Keeping up with the Times

Just a quick comment on this piece on "The Dwindling Power of a College Degree," which appeared in the NYT Sunday Magazine for November 27:

Computers have hurt workers outside factories too. Picture the advertising agency in “Mad Men,” and think about the abundance of people who were hired to do jobs that are now handled electronically by small machines. Countless secretaries were replaced by word processing, voice mail, e-mail and scheduling software; accounting staff by Excel; people in the art department by desktop design programs. This is also true of trades like plumbing and carpentry, in which new technologies replaced a bunch of people who most likely stood around helping measure things and making sure everything worked correctly.

As a result, the people whose jobs remained valuable in that “Mad Men” office were then freed up to do more valuable things. A talented art director could produce more work more quickly with InDesign. A bright accountant could spend more time thinking of new ways to make and save money, rather than spending endless hours punching numbers into an adding machine. Global trade works much the same way. It’s horrible news for a textile factory worker in North Carolina, but it may be great for a fashion designer in New York.

Has it, in fact, been great for that art director and accountant and fashion designer? Or, in addition to producing more work quickly, thinking of new ways to make and save money, and so on, are these workers not also having to take on paperwork, maintain correspondences by voice and e-mail, and schedule meetings and what not via Outlook? The technologies do not do the work on their own - they still require people to run them. Except that those people are no longer dedicated staff that (in my opinion, more efficiently) manages the operations of a workplace.

In the workplace of higher ed, I recently heard from a colleague that how a few of her now-approaching-emeritus faculty member typically handled attendance (until quite recently) was that they circulated a sheet of paper asking students to sign in - then passed along the sheets to their full-time department secretary to keep track of student absences! So that the older faculty members could not understand how and why younger faculty members complained that they could not "count" attendance in their grading. Hint: Because it takes a lot of time to keep track of student attendance. Time that younger faculty members do not necessarily have b/c we have absorbed a lot of workplace operational work ourselves... (Not to mention whether or not it is even appropriate to ask department secretaries to do work like this...)

Here is what I found a bit frightening:

A general guideline these days is that people are rewarded when they can do things that take trained judgment and skill — things, in other words, that can’t be done by computers or lower-wage workers in other countries. Money now flows around the world so quickly, and technology changes so fast, that people who thought they were in high demand find themselves uprooted.

I think we tenure-track faculty members cannot take for granted that professors will always be needed. (We know that they are not always wanted...)

It is happening already, believe it or not, in K12 schooling. Read this piece, "How Online Learning Companies Bought America's Schools," from The Nation's November 16 issue.

The new normal sucks.

The demise of the Korean deli

A friend posted on Facebook this article on the demise of Korean grocers in New York City, noting that it seemed both not a bad thing, but also a bit sad.

I know what she means. Not a bad thing in that running a mom-and-pop store is not just a job, but a livelihood that involves entire families. I think the only time that my aunts and uncles closed their stores might have been for funerals in the family. When I was planning my wedding, my mother reminded me that it ought not interfere with store hours.

Like the people interviewed in the article, I think my aunts and uncles regarded their stores as the best opportunities available to them here in the United States, but they hoped for still better opportunities for their children.

So, it seems sad that - at least according to the NYT - the wane of the Korean grocery store is a result (and a sign) of "the same forces that threaten all sorts of mom-and-pop businesses: rising rents, increased competition from online and corporate rivals, and more scrutiny from city agencies that impose fines."

For me, this is not just about the closing of Korean grocery stores, but also the narrowing of possibilities.

B/c while my aunts and uncles did not necessarily aspire to running a store, I think they will agree that it indeed enabled them not only to make a living, but to make lives for themselves and their children. It permitted them a degree of independence: I think it makes a difference that when they interacted with other (non-Korean) Americans, they were store owners and managers interacting with customers, not employees or laborers interacting with employers or bosses.

I disagree with the blogger at New York Press: Korean Grocers Move on to Bigger and Better Things. I appreciated that the NYT offered a bit more nuance in its account than that.

Bigger-and-better seems to be the story that we all want to believe: The American dream. Especially in a place like New York City, which specializes in cheering for the underdog. We do not want the story to be that Korean mom-and-pop stores are closing b/c small business no longer presents the possibilities that it apparently did for earlier generations. We do not want the story to be that the underdog will not win.

State of The Nation

In the May 23rd issue of The Nation, New York Times economics writer Louis Uchitelle reports on the decline in the number of dual-earner married couples between 2007 and 2010.

