Today, I was assaulted by an article. There I was, happily reading along and deciding what my response to the article would be, when suddenly I felt clever. The article was Higher education does not equal happiness by Judith Ireland, and it was well written, which somehow made things worse. The altercation took place between the fourth and fifth paragraphs. It was at that moment that I looked up and realized that the obvious conclusion to be drawn from “Higher education does not equal happiness” is that ignorance is bliss. I patted myself on the back and read on…

While pretentious scholarly types will dismiss the report as proof ignorance really is bliss, its author, Mike Dockery of the Curtin Institute of Technology, is unsure why it has confirmed the puzzling phenomenon that people in developed countries with higher levels of education report lower levels of wellbeing.

Okay, I’ve been called pretentious before, even scholarly, but the combination of the two made me feel like–well, it made me feel like Judith totally had my number. Fear not; I got over myself pretty quickly and started being genuinely intrigued.

Let’s start from a high level…

The Definition of a Western Education

As I understand and generally misquote, a Western education should serve one main purpose: to give those who’ve completed it the ability to reason. This ability to judge, to question, to argue prepares one to be a model, participating citizen, at least in the classic sense. It is, at the very least, a noble goal. [I should note here that I can't find any reference to my definition anywhere, but I rather enjoy it, so we're going to run with it because it helps me prove my point.] The other side of the coin–that’s the teaching-people-to-reason coin–is that a successful Western education nurtures skepticism. So here we all are, out in the Information Age, being blasted with more memes than we know what to do with, and we have to question everything.

Is it any wonder that we, the pretentious scholarly types, are paling in the face of the postmodern abyss? Surely it does mean that ignorance is bliss. And I for one am sick and tired of seeing the forest for the trees. Let’s go down to town hall, tear off our sociological imaginations, and burn them, for all to see!

Ahem.

So, if we toss that lot of elitist, second-hand, armchair-philosophy nonsense out the window, we’re left with an interesting question: what is wrong with us?

The Real Culprit

Further on in the article, we’re met with some hefty statistics about underemployment and student loan debt, followed by:

Perhaps rather than feeling let down about real life, university students feel let down about university instead.

Could the case be so pragmatic? Could it be that the contemporary college grad is just inundated by debt and struggling for work? Could it be, too, that we always wanted to grow up to be the president of police astronauts, and being stuck inside a cubicle, behind a register, or generally smiling and thanking people for being rude just isn’t working out the way we’d hoped? Yeah, that’s probably a bit more like it.

Pull Your Head Out…of the Clouds

Here’s an idea that’s worked for me: Stop focusing on how you thought things would be different, and start embracing the fact that they are. It’s time to grow up, but that doesn’t mean you’re dying tomorrow. You’ve still got plenty of time to achieve those dreams. The only real hiccup is that you’ve got to spend time keeping yourself afloat–your parents don’t pay for anything anymore, nobody cleans up after you, and you get excited about health insurance–these things happen.

Feeling a little envious of those aforementioned, happy-go-lucky vocational students? Enroll in an MBA program; you’d be hard pressed to find a master’s degree more practical than that. Is it the cubicle that’s grating on you? It’s never too late to pick up a less business-oriented skill.

Of course, if you’re happy feeling sorry for yourself and lamenting what could have been, by all means, keep at it.

In case you were unaware, we have a pretty decent presence on Twitter, among other social networking outlets. This morning, a friend made sure I didn’t miss the following tweet:

Is online education inferior to face-to-face teaching? Our blogger thinks so

At first, I read it like it were a call to arms. I put my special war headdress, cinched down my holier-than-thou armor, and drew my rhetorical blade–only to find out that I heartily agreed with the blogger in question. I took off all of my figurative garb, and tweeted back something to the effect of “Different strokes for different folks,” and–you know what?–I bloody well meant it!

Online Education: No, It Isn’t for Everyone

A lot of our content is geared towards online degree programs and how awesome they are; it’s true (true about our content and true that online education is awesome–it is; deal with it). It’s sort of our specialty, but we don’t think it’s the best for everyone, nor do we think that campus programs are entirely outmoded. The point of the aforementioned blog post was simply to say that it’s probably wrong that many campus-based students are being forced to take strictly online classes. And, yeah, I totally agree. It’s not keeping up with the times; it’s putting a smiley-face spin on budget cuts.

