Adult nonfiction
Today I'm reviewing two enlightening books on higher education within a slightly different context: a tribute to a truly excellent educator who is fortunately still very much alive.
It was nearly five years ago that I walked into Elizabeth Allan's classroom, not knowing what to expect. The class was seminar, an overview of higher education's history, missions, structure, and issues. Elizabeth told us about the different divisions of student services and their functions. She asked if any of us had questions.
Having worked my on campus student job over the summer I felt that there was something decidedly missing. "What about dining?" I asked. "You can have the most amazing curriculum and the the most brilliant professors in the world but if you aren't prepared to feed them--and feed them well--you won't draw the students."
Sitting at the front of the room, I couldn't see my classmates. But I heard giggles and gasps.
Elizabeth said "Jules is right" and explained why not recognizing the importance of dining is a mistake.
That was my we're not in Kansas any more moment. It was when I realized that my educational experience was going to be nothing like any other in my past. There was important content to learn, but not in a listen, read, and regurgitate way. We were to actively engage with the material and apply critical thinking skills. Our out of the classroom experiences were sources of knowledge and insight--even those as humble as wiping down tables and serving lunches.
I looked forward to that class every week. My favorite part was all the times we were split into groups, given tasks such as creatively portraying a concept, and called on to share with the class. Barring Alzheimers for the rest of my life I'll remember Elizabeth gliding around the room calling on us and being delighted with what we had to say.
When the class ended I was thirsty to learn more. It was as if Elizabeth had given me a solid foundation and I wanted to keep building on it. In the years since I've tracked down and read as many new books 📚 on higher education issues I can get my hands on. Instilling this kind of motivation in a student is the mark of an excellent educator.
"More than a half century after the baby booms and economic booms and the atomic booms of the 1950s and '60s, we are still clinging to the fast-melting permafrost of a now no-longer-new idea that college is the American Dream. So much so that we are refusing to admit that somewhere in the middle of a long and stormy postindustrial night, the dream has morphed into a nightmare. That a ladder greased with a snake oil called meritocracy has changed from joyous kids climbing higher than their parents to a panicked desperation to hang onto the slippery middle rungs."
I know that I don't have to tell you that the last time America was as split into two warring factions as it is today Lincoln was running the country. January 6 was only the iceberg tip of a desperate struggle between the forces of blue and red, with pundits on both sides trying to sell their narratives of what the fuck is going on and if/how we can solve the problem. In After The Ivory Tower Falls Will Bunch asserts that we'd be very remiss if we didn't include higher education in understanding the problem and devising the solution.
Bunch gives readers a guided tour of the recent history of American higher education beginning with the mid 1940s--"When College In America Almost Became A Public Good. We know and Bunch acknowledges that this was as much cautionary tale as shining example. Blacks were for the most part unable to access GI Bill benefits which is one of the reasons for the unconscionable and growing racial wealth gap. But it was a time when the concept of who could benefit from college was greatly expanded.
It started off as a pragmatic issue. Following World War I the government did a really poor job of facilitating the transition of its veterans into civilian life. Washington did not want a repeat of that. Even legislators who normally swung ultra conservative voted in favor of it.
However the influx of students from more heterogeneous backgrounds was greeted with skepticism and dismay, even by those who ran the colleges and universities that would benefit from their tuition money.
"A lot of America didn't think that the farm boys and sons of coal miners and immigrant laborers who'd fought on Iwo Jima or in the Battle of the Bulge were really college material, to be shamefully honest. This was especially true of the men who ran the country's best-known and longest-standing universities, who saw the G.I. Bill not as an opportunity, but as a threat to their hegemony. These college gatekeepers clung to their beliefs that it wasn't because of inherited wealth and elite privilege that they only educated the top sliver of Americans, but rather because the other 95 percent didn't have the brain power, or 'merit,' to cut it."
The soldiers turned students more than proved their drive and ability. Steps were being made to change higher education from a perk for the children of the elites to a public good. Many leaders were troubled by the fallout from the bombs dropped on Japan to end the war and the possibility that a nuclear war could be a real planet ender.