Uchitelle takes particular note of married couples who find themselves relying on what had been women's "second income" jobs after men lose their places as the primary bread winners:

Meanwhile, Rhonda's long working days - she leaves at around 5 am and is gone until early evening - have altered her role in the family, not to mention his. She still views him - and he views himself - as the chief provider, if not today then in the long run, when her income, they hope, will once again become secondary.

Uchitelle describes a shift in household responsibilities, but whether or not this constitutes a shift toward gender equality is another question:

When Ruth Millkman, a sociologist at the City University of New York, noticed this role reversal in data from the 1930s, she thought it was a move toward gender equality. "But because the role reversal was strongly associated with economic deprivation, it was not welcome," Milkman says. Seventy-five years later, Keith Baudendistel certainly does not welcome it. "I want to be the head of the household again," he says, "but until that can happen, we have to manage as best we can."

I have to wonder about the hope and the expectation that life can return to what it had been. Even when men like Keith find work again, they are likely to earn less (even considerably less) than what they earned before, and it is unlikely that Rhonda's income will be "secondary" again. Their home life has been and will be transformed.

I think there might have been a moment when it looked like the financial crisis might precipitate important and meaningful changes in the way things (and people) work. It seemed like crisis might precipitate a searching of our collective souls. Question the power of financial institutions. Question the work week. Question inequalities, including gender.

Did I miss the parade?

Keeping up with the Times: Bob Herbert

Bob Herbert published his final column (which sadly is titled "Losing Our Way") for the NYT today. This is too bad b/c in the era of the new normal, we need a voice like his to remind us:

There is plenty of economic activity in the U.S., and plenty of wealth. But like greedy children, the folks at the top are seizing virtually all the marbles. Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached stages that would make the third world blush. As the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007, the most recent extended period of economic expansion.

Americans behave as if this is somehow normal or acceptable. It shouldn’t be, and didn’t used to be. Through much of the post-World War II era, income distribution was far more equitable, with the top 10 percent of families accounting for just a third of average income growth, and the bottom 90 percent receiving two-thirds. That seems like ancient history now.

The current maldistribution of wealth is also scandalous. In 2009, the richest 5 percent claimed 63.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. The overwhelming majority, the bottom 80 percent, collectively held just 12.8 percent.

I find funny in a not-so-ha-ha way Herbert's observation that "Americans behave." We need to start serious misbehavior on the part of what is fair and just.

I am a fat cat

Clearly, I am: I am a professor at a public college, where I teach an impractical liberal arts discipline, which generates no income via patents, but nevertheless has contributed countless insights into human experience that in fact we draw upon daily. Today, I am earning a salary that is equal to what I earned more than 10 years ago (in journalism), before I returned to graduate school and earned a PhD in anthropology. (BTW, I can expect never to earn six figures.) Thanks to my union card, I have a contract (which means that the conditions and requirements of my work are known clearly), and I am entitled to health benefits (which can we agree everyone ought to have access to?), and a retirement plan (BTW, not a pension). Not to mention that I have my summers "off" (to engage in the research and writing that contribute not only to my own standing and my ability to teach students, but also to the prestige and status of the department and the college where I work).

Wait. I thought that the financial problems today were rooted in, say, "AIG" and "Wall Street" and "speculation." Since when are they about "public sector employees" and "unions" and "collective bargaining"?

I find it troubling to see where "greed" is being shifted - from bankers who worked with relatively little regulation to government workers who take for granted that their work will undergo a great deal of scrutiny. Even more troubling is that too many of us are falling into line with that line of discourse.

I refuse to buy it.

The case against tenure

Over breakfast, I read Dana Goldstein's essay, "Grading 'Waiting for Superman,'" in the October 11th issue of The Nation. Goldstein, an education reporter, considers what "Waiting for Superman" - a much discussed documentary about the failures of public education - tells us and especially what it does not tell us. Her assessment is similar to Nicholas Lemann's recent comment in The New Yorker, about which I blogged recently: Both journalists note that the film celebrates charter schools as a solution, and teachers unions as the problem.

For my friends who are parents and / or who are concerned about public educations and have questions about charter schools (I confess that I probably know too little about the issue...), I think it would be smart of us to read the criticisms of "Waiting for Superman." I have not yet seen the film - not at the mall cineplex in my neck of the woods - but I certainly plan on it. My understanding is that the film, made by the director of "An Inconvenient Truth," is quite compelling. However. I know that I want to know the rest of the story, too.

