The University of Blefuscu

 "You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place." Jonathan Swift (maybe).

"Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired." Jonathan Swift, Letter to a Young Clergyman, 1720.

"Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out." Sidney Smith (1771-1845).

"... what we generally refer to as traditional schooling is largely the result of outdated policy changes that have calcified into convention." Alfie Kohn.

I do not know how accurate any of the above quotations are in their sourcing, but I have encountered such futility with overnumerousness and would heartily add that it has no more fertile a breeding ground than in the halls, or online echo chambers, of academia. I hesitate, with a hesitation born of this very futility, to add that I believe the above quotations to be using the unisex "man," "him," and "he" since it occurs no less, possibly even more, in circumstances under which unreasonable positions have been acquired by members of the fairer gender. The mere fact that I type the phrase "fairer gender" with no such hesitation illustrates my point.

I much prefer the illustration of the Blefuscudians. You may know about them without recognizing the name, but if I said Lilliputians, it might ring a bigger bell. A proper Blefuscudian, you see, breaks his morning eggs at the large ends and considers the heresy of breaking eggs at their small ends to be an act worthy of war. Referring back to the original quotations, the war of the "Big-Endians" vs. the "Little-Endians" is the ingenious satire of Jonathan Swift comparing France and England and their conflicts over absurd political and religious differences. The quotations, if correctly attributed, undoubtedly are as well. 

I propose to you that the convention of initiation is another such practice that is perpetuated on no other grounds than the most common of justifications (and the most absurd) tradition, habit, or rules. To me this has always seemed a type of vengeful, pay-it-forward thinking that cannot withstand even rudimentary rational examination, yet it has caught on in a profession that is meant to champion just that. In academia the absurdity is magnified in that the thinking (or lack thereof) behind initiation originates in the supposedly erudite and superior intellects of professors and even "doctors." The "thought" progression seems to be as follows: I worked VERY hard to earn my advanced degree. My professors made things difficult for me. I am now in charge of training initiates and judging their efforts to be worthy or unworthy of that same degree. I MUST make their experience as difficult or MORE difficult than mine in order for them to suffer the hardships that I suffered.

Unfortunately this is one of the outdated policies that have calcified into convention in education and it belies the very nature of it. Is a professor a teacher or just someone who professes to be a teacher? As teachers it is an integral part of our jobs to be facilitators. That word comes from the same root as "facile," which means easy. We are supposed to be making things EASIER for our students. Initiation is the exact opposite. Now, add to the absurdity of all of this the situation I have been in for quite some time now: my final course of my master's has been presented and taught under conditions in which initiation has replaced facilitation, students are initiates, and professors are the initiators... and my major IS EDUCATION! For three years the focus of my studies has been on progressive educational policies and philosophies, but it has been taught under the auspices of what we mistakenly call "traditional" education. My university? UofB - the University of Blefuscu.

Look, I understand that part of any advanced degree needs to be rigor. Hard work. But good course designers, professors, and educators don't just manufacture rigor for rigor's sake. I did 11 courses and most of them were well done. I can say that from a position of superior educational experience than most of my professors, if not, all of them. I have designed more courses and taught more courses than my teachers so I recognize when things are legit and when they are not. I encountered one illegitimate teacher who was in over her head and more concerned with appearances than performance and I dropped her course. She tried to make it look harder than it was and gave low grades for the same reason and, frankly, it was one of the more elementary concepts in education. I later took the course again with another professor and it was done well. I suppose inept educators who are more concerned with resume fodder and relevance in the highly competitive education racket than good teaching is a problem you might encounter if you are a "tuition free" university. My university is tuition free so the professors get less than other unis, but although it is very cheap, students still pay and professors still receive payment. To be more positive about it, you also get teachers who ARE good at their art and less concerned with career advancement and money than educating people. It's unfortunate that you never know which you will get when you sign up for the courses...

There I go being all positive again signing up for a cheap school! I suppose it's time for a little aside. I've learned that Gen Xers (like me) tend to hope for the best but expect the worst. We are the last generation to truly experience long-term boredom, so we often chose to educate ourselves and think critically about our world analyzing things and coming up with world views that to younger generations appear jaded, pessimistic, and cynical, but which are logical, pragmatic, realistic, and not self-delusional or ignorant. I could tell you I have a horrible opinion of what has happened to education all over the world since industrialization and I could tell you that I have done extensive reading, research, and had loads of personal experience to back it up, but I'd still be accused of being jaded, pessimistic, or cynical. If the U of B had allowed me to write a thesis (which I thought I was going to be doing up until the 11th course) it would have been on how education has been destroyed by commercialization and the corruption it inevitably drags with it. Since my uni is an American one, I'll give you a few pretty high-profile examples of what I'm cynically, pessimistically, and jadedly bellyaching about. It's all in the documentary Inside Job from about the 1:22:00 mark. 