Online education is great for students who don’t fit the traditional profile, which, as it turns out, is a whole lot of people. Got a day job? Online education lets you work around that schedule without being relegated to night classes at the local community college. Got a full-time family? Again, online education is a scheduling life saver. Not good with social interaction? Hey, online education has got you covered!

If, on the other hand, you need that disapproving look from a mentor when you blow it, if you crave the way a college campus makes you feel, if you paid for a traditional education, then–no–strictly online classes probably aren’t going to be your cup of tea. Given the choice, I’d still go for an on-campus program, but certain things, like paying the bills, make an online degree a much more viable option for someone like me. If I didn’t live in a city that happened to be home to a pretty decent university, I’d be even better suited for online education.

The truth of the matter is that, while online education does beat traditional face-to-face learning, it’s the union of the two that produces the best results. It’s no secret that you can’t please all the people all the time, so let’s just agree that learning is a wonderful thing. The more people we get to do it, the better.

I’m not a Wal-Mart shopper. It’s not that I don’t like low prices; it’s just that this ridiculously large purveyor of goods has a history of labor abuses, not to mention driving smaller stores out of business. That said, I try not hold grudges. Wal-Mart has been taking steps to make their company greener, and various institutions of law have made sure that they’re respecting labor laws. What they’re doing now has me downright shocked.

Wal-Mart Employees to Get Tuition Breaks for Online College

In a partnership with American Public University, Wal-Mart is going to start offering it’s employees a 15 percent tuition break. They’ve dedicated $50 million to dissemination over the course of three years. According to former education under secretary Sara Martinez Tucker, who is now on the company’s external advisory council, If 10 to 15 percent of Wal-Mart employees take advantage of this, that’s like graduating three Ohio State Universities,” which gives you an idea about just how many people work at Wal-Mart.

From the New York Times’ article on the subject:

The program will initially allow about 200,000 employees in positions like cashier, department manager and distribution center unloader to accrue credits for training they already receive in their jobs.

For instance, a department-level manager, who receives training from Wal-Mart in areas like pricing, inventory management and ethics, would be eligible for 24 on-the-job credits, at no charge, toward a 61-credit associates’ degree. A cashier would be eligible for six credits toward a 61-credit associate’s degree or a 120-credit bachelor’s degree.

Credits for work experience and a 15-percent tuition break? It’s an online college, too, which means that–really–any employee with Internet access is good to go. I’m still not sure I’ll shop there, but I’m proud of Wal-Mart. It’s a fantastic nod to online education, too.

Arizona and Texas are playing a deadly game of one-upmanship. Most recently, Arizona changed immigration laws to include such nonsense as making not carrying your immigration papers a misdemeanor and requiring police officers to detain people they reasonably suspect of being in the country without authorization “when practicable”. This put them ahead of Texas–and nobody messes with Texas. To prove this point, Texas decided to change their textbooks in the name of “adding balance” to the curriculum. I blogged, at length, about this recently. Because Texas is the largest market for textbooks in the country, which means that their standards could potentially shape the minds of children from California to Maine, and this move got them up there with Arizona on the country’s list of things to be angry about. Arizona isn’t one to back down from a challenge, and when their spotlight was taken by Texas, they had to do something.

Changing the Face of America’s Youth… with White Paint

An elementary school in Prescott, AZ was in the process of getting a lovely mural painted. The mural was encouraging “green transportation” and just so happened to be located at a prominent intersection, where passersby were able to shout their support for the cause… by shouting “racial slander from their cars.” Why? Because the mural depicted a few students who attend the ethnically diverse school in a larger-than-life fashion. It just so happened that–you guessed it–the students were not white.

A city councilman, Steve Blair, got the town all riled up by ranting on his radio show. My personal favorites of his quotes:

“To depict the biggest picture on the building as a Black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?”

