the project that he had become most devoted to, building a new clinic, turned to ashes.

Zambia, then, radically reworked Swiller's self identity.  It not only showed him that being deaf was less central to that identity than he had supposed, but also that his assumptions about individual agency and power were something of a mirage, that he had much less control over his life--and certainly over the lives of others--than he had imagined.

2007 Interview with Swiller

The Meaning of History and Life, Concluded

I have argued that we face unusual, even unique, challenges as human being and historians in the modern western world inasmuch as we both live in fragmented societies that lack cultural coherence and have unprecedented opportunities to understand and shape our world.

To take advantage of those opportunities, though, to make our way through life's complexities, past and present, requires two broad sets of characteristics or practices.

First, we must resist closure.  All of our histories are open to revision.  There is no such thing as a definitive history of any important event or process, just as there is no definitive understanding of what it means to be a good spouse or parent or citizen.  As we learn more, we usually get closer to the truth.  But the truth remains elusive.

To accept this uncomfortable fact of the human condition requires steering between the temptations of certitude and cynicism.  There are many people who seem sure of everything.  There are many of us who seem not to care about anything.  Our job is care and to act even as our understandings and beliefs remain open to revision.  That is not easy, and it is not how our ancestors lived.  But it is where we find ourselves.

The Meaning of History and Life, Part VII

Thus far I've largely focused on the many disadvantages that those of us in  the modern western world labor under.  Since we no longer rely directly on the support of others, we often struggle with loneliness and isolation.  Most of us are not born into a coherent culture.  We are deeply divided over such questions as abortion and universal health care, political questions that often relate to broader religious differences.  Unlike the great majority of other people in the history of the world, we are required to work out our own answers to fundamental religious, philosophical, and practical questions.

That said, we have two major advantages in that work.

First, we have unprecedented freedom and access to information.  The great majority of us  have the time and opportunity to learn a great deal about a wide range of topics.  To be sure, the great majority of us are more likely to watch TV and play video games or otherwise divert ourselves than to, say, learn Arabic or conduct a serious comparative study of Hinduism and Christianity.  But it needn't be so.

Second, we have a tremendous amount of freedom to shape our world.  For a few dollars a day we can provide a mosquito net a day for a family.  We can write letters to our elected officials.  Or start a political-action committee.  Or a non profit.  Again, very few of us make these choices.  But a few people do, and some of them have improved or at least shaped the lives of hundreds or thousands or even millions of people.  For most people in the history of the world, such an influence has been utterly inconceivable. 

The Meaning of History and Life, Part VI

So, then, we find ourselves in a bit of bind, adrift with our meager intellects in a sea of uncertainty, a fog of confusion, a culture and society deeply fragmented and divided over why we are here, let along how to live and act.  This is the classic existentialist dilemma.

History can help.  What we must do, after all, is to live many lives, to draw from other people's experiences enough knowledge and wisdom to be able to construct--individually and collectively--a workable world view.  What better way to understand what humans are--and are not--capable of than to study what they have done?  To study history is to study the human condition.  What we are left with is not exactly a road map to or dictionary of life.  But certain patterns emerge, certain broad truths become manifest.  Experience, travel, study all have the capacity to get us outside our narrow perspectives, to season and broaden our outlooks and sensibilities.

This intellectual process is demanding, to be sure.  But the alternative, to live thoughtlessly, pushed and pulled by the whimsies of mass culture, is hardly viable.  The way out of the pain, as they say, is through the pain.

The Meaning of History and Life, Part V

If historical study reveals that life in the modern western offers unprecedented comfort, it also suggests that we labor under peculiar burdens.

Chief among the historically unusual challenges modern Americans face is a lack of consensus on what people are for.  People in most times and places are born with a pretty detailed instruction book attached to their wrists on what is expected of them, how they should act in various circumstances, what their society would define as a life well lived.  The modern U.S. lacks that sort of shared understanding.  In fact we divide sharply on all sorts of important issues, from whom we should marry to how to treat children to when force is appropriate--and of course whether or not God exists and, if so, what he (or she) requires of us.

These many divides over key moral and religious questions not only lead to bitter divisions in our national and even familial arenas, they also create a great deal of stress within individuals.  Evolution has not really fitted us out to create a workable philosophy of life.  The societies we are born into are supposed to handle that.  But we find ourselves confronted with many competing world views--as well as the pervasive consumer-oriented ethos touted in countless advertisements that admonish us to "have a good time, all the time," as a band member of Spinal Tap put it some years ago.

Most of us bumble along as best we can, trying to "have a good one," as the saying goes.  But this leaves us feeling a bit like Homer Simpson, beleaguered and confused by why we are here and by what life throws at us, especially when we encounter--as all of us must--suffering.

With great freedom comes great confusion.

The Meaning of History and Life, Part IV

So far I have dwelled on how history reveals the limitations of historians (and other human beings).  Now I am going to turn to some broad generalizations about what history reveals about our current state, particularly those of us living comfortable lives in the western world.

Historical study and a bit of travel have underscored to me how peculiar the modern western world has become.  The scale of our affluence is staggering.  We live much longer and more comfortably than have any other people in the history of the world.  We also have tremendous freedom, are free to abandon our parents, spouses, even children--let along friends and neighbors.  Though we still rely closely on others for food, clothing, and a multitude of other requirements, that reliance has been obscured and monetized.  Most adults can meet the basic obligations of life pretty easily (food, clothing, shelter), and without having to rely on direct collaboration with others.  This means that we can, if we choose, dispense with family and friends altogether.  Most of us are free--again, if we choose to arrange our lives that way--to spend hours every day playing video games, volunteering at soup kitchens, watching porn, mastering a foreign language, collecting salt-and-pepper shakers, lobbying our elected officials, or training for tri-athalons.

From an historical point of view, this degree of freedom is bizarre.

The Meaning of History and Life, Part III

Historians are constrained not merely by their humanity, by their finite intellectual and moral capacities.  They are also limited by the nature of the evidence with which they work.