These examples are from fairly recently, but I can give you examples from a hundred years ago of academics publishing flawed research (that industry paid them to fudge) and that research being used by industry to improve conditions in government, finance, and education for themselves. During my master's studies I read a very well written and very wrong paper on how class size (that is number of students per class) shows no correlation to student achievement. The lady who wrote that probably retired from teaching afterwards. Or maybe she became education minister or a banker. These three rackets (big finance, education, and government) still trade players like sports franchises with little to no regulation even though the conflicts of interest are glaringly obvious! I'll give you a few names from the doc: Martin Feldstein- Harvard U. professor of economics + Reagan's chief economic advisor + AIG board of directors. He advocated the deregulation Reagan's administration implemented. Glenn Hubbard- Dean of Columbia Business School + chief economic advisor to the GW Bush admin. + Bear Stearns defender, Met Life board member, and advisor to many other financial firms. Laura Tyson- Professor at Berkeley + Director of economic counsel of Clinton admin. + board member of Morgan Stanley. Ruth Simmons- President of Brown University + board member of Goldman Sachs. Larry Summers- Treasury Secretary who deregulated derivatives + President of Harvard University (2001) + made millions consulting for hedge funds and speaking fees from lots of investment banks. Frederic Mishkin- Federal Reserve board of governors + Columbia Business School + Wrote a paper on Iceland lying about their central banks being solid when they weren't. He was paid $124,000 by the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce to write this paper. The title of the paper was "Financial Stability in Iceland." It was later changed in online credits to "Financial Instability in Iceland." Richard Portes- Most famous economist in Britain + prof. of economics at London Business School + also commissioned by the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce to report on the strength of the Icelandic financial sector.

Based on the purchased reports of Portes and Mishkin (can you say conflict of interest?) and possibly the paper Hubbard wrote singing the praises of CDO's and other garbage written by "scholars" in which truth took a back seat to financial advantage, the top 3 banks of Iceland were allowed to deregulate and operate using foreign currency. They promptly "borrowed" 120 billion dollars or 10X the Icelandic economy. I enclose the word "borrowed" in quotes because they did things that only banks can do for the most part. One example of this is their central bank (which Mishkin praised as trustworthy) jacked up interest rates which attracted foreign currency deposits in Icelandic kronur, which were promptly loaned to the Icelandic banks who then re-loaned it out willy nillilly. 

You know the rest cuz it has happened several times in several countries in several points during history. Bankers got rich, housing prices more than doubled, prices of everything shot up from all the fake money creation or "fiat" currency. Despite all of THIS, crooked credit rating agencies reported (after undoubtedly being paid off as well) that Iceland was AOK and raised their credit rating to triple A. While their credit rating was 3A their unemployment rate got a rating of 3X. That's right, it tripled in 6 months. The few regulators who tried to stop this went to banks, were met by teams of expensive lawyers ready to squash their claims and either went away defeated, or if they did really well, were offered jobs. 1/3 ONE THIRD of Iceland's regulators accepted those jobs with the banks.

Okay, so I know the world has gone to shit like Iceland and bad educators are at the very heart of it. I also know that the solution must have GOOD educators at the heart of IT. This has been a big part of my pursuit of education as a career. I have always wanted to do my part in turning the corruption around. I have mountains of respect for educators like Howard Zinn, Alfie Kohn, Noam Chomsky, and Robert Reich whose positivity seems unassailable in the face of overwhelming negativity, but I guess I'm not as strong as those guys. The negativity at the University of Blefuscu overwhelmed me.

I didn't quote Rush at the outset because it is a three-parter. I would say it's a toss-up between Grand Designs and Subdivisions for the best lyrics ever in a song that I know of and BOTH are by Rush. "So much poison in power, the principles get left out; So much mind on the matter, the spirit gets forgotten about" That describes the above situation to a T does it not? But wait, there's more from one of the greatest lyricists in rock music ever, Neil Peart. "Growing up it all seemed so one-sided; Opinions all provided; The future pre-decided; Detached and subdivided: In the mass production zone... Nowhere is the dreamer; Or the misfit so alone"

When the poisonous principles of power take over education, schools become mass production zones where quantity trumps quality, learning takes a back seat to finishing, and students are assessed and judged to be worthy or wanting by the Standardizors! This is what musicians sing about, (Pink Floyd did it well too) authors write about, (Bradbury, Salinger, Orwell), educators complain about, (Freire, Dewey, Gray) and education courses even educate about, yet it persists... sometimes in the schools that teach the evils of it!

"So much style without substance! So much stuff without style! It's hard to recognize the real thing. It comes along once in a while." Rush again. For 10 courses I believed I was getting the real thing. I had a couple teachers that were not the best but I signed up for a budget master's and I expected some parts of it to be a little worse than Harvard. I'd have been crazy not to expect that. But the final courses threw me for a loop!