"With the war's end, America's growing network of colleges and universities were suddenly viewed by Washington as an underutilized resource that--through both basic and applied science and research--could be both the nation's secret weapon in winning the cold war as well as a driver of peacetime prosperity."
Sadly the drive to make higher education a public good was reversed, leading to the politically acrimonious shitsttorm we're in today. Bunch gives readers a decade by decade analysis of all that went wrong. Fortunately he has ideas on how to remediate the situation. His book is a really good read for anyone who wants a better grasp of the plight of 21st century higher education and how it got this messed up.
I am, though bothered by the ageism Bunch brings to the topic. Comparing Americans to a pizza, he cuts us into four slices based on age and the chance (or lack thereof) to attend college. He embraces every negative age stereotype making the rounds. When stereotypes are common enough descriptions reinforce as well as portray the status quo.
In line with this, I question his request for free education for only eighteen to twenty-eight-year-olds. I can think of many reasons people need college access in later years. Between the shipping of decent paying jobs to other countries and the automation that is rapidly replacing not only blue collar, but white collar and entry-level professional jobs, not to mention divorces and spousal deaths, a lot of people who never thought they'd need higher education...
...suddenly do.
"At the same moment, not far away, an equal number of Alabama National Guardsmen assembled, preparing to invade Tuskegee Institute. Governor Lurleen Wallace gave them orders, just days after the assasassassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In Memphis, Tennessee, to free the prestigious trustees. The troops gathered outside the campus gates in the early hours of April 7, with bayonets attached to their rifles. Tuskagee's dean of students approached, hoping to avoid a bloodbath. One soldier heard his concerns, but told him that they would enter the campus anyway. 'Well, you know,' the guardsman explained, 'you all at Tuskagee have been too uppity for a long time.'"
Wow! You have National Guardsmen with drawn bayonets about to rush into a campus to free a group of trustees from students who feel like holding them captive is a final desperate option to achieve much needed change. If that historic incident isn't drama, I don't know what would qualify. And it's part of a largely hidden history. The story of student activism in higher education centers on primarily white institutions. People who were born way after Kent State know what went down there. Historically Black colleges and universities have been pretty much left out of this narrative...
...until the 2022 publication of Brian Jones' The Tuskegee Student Uprising. Jones sets this incident within two contexts: the history of the institution and the student rebellions of the 1960s. With a variety of documents from the past and interviews of survivors he skillfully combines past and present sources.
Jones dilineates several sources of tension. The first is in regard to its founder's legacy which is hotly debated today. Tuskagee was modeled after what was then the Hampton Normal (which then meant teacher training) and Industrial Institute. This was at a time when any challenge to racial imbalance and white supremecy would lead to severe consequences. The loss of the Civil War and Reconstruction had left a lot of powerful whites mad as wet hornets.
"Fusing the curricurriculum with a political stance, [Booker T.] Washington followed directly in his mentor's footsteps and also surpassed him. Black people needed moral education and manual education, Washington taught, not the broad liberal arts education they sought. 'No race can prosper,' he said. 'till it learns that there was as much dignity in plowing a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.'"
While many people lionized Washington, subsequent waves of students felt that Tuskagee curricullum kept them at the bottom. Desiring an education that would prepare them for professions, they increasingly saw their professors, curriculum, and resources as inadequate. They also rebelled against a strict moral code which they felt was geared toward conformity and subservience.
A second lies in the conflicting responsibilities of Tuskegee faculty and administration. On one hand they had a mandate to nurture the talents of the students including those that could lead to rebellion. On the other they had to not anger not only the whites who controlled financial allocations and made up the majority of the trustees, but the Black middle class professionals who didn't want to see any kind of boat rocking. That must have been a fine line to walk.
Although The Tuskegee Student Uprising is the product of a university press and would make a worthwhile read for higher education professionals I can also see it appealing to a much wider audience.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone
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