We commonly think of history as a noun, as everything that has happened.  But we are able to retrieve only a tiny, tiny fragment of what has happened.  Until recently, few human lives generated any evidence to speak of.  Even famous people, such as queens and generals, recorded just a small proportion of their thoughts and actions.  Those recordings, moreover, are always at least a bit biased, at least one step removed from what actually happened, are never quite the same thing as the thought or the action itself.  Most letters, for example, are written not to capture precisely what one thought or did, but to create a certain (usually favorable) impression.  And, as the saying goes, the winners get to write the histories, for the winners are most apt to have the opportunity to write, preserve, and disseminate their versions of given events or processes.

This is why books that set out to offer you the voice and perspective of the "subaltern," of poor people who lived on the margin, are often so deadly dull, a succession of statistics or abstruse theories--or tell us instead about what elites thought about the poor suckers they oppressed.  It is not that the authors would not like to quote the diaries and letters of enslaved Chinookan Indian women from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  Rather, such documents simply don't exist.  The descriptions we do have of such women are both very rare and biased, coming from people who had neither much respect for of knowledge of them.

Pity the poor historian!  Not only is her vision beclouded, her hearing impaired; the fragmentary, dim figures and sounds she perceives are more often than not vaporous or false.

The Meaning of History and Life, Part II

Not only are we limited intellectually and morally.  We are also bound socially and by mortality.

All of us can count on decaying and dying.  This is, to be sure, a truism.  But it's one that modern western society does its best to disguise.  But there is no cheating death.  And death is a process.  Each day one is closer to it, and as middle age approaches, life goes South in many respects--literally as well as figuratively.  Our body, brains, and mental faculties decay.  Everything that seemed to distinguish us, to set us apart, gradually dissolves.  Aging humbles us.

We are also bound socially.  Foucault remarked years ago that eighteenth-century Europe essentially invented the individual.  And it may have been wrong.  Evolution, after all, is more of a social than an individual achievement.  Humanity learned how to speak, travel long distances, organize itself into family, kin, and other social groupings through shared rather than individual endeavors.  Again, modern life obscures this fact, tempts us to think that we are the captains of our own ship, autonomous actors, heroes in our own movie.  But our food, clothing, homes, ideas, and peak experiences are the work of many hands.  We are socially imbedded in all sorts of networks, seen and unseen.

In sum, history suggests not simply that the each human being is limited in her/his capacity.  Her/his very existence as an individual, discrete entity may be something of a modern misunderstanding.

Next week I'll examine the limitations of historical evidence and, therefore, inquiry.

The Meaning of History and Life, Part I

I decided on this decidedly pretentious title for a introductory video I'm putting together for my fully online courses.  On the blog, it will come in several installments.  I hope to make it available on Youtube in a couple of weeks.  Despite the ironic sounding language, I'm sincere.  I'll cover four broad topics that I think the study of history bears on: our limitations; the peculiar nature of modern life; the unusual dilemma in which we find ourselves; and, of course, a solution--of sorts.

I'd like to begin with my first two of four points of what a study of history (or just plan common sense, which is closely related to historical study, I think) reveals about our limitations:
1) That our knowledge and understanding is always limited.  Brilliant people disagree on all sorts of fundamental questions, and life is far too complicated for any of us to fully grasp.  I love the perspective of the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who asserted that there are indeed ultimate truths, rights and wrongs (a belief that is not very popular among contemporary intellectuals), but that no human being will ever know what all of them are, will ever get everything right.  We can therefore rest assured that some of our most cherished beliefs are right and some are wrong.  We just don't know which ones.
2) We are also limited in our moral character.  Some of us have persecuted evils of epic proportions, are responsible for the deaths of thousands, even millions of people.  Most of the rest of us have learned to tolerate or ignore such evils, including ones that we could easily do something about.  Thousands of children perished today from the consequences of hunger or common diseases that could easily be cured.  People from so-called third-world countries come to the U.S. and are startled to find homeless and hungry people living in this land of plenty.  Furthermore, if we are honest, I think that the great majority will admit that we exercise all sorts of petty acts of cruelty in our every-day lives, from wishing misfortune on people we envy or our intimidated by to failing to offer some small act of kindness to a neighbor, family member, friend, or stranger.

Next week: Two more human limitations.

No One or Everyone Gets a Trophy

A recent story on BBC Africa related the interesting fact that out of 25,000 applicants for entrance to the University of Liberia, not one passed.  Though this is obviously an aberration, it is not unusual for students at all levels in West Africa to be graded very harshly.  This makes the dedication that many of their students possess all the more remarkable.  The system is often perceived as unfair and opaque, but people still work very hard to try to succeed in it.

This is of course a great contrast to the U.S., where many of us feel or even believe that everyone should finish first at everything.  Yet in spite of incredible educational advantages and opportunities, most students seem to view school not as a priceless opportunity, but as a necessary evil if not a conspiracy by adults to rob youth of their freedom.

These two sets of generalizations are exaggerations, but they illustrate major differences--and strengths--between the two educational systems.  West Africa would benefit from a more humane approach to education, and the U.S. would benefit from higher standards and expectations.

Kudos for "The Butler"

Sensitive to criticism that a guy should take part of a day off once in awhile, I went with my leisure-loving life partner to see "The Butler" today--and was quite impressed.

The film has been criticized for being a bit too formulaic or artificial or tidy, a sort of black counterpart to "Forrest Gump" that goes out of its way to cover every iconic moment of modern American history.

I nevertheless liked the film for two big and interrelated reasons:

1) It's very rare to see a big movie that's not about white males.  All of the major characters in this film are black.  So is the director.

2) "The Butler" takes black life seriously.  It shows blatant and subtle aspects of racism that most white people don't much think about, and it also shows why black people have responded to that racism in such diverse ways.

Race continues to be the "elephant in the American living room."  Most of us like to act as if it doesn't matter.  "The Butler" reminds us of why race and racism have long resided at the heart of American life.

Course Design for Middle-Aged Professors

As I have mentioned before, college teaching is an unusual profession in that most of us have received very little training in how to teach.  Graduate school focuses largely on doing original research (writing a dissertation that will hopefully become a book) and attaining a certain level of knowledge in several historical fields.  Of course that knowledge can be passed on once one starts to teach.  But very few of us are trained in the art of teaching itself, how that knowledge is to be conveyed.  Who has not suffered through a lecture from a brilliant professor who knew a given subject backwards and forwards but who did not have a clue--or any evident interest in--of how to convey that knowledge.  Or perhaps you are fascinated by the lectures or readings and then surprised to learn that the final exam bears little relation to what you studied.

