Support Illiteracy: Vote

I have been teaching at Brooklyn College, a campus of the City University of New York, for 16 years. Our students are at the average for college students nationally.  When I first arrived at Brooklyn in 1998, the students' writing was dismal.  I don't think it's unfair to say that the governance of New York City, hence the school system, has largely been that of the Democratic Party.  It is fair, then, to attribute my students' dismal writing to the Democratic Party. A little less than five years after I started, President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act.  Eleven or so years later, I can see the effects. The Republicans took a dismal educational system and made it worse.  My students' writing now is so bad that it is virtually unintelligible. Their writing went from semi-literate to illiterate. This is occurring at a time when the desirable jobs are going to those with the best skills. Sending your child to a school that is under the control of Democrats or Republicans is a form of child neglect.

The  saddest thing is to see students who think that they are studying business but lack rudimentary writing skills necessary to pursue a career in business. I have fought to improve the writing program at CUNY for several years, and I have gotten nowhere. The college simply denies the problem.  The students write at the mean, so there is no problem.  The trouble is that the mean American is in for a rough treatment from the global economy. 

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO HIM?

H/t:An anonymous colleague.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO HIM?

He just wrote me to say this:

Hi Professor:

I am doing ok. How are you doing? Is everything well?

After I graduated, I was unable to find a job in marketing. But things didn't go so well for me as I wasn't able to make any sales when I find a sales job in a phone store. So I was resigned from it and cannot work in the store again. I am currently still looking for a job related to marketing but don't find it, but I don't want to work in the sales department of a store since it didn't work out for me. So it's a bit difficult as all the marketing job I look for before are all sales and I can't sell. 

I would love to come to see you during that time of office hour.

Thank you so much!!!

My answer: "I would say, 'Join the navy, see the world.' Actually, that’s an idea. Have we thought of ROTC for our students?"


The anonymous colleague told him to join the military.  This is how he responded:

Thank you for the information about military. But I will have to think about it because I want to stop school for a while. That's why I didn't apply for graduated school after I graduated. Is military like a graduated school or
less difficult? Do you select the job and get it right away when you leave? Is there GMAT? Is there scholarship?

But thank you for the information!!

The professor then corrected the students' grammar. Another student wrote this:
 
This is A.B. again. Do you remember you mentioned on my first assignment regarding my grammar problem? You mean that there is a grammar corrector who corrected my paper and helps student to correct the appear online red? Do you have the contact information for that now? 


The students are majoring in business because they expect to get jobs in major US corporations.  The American dream has become the American lie.

Is the Town of Olive's Sylvia Rozzelle Double Dipping or Skinny Dipping?

 Is Town of Olive Town Clerk Sylvia Rozzelle planning to double dip on her pension money and so ride the gravy train down Watson Hollow Road? Rumor has it that Rozzelle, who is running for town supervisor, is applying for a pension from the State of New York for her years with the Town of Olive as town clerk.  How much is enough?  The Town of Olive already pays its town supervisor more than does almost any other town in Ulster County.  The $50,000 paycheck for a part-time job is apparently not enough for Rozzelle, who also aims to collect almost $40,000 in pension money.  But what are the exact amounts?

The Democrats are fond of claiming that they believe in openness in government and in democratic processes.  But when it comes to the Democrats' pockets, they are notoriously averse to allowing public scrutiny. Let's see if Rozzelle responds to this Freedom of Information Law letter:

PO Box 130

West Shokan, NY 12494

October 2, 2013

Ms. Sylvia Rozzelle

Town Clerk, Town of Olive

PO Box 96

West Shokan, NY 12494

Dear Ms. Rozelle:

Under the New York Freedom of Information Law, N.Y. Pub. Off. Law sec. 84 et seq., I am requesting an opportunity to inspect or obtain copies of records that pertain to the computation of the pension benefit of Sylvia Rozelle.  These include all application forms to the State of New York and any other New York State pension fund and any estimates of or statements of actual amounts of pension benefits to be paid to Sylvia Rozelle. 

I also request all records stating the amount of annual salary currently paid to the Town of Olive Town Supervisor and the Town of Olive Town Clerk.

If there are any fees for searching or copying these records, please inform me if the cost will exceed $75.  However, I would also like to request a waiver of all fees in that the disclosure of the requested information is in the public interest and will contribute significantly to the public’s understanding of salaries and pensions paid by the Town of Olive.  I am a journalist for The Lincoln Eagle as well as a citizen in the Town of Olive.  This information is not being sought for commercial purposes, although it is on the record and may be used for journalistic purposes.

 The New York Freedom of Information Law requires a response time of five business days.  If access to the records I am requesting will take longer than this amount of time, please contact me with information about when I might expect copies or the ability to inspect the requested records. 

 If you deny any or all of this request, please cite each specific exemption you feel justifies the refusal to release the information and notify me of the appeal procedures available to me under the law.

Thank you for considering my request.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

The Wizard of Oz and the Business School

Much has been made about fraud in industry, but there is as much fraud in education.  An example is the enrollment of unqualified students who are told that they will find jobs appropriate to college graduates but never will because they lack the writing skills.  Often, colleges will tell applicants  that if they matriculate, they will get high-paying jobs. The students do the necessary work, and of course make the necessary payments, but in the end they do not get a job equal to the one promised.  This is especially true of business schools, which use statistical manipulation of data on graduates' salaries to trick students into attending.

The film The Wizard of Oz adumbrates the academic scam.  The Wizard tells the Scarecrow that he doesn't need a brain--all he needs is a diploma.  As William Leach points out in his Land of Desire, which is about consumerism, The Wizard of Oz is about consumerism, for its author, Frank L. Baum, was one of the first modern advertising men. He created the window displays at Wanamaker's.  The Wizard, the man behind the curtain, is the same old snake oil salesman whom Dorothy knew in Kansas, but he uses new imagery:  the medal for the Cowardly Lion, the testimonial for the Tin Man, and the diploma for the Scarecrow.  Coinciding with the development of commercialism and marketing is the development of the university degree, a replacement for intellect and education.  This point is captured by Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago in the 1940s, who decries the advent of the anti-intellectual university in his Higher Learning in America.  

But the illiteracy-producing university?  This is a topic that deserves more scrutiny. How many of America's college grads cannot write and are literally illiterate?
 
I moved to Manhattan after a small college on Long Island canned me. One of the doormen in the building had attended the same college. The college produced doormen.  Like Dante's admonition to abandon all hope,  they should have said as much above the doorway to the administration building, perhaps employing one of their own alums to open and close the door for prospective students. 

What is the role of standards-setting bodies in limiting the modern university's fraudulent production of illiteracy?  From what I can tell, the current standards-setting bodies in American universities are indifferent to whether college graduates can read, write, or do basic arithmetic.  Admittedly, I have not studied the question, but recently I heard a former chair of the board of trustees of a public university state that his students were at the national norm. But I know first-hand that a large share of his students are illiterate.  This suggests that the problem is pandemic.

Is the production of illiterate college grads a form of fraud?  If the college admits openly that it is graduating illiterate students, and it tells the students that if they cannot write, then they cannot find jobs, then it is not committing fraud.  The board of trustees chair did no such thing.  He insisted that his illiterate students are literate.  The students pay for an education, so if they are paying thinking that they are being educated, and they are not, then the university is committing fraud.  Fraud is lying for money.  Colleges like to claim that their graduates will all get great jobs.  I suspect that a large share of colleges, including top business schools, routinely commit fraud.  Many, but of course not all, higher education institutions have ethical characteristics much like Enron's.