What especially caught my eye is the brief comment on tenure for public school teachers, which I think gives insight to the brouhaha over tenure for faculty at colleges and universities. Goldstein quotes from an interview with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, who apparently is singled out in the film as The Enemy:

The unions are hurt by public frustration with teacher tenure, a level of job security inconceivable to most American workers, who are barely hanging on during a recession with a nearly 10 percent unemployment rate.

"Only 7 percent of American workers are in unions," Weingarten says, adding matter-of-factly, "America looks at us as islands of privilege."

That is the case against tenure?! I call this the "sucks"-is-the-new-normal effect... Never mind that the real islands of privilege might lie located elsewhere...

***

I think it ought to be noted, as Goldstein does, that unionized teachers themselves also want to see their profession do a better job at maintaining their own standards. "According to a 2003 Public Agenda poll, 47 percent of teachers believe 'the union sometimes fights to protect teachers who really should be out of the classroom," Goldstein notes.

So, why not enable, encourage, and support workers themselves to set the standards, and see that they are upheld - and to do so in a way that preserves the dignity of each individual? Which, unfortunately, "policing" too often fails to do. We might have more incentive not to bend the rules, were the rules themselves more resilient...

Stand up for your work

A link to this thoughtful op / ed piece in the NYT just circulated on a teaching listserv to which I belong, accompanied with a comment that it was relevant not just to elementary / secondary school, but also in higher ed.

In particular, author Susan Engel's concluding remark resonates with me - that testing ought to be "one tool among many for improving schools, rather than serving as a weapon that degrades the experience for teachers and students alike."

We are only in the first few weeks of first grade at our house, but already I have become aware of the long shadow that standardized testing casts over teachers and students. I think about Beanie's teacher, whom we already have come to respect and admire in just the few weeks that we have known her: I cannot imagine that assessments and measures are what motivated her to become a teacher in the first place. She seems like a caring and creative teacher with a lot to share, but the more that the "job" of teaching becomes degraded to test preparation, the less room there is for the exercise of talent.

The imperative to assess is being felt also in higher ed. The perceived recalcitrance of faculty, I think, ought to be understood, at least in part, as the stand we are taking on the importance and meaning of our work. We do not want it - and our students and ourselves - to be degraded.

We the Nacirema

The other night, while prepping for my class on the Anthropology of North America, StraightMan suggested that I read this Onion piece from 2004. I finally got around to it today. It hurt to read it. A lot. I did not laugh. At all.

Later, reading martinimade's QOTD made my day. I interpret it to mean that Jon Stewart agrees with me - or at least that I agree with him - about "sucks" being the new normal: Except that he calls it "shit taco".

1 in 7 Americans now live in poverty, defined as about $22,000 a year for a family for four. The Washington Post noted:

Since 2007, the year before the recession kicked into gear, the country has almost 4 million fewer wage-earners. There are more children growing up poor. And for the first time since the government began tracking health insurance in 1987, the number of people who have health coverage declined, as people lost jobs with health benefits or employers stopped offering it.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to remain employed on the one hand feel grateful, but on the other hand also insecure and uncertain. Not to mention overstretched in almost every domain, with pressure to do more with less at work and at home.

I suspect that expectations already had been increasing even before the economic downturn, which then becomes referenced as the reason to "explain" (or justify) so-called austerity measures, which become promoted as "temporary" and as "shared" sacrifice.

Or it just might be time to wake up and smell the shit taco.

Further proof

Further proof that "sucks" is the new normal: The incorporation of routines like the morning nit check and products like Lice Shield - "a new line of hair care products demonstrated to repel lice while, at the same time, gently cleansing and conditioning" - into the body rituals of the Nacirema (or at least a few families that I know).

StraightMan lamented this morning that the days when a single rinse of pesticide shampoo could visit devastation upon the lice have gone: This is now a nit by nit battle. The guerilla warfare / new world order / post-9/11 / counterinsurgency tensions surrounding such a statement make my skin crawl as much as the idea of lice makes me itch.

I feel so colonized.

Note that the Web site photo for "Lice Shield" (above) is a child dressed as a knight engaged in sword-in-hand combat. Which seems to prove StraightMan's point. What a frustrated parent like myself really wants to see is a mushroom cloud swirling around that child's head, with stone cold lice on their backs and their six legs pointed skyward...

Uh oh. I seem to have lapsed into Cold War nostalgia. I am way too young for this.