Given the above, it has been exciting and humbling to learn more about course design, how to think about teaching from a student's point of view.  The key principal here is alignment.  Start by deciding what skills you want your students to learn, then align the rest of the course behind those skills so that every aspect of the course contributes to acquiring those skills.  Those skills may need to be learned gradually.  If, for example, your ultimate goal is for students to write a sophisticated essay that is supported by diverse evidence and is sensitive to counter-arguments, then break that daunting task into smaller components.  Make sure that everyone knows how to write a clear thesis statement.  Then work on supporting that thesis with evidence.  Then move on to incorporating or addressing counter arguments.

Most professors have very sophisticated research plans.  Few of us approach teaching with the same thoughtfulness.

Why Writing, Like the Rest of Life, Is So Difficult

I have a lot less energy as a researcher and writer than I once had, and my memory isn't as keen as it used to be.  But I have learned how to work much more efficiently than when I felt compelled to write down every shred of evidence I came across on a given topic.

Part of what I have learned is that it is very difficult to tell what a book is about until one has started to write it.  Dr. Robert Wiebe had told me this back in 1982 when I was a graduate student at Northwestern: you don't really know if you have a sound argument until you write it down and try to support it. The evidence often turns out to be different from what one expected, and the process of reading one's notes and trying to make sense of them often opens up new and very unexpected insights.

I was recently reminded of this discomfiting fact while working on a chapter of what I hope will be a book on the history of how Americans  have viewed Africa.  The chapter is on the decade after World War II, and most of the Hollywood movies and articles in popular magazines depicted white (usually male) quests in wild Africa.  But a few white writers approached Africa with much more empathy and respect for its humans, and all of these writers were women.  Louise Stinetorf, for example, wrote quite a popular novel, The White Witch Doctor, which became a Hollywood movie that largely obscured her African-centric message.  But in going over my very rough first draft, I noticed this gendered pattern in how Africa was interpreted and found that she had written other books (another adult novel and some children's stories) about Africa that had the same message.  So Stinetorf--and several other women like her--are going to take up many more pages in my manuscript than I had anticipated, and they will change the trajectory of its argument.

Writing is difficult, like the rest of our lives.  We would like to be always sure of where we are going and how we are getting there.  But our maps are smudged and faulty; we must continually stop and reconsider our route and our purpose.  But if we can live with these uncertainties we are rewarded with delicious surprises.

Reflections on 20 Years of Marital Bliss

OK, the title is meant to be a bit ironic.  Wendy and I have weathered many battles and a few crises over the past two decades.  But our marriage has taught me a lot about the importance of respect when dealing with others.

Wendy and I are very different from each other.  I am more drawn to abstract causes, she is more concrete.  This sounds innocuous enough.  But it poses some daunting challenges for how we spend our time and money--a couple of issues that tear many marriages apart.

What keeps us together, I think, is that we respect both each other and each others' priorities--even as we pursue somewhat different ones in our individual lives.  And I think the fact that someone we respect so deeply (Wendy is the most amazing person I've ever met) disagrees with us on some important issues reminds us that our individual points of view are very likely to be flawed and incomplete.

Of course this insight can be exported from our marriage to the many other relationships that we are part of.  Each of us encounters and works with people with diverse beliefs and priorities, points of view that can be viewed as threats to our own--or as opportunities to become both kinder and wiser.

Congratulations to Rashid Hafisu!

One of Yo Ghana's most dedicated teachers is working his way toward becoming Ghana's Teacher of the Year!

I first met Mr. Hafisu a year and a half ago, where he teaches: Accra Girls Senior High School in Accra.  Although he was expecting a guest who would speak to a group of students about French, he and the students quickly adjusted to the fact that I was instead looking for students interested in exchanging letters with students in the U.S.  Mr. Hafisu has been a wonderful host on my several visits to his fine school and has done an exemplary job publicizing and supervising our letter exchanges.

Mr. Hafisu has already won the award for his district and is now being considered on the regional level.  (Ghana has ten regions, and of course Greater Accra is the most densely populated.)  He writes that: "The criteria includes the impact of the teacher on the community as well as other human voluntary services."  Ghanaian teachers work very long hours for modest pay, and Mr. Hafisu is one of the most inspiring and dedicated ones I have met.

Yo Ghana! at Africafest at PSU on Saturday Afternoon

Yo Ghana! will be at Africafest on the South Park Blocks at PSU on Saturday, July 20.  We'll be: talking to people about our projects; recruiting schools, teachers, and groups of students interesting in writing letters to and raising some money for schools in Ghana; selling t-shirts, bags, cards, and stickers to support that work.

Africafest will of course offer much more than vendors: good food, music, and company.  Portland has a large and growing community of people from Africa.  Occasions like Africafest offer them the opportunity to gather and the rest of us a chance to sample a bit of the continent's rich culture and warm friendship.

A special thank you goes to Dr. Kofi Agorsah of PSU, who among his many other duties finds time to help organize this festival.  Dr. Agorsah is also a Yo Ghana! board member and is working to link us to a school in the Volta Region, in the town where he spent so much of his young life.

Yo Ghana! at Delta Park July 12-14

We'll be at the PCU soccer tournament this week-end, starting bright and early Friday, selling t-shirts, posters, bags, and cards to support Purity Preparatory Schools first-ever library.  Some of their students are shown below, modeling the shirts created by Elizabeth Fosler Jones, co-founder of Yo Ghana! and the President of the group of students supporting the school.

Elizabeth also led the charge last night at Burgerville, where we made about $450 for the school.  Thanks to all of you who came out!  And if you happen to be in the vicinity of Delta Park in the next three days, please stop in--or check out our website's Paypal button:  http://yoghana.org.  I used to be uneasy asking people for money, but contrasting the extreme comfort in which most of in North America live with the lives of hard-working students who don't have regular access to books has helped me to overcome such reservations. . . .

Yo Ghana! at Burgerville on Thursday, July 11, 6-9 p.m.

The Burgerville on MLK near the Portland Convention Center has graciously offered to donate 10% of their receipts for next Thursday evening to Yo Ghana!

