Random Music Suggestions

Now that my Spring Break is here, I am getting a chance to re-acquaint myself with my Ipod and music. I highly recommend the following "new" tunes (or at least they are relatively new to me):

Blitz the Ambassador "Ghetto Plantation"
Blitz the Ambassador "Dying to Live"
K'naan "Waving Flag"
Sollilaquists of Sound "Property and Malt Liquor"
Sollilaquists of Sound "Mark It Place"
Kid Cudi "Up, Up Away"
Immortal Technique "Mood Music"
Sene & Blue "Press Pause"
Aceyalone & RJD2 "All for You"
Viktor Vaughn (aka MF Doom) "Saliva"
Boycott Blues "Got Beef"
Aesop Rock "Daylight"
Atmosphere "Yesterday"
Q-Tip "Won't Trade"
"Moving at the Speed of Day"


Two bonus recommendations are "Hurt Me Soul" by Lupe Fiasco and "Dynamite" by the Roots. I have long loved these tracks and I am surprised that they have not gotten more attention.

And what is up with Mos Def's "Quiet Dog" on that commercial?

The Creativity of Deejays

In re-reading Joseph Schloss's Making Beats for one of my classes, I was reminded just how much creativity, knowledge, and work goes into deejaying and producing hip-hop music. Anyone who thinks either hip-hop is mere copying or that it isn't music must engage with Schloss's book. He tries to show just how much goes into producing hip-hop. Another element of his argument is that many critics of music assume that live performance is the exemplar of what music is. While that may have been true, it may not be so true anymore. Schloss, I think, demonstrates that the studio is much more significant to the music that folks listen to today. I even got the impression that Schloss hints that technology has affected blues, jazz, classical and even folk than most people realize.

I also think that Schloss's interviews with a pretty wide range of producers and deejays is really great model of what hip-hop or cultural studies scholarship should be like. Check out his book!

A Bad Book

The American Book Review has asked a number of pretty famous professors to identify a "bad book" (See http://americanbookreview.org/PDF/Top40BadBooks.pdf for their list). A number of the writers made it clear that a "bad book" has to be good enough to be worthy of getting angry with. In other words, they mean books that frustrate the reader because the writer could have clearly had the ability to do better and the topic warranted a better treatment.

My two nominees would be Percival Everett and James Kincaid's A History of the African American People [Proposed] by Strom Thurmond and Philip Roth's A Plot Against America. Both of these books began with fantastic, rich premises, but the authors seemed to get bored in the middle of the books. Because I love Everett and Roth, these were very disappointing to me.

The Place of the Lecture in Higher Education

A recent article in the Chronicle (http://chronicle.com/article/More-Professors-Could-Share/64521/#comments) discusses whether professors or institutions should record lectures and make them available online.

Hidden in the conversation about who owns it, public access, and how students might use and benefit from such recordings is a key assumption about the nature of teaching and learning. While it is unstated, it appears that the article and the debate assume that higher education is primarily about knowledge transfer, ostensibly from faculty to student. Based on this assumption, the lecture is one method for facilitating that transfer. Further relying on this assumption, the next question is whether we need universities at all if students can simply "listen" to the lectures on their own.

Despite the framing of the issue around new technology, this is really part of an ongoing debate about the nature learning. Are teachers engaged in a form of banking in which we deposit knowledge into brains that will be accessed at a later date or are we more like fitness coaches who are helping people develop "healthy habits of the mind"?

As I get older, I am realizing that I view teaching through the lens of creating good intellectual habits. I just don't have much faith in the banking theory of education, especially as knowledge expands and changes. Moreover, the internet is really good at reminding us of names, dates, and definitions. On the other hand, the internet is not so good at helping us figure out how to evaluate information or apply that information to discrete contexts. This is where you need to talk to an actual human being and engage in a conversation. This is where "hands on" and experiential learning kick in. This is also why students need classes to jumpstart the processes of reflection and analysis. I guess this is why I don't really lecture, but try to hold discussions with my classes. As my friend, Chris Panza, says, education is not so much about knowledge but relationships and wisdom.

From what I can tell, much of the conversation around online lectures relies on the banking theory of education. So, I really don't have much of a problem with posting online lectures, but I don't think that is really a substitute for higher education though either.

Right now, there are tons of books in libraries that possess more information than I ever could ever relate to my students. However, they are not a substitute for actual classes even if the books could be made more widely accessible. The information is not enough. Online lectures, while probably better than many books, still are not engaging, experiential, or conversational enough to serve as the primary basis for teaching and learning for most students.