In its defense, my online master's uni has only been going for 17 years and it only got WASC regional accreditation last year. So for 15 years they were trying really hard to get established and they finally did. This was great news for me when it happened because I had only a short time before found out that regional accreditation is the big one. Without that the uni can't really be taken seriously. I might have even been refused teaching jobs overseas with just the international accreditation. And that was the big reason I was pursuing the master's. What I'm saying is my master's degree might not have been substantial enough to get me the jobs I was looking for until just last year. Good luck for me? Not so fast hombres!

You see the final two courses were originally designed as primary research conducted on actual students then written as a primary research assignment in the form of a curriculum or curriculum adjustment plan. We were supposed to find something lacking in a school and then, using previously published studies, our research and experience, and the results of our own private study, compose an action plan that would strengthen the class/school of the students and solve an educational issue you observed to exist in their class/school. My initial plan was to write a thesis about Paulo Freire and how his wildly successful language teaching methods that revolutionized the citizen literacy in his native Brazil could be used for teaching ESL in other countries. That would have been a thesis. I did 10 group projects during my studies and every group member I talked to about this was under the impression that our "capstone" courses would be in the nature of theses. I don't remember reading anywhere or being told at any point in my studies otherwise. It's a massive thing to leave out and I believe it was left out purposely. They wanted people assuming the standard thesis would be the final course and they conducted the first 10 courses as if it would be simply because if students knew we were going to be responsible for one of these boring, repetitive, highly technical, almost mathematical, and mostly common sensical educational studies, we might not have signed up at all. I also believe that the hundreds, or maybe thousands of these studies published by students from my uni have kept that uni relevant in academia and have played no small part in its regional accreditation being granted. 

At any rate, that's just educated speculation. Here's something that's NOT speculation: I called and actually talked to a lady named Heather who is moore than just your average representative at the University of Blefescu. She told me that they were running into legal and liability issues with students who were unable to obtain permission from students, parents, or schools to conduct their studies. This was when I was having difficulties with course number 11. I was expected to do a study on some students but I was in Calgary about to move to Maryland and it was July. All the kids were on summer holidays and I didn't have a class of students at the time because I had just left my job teaching adult refugees and immigrants to Canada. Heather said the course was going to be adjusted and sure enough it was just about research in education designed, I guess, to help us find secondary sources of research for our ultimate capstone assignment that was going to be changed to a secondary research assignment in the form of a curriculum or curriculum adjustment plan. Sounds like an easy tweak but holy jumping Jonathan did the University of Blefescu ever fuck this up!

Suffice to say they left elements of the primary research assignment and instructed students to conduct them in the form of secondary research. Some of this was literally impossible! So I tried three times with three different teachers to point out the flaws and contradictions in the assignment instructions and asked them to give me their interpretations of what it was we were supposed to be doing. The first lady gave me a hearty thumbs up on my initial ideas saying she was excited about my choice of topic, then after a hellishly long week of work she poo-pooed almost everything she was excited about telling me in no certain terms the abstract ways she expected me to amend my original submission IN ONE DAY. So I dropped it because if you don't drop the course at the one-week point, you fail it. 

The next teacher was much worse! She told me that if I didn't understand the instructions maybe I shouldn't be enrolled in a master's course or something dismissive to that effect. Would not tell me her interpretation of the assignment or acknowledge any mistakes in the assignment description. So I dropped the course again.

The U of B has a rule that if you postpone studies for 5 consecutive semesters you will be forcibly un-enrolled. My last chance was a couple of months ago and the teacher again refused to give me her interpretation of what I was expected to do. She defended the school's description of the assignment stating that it was fine but would not discuss the glaringly UNfine details I brought up in an email to her. I even told her a friend of mine put the description through AI and asked how to write the assignment. AI said it was a primary research study. My friend said no it isn't and AI argued with her saying that YES it was! So impossible, right?

But people are somehow finishing this assignment! It makes me think that THEY are using AI to get it done and that maybe the school WANTS the assignment to be impossible to do without AI. But what could the purpose of THAT be? Is it possible that the teachers (who ARE paid but not as much as regular university teachers) are accepting only the assignments obviously created with the help of AI, busting the students, then saying that if they don't give the professor a little for his/her efforts they will be reported? 

Is this how low our education systems have fallen?

All I can say is I've given up after spending 3 years, thousands of dollars, and a helluva lot of effort achieving straight A's then being forced to capitulate right at the finish line. 

I've paid money to learn a lot of stuff. It hasn't been wasted money. And the courses and the majority of teachers were good. But as the old saying goes, THAT AND $3.25 GETS YOU A RIDE ON A SARNIA BUS.

That's where I am now. Pursuing a career change at the age of 59.

This should be colourful. <---- Now that I'm back in Canada I'm USING that U red wavy underlining notwithstanding. 

Maybe next time I'll tell you the details of how bad the last "school" I WORKED at was. But this post took months due to burn-out. I don't think I'll even bother.