We'll be there from 6:00 to 9:00, serving good food, accepting donations, and talking about Yo Ghana's project to help Purity Preparatory School of Ghana build their first library.  Please stop by for high-quality fast food and a great cause.

Here's a photo of the school, taken during my visit of last September:

Yo Ghana! Applies for 501(c)3 Status

Thanks to our good friends at Thompson and Bogran, Yo Ghana! will be formally applying for 501(c)3 status in a few days.  This status would allow donors to deduct their donations on their taxes, as would of course give us more legitimacy.

Most everyone who has gone through the process has told me not to try.  The application is long and complicated, the application fee is high, and the wait period can be very long.  I was very fortunate to have two experienced corporate attorneys guiding me at every step.  Even so, it has been, as they say, "a hassle."  And it may remain a hassle--for many months or even years to come.

In fact the entire process of bringing schools in Ghana and the Pacific Northwest together has been a hassle, a long series of e-mails unanswered, wire transfers that haven't gone through, partnerships that haven't panned out, hours of standing by a table trying to sell the program to teachers who are already too busy.

Of course there are also many success stories.  But all of them have entailed difficulties and frustrations.  In this respect running a little non-profit resembles being a parent, spouse, or friend--or writing a book, learning a new language, or mastering a new skill.


Like another Americans, I don't like hassles.  I would like nothing but peak experiences: students excited about their cross-cultural friendships, projects buzzing along on schedule, letters flowing back and forth without a hitch, students from struggling families getting access to better educations.  All of this happens.  But only after a lot of hassles.

San Fernando Mission and the Invisible Indians

I have a relationship with historic sites and museums that resembles how my friend, Diane, approaches blind dates: I ought to know better.

But after several days of driving to and around L.A., catering to the desires of sixteen-year-old males (which, to be fair, sometimes intersect with my own), I dropped them at Six Flags and headed off for the San Fernando Mission.

I liked the church.  It was old and ornate and full of character.  I stood there and imagined all the hopes and sorrows it had soaked up over the past two centuries.

Having taught western and Native American history several times, I knew that the California missions were the site of great piety and exploitation and suffering.  I didn't expect the site to resolve those paradoxes, but I hoped to explore and experience them more deeply.

But I learned very little about the broader context of the mission or the thousands of Indians who had lived there, the texture of their lives and faith.  I got a pretty good idea of how the elite of the mission lived.  The gift shop had several picture books on the missions but no scholarly ones.  There were lots of memorials to European saints and the usual flotsam of generic tourist items.  On the grounds itself, tucked away in the corner of a large garden. there was a small memorial for the thousands of Indians who had been buried at the mission.  This was an incidental theme, however, as the garden was dedicated to the memory and the grave of Bob Hope.

Unlike most academics--and liberals--I have a lot of respect for the Roman Catholic Church.  But what a waste and what a shame: "Jesus wept."

Surviving my First Fully Online Course

After teaching some fully online courses since 2000, I took my first one recently, an intensive, two-week course on how to evaluate online courses.  And it wasn't pretty.

The course had recently been revised, and I found the site confusing.  I was really busy when the course started, so I put off the first quiz for a couple of days, then didn't read the instructions carefully so flunked it.  That got my attention, and I buckled down and did very well in the rest of the course, but it took much more time than it was supposed to.  The instructor didn't send feedback as promptly as I would have liked, but it was very detailed and precise.  She reassured me that I could do the work, and she didn't make the work easier.

I learned a great deal in the course about how to evaluate and improve online courses--my own and those of others.  Just as important, I was impressed by how frustrating it is to feel confused in an online course.  I was reminded that fear can be a great motivator; it has been many, many years since I have felt fear as a student--though I still have nightmares about being in college and forgetting that I have a final.

So I plan on subjecting myself to more experiences like this.  Professors are seldom challenged.  Once we get our Ph.D. and our job, we typically "settle in" and get comfortable with being in control and treated with a great deal of deference.  It felt good to be pushed to master a new set of materials, to overcome some adversity.  And I am now much more motivated to make sure that my courses are clear and logical.

Taking My First Online Course--and Suffering

My empathy level for my students--especially those taking fully online courses--has gone up and up and up over the past nine days.

I've learned how awful it feels when: 1) You flunk a quiz because the instructions were not very clear--or maybe I didn't read them closely?  2)  You are promised feedback within a certain time--and it doesn't come.  3) The amount of time you must spend on the class is about twice as long as you were told it would be.  4) The class is listed as asynchronous--meaning that you can complete it at your convenience within a certain time frame--but if you don't haul ass on the first day, you'll be struggling to keep up the rest of the term.  5)  You put hours and hours into an assignment, read the directions over several times, take great pains to get your submission just right, then find out that you didn't meet the requirements, and you're still not sure what you did wrong.  6)  You flunk an assignment because you did not use the exact terminology or particular words that the instructor demands.

I only hope that some of the many students who have felt the same way about my fully online courses somehow sense my pain and suffering and get some small measure of satisfaction from it.  Seems only right.

African Realities Versus Stereotypes

I just returned from the Association of African Student's Africa Night at PSU, and I was again struck by the strong contrast between the reality and the stereotypes of African culture.

I met wonderfully warm and caring and engaged people from Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Ethiopia.  Yet most Americans associate these places simply with pain and suffering.  We seldom realize that there are many positive developments in these countries, and that most of the people in them and from them are very hard working and gracious.  There was an an old saying in the Peace Corps that went something like this:  Volunteers in Latin America came back radical;  volunteers in Asia came back meditating; volunteers in Africa came back laughing.  Of course Africans, like the continent itself, are very diverse.  But the great majority of Africans I have had the pleasure of knowing are delightful--exactly the opposite of the Hollywood stereotype of AIDS, starving babies, and wild-eyed young men with machine guns.

It made me realize what is at the heart of our Yo Ghana! project: giving students in the U.S. and Ghana the opportunity to learn about each other directly.

Africa to America: Your Life Is Not Your Own

Last Saturday I had the great pleasure of spending a day at the Teach Africa conference run by the World Affairs Council of Oregon talking with people about Yo Ghana! and meeting with scores of people from and interested about Africa.  I made some good contacts.  More importantly, I was reminded of what Yo Ghana! (and the rest of life) is all about.

