Hooray for Historiann! Or, Why the More Time I Spend Doing "Assessment," The Worse I Become as a Teacher; And Vice-Versa

by Paul Harvey

[warning: short but ill-tempered and rather off-topic rant to follow]

This is a brief, off-topic rant, -- as blog czar, I get to do that once a year or so, the rest of you, don't get any ideas -- just to get it off my chest before the school year starts and I resume my mind-numbingly time-consuming duties as "assessment coordinator" for my department (translation: gin up some "assessment numbers" from mid-term surveys and the like, so that the committee that oversees that at my university will leave our department alone and not throw yet more tedious make-work, errr . . . I mean assessment strategies, our way -- courtesy, ultimately if not completely, of Margaret Spellings and her crowd).

[side note: I'm not referring to the work done by the Carnegie Foundation for Teaching and Learning, or the like, just to be clear. I have read and learned much from the scholarship on teaching, that comes from such groups; the point here is the constant exhortation by experts to do what we do all the time anyway, in contrast to the silence on far more important subjects].

Historiann asks:

In sum, why are there so many workshops urging faculty to learn to teach better, and so few workshops urging universities to hire more regular faculty and dramatically improve the faculty-to-student ratio?

Many higher education bloggers and writers, Historiann included, publish and post regularly on the ongoing demise of tenure-track faculty, not at elite institutions but most everywhere else, as the adjunctification of higher education proceeds apace. There's the real scandal, not whether liberal arts professors should be denied hall passes because they haven't adopted clicker technology or "formative assessment questionnaires" yet.

Historiann's cri de coeur is in response to Homework for Profs: Perfect the Art of Teaching?, an article which advises us that "Liberal Arts educators “need to talk more about what and how we teach college students” so that we can “engag[e] 21st century college students in the kind of learning that will lead to success in life, work and citizenship.” Oh, yeah, dang, I've completely forgotten to do that almost every day of my professional life, guess I'll start doing it now.

And then, from the same piece : “[E]veryone’s teaching needs regular rejuvenation and context.” Hell, everyone needs someone to lean on, I guess; this author, however, needs a new sentence to lean on. "Everyone' teaching needs . . . context" is like saying "everyone's sink needs water."

I'll finish with Historiann's words of common sense:

I write this not as a skeptic of the value of thinking about pedagogy and of improving one’s teaching–but, and level with me, dear readers–isn’t that what we do all of the time, throughout the year, without going to workshops or special “colleges?” Isn’t this what we do, when we assign all or mostly new books to our classes each term, so that we can keep up with the current literature in our fields (and not incidentally, avoid boring ourselves with the same old readings)? Isn’t this what we do when reviewing previous drafts of lecture notes to see what’s outdated or less useful, and to add new material based on your current readings and research, or to speak to the specific themes we;re emphasizing in this or that semester? Aren’t we always adding new visual images, new ideas, and new slides to our PowerPoint lectures? Do any of us set out intentionally to bore our students to death? Do we enjoy being out-of-date and out-to-lunch in public?

I remember hearing about that legendary college professor who worked from yellowed note cards, or off of lecture notes on legal paper from the 1930s that hadn’t been revised since they were first drafted. Remember him? Me neither. I never met that guy or took his class–it was always someone’s brother’s roommate, or someone’s girlfriend’s sister who was in that class, and usually at another college or university. That professor is largely an urban legend, but “Centers for Teaching and Learning” are set up and funded to guard against him in universities across the country. (Do they also sponsor a “Center for Defense Against Unicorn Attack?”)


I feel better already! So now, back to American religious history.

Tyson Homosexual...Oh wait, Tyson Gay...

Art Remillard

[Author's note: Humble apologies for the previous title. While intended as a quirky title for a quirky story, it was instead thoughtless.]

Sometimes, my computer tries to outsmart me. For example, it will re-spell words that I had intended to mis-spell. But it has never changed the word "Gay" to "Homosexual." It seems I don't have the right software.

From the Washington Post, Mary Ann Akers, "the Sleuth," reports...

The American Family Association obviously didn't foresee the problems that might arise with its strict policy to always replace the word "gay" with "homosexual" on the Web site of its Christian news outlet, OneNewsNow. The group's automated system for changing the forbidden word wound up publishing a story about a world-class sprinter named "Tyson Homosexual" who qualified this week for the Beijing Olympics.

The problem: Tyson's real last name is Gay. Therefore, OneNewsNow's reliable software changed the Associated Press story about Tyson Gay's amazing Olympic qualifying trial to read this way: "Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has. His time of 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials Sunday doesn't count as a world record, because it was run with the help of a too-strong tailwind. Here's what does matter: Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he's certainly someone to watch in Beijing."

Stop the Presses! Or Not.