Oddly, after reading the article and thinking for a bit, I remembered why I don't lecture so much. I just don't believe in information transfer as the key element of learning. The key is dialogue and feedback. All this talk about online lectures speed up and/or increase the productivity of information dissemination, but it does not really revolutionize how individual feedback and guidance is handled. When someone figures out how to dramatically improve the productivity of my grading and working with students on formulating and editing papers, then we will have a real revolution in education!

Avatar and Authenticity

My wife and I were probably the last people in the United States to watch Avator when we got a chance to catch the film last night. I had read that the movie relied pretty heavily on metaphors of colonialism and that seemed all-too accurate to me. Building on this theme, what struck me was how the main character, Jake Sully, learned how to become one of the indigenous people. My father-in-law compared it Dances With Wolves and again I would heartily agree. It definitely seems odd to me that this film, which seems to offer a major critique of the European and American conquests of the "new world," would be so popular. When academics raise the very critiques developed in the film, we are generally castigated for our "weird" ideas.


The only spin that I would want to add to all this commentary is that Avatar has a pretty interesting representation of authenticity. In the field of hip-hop studies (one thing I write about), artists, critics, listeners, and scholars endlessly debate the authenticity of artists. In the film, Sully was able to shed his human skin and become like one of the "natives." So much so, that he manages to become their leader. I could not help to think of white folks like Eminem, Beastie Boys, Brother Ali or even socially conscious rappers like dead prez or Arrested Development. All these acts, even if they attain significant popularity, must engage the authenticity question. I do wonder how Avatar comments on this situation. It seems like a lot of Americans enjoyed watching Jake Sully gain entry into the indigenous society and become an "authentic" member of the community.

On the other hand, it seems like white audiences in hip-hop tend to prefer more "authentic" (i.e. gangsta) forms of rap. I wonder why the film found commerical success but that same kind of success eludes many middle-class and/or white rappers. Obviously, Eminem is the exception here but perhaps his own career might help explain the popularity of Avatar. Eminem and Jake Sully perhaps make whites feel that they could cross-over this seemingly impossible racial/species barriers and be on the "right" or "moral " side of history. Their ability to cross these boundaries suggest that we too might be exception who can escape the rigid nature of racial divides. Perhaps, it is that fantasy that helps catapault both Avatar and Eminem to their stratospheric commerical success.

College Completion Shortfall

In 2009, College Complete America was organized by folks like the Lumina Foundation, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Ford Foundation to help increase the number of students who complete college in a timely manner.

They identify a number of problems that are contributing to the problem:

To name only a few of the many reasons: inadequate academic preparation, poorly designed and delivered remediation, broken credit transfer policies, confusing financial aid programs, a culture that rewards enrollment instead of completion, and a system too often out of touch with the needs of the today’s college student. (http://www.completecollege.org/completion_shortfall/)

Their hope is to change state policies to focus on graduation (not enrollment) and knock down impediments to graduation.

It is hard for me to be too critical of this kind of agenda as I want all of my students to succeed. I don't really quibble with their general strategy even for accomplishing this.

I do want to note a few curious items that tend to get omitted from their discussion:

(1) America is pretty anti-intellectual. Having more college graduates who don't read and lack curiosity and critical thinking skills are not going to help us compete economically. I think (although I am not supporting it here) that a college degree is much more than a mere device to improve employment possibilities or earning power. It is about critical thinking, innovation, and being a good citizen. We really need to change America's understanding about college. I just don't see this group succeeding in this when they adopt essentially corporate rhetoric about education. They seem to be viewing the degree as the end, rather than the importance of the habits of mind developed and the relationships nourished during a college career.

(2) Many students struggle to graduate because they can't afford it - either in monetary terms or opportunity cost. Between the economic, family, and health care catastrophes I regularly hear about, the problem is not always government red tape.

(3) I wonder if the increase in overpaid and overworked adjuncts play any role in why graduation completion rates remain a problem. Folks with little connection to their institution, teaching too many students, and little job security probably are not the best people to respond to this crisis. (This is not to say that adjunct instructors are not good at what they do, they just can't always create the kind of relationships that many students need to help them graduate).

I like where this organization is heading and some of the steps they are taking. I just wish they were tackling some of these other challenges as well. When education is generally de-valued and students are not healthy or safe, we will struggle to succeed in our educational goals.