What I kept hearing from the various presenters and people I spoke with was this consistent message: your life is not your own.  It's a profoundly un-American sentiment.  We are constantly told that we are "captains of our own ship," that we owe it to ourselves to pursue happiness as fully and relentlessly as we can.  That might bring us into contact with others.  Or it might not.  And it is fine and dandy for us to rid ourselves of friends, spouses, even children we find irritating, boring, or overly demanding.  Our only sacred duty is to self-actualize.

Most of the rest of the world doesn't think this way.  Certainly most Africans do not.  The Ghanaian pupils who write letters to students here in Oregon often comment, with pride, on how they help their teachers and family members.  The first thing that Stephanie does when she gets home from school in Akropong is to ask her family what they need.  Then she provides it.  Studying is very, very important--but not as important as one's social duties.

The scores of happy people at the Teach Africa conference revealed why caring for and about others is so important: it's what we are designed for.  Service is not simply about helping others; it's also the path to a deeper and more permeable self.

Fickle Fame

Part of what makes "Searching for Sugar Man" so intriguing is its description of fame.

In the modern U.S., it seems as if everyone wants to be famous, wants to be set apart and recognized as being special.  Part of what made us enjoy the Harry Potter series so much was the notion that each of us could be "the Special One," endowed with special powers, destined for great things.

Rodriguez, discovered in Detroit in the early 1970s, actually is endowed with special powers, had this rare capacity to write lyrics and music that cut to the core of the human condition.  But only a few people saw it--until his music found its way to South Africa.  How interesting that his music resonated in a place so foreign to him, even as it was ignored where he lived.

It's also interesting that Rodriguez seems almost indifferent to fame when it finally arrives.  He's delighted to play before tens of thousands of adoring fans.  But he's also just interested in meeting people, connecting with them.  And when he returns to Detroit, he gives most of the money away, lives in the same modest home.  His friends have a hard time believing that he's a star in South Africa, wonder if the photographs of him in front of huge audiences have been "photoshopped."

I would think that the great majority of us, if we became famous, would expect and then demand to be treated differently from everyone else, would gradually lose the best parts of who we had been, would demand to be hoisted onto fame's shoulders and carried far away from those who had known and loved us.

See This Film!

"Searching for Sugar Man" is the most inspiring film I've ever seen.

Imagine a man who is a musical genius, beloved by record producers and hard-core music fans--but he just doesn't catch on.  It's the early 1970s.  He's a Latino singing and playing sort of folksy protest music.  He doesn't try hard to please, sometimes plays with his back to the audience.  So as his chance at fame slips away, he goes about his work as a laborer, takes some philosophy courses, raises some children.  End of story, right?

But a world away, this man, known simply Rodriguez, has become a sensation.  His music is inspiring the heart of the young, white, anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, for it speaks freedom and equality to the establishment's narrow and racist Calvinism.  Rodriguez, one later recalls, was "the sound track to our lives."

In this corner of Africa, Rodriguez is bigger than Elvis or the Beatles.  But South Africa is a very insular and isolated country, so his fans know next to nothing about him.  He is widely believed to be dead.  Details vary, but most think he committed suicide on stage.  In the U.S., Rodriguez is known in his poor Detroit neighborhood as kind, progressive, eccentric, humble, and hard working.  You'd never think of him as some sort of rock star.  What will happen when these two worlds--the aging Detroit musician whose career fizzled long ago and his hundreds of thousands of South African fans--collide?

New York Times link

Victorian Stereotypes of Women and Men are Alive and Well

A recent article in The Atlantic discusses how Republican and Democratic operatives alike are looking hard for women candidates.  This isn't just because the gender gap played such a large role in Democrats' success in the last election.  Researchers find that voters are likely to view women candidates as more trustworthy than male ones, as being more likely to challenge the "boys' club" of insider Washington politics, to represent faithfully the interests of ordinary people back home.

But a sidebar to the same article notes that gender stereotypes usually don't work in women's favor.  People who view resumes that are identical except for the names of the applicants (Heidi versus Howard, for example) are much more likely to rate the male candidate as more qualified, whether the job is as a software engineer, researcher, or violist.  The differences are not small.  One study found that female musicians were 50 percent more likely to audition successfully if listeners did not know their gender, if they only heard the music and did not see it being played.

In other words, we tend to assume that women are nicer but less intelligent and talented than men.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/a-womans-edge/309284

Why Women Do Better In School and Still Make Less than Men Do

There are of course many answers to the question of why females have been outperforming men all the way through their educational careers, straight through to graduate or law school, then end up making less money.  But I've just learned of a new one.

It's long been clear that men benefit from a variety of sexist traditions at work, including: an over-valuation of occupations dominated by men; assumptions that men are supporting families and therefore should earn more than women; and work cultures that are simply more critical of and hostile to women.  At the top of the occupational ladder, highly educated women are more likely than their male peers to work part time or not at all because they are more likely to want to spend time with their children--and to recognize that their highly ambitious husbands are not likely to cut back much on their 80-hour work weeks to share that responsibility.

But  a recent Atlantic review of Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In, passes along some gender differences that I was not aware of, namely that once high-performing women leave college they are, on average, much less assertive than the male counterparts they have just finished pulverising in the classroom.  Men are much more likely to demand raises and to shoot for higher positions.  In sum, male employees tend to be more confident than female ones--though they would seem to have less reason to be.  And this confidence is often rewarded. 

Can Everyone Be a Winner? Reflections on Track and Field

My high school son, Peter, recently started competing in track and field after many years of playing soccer, and, as a former cross country and track guy, it's brought back a lot of pleasant memories.  And it's humbling to realize that after less than four weeks of training and three meets, he's already within 5 seconds of my best 800 meter time, which I achieved after logging about 6,000 miles of running over three years.

But watching track meets has also reminded me of the many strengths of timed and measured competitions.  In soccer, everyone is part of a team that wins, loses, or draws.  No matter how well one plays, the outcome essentially determines whether or not you were successful.  As the players age, they learn that needling your opponent or trying to injure him or her when the referees are not looking is often part of the game.  But the players generally behave with much more civility than their parents do.  Some years ago Oregon's head of refereeing told a group of coaches that he had a simple suggestion for improving the quality of soccer matches: ban the parents.