Darren Grem

How much of a role younger, white evangelicals will play in the November elections remains to be seen, but they're certainly flying around in pre-season reports. Reporters seem devoted to the notion that younger, white evangelicals are either apolitical or now ready to slap Obama stickers right next to the magnet Jesus fish donning their vehicular posteriors. To be sure, there's some Pew research to back these notions up in a very basic, general way, although it comes with some big caveats. Often overlooked in fly-over accounts was that the Pew Center concluded that younger, white evangelicals were "Less Republican, [But] Still Conservative," noting that they weren't much different than most conservatives (or Americans, for that matter) who are fed up with the Bushies. In turn, they remained more conservative than counterparts their age on questions concerning Iraq, law and order, abortion, and (I would proffer) free market capitalism. As such, though the opportunity is there, Obama probably shouldn't expect a windfall of younger, white evangelicals falling into his camp. John Green said as much, pointing out: ". . . Relatively few of the evangelicals who have moved away from the Republican Party have become Democratic, most have become independents." The numbers don't lie. In 2001, 55% of young, white evangelicals held Republican affiliations and, in 2007, only 40% do (still, that's a decently large minority). In the same period, Democrats only picked up a measly three percentage points while independent affiliations rose by six percentage points. I guess that means that if I ran as, say, a Bulldawg Party candidate, I'd be getting more younger, white evangelical votes than Obama.

What does this all mean come November? I'm willing to bet a case of Milwaukee's finest that it won't be an election maker or breaker since Bush has handily alienated more Republican constituencies than just plus-30 evangelicals and more swing voters than their Facebooking counterparts. Try as he might, McCain probably won't be able to overcome that fact. I'm also willing to argue that, in the long run, it won't be the cultural shift that some folks think it will be. To be sure, younger evangelicals might not jump in as short-list, "issues voters" as fervently as their parents' generation, but whether they will continue a drift leftward or middle-ward remains to be seen, especially as they get into their thirty and forty-somethings, have families, get corner offices, and start paying property taxes. As I believe John Turner has mentioned on this blog before, in four to eight years, we might be seeing report after report about the "revival of the Religious Right."

Meanwhile, James Dobson has officially thrown his two-cents in. I'll see your hermeneutics and raise you, sir!

McCain, Obama, Evangelicals, and Rachael Ray

Paul Harvey

McCain is still trying to make it to first base with evangelicals, according to today's New York Times story. Apparently, the fact that he wants the states individually rather than the federal government singly to outlaw gay marriage ticks them off.

Meanwhile, Louis Ruprecht provides an analysis of religion and the Obama campaign. He concludes:

One regularly hears that the question for Obama is whether lower-and-middle-class voters can be convinced that “he is really like them.” The implicit notion seems to be that “being like them” involves being Christian, somehow. There are two ways to interpret this belief, both of them disturbing.

The first is that America is still imagined as a strictly Christian nation and thus a presidential candidate must be Christian, in some recognizable way, to be considered viable (with all due sympathy to Mitt Romney). That flies in the face of current demographics, especially among the post-Baby Boomer generations to whom Obama speaks with eloquence and power.

The second is that “being like us” is indeed a code for race, that being like us involves being white and Protestant and thus if one is not white, but “merely” mixed, then one somehow can’t really be Christian.

It is more than a little sad that mainline Christians are not speaking more forcefully and with outrage against either of these scarcely veiled noxious beliefs.

Finally, John Hagee may be down, but he's not out, and if Rachael Ray is a secret jihadi, then why not Michelle Malkin as well? Makes perfect sense, by the logic of Islamophobia. Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful.

God, Country, and Declension Narratives

Paul Harvey

Kevin Levin at Civil War Memory asks: Do these young Boy Scouts know why these flags look different from all the other flags placed on the graves of soldiers on this Memorial Day?

Perhaps a good Memorial Day activity for everyone would be to look again at Charles Reagan Wilson's Baptized in Blood, followed by a brief review of David Blight's Race and Reunion. When these boys get a bit older, I'll put that on their reading list when they take my course. I bet they can hardly wait.

While you're at it, see "Declension Narratives in Civil War History" at the same blog, which references Tim Burke's discussion of declension narratives in general. I post here because religious historians, of all folks, should be familiar with declension narratives, right Perry Miller?

Burke writes:

A very large number of the popular narratives of decline and fall that have circulated in American society for the last thirty years or so, for example, take conditions that were a brief, specific consequence of the post-WWII reorganization and affluence of American society and start to reframe them first as a general part of the entire 20th Century, then as something basic to American history all the way back to colonial settlement, and then leap the Atlantic and usually plow straight for the Aegean, coming to rest in Greece, Rome or Jerusalem.

