Some Teachers Want To Remove ‘Failed’ Word From Classroom
July 26th, 2005 Stewart
Don’t see what difference it would make here in the states, though.
With grade inflation, no one gets Fs anymore, do they?
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July 26th, 2005 Stewart
Don’t see what difference it would make here in the states, though.
With grade inflation, no one gets Fs anymore, do they?
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July 22nd, 2005 Stewart
Most mornings as my wife and I are getting ready for work, both of us having worked in higher education for many years, we will find ourselves talking about the university as a workplace. This morning, it led me to crystalize some thoughts that I have regarding service in higher ed, and I thought I’d post them to my blog before they pour out of my brain onto the floor and are lost forever.
As a hypothetical, say that the university president came to the library to check out a copy of his latest book. The circulation clerk looks up the record and says, “Sorry, but that’s already checked out to someone, due back in two weeks.” The president is curious, asking, “Really? Who checked it out?”
The clerk can respond one of two ways:
1. “I’m sorry sir, but we aren’t allowed to give out that information. I’d be happy to place a recall and hold on the book for you so you can have it as soon as it is returned.”
2. “Actually, your secretary checked that out last week.”
Of these two responses, which do you think is better service? Many faculty and university administrators might say #2, which would of course be better for them as patrons. The president, for example, now knows who has the book, and would have easy access to it through the secretary.
But while answer #2 has the illusion of better service, it really isn’t. Maybe the secretary checked it out on her boss’s behalf and is already planning on giving it to him. Maybe the secretary is new, and wants to better understand her new boss and his scholarly interests. Maybe she’s planning on burning it in effigy. Her motivations are her own, and they should remain such. The secretary’s possession of the book, whatever the reason, is her own business.
Answer #1, as professional librarians have known for years, is the only responsible way to deal with this situation. We protect our patrons’ information, because who checked out what is really no one’s business but their own. I would also argue that answer #1 is indicative of better service overall. While it may not serve the president best for the clerk to withhold that information, it does in fact serve the university community best for library records to be confidential and for library users to be assured of their right to privacy.
As universities continue to adopt more business-like practices, the idea of “The customer is always right” has begun to trickle down into various support service points, including libraries, IT support, human resources, and elsewhere. Frankly, many businesses long ago realized that the customer was not always right, and adopted their practices accordingly, but university administrators are often working from outdated concepts of business management anyway.
Oftentimes, pressure is exerted on rank-and-file members of university services to alter their services to better suit the individual than the institution, to make exceptions based on the academic rank of the customer. Certainly, a circulation clerk faced with the university president could not help but feel this kind of pressure.
One of the most important roles for mid-level administrators and directors in university services must be the creation of responsible policies and procedures to assure that this kind of pressure does not negatively impact the provision of service to the greater university community. People who work in university services, like libraries, must know that when they follow the rules and do their work with due dilligence, they will not risk reprimand or censure of any kind.
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July 7th, 2005 Stewart
“Mountain from Molehill Syndrome” strikes again, as rabid right-wing psuedointellectual Horowitz has created an issue where none exists.
The number of students who actually feel this kind of “discrimination” is negligible, and can be (and is) handled easily with established mechanisms within their colleges and universities. Like passing a flag-burning amendment when no one is actually burning flags, Pennsylvania’s going to create more law, more government, all in the name of curtailing a non-existent “epidemic” of discrimination.
I’m certain that the taxpayers of Pennsylvania would much rather see their legislature deal with real issues instead of made-up ones. Maybe they will speak with their votes come re-election time.
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July 5th, 2005 Stewart
Whenever I see something like this, I always think of this instead.
Or as Agent K said in Men in Black: “A person is smart; people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.”
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July 4th, 2005 Stewart
Where are the librarians? As the ETS is working on screening college applicants for what are essentially information literacy skills, we continue to see more puff pieces like this one, where students praise “the internet” and heap contempt upon “the library,” as though in college you can really extract one from the other.
In the meantime, ALA/ACRL and other library associations seem to be remarkably silent. If the testing is rigorous, it can be of value to information literacy librarians, helping them to make the case for curriculum-wide training in the use of information. I’ve never been a member of ALA, so maybe I cannot correctly judge this, but shouldn’t they be making statements to the press, working with ETS to develop the test, and turning this into a win for academic libraries?
And if they are already doing these things, then why are we so notably absent from this article?
(Found out about the article from Kept-Up Academic Librarian, a daily read for me.)
[ADDENDUM 7/6/05: An article from Inside Higher Ed mentions the involvement of Stephanie Brasley, information literacy librarian at UCLA, and has quotes from her. This is very good to see in the press, and allays some of my concerns listed above. That said, where is ALA/ACRL in all of this?]
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July 1st, 2005 Stewart
For folks who need to see the difference between Boomer parenting style and Gen X parenting, here it is, in larger-than-life Sorkinesque dialogue. Enjoy!
From The West Wing Transcripts — Commencement:
ANDY Because instead of showing them that the world is for them, you’re going to be telling them that they have to work hard in school so they can bone up for a life of hopelessness and despair.
TOBY Wouldn’t it be ironic if our kids were the only ones who were properly prepared?
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July 1st, 2005 Stewart
Andrew Whitacre over at FC was kind enough to drop me a comment, so I wanted to get a link in to him before I called it a night. I think his parents’ comments make for good reading, too. The “watch your tone” comment is actually a fairly typical response from Boomer employers (and, well, mothers too), but I’m not sure that tone-watching actually works on Boomers.
When I think “Entitlement Generation” I actually think “Boomer” more than “Millennial” anyway.
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