“Personally, I think it’s pathetic. You have changed the ambiance of that building to excite some kind of diversity power struggle that doesn’t exist in Prescott, Arizona. And I’m ashamed of that.”

Wait, I’m sorry, just what are you ashamed of, Mr. Blair? The irony? The kids go to the school. I wonder how he feels about Obama’s presidency–yikes. Fortunately, he’s been fired from his radio show. Even more fortunately, the principal of the school has apologized for his previous statements, saying now that the mural will go up as it was originally intended. Now, if only we could get Texas to put all of that history back in the books, we’d be in business.

Breaking down the list of historical figures who didn’t make the cut has been more work–and considerably more fun–than I’d originally thought. We’ve covered everyone from Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan to Florence Nightingale and Sandra Cisneros so far, and we’re only now heading into the truly important classes–those during which adolescents form the opinions that they’ll carry with them into adulthood.

Don’t Mess with Textbooks: Even More People Being Left Out of History in TX

Today, we’re starting off with U.S. History Since 1877. First up on the list…

1. Oveta Culp Hobby. And another strong, successful, historically significant woman makes the list but not the cut. Oveta was the first secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (not to mention, obviously, the first female secretary of the dept.), which later became the Department of Health and Human Services. She was the first woman in the Army to receive the Distinguished Service Medal; she was the first commanding officer of the Women’s Army Corps; and she even served as chairman of board at the Houston Post. All in all, she seems pretty suspect–good thing they took her out of the books.
2. Herbert Hoover. Okay, really? We’re just coming out of the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Mainstream newspapers were actually making reference to Hoovervilles, and their cutting ol’ Herbert out of the curriculum? Are we going to pretend no one’s ever screwed up economic policy before?
3. Shirley Chisholm. Shirley wasn’t all that important, right? I mean, she was just the first black woman elected to Congress, the first woman to make a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, and the first black presidential candidate, male or female, for a major political party. Now that I re-read that it seems like she might just have earned her spot, too bad Texas doesn’t agree.
4. Eugene Debs. Eugene Debs was a socialist. There I said it. He was also a union leader; one of the founding members of the International Workers of the World, the American Railway Union, and the International Labor Union; and the five-time presidential candidate of the Socialist Party. A vehement opponent of World War I, Eugene spent a fair amount of time in jail for his speeches and exploits, but he always managed to bounce back. We can’t have our children growing up thinking that everything will be okay if they speak out against America, war, or capitalism–that just wouldn’t be right.
5. Robert La Follette. Hailed by some as “arguably the most important and recognized leader of the opposition to the growing dominance of corporations over the Government”, Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette actually managed to get 17 percent of the national popular vote when he ran for president in 1924 as the Progressive Party candidate. It’s no wonder this guy’s pages are being pulled; when he was governor of Wisconsin, he championed all sorts of crazy ideas, like the first workers’ compensation system, minimum wage, and women’s suffrage.
6. Ralph Nader. Unless you missed the past few presidential elections, you know who Ralph Nader is–and you probably have a good idea about why he’s being taken out of school books–at least conservative school books. What you might not now is that he’s been behind more consumer rights issues than you can shake a stick at. His article, Unsafe at Any Speed, heavily contributed to the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, which brought us seat belts, stronger windshields, and other things that our kids shouldn’t learn about… right?
7. Ross Perot. This oil tycoon ran for president a few times in the ‘nineties. I’m guessing that Texas would just like to forget the whole thing ever happened. Ross was like the Texas-tea version of the Monopoly guy: eccentrically stereotypical and crazy rich. Fortunately, they found a rich, faux-cowboy to help us forget about the off-kilter oil tycoon.
8. John Steinbeck. John Steinbeck wrote Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath, two books still assigned by a large number of high school English teachers, which is fortunate because it looks like our kids won’t be learning about this guy in history class anymore. I really don’t have a clue as to why he’s being cut from U.S. history classes. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and the United States Medal of Freedom–seems like a good guy to keep in there.
9. Thomas Jefferson. Before you start getting all uppity, the decision to strike Thomas Jefferson from the annals of world history (not U.S. history) was actually overturned. The original argument was that TJ wasn’t actually an Enlightenment thinker, but was, rather, only influenced by them, so he shouldn’t be included. He wasn’t ever going to be cut from U.S. history, but boy, was that ever a great way to get everyone all riled up. “They’re taking Thomas Jefferson out of the school books! Get your pitch forks and torches!”
10. Vladimir Lenin. Isn’t there some famous quote about being condemned to repeat the past? I know that Lenin was a sort of socialist, but wasn’t he the really, really bad kind? The kind that would support all of that anti-pinko rhetoric that’s all the rage lately?
11. Oscar Romero. He was the Archbishop of San Salvador and gained must of his international renown for speaking out against poverty, injustice, and terror. Why pull him? Perhaps because of a the little American blunder that didn’t earn him any popularity points with the already-sort-of-upset El Salvadorian Marxist radicals who assassinated him shortly there after. He’d written to President Carter to ask that the American funding be cut off and was ignored, but word got out. Whoops.
12. Desmond Tutu. Desmond Tutu seems like a good guy to learn about. His anti-apartheid stance got him international recognition, a Nobel Peace Prize (1984), the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism (1986), the Gandhi Peace Prize (2005), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009). Other humanitarian interests: gay rights, women’s rights, and climate change–and we can’t have kids coming home talkin’ about those, now can we?
13. Thomas Hobbes. Thomas Jefferson may have been spared the axe in the world-history department, but Thomas Hobbes didn’t get the same kind of love. He’s been cut from the U.S. Government curriculum.
14. Mary Kay Ash. The founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc. is getting cut from economics courses, bringing the total number of historical women in the curriculum to zero. So much for women entrepreneurs.
15. Sigmund Freud. Okay, so most Freudian psychology has been shown to be wrong, but still, cutting the father of psychoanalysis from high school psychology classes? I won’t read too much into this one; sometimes the cutting of one of the most important historical figures in a field is just the cutting of one of the most important historical figures in a field, you know?

