The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: education system

  • Dr. Asao Inoue Looks to Lead Academic Revolution

    Dr. Asao Inoue Looks to Lead Academic Revolution

    Inoue confronts the supremacist ideas within American academia

    From unkind flyers to nasty messages written on bathroom walls, Humboldt State University has dealt with its fair share of acts of hatred and racism.

    Asao B. Inoue, a professor and associate dean at Arizona State University, studies student writing assessment, race and racism. In a Social Justice Summit talk and an exclusive interview with The Lumberjack, Inoue pondered how a university can be anti-racist and address white supremacy.

    “I was asked to come here and give a talk at a workshop, and I love doing that—it feels like an important part of the public work that I do in the academy,” Inoue said. “I help teachers think about ways to do social justice projects in their class, particularly around literacy classrooms and the grading evaluation and feedback of student literacy projects or writing.”

    Inoue’s objective is to change the ways professors think about language and white language supremacy, and to start a revolution within the American grading system.

    “My scholarship and research is in writing assessment and racism studies and the intersection of those two things,” Inoue said. “This [workshop] is an extension of that by trying to engage with writing faculty, English faculty and the curriculum.”

    Inoue described white supremacy as a condition in which a particular group’s dialogue dominates others.

    Inoue said white supremacists are often middle to upper-class people from the East Coast that attended an elite school. Inoue said these conditions collectively make up the identities of white supremacist perpetrators.

    “It’s rarely, if ever, anybody else but that group of people from their particular material conditions in life that produce a certain language, which we tend to call standard or proper English,” Inoue said.

    Inoue called out academia for actively perpetuating racist standards. He said the American grading system reaffirms racist ideals and practices through assigned curriculum.

    Inoue said proper English can be especially problematic in academic settings.

    “There’s lots of research that shows that we don’t actually agree about what that standard looks like,” Inoue said. “But I’m talking about when the rubber meets the road and you have to grade a paper based off of this, or decide whether something is consumable for the public. That’s where we start to have a lot of disagreements.”

    Inoue called out academia for actively perpetuating racist standards. He said the American grading system reaffirms racist ideals and practices through assigned curriculum.

    “I don’t want one to confuse me calling the system racist, with me calling people racist,” Inoue said. “[Professors] are thinking about the disciplines they have to teach and they’re not always thinking about, ‘How do I teach this?’”

    One of the structural flaws within the educational system that Inoue noted was that professors fail to question the academic system and how it reaffirms practices of white language supremacy.

    “It’s difficult to be critical of a system that has really benefited you,” Inoue said. “It seems like everything is working.”

    Inoue said the façade of the education system being equally supportive can be convincing enough that people don’t see the flaws. Inoue said many professors inherit the practices that were inflicted upon them, and because those practices worked for them, they assume they work for others.

    “It’s a fairly narrow economic and social bandwidth of people, so that means that all those practices are fairly narrow and the language practices are fairly narrow,” Inoue said. “So it doesn’t really leave a lot of room for considering differences or changes or being critical about those things.”

  • More like higher training!

    More like higher training!

    By | Reza Sadeghzadeh

    Let’s be honest and tell it like it is.

    Screen Shot 2017-10-14 at 2.23.51 PM.png

    The big corporations want the politicians to turn higher education into a factory that produces blue and white collar workers because the corporations need individuals that are trainable. But there is more to it!

    Programs like Humanities and Social Sciences are under attack by politicians like Marco Rubio, the person that said: “we need more welders and less philosophers.”

    The underlining message is that public schools should teach us less about the world and more about the working world.

    Donald Trump’s most recent presidential memorandum to the Secretary of Education will also reassure you that “it is critical that we educate and train our future workforce to compete and excel in lucrative and important STEM fields.”

    Read between the lines! Trump is trying to manage public school programs that teach students how to be obedient workers.

    In other words, the Trump administration is steering the working people away from courses that focus on critically thinking. They want to make sure that the 1% does all the thinking for us.

    To be fair, STEM students do have more career opportunities than students in other programs. But that should not make the other programs inferior to science, technology, engineering and math. It would be like comparing apples to oranges.

    These “soft” or interdisciplinary programs are just as important because they cultivate leaders with ethical decision-making abilities. But this notion would bring empowerment to the working class that would threaten the 1%.

    Knowledge is power. When the people become educated, they are more inclined to be critical of their surroundings, the public discourse and their history. As a result, the people start making impressive egalitarian changes in society.

    A perfect example of that is the current transformation of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

    Hopefully, you can see why the few people at the top would want to make sure that our education does not get out of line. Emphasizing STEM programs is a smart tactic on their part to deter us from gaining social consciousness.

    There is more to Trump’s job growth rhetoric and it is not just about increasing our nation’s gross domestic product. It is harder for politicians to manipulate the people when the people start thinking outside the box. With that said, I leave you with this question: Is Trump’s education plan undermining your intellectual autonomy?

     

  • A nuanced way of grading

    A nuanced way of grading

    By | Reza Sadeghzadeh

    Settling for a lower grade is frustrating when you’re trying to get the grade you want. It’s time to get rid of our old, outdated grading structure!

    There is a new way of grading that allows students to get the grade they deserve. It‘s called specification grading. The “specs” grading system has no ambiguities because students will know from the first day of class exactly what grade they will be getting. It sounds too good to be true, but this is how it works.

    The professor will tell their students the first day of class that they must successfully meet a set of specification proposed in the syllabus. For instance, to get an A, the student must write four essays, pass three exams, finish two projects and provide the class with one presentation. If a student could settle for a B, they will have to complete and pass fewer tasks. You get the idea.

    The professor will also give a token to every student so they can use it to redo an incomplete assignment. Additionally, the instructor will provide more assignments and exams than the amount required to get an A. Therefore; students have a chance to redeem themselves if they fail an assignment or test.

    Dr. John Meyer, a Politics professor at Humboldt State University, has experimented with this method of grading.

    “[I] very much liked it,” said Meyer. “It encouraged the class to focus on the things that matter.”

    Further, the students are inclined to apply themselves more in class since they know exactly what it takes to get the grade they want.

    “There’s something wrong with the way we’re grading that isn’t being talked about nearly enough,” said Dr. Linda Nielson, director of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation at Clemson University. “Grades [only] account for 2.4% variance of career success.”

    Our current grading structure does not fully correlate with how much we learn. Sometimes the difference between a B+ and an A- comes down to the discretion of a professor. In other words, their final decision may be dogmatic and unfair.

    It is important for a learning institution to acknowledge all of its options. Now is the time to start talking about a new way of grading that will boost our education so we can focus more on learning than worrying about the uncertainty of our grades.