Mormon Domination (of Popular Culture)

Kelly Baker

It seems that Newsweek's on a roll this week for Mormon coverage. In a previous post today, Art highlighted the article on Short Creek and its law enforcement legacy. Another article, "America's Next Top Mormon," trumpeted the prominence of Mormons on television. (They are everywhere! American Idol! Dancing With the Stars!) The author, Sally Atkinson, sees a surge of Mormon contestants on reality television as signal of LDS's growing (pop) cultural dominance. While I am not convinced by her thesis, I am intrigued by her reaction to Mormons invading our precious reality T.V. programs. Does this (gulp) mean Americans want wholesome, religious competitors on shows like Rock of Love or Big Brother? The wholesomeness (no rated "R" movies!) is part of where Atkinson thinks the appeal lies. Atkinson writes:

Wholesome, likable Mormon competitors are now so plentiful that some viewers have taken to playing Spot the Mormon. Former "Idol" contestant Carmen Rasmusen, herself a Mormon, says one of this season's early episodes set off her Mormon radar when she heard White tell the judges she'd never seen an R-rated movie. "My husband and I just looked at each other and said, 'She's totally Mormon.' I mean, who else would say something like that?" With all the conniving, back-stabbing and sexuality on reality TV, it may seem like a strange place for Mormons to congregate. That cultural disconnect is obviously part of the attraction for viewers and casting directors alike. Take the strange spectacle last month of a beautiful young Mormon woman— the "Idaho virgin," as she came to be known—sucking the toes of the eligible bachelor on MTV's racy "That's Amore." Or the contestant on this year's "America's Next Top Model" who said maybe her elimination was for the best, as she would have been uncomfortable doing a nude shoot. But for Mormon contestants themselves the motivation is more complex, whether it's testing the limits of their religion, showing America that Mormons aren't the insular community they're often perceived to be, or the one that crosses all denominations: the hunger for fame.

In reality TV terms, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is in a sweet spot demographically: still small enough that members get excited to see one of their own in the spotlight, but large enough that when they watch together and vote they can affect results and ratings. Mormons reserve Monday nights for Family Home Evening, and when Marie Osmond competed on the family-friendly "Dancing With the Stars" last year, she benefited from having the voting fall on a Monday each week. In fact, all three Mormon contestants made it to the final four that season.

While "Idol"'s voting night is Tuesday, some Mormons around the country still get together for viewing parties and pour in the votes after each show. "Idol"'s producers won't disclose voting numbers, but Rasmusen says producer Ken Warwick once stopped her before a results show and told her she usually did pretty well in the East Coast voting but that her "numbers just soared" when the mountain states kicked in. "I was so happy to hear that people were voting like crazy and supporting me," she says. "Utah does a great job rallying around its people." Lauren Faber, an eighth-grader in Provo, votes for Archuleta as many times as she can each week for at least 20 minutes, "no matter what—even when he messed up that once." That will undoubtedly be music to Archuleta's ears, although last week Osmond spoke out in the church-owned Deseret News, saying that White and Archuleta should be judged based on their talent, not their religion. "I mean, you don't hear other people saying, 'One of the finalists is a Catholic' or 'One of them is a Presbyterian' or 'One of them is Jewish'."

But Mormons don't do well only on shows where the audience votes. "There must be something about the Mormon community that makes these people so self-confident and so open," says Lynne Spillman, a casting director for "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race." She thinks that coming from a large family probably helps in a game like "Survivor," with its complicated group dynamics mirroring sibling rivalries. "They also have these incredible experiences through their missions," she says, "and can relate to being dropped off in the middle of somewhere they've never been and having to make it."

I am curious to what our readers and contributors think about this piece. It strikes me as exoticizing Mormons by pointing out their (gasp) normality (Katie argues "charmed observance" can sometimes function for naughty purposes in this post). Am I hyper-sensitive because of the FLDS media coverage (more on that to come) or my tendency to look for the nefarious because my own research? Or is there something else going on in the need to document the Mormon presence on all these shows? Are Mormons becoming mainstream, at least in pop culture, as Atkinson seems to suggest? I am just not sure, but now, I will be on the lookout for the religious commitment of my favorite reality T.V. show "stars." Perhaps, Rock of Love will add a lovely Mormon to the cast, but for some reason, I doubt it.

If God Doesn't Exist, then Everything is Permissible; Oh, Ok, Never Mind, There Is a God

Did Dostoevsky have the Rockies in Mind? 4-0 sweep of Diamondbacks, fair enough, but c'mon -- 21 out of 22 victories, miraculous come-from-behind victory in bottom 13th just to make the playoffs, one weird lucky break after another, sweep Phillies (3-0) and sweep Dbacks? No way. No. Way.

Yes, it must be God's will. No other explanation for the muffed ground ball that led to the Rockies' 6-run inning that won the game. Agnostics, come to the altar at (ahem) Coors Field.

God's on a Rocky Mountain High.

The Roots of Perfidy

As noted below, Harold Fickett writes of Henry Ward Beecher that "we are left to conclude—as did many of Beecher's contemporaries—that his liberalism and his perfidy went hand in hand." Liberalism made him do it.

Would you care to comment, Larry Craig? Or Ted Haggard? How about you, Congressman Foley, a response? And now back to you, Cardinal Law.