In track, on the other hand, one can finish last but still celebrate a "PR" (personal record).  There is a team score, but it's hard to keep track of.  The girls and the boys compete separately, but at the same meet, and everyone seems to cheer for everyone--parents and athletes.

Not only does everyone get to play, but politics (how much clout one's parents have) don't much enter into the pecking order.  "Stopwatch don't lie" means that the results clearly show who deserves to be on varsity in a given event.

Best of all, there are no controversies over playing time; the slower you are, the longer you are out there.

Video of Anani Memorial International School

My very talented and generous life partner, Wendy, made this short clip from video and photographs I collected while at this amazing school last September.
http://www.friendsofanani.org/

A Shrinking Professoriate?

Today's New York Times brings more bad news for professors: an automated grading system that evidently does a pretty good job of grading short answers--and does so almost instantaneously rather than taking a week or more.  The hope is that such technology will free faculty up for other duties.  Of course those "other duties" will often entail looking for a new job.  With undergraduate tuition continuing its ever-upward spiral, cutting labor costs is, understandably, a primary goal for administrators.  If technology can deliver outstanding online lectures and reliable assessment tools, then won't we simply need fewer professors?

The article notes that there are many skeptics--but also that most of the skeptics come from elite universities at which undergraduates receive a lot of individual care.  It seems to me that for the rest of us survival depends on providing students with the sort of attention that is too often missing at many universities.  If we believe that we can't be replaced by software programs and canned lectures, the onus is on us (no pun intended) to prove it.  The millions of students confronting murky employment possibilities and massive debts are soon going to be voting with their feet--and mouses.

Link to the story

National Geographic, Somalia, and Rwanda

I noticed a very interesting and troubling trend while continuing my research in National Geographic this week. 

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s the magazine was treating Sub-Saharan African more respectfully than it had in the 1970s.  The photographs of black Africans were less exotic.  More black Africans were quoted in the articles and depicted doing modern activities: going to school, working as professionals, protecting national parks.  Even articles on big game and the need to preserve them also mentioned the need to balance the needs of humans and animals, recognized that humans were part of the ecosystem.  There was even a piece by Paul Theroux, the old Peace Corps Volunteer and arch anti-romantic, returning to Malawi to find the populace generally capable and optimistic.

Then the magazine's coverage of African people (as opposed to wildlife) plunged around 1992-93.  This was evidently due to two events.  First, the killing of several American marines in Somalia; second, the genocide in Rwanda.  The magazine had offered a pretty upbeat piece on the arrival of American soldiers in Somalia.  It offered no such treatment of the bloody aftermath.  The bloodshed in Rwanda also took it by surprise.  It published two pieces in the aftermath, both of which focused on the fate of the mountain gorillas made famous by Dian Fossey rather than the stunning loss of human life.  The following month the magazine published a cover article on Jane Goodall, the famous British researcher of African chimpanzees.

I think that these choices and silences speak very loudly to Americans' unease with African tragedies.  The easy way out is to ignore them--or to focus on the continent's charismatic mega-fauna. 

Western Photography and Black Africa

As part of my research for what I hope will some day be a book entitled something like: Africa Existential: American Quests on the "Dark Continent" I've been slogging my way through back issues of National Geographic.  This means examining scores of photographs of "tribal" scarification, pointy-breasted maidens, and vividly painted warriors.  National Geographic has long been drawn to the exotic, and through the 1970s it was a rare article on Africa that did not feature wildly dressed natives, stunning wildlife, or both.  Black Africans evidently spent most of their time dancing and holding ceremonies.

It was with no small amount of wonder and gratitude, then, that yesterday I ran across a 1979 article written by a woman from Uganda and her white Canadian fiance--the first I have found with a black African author.  She had left Uganda to go to college in North America shortly after Idi Amin came to power, met her future husband, and they determined to live in Uganda and run a medical clinic.  The article's opening photograph features the dark-skinned woman woman smiling comfortably at the camera while kneeling at her aunts' feet.  Of the hundreds of photographs I have viewed of black Africans since 1945 in the magazine's glossy pages, this was the first in which I felt that the subject was being presented as fully human.  It was as if a massive, if unspoken, barrier separating "us" and "them" had been breached.  A later photograph conveyed a similar message.  Here the young woman was wearing a more exotic costume and walking away from the camera with her white husband.  They were holding hands.

I have found two major sources of photographs that dwelt on the humanity rather than the (perceived) peculiarity of black Africans long before 1979: those by black African photographers and those by the black American photographers of Ebony.

Why Bother?

A very thoughtful friend asked me the other day why I was devoting so much time to connecting schools in the Pacific Northwest and Ghana.  And it's also occurred to me that the work is often difficult.  The electricity went out in Ghana for most of a month.  People get sick.  The mails are slow--in the U.S. and Ghana.  Teachers are already and always too busy--in the U.S. and Ghana.

But I believe that getting a letter from a place where people live very differently--in part because it's a place where electricity is always available or often disappears for a few minutes or weeks--makes us wise.  Most Americans live under the assumption and expectation that life is easy and comfortable.  For most people, even in today's world, it's not.  Learning about and becoming friends with people who assume that life is difficult is very unsettling and, I think, very necessary.  It helps us to get ready for the inevitable challenges and losses that even the most prosperous of us will face.  And it raises a very frightening and exhilarating question: what are we to do with our embarrassment of riches, with our anomalous access to money, knowledge, and influence?

Also, getting a letter from a friend from far away is just plain fun.  There's also that.

Teaching and Vulnerability

Professors--especially white men--can get away with a lot.  Students tends to assume that we know what we are talking about and that we are very busy.  Despite the ever-rising costs of college, most hesitate to "bother" us.  It's one of the reasons that being a professor can be a pretty soft job.  We don't spend nearly as much time teaching as high school teachers do, and we are treated with a great deal of deference.

So it has been with a certain amount of fear and trembling that over the past few years I've instituted a system of ongoing feedback in my classes.  In the fully online classes, I ask the students what they like and don't like.  In my face-to-face classes, I have a forum in which students can state what they found most interesting and confusing about the last class meeting.