That concludes the list of those who got the axe in the name of celebrating what is commendable about American history and bringing a more centrist position to the curriculum. While the “white-washing” of history seems to be getting quite a bit of attention, it seems to me that we should be more concerned about the number of women’s rights leaders (and women in general) who were purged from the curriculum.

Of course, the hefty “white-washing” reaction is also due in part to decisions like calling the slave trade “Atlantic triangular trade” and referring to American imperialism as “expansionism”. These find-and-replace tactics for dealing with major historical concepts are disconcerting, particularly when the terms really don’t mean the same thing. That’s another blog post for another time, though, and I’m already steamed enough about just the historical figures getting pulled.

Last week, I decided to look a little further into the Texas textbook issue, mainly because of a point my mother made about how it would, in fact, affect the entire nation, not just the Lone Star State. Checking out the main website for the Texas Board of Education, I found the list of historical figures getting chopped from the curriculum. Well, not all of them are getting chopped, many–even most–are just being adjusted slightly (you wouldn’t believe how many are being moved from “Follow the words ’such as’” to “Follow the word ‘including’”–something so pedantically minor that giving it so much room in the report seems more like subterfuge or sleight of hand than something of genuine import). I got through the first six on their list, including Florence Nightingale and Paul Bunyan, and nearly through the third-grade curriculum.

