A "brrrrrrrry" good morning.  I just came in from getting the newspaper and I my
frozen face is as Carolina blue as my UNC scrubbies.  My hands are so cold that the hot
cup off coffee I'm tightly holding to thaw out board-like fingers almost turned to coffee
slush.  The temperature here in supposed warm and sunny South Georgia is lower than it was
in Tahoe last week:  17 degrees, 12 degrees if you factor in the wind chill!!!!  Later,
its ice skating on my koi pond and snow boarding down the fire ant hills for me!!!
Brrrrrr!!!  Double brrrrr!!!

	Talking about cold, stirred by some stuff on higher education that I've been
reading, by some more stuff I've been reading on research on how each of our brain
operate, by what the SACS study we're suffering through for reaccredidation I know won't
study and comment on, and by starting to get into the groove for the start of the new
semester tomorrow, I was thinking about some chilling questions this morning.  

	Do we professors know, really know, what we're doing in the classroom?  Oh, I
don't question that the profs know the stuff of their discipline, but do they know, truly
know, how to teach it?  Most don't.  Are we professors trained in leadership and public
speaking, both of which are requirements in the classroom?  Most aren't.  Do we professors
know, really know, or care to know, who is in the classroom with us?  Most don't and don't
care to.  Are we professors really trained for the classroom with the same rigor we are
trained in our scholastic discipline.  Most aren't.  After being in the classroom for over
45 years, I have come to the same conclusion many others, both inside and outside higher
education, have reached:  teaching in higher education is largely haphazard, largely
confined to the realm of tradition and guesswork, at best to on-the-job, trail-and-error,
seat-of-your pants, almost intuitive navigation, to unverifiable claims and presumptions
and assumptions and stereotypes and mythologies.  They all revolve around the usually
unexamined and widely accepted propositions that if you know it, you can teach it; that
teaching is little more talking or controlling discussion; that education is solely an
information transmission and skill development business rather than a people business;
that professors are the paragons of inhuman, emotional-less objectivity; that learning is
hearing, note-taking, test taking, and paper writing; and that the legitimacy of this
process is evidenced by the test grades, course grades, and cumulative GPAs.  

	As a result almost everything is focused on the blind rituals of scholastic
education, which are formal, structured, and supervised--and worshipped.  And, the SACS
study will not change that, for it has been my experience of having undergone three
previous such processes that the people of the SACS study will only study "outwardness" as
they swarm all over our campus.  They'll look at, discuss, and raise questions about
courses, programs, resumes, assessment, objectives, and, of course, those supposedly
know-all-and-see-all syllabi.  They, like most of us, will give little, if any, thought to
emotional, social, and character education, which remains generally ignored, unsupervised,
informal, and haphazard.  They won't go into personal inwardness: the flow of spirit,
attitude, personal vision, inventiveness, creativity, uniqueness, renewal, refreshment.
That is sad, for, as David Brooks once said, since the latter, which governs how and to
what ends we use the former is much more important to our personal, professional, and
social long-term happiness and the quality of our lives.

	Yet, coming into what is proving to be an anorexic picture of higher education is
cognitive science's revealing, challenging, but richly nutritious research on the brain.
It's uncovering the nature learning.  It is, therefore, revealing what I call a bulimic
process of serving up, ingesting, and vomiting up that information with very little time
and effort given to digesting that information into knowledge and wisdom; that both
teaching and learning is based on a highly unnatural, inefficient, ineffective,
questionable, and subjective, fear inducing, threatening, stifling, and often debilitating
reward and punishment system on both sides of the podium.
 
	Teaching is an ancient craft which has had very little refitting over the
millennia.  Until recently few people really had any idea of how the traditional way of
teaching and learning affected and was affected by the workings of the brain. Well, that
is beginning to change, and for the first time we are seeing the fields of brain science
and education coming together.  But, at the same time that togetherness spotlights a
reality:  what the science says we should be doing in our field and what we are still
doing are fields apart.

	This relationship is new and still awkward.  To be sure, there is a ton of
bandwagon, scholarship-of-teaching hyperbole weighing down a lot of good “brain-based”
research. But, at the same time, the good stuff is more often than not falling on deaf
ears.  While the brain research is giving us a lot of food for thought, there are seven
other inter-related traditions in higher education are at work that are squelching most
appetites to alter eating habits.  First, there is the Ivory Tower's too often lofty,
remote, self-validating, elitist, and isolating "what do they know" that breeds resistance
to change and disdain for any sort of answerability and accountability.  The result is
that you will often get reluctant and resigned compliance, but not enthusiastic commitment
and dedication.  Second, lip service notwithstanding, there is the heavy emphasis on
research and publication and a depreciation of the scholastic value of teaching in the
hiring, promoting, recognizing, awarding, and tenuring processes.  Third, there is the
fear-ridden, self-centered, stifling don't-rock-the-boat, submissive what-do-they-want
quest for the job guarantee of tenure.  Fourth is the prevailing inadequate training for
the classroom.  Fifth is the deafening, blinding, paralyzing, and atrophying "I know how
to teach.  I've been in the classroom X years" syndrome.  Sixth is the wide spread, and
often counter intuitive belief, that technology in and of itself is the panacea for all of
academic's ills, that it can meet all of its contemporary challenges, and carry out all of
its missions.  And finally, there is negative, fear inducing, and debilitating
overwhelming misuse and abuse of the faculty grading system we call "assessment" more as
admonition and punishment than as improvement, growth, and change.  

	Nevertheless, there is possibility of transformation, of turning higher education
on its head, if we find the courage, strength, commitment, endurance, and perseverance to
retrofit this ancient craft beyond merely slapping on a new coat of paint, give it the
prestige it deserves, allow for and promote creative experimentation and exploration, and
alter its course by replacing dead reckoning with a modern scientific compass and GPS
system.

	How to do that?  Well, as Paul Harvey would say, that's the rest of the story.


Make it a good day.

      --Louis--


Louis Schmier                                http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History  
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org               
Valdosta State University             
Valdosta, Georgia 31698                  /\   /\  /\               /\
(229-333-5947)                                /^\\/  \/   \    /\/\__/\ \/\
                                                        /     \/   \_  \/ /   \/ /\/    
\      /\
                                                       //\/\/ /\    \__/__/_/\_\    
\_/__\
                                                /\"If you want to climb mountains,\ /\
                                            _ /  \    don't practice on mole hills" -