Although I don't always agree with what students say about my courses, I find most of their complaints or suggestions very helpful.  Just as important, it reminds me that teaching, like the rest of life, is a work in progress, that it's always imperfect, in need of improvement, and that I must rely on others if I want to do my best.

Last night after my large history of the U.S. family course a student remarked that my teaching had improved dramatically during the term.  She wondered if this was all part of a master plan, a sort of metaphor I was acting out to show everyone how to improve.  Of course the answer to why I had improved as a teacher was much simpler than that: she and others had pointed out that the first two class meetings were too diffuse and confusing, so I adjusted.  But I wouldn't have discovered that without help.  In fact I had thought that the first two class meetings had been pretty good.  There are many times when everything that comes out of my mouth strikes me as brilliant; I can only maintain that fantasy if I don't invite honest feedback.

Our capacity for excellence is directly correlated to our willingness to seek and listen to criticism.

Yo Ghana! Files for 501(c)3 Status

Thanks to the generosity and expertise of the law firm of Thompson and Bogran, Yo Ghana! has officially filed for 501(c)3 status.  Taking this step required overcoming two (internal) sets of reservations.
1) Acquiring and maintaining 501(c)3 status, which enables contributors to deduct their contributions on their tax returns, is tedious and time consuming;
2) The primary purpose of Yo Ghana! is for students to learn from each other by sharing letters.  Encouraging American students to raise money for schools in Ghana might interfere with that.

Over time, compelling rejoinders to these concerns occurred to me.  For the first: Small is beautiful.  Many people are motivated to give to a cause because they know someone who is intimately involved with it.  Small nonprofits also tend (at least this one will!) to spend little money on staff or overhead.  It's all about volunteering so that as much money as possible goes to the people who need it.  For the second: Yes, it is challenging to mix global friendships and financial support.  In fact students are encouraged to give not to individuals, but to the larger school.  The school leadership decides how the money can best be spent for the school as a whole.  With Purity School, for example, we are funding a library for everyone, not giving away laptops to a few.  The library will draw more students and, therefore, increase the school's income, which means better pay for staff.  Furthermore, part of what American students learn from people in poorer countries is that our world contains extreme inequality, inequality that often leads to suffering.  Those of us who have way more than we need have a lot of power to change that.

Check out our new website: http://www.yoghana.org/

Why Professors (Often) Teach Poorly: Part III

Over the past two weeks I have argued that professors often teach poorly because of how our training and early professional development is structured.  Both graduate students and assistant professors are acutely aware that getting and retaining a professorship depends largely on the quantity and quality of their publications.  So a decade or more will pass between the time that a student enters graduate school until she or he has the job security to focus on teaching.

But most associate and full professors continue to put more emphasis on publication than teaching.  This is partly a matter of habit.  Our recently tenured professor has been trained to value publishing.  Raises and further promotions--or jobs at more prestigious institutions--usually hinge on distinction as a researcher.  Publishing a prestigious book or in a top journal is a sure way to win the notice and respect of one's peers--inside and outside one's department and university.

And what about teaching?  One of my professors at the University of Oregon back in the early 1980s referred to it as "making mud pies."  Most professors wouldn't go that far, and I knew some very, very dedicated teachers at the University of Oregon.  But being a good--let alone great--teacher is optional at far too many universities.  We are trained to push the boundaries of research at the edges of our fields, not to get beginning or intermediate students excited about material we consider basic.

I have found that  most people outside academia are surprised to learn that most professors focus on research rather than teaching.  Given the daunting challenges that all of us face, the growing interconnectedness and complexity of the world, we need to find a way to get professors more focused on educating their students rather than researching and writing for each other.

Why Professors (Often) Teach Poorly: Part II

Last week we examined the socialization of professors, how the experience of graduate school draws them more and more deeply into isolated, highly specialized research while neglecting to teach them much about teaching and then releases them into an extremely competitive job market in which publications--or the possibility of publications--is the easiest way to stand out from the other hundreds of applicants.  So our beginning professor is heavily pre-disposed toward researching and writing books and articles that will reach a small, highly specialized, audience.

Teaching classes to large numbers of undergraduates will not necessarily change that.  Many professors in fact start out as instructors, are hired to teach a class or classes for a term or a year.  Again, getting published is one's best bet at gaining a more stable and remunerative job.  Professors who do gain such jobs cannot rest on their laurels, however, for the tenure clock starts to click as soon as their appointment begins.

Publications usually loom large in tenure and promotion.  The first time I was reviewed for promotion, many years ago at a university far, far away, a great deal of attention was paid to my publications, both by the exterior referees and the committee members.  When it came time to review my teaching evaluations, the day before the committee's report was due, it turned out that they had been lost.  This was not a major concern, for my publications were numerous and well regarded.  A friend of mine who failed to get tenure at an elite university despite a book with a top publisher and a fabulous reputation as a teacher was told by a full professor: "It's good to have good teaching recommendations.  But not too good."

Now, not all professors at all colleges feel that way.  Some colleges focus more on teaching than on research.  But there is much truth in the slogan "publish or perish."  Every hour devoted to constructing a lecture or grading papers is, from that perspective, time wasted.

Why Professors (Often) Teach Poorly: Part I

Graduate School

Most professors decided on their occupations as undergraduates.  They get excited about learning, maybe get to know some of their professors well and think that teaching college looks like a good job--the life of the mind, working with motivated students, maybe writing books.  So far, so good.

Then graduate school comes along, and the world shrinks.  The amount of time spent in class declines.  The amount of time spent around people not like you declines.  In fact, the amount of time spent around other humans of any sort declines.  The initiate is being socialized, and she or he is also competing.  Our aspiring professor is likely going to a very strong graduate school.  Getting scholarships or other aid is often competitive, and so is getting strong recommendations.

Graduate students have three ways to distinguish themselves from the pack: 1) Stand out in seminars by offering brilliant insights in your oral and written work; 2) Ace your field exams in your major and minor field; 3) Write a brilliant dissertation and get an article or two published.  The third point is by far the most important.  All of this requires a great deal of time on one's own, reading and researching and writing.

