Submitted by Jim Aune on April 29, 2012 - 10:00am
This has been an interesting weekend on the administrative front. As all of you know, public universities and faculty have been under systematic attack by Koch-funded think thanks, especially in Texas. Here is the particular editorial, written by the failed academic Thomas Lindsay of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Lindsay's official bio is here at TPPF. The bio conveniently leaves out his firing at Shimer College, which illustrated rather clearly the secretive role of crony capitalism in higher education. Lindsay's money shot in the column is this sentence: "public policy foundation analysis of the Spring 2006 Texas A&M course catalog found that nearly every section of two key freshman-level courses -- English 104 and Communication 203 -- were taught by graduate students." 104 is beginning writing and 203 is public speaking. I was asked rather early on Saturday morning by the higher-ups to explain the situation, and explained temperately why such a practice is normal in ENGL and COMM. From further discussion and research I discovered that 104 section numbers are declining because of increased numbers of AP courses in writing at TAMU. Since I went to a high school with no AP courses, and my first experience of the class divide in higher education was attending a private college in Minnesota where it appeared that at least half the students (almost all from wealthy suburban school districts) were able to place out of their first college year. Since then, the question of AP has not been on my radar. I then discovered, thanks to help from DB, that there is NO AP course in public speaking offered. The list of approved courses is here. One of the original reasons for the expensive move of NCA offices to DC was to improve federal lobbying efforts. As far as I can tell, we've had some progress with NSF and NEH, which is all to the good, but apparently none with K-12. I stopped reading COMM ED a long time ago, when it appeared that teaching, like, "intepersonal communication skills" to K-12 students was a greater priority for them than public speaking or debate, which actually were the sole reason I was competitive in college with my much richer and better educated peers. Who dropped the ball on AP, and why?
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