More Historical Figures Cut from Texas Textbooks

And the final cut from the third-grade textbooks is…

1. Pecos Bill. Along the same lines as Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill was one of the tall tales of the old West, but is that really all there is to this one? (Because I begged the question, you should be pretty sure that it isn’t.) No! Enter William Rufus Shafter, a Union Army officer during the Civil War and a general in the Spanish-American War who earned the title Pecos Bill for his service in the Indian Wars, during which he led the 24th Infantry in campaigns against the Cheyenne, Comanche, Kickapoo, and Kiowa tribes of Texas. No real need to confuse third-graders with the morality of killing native Americans after serving the Union–particularly when you’ve gotten a cartoon character and cowboy legend named after you.
2. Moses Austin. Moses was an interesting character. He was involved in the lead industry in the late 18th century and was the first to get permission for Anglo Americans to settle in Spanish Texas. While he and his son, Stephen F. Austin, were major pioneers of contemporary Texas, Moses did something that probably didn’t put him in a favorable light with Texas educators: he declared his loyalty to the Spanish crown. I’m not sure why they’re so concerned; it seems like a little “he totally ate some lead and went bats” paragraph could have made an excellent segue into a science/safety lesson.
3. Henry Cisneros. This one follows the whole white-washing-of-history argument that’s got so many people riled up. Henry served four terms as mayor of San Antonio, TX–which gave him the special distinction of being the second Hispanic mayor of a major U.S. city. He went on to work as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Bill Clinton, where he made significant progress housing the growing homeless population across the country. Sounds like a no-good socialist to me–well, as long as you ignore the fact that he made his own way in a classically pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, American style, that is.
4. Miriam A. Ferguson. The first female governor of Texas, Miriam Amanda Wallace “Ma” Ferguson was also the second female governor in the U.S.–and the first one actually elected. Granted, she was essentially just replacing her husband, who’d been impeached and convicted, but nonetheless, she most certainly got elected. A bit of a populist and not one to shy away from tough issues like how stupid prohibition was (even though she wasn’t a drinker) and how the KKK could go take a flying leap, she’s an obvious choice for being cut from the textbooks.
5. Clarence Birdseye. The man responsible for inventing the way we freeze food, Clarence was probably cut because he sold his company to Goldman Sachs in 1929–and we all know how much bad PR they’ve been getting lately. Seriously though, Birds Eye frozen foods is still named after this guy. Learn something new everyday…
6. Carrie Chapman Catt. This one’s easy. Three words: Women’s Suffrage Leader. She was instrumental in getting the 19th amendment passed, allowing women to vote… finally. After she was done in the U.S., she went on to help found the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, which has since been renamed as the International Alliance of Women. The further I get into this list, the more I wonder why “white-washing history” is such a big concern while let’s call it “turning history into a giant sausage fest” or, more accurately and less flippantly, “purging history of all of the strong women who helped make America the place it is today” is largely being ignored in the press. If it’s the winners who write the history books, then it must be the sore losers who make underhanded curriculum laws.
7. Carl Sagan. I think this one can be summed up in a single quote:
   
   

   Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Others–for example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein–considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws.

   Anyone who knows words like “anthropomorphic” and “patriarch” must be trying to undermine society, right?

8. Santa Barraza. This Hispanic artist often portrays the historical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of Nepantla, the borderlands of Texas and Mexico. Why’d she get cut? Probably because colorful, emotionally compelling visions of what it’s like to be split between two cultures make it more difficult to dehumanize illegal immigrants.
9. Sandra Cisneros. The House on Mango Street, a book by Sandra Cisneros, is probably the most accessible story about the difficulties faced by Mexican-Americans coming of age in the U.S. Add that to the fact that Sandra is probably the most famous author to come out of Texas, and it’s clear why they’d never think of cutting–oh, never mind, she’s gone.
10. Cynthia Parker. Cynthia was captured as part of a Comanche raid on Fort Parker when she was nine years of age. When, at age 34, she was re-kidnapped, she had quite a bit of difficulty reintegrating into the Texan community and tried to escape several times. Had she learned to bake pies and hate native Americans like a normal woman of the times, I’m sure she would have been left in the books, but history isn’t always as clearly cut as certain people might like.
11. Phil Gramm. This former Democratic Congressman, Republican Congressman, and Republican Senator from the great state of Texas was behind the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which is thought to have helped get the subprime-mortgage and global-economic crises going. Is it any wonder they don’t seventh graders learning about this guy?
12. C.M. “Dad” Joiner. He discovered what was, at the time, the largest oil deposit on Earth in Texas. With all of the bad press that oil is getting lately (global warming, ever-growing spills in the Gulf), it’s no wonder they’re trying to re-brand Texas tea, er, oil.

Those 12 bring us all the way up through seventh grade. Join me tomorrow for the final rundown, in which we will learn about the remaining group of historical elites who are having their pages torn from history books in Texas.