One may grade some papers, lead some discussion sessons, maybe teach some classes.  But theses tasks are a means to an end, a way to fund one's "real work": the original scholarship that will enable you to both graduate and to have a decent chance of getting a job after you graduate.

The graduate student will also notice that her or his mentors, the professors at these prestigious universities, do not teach very often and may not teach very well.  But the great majority of them care deeply about their research, and they derive a great deal of status and pleasure from their publications.  One may even tell you, as the head of graduate studies once told us, not to let teaching get in the way of scholarship.  Indeed, few graduate students (outside, I suppose, of schools of education) take classes on teaching.  There just isn't time for that sort of thing.

Violence in the News

The recent outbreak of tragic shootings raises two questions for me: 1) Why our nation's long and intense relationship to violence? 2) What sort of violence draws our attention?  Right now, I'll focus on the second.

The intense news coverage of the shootings in the Portland Area mall and the Connecticut school reminded me of the summer of 1996, when I set out to publicize my brand new (and first) book: What Trouble I Have Seen: A History of Violence against Wives.  Though you wouldn't know it from the title, the book focused on Oregon, and it was published by Harvard University Press.  So I figured that Oregon newspapers and radio stations would be lining up to interview me.  Ha!  What a fool I was.  It turned out that violence against wives was not news unless some sort of sensational case has just occurred.  As the thesis of my book was that violence against wives was a deeply ingrained part of everyday life and culture, my book was not newsworthy.  And I got the distinct impression that having a big-name press attached to the book simply underscored its irrelevance.

But finally the day arrived when my umpteenth call to Portland's leading news radio station bore fruit.  An estranged husband had just kidnapped at gunpoint their child.  This was news.  Call back at noon, and my book would get its five minutes of fame.  I called back, of course, but I was given about 15 seconds.  An airliner had just crashed, killing scores of people, and a bloody airline crash trumped a kidnapping any day.

I relate this story not to suggest that mass killings or airline crashes are not tragic or worthy of our concern, but rather to point out that they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.  If we are interested in understanding--and of course preventing--more typical forms of violence and death, we must of course consider less publicized acts: accidental shootings and fatal automobile crashes, for example.

My Entry in the International Guide to Student Achievement

Routledge just published a thick book entitled The International Guide to Student Achievement, and I'm one of three authors to offer a piece on an a Sub-Saharan African country.

My short article on Ghana gets across some basic factual information.  Ghana spends about one third of its budget and 10% of its Gross National Product on education.  More than 80% of children of primary-school age are in school, and  about one half of those of junior-secondary-school (grades 7-9) are.

Other findings are more depressing.  Ghanaian students have not done well, on average, at tests examining their proficiency, and researchers find that most teachers still emphasize rote learning.  A study that examined classrooms in Ghana, Tunisia, Morocco, and Brazil found that teachers were teaching just 39% of the time set aside for that purpose in Ghana compared to an average of  71% of the time in the other three countries.  Teacher absenteeism is particularly acute at public schools, and children who attend public school have been much less likely to do well on the exams which largely determine which high schools or universities they will attend--if any.  Ghanaian parents in fact undertake great sacrifices to send their children to private schools.  But access to a good education correlates very closely with wealth.

I met many highly dedicated teachers in Ghana, at both private and public schools.  But several told me that committing themselves to a teaching career is a bit like taking a vow of poverty.  Ghana's economy is growing very quickly.  Hopefully higher salaries for teachers will soon follow.

Professors Will Be Downsized

This is not a good time to be getting a doctoral degree in the humanities or the social sciences, at least if you expect to become a professor.

The California State University system--the largest in the world--is the latest to move toward putting some of its courses online.  The cost is just $150 per course for remedial math courses.  Preliminary studies indicate that students taking such courses learn more than do students in (the much more expensive) face-to-face classes.

Of course people like me might argue that it is relatively easy to automate a system to teach and grade elementary math, quite another to capture the nuances of historical experience.  But how many history instructors could compete against, say, a class on the Civil War that featured lectures from Eric Foner of Columbia University and online discussions and papers graded by earnest and capable teaching assistants located in, say, India at one quarter the cost of a similar course at a state university?

Cheap, effective online courses offered by prestigious universities are likely to be a great boon for debt-burdened students and a disaster for professors.  Professors can minimize the shock by: teaching so well that we cannot be easily replaced; adjusting to the new online reality by incorporating the best aspects of it into our teaching.

Sell Your House

I heard an inspiring story on NPR late Thursday about a fourteen-year-old girl who was telling her mother that their family should do something about global inequality.  The somewhat exasperated mother finally said: "What should we do, sell our house and give the money away?"  "Great idea," responded the daughter.  So they sold their huge home, replaced it with one half as large, and spent a year researching what to do with the money they had saved.  They ended up donating several hundred thousand dollars to the Hunger Project (they owned a really big house in one of Atlanta's most exclusive neighborhoods).

Of course not all of us have an extremely expensive house that we can sell off.  And, by definition, most Americans are not in the top 1-5% of the nation's wealthy.  But the great majority of us could spend much less money on ourselves than we do and still live very, very comfortable lives--and in the process greatly enrich the lives of hundreds if not thousands of others, people born into less fortunate circumstances.

http://www.thepowerofhalf.com/

Article in Africa Today

After nearly three years of researching, writing, rewriting, and rewriting some more, my article comparing how Ghanaian intellectuals and its social studies textbooks approach its past has just appeared in Africa Today (volume 59, Winter 2012), which is available online at PSU and other university libraries.

The article examines why Ghanaian textbooks are relatively positive about British colonialism, certainly when compared to historical accounts intended for adults, such as the novels of Ayi Kwei Armah and the film Heritage Africa.  My argument is that the textbooks express the government's emphasis on unity (they depict colonialism as bringing Ghana together) and progress (colonialism is praised for bringing Christianity, education, railroads, and other technologies).  In sum, "pragmatism trumps romanticism."

I don't think that this emphasis on colonialism's advantages can be simply interpreted or criticized as an example of internalized colonialism, in part because Ghana's "entire education system, not just its textbooks, serves the ends of unity, conformity, orderly progress, and other conservative themes," impulses that were present in Ghana before the British imposed colonialism and that still resonate for many Ghanaians today.