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[Susan E. Gallagher]

<These sort discussions about how Johnny doesn't spell check, Susie doesn't care about civics and everyone is too busy padding their resumes to actually learn anything really frustrate me. >

  My complaints really aren't useless hand-wringing.  Literacy is declining among college students and, as everyone who grades term papers knows, students who can write a coherent paragraph are increasingly rare.  While lots of students can earn high scores on video games and standardized tests, most of my students wouldn't get Aldon's reference to Robert Kennedy and have never heard of George Bernard Shaw.  You don't have to be elitist to lament this level of impoverishment.  As a high school drop out who grew up in an exceedingly ugly virtually book-less town in NJ, I can't help but sense my students' depth of cultural and educational deprivation.  

  They certainly aren't dumber than the baby boomers who came before them, but along with much less time and much less financial aid, they have almost no opportunity to ask, why not? as Aldon suggests.  

  I have no cure for the cynicism that seems to pervade the flat, hypersexualized, buzz-filled blur in which many of my students seem to live, but I wouldn't insult them by yammering about civics when they don't know what to make of their sisters or cousins or high school friends shipping off to Iraq.

  What kills me is that we've made such a mess of things in politics, education, economic opportunity--you name it--and then we talk about taking direction from students themselves.  But without pretending to make more than a dent in these immensely complex problems, I think we owe it to them to at least try to provide them with better ways of learning, and we may be able to do that if we figure out how to use technology to convey significant historical events, works of art, music, literature, and political thought.    

  I don't know.  The news is so bad these days that whatever idealism I might have remaining sounds too much like schmaltz.  Still, having had the experience, I can't help dreaming that we might be able to turn education back into liberation, at least for some students, instead of subjecting them to more unfreedom, which is how most of them seem to think of school.

  Sorry if this seems dark.  I'm writing this note as an interlude--more procrastination--in grading the latest round of assignments sent in by my online students.

  Susan

  Susan Gallagher, Library Fellow
  Political Science Department
  UMASS Lowell
  http://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher
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