What's Next?

Ordinarily, being a Penn State trustee is an honor. Most of the decisions to be made are self-evident and require nothing more than a good look at the budget. Today, it's different. Asking football coach Joe Paterno to step down is very likely the worst decision that this set of Penn State trustees will be forced to make. Why? Because Paterno is not only an 84-year-old legendary coach, he and his wife are major benefactors of the University. In 1997 they made a $3.5 million commitment to Penn State, and their name is on the library at University Park. Joe Paterno has been a major fundraiser for the University for most of his career, and he has always put the academic success of his players first. In football and in life, he deserves to be respected. What many people don't realize about major institutions of higher education is that they are very much like the military. There is a hierarchy that sets the pattern for administrators: assistant directors take information to dir...

Is it just me, or are there others who are disgusted by the uncivil discourse of the Republican candidates? I admit to being a woman of a certain age, but I do live in the world, and know that debate sometimes gets heated. But the downright screaming competition at the last Republican match up (I can't dignify it by calling it a debate) was ludicrous. Are these men--and woman--so reduced by their desire to gain votes that they forget the common courtesies of normal civility? There's a great book by P.M. Forni titled Choosing Civility , and I wish a copy would end up in the reading pile of each of the candidates. Forni lists 25 rules for considerate conduct and writes a chapter about each rule: why it's necessary, what it benefits, and how it helps society. I've included the 25 rules at the end of this blog, just because it's a great list. I used this book as a teaching tool in 2008, and my students found it boring. They asked "Isn't this the stuff ...

In today's Inside Higher Ed, the editors juxtaposed two articles about online learning. Both were supported by research, both were written by recognized names. The article by Jeb Bush (former governor of Florida), advocated an increasingly strong focus on online learning; the article by Johann Neem, professor at Western Washington University, noted that the physical and cultural surroundings of college students, including their buildings, professors and classmates, were necessary to encourage higher learning. I strongly agree with Neem. Face-to-face higher education is necessary because almost all traditional 18-22 year old college students need daily motivation to study. The class at which they MUST show their face, the reading quiz that they MUST study for (in order to pass), and the professor who will express grave disappointment in poor test results are vital to early post-secondary education. In high school, that daily motivation comes from Mom ...

Last evening I decided to watch the opening episode of a newly conceived show, "Person of Interest." I was enticed by ads featuring lead actor Jim Caviezel (or something like that), who is really good-looking, and he has a tremendous presence. No wonder he played Jesus Christ in a movie! But the show, as it rolls out, is making a mockery of the American brain. The premise of the story isn't bad. A rich man creates watchdog software for American intelligence services, then realizes he must create a "back door" to the program. He preserves for himself the ability to view potential problems that don't come to government attention and resolve them; he finds Caviezel, a former intelligence agent, and gets him involved in the dirty work. The problem is that most of the story is not told in words, but in strange screen views of the cameras that watch all of America. This show is a great example of how the "geeks" of TV creativity are moving away from ...

Most Americans are aware of the controversy surrounding the cost of end-of-life medical care. About 80 percent of Medicare expenses are incurred in the last year of life, when families and physicians will often take extraordinary measures to preserve a life that's about to end anyway. Some Americans are beginning to favor less end-of-life treatment, and so this issue is often addressed publicly. But how many Americans are aware of the extensive costs involved in the care of infants born before 32 weeks in the womb? Nearly 13 percent of all babies born in the United States are premature, a 20 percent increase over the past two decades. Technological breakthroughs are allowing physicians to save babies at younger and younger ages. Births at 28 weeks are now routine, and the outer edge of viability is 22 weeks. In the next three to five years, doctors could push the threshold to as low as 20 weeks, at which age the infants would weigh abo...

A few days ago I climbed yet another rung on the ladder to Social Security, Medicare, and heaven’s pearly gates. It was the ideal birthday: the celebration covered seven days, I don’t feel any older, and my beautiful grandchildren were actively involved in the cake and the singing. If I asked for more, I’d be greedy. One of the greatest gifts of my life—a gift that improves with every year—is my daughter. Now a mom herself, she is my friend, my therapist, my advisor, my editor, my intellectual sounding board, my cheerleader, and (along with my wonderful son-in-law) provider of those other great gifts, my grandchildren. I look at Rachel and see all of the good in my life, present and past. In her I see glimpses of her father who, after nine years, lives only in my heart and hers. My daughter also produces a lot of the fun in my life. For this birthday, she took me to Greenville, South Carolina, to visit my ailing uncle and to explore the city. We shared a good meal, a bottle ...

I can't think of anyone I'd rather spend the rest of my life with than Tom Friedman. That's right, the New York Times columnist whose experience and research offers great--and practical--insight into our nation's future. (Tom: I already know about Mrs. Friedman. I'm just a dreamer. And maybe you don't put your socks in the hamper, which would be a dealbreaker.) Last evening I was surfing the 12 channels I can afford, wondering why I hate TV. Suddenly, there, on C-SPAN, was my favorite columnist, addressing the National Governors' Association. He based his talk on his new book, That Used to Be Us , and he gave the governors, and viewers like me, a lot to think about. Friedman's background includes extensive research on the Middle East, One of his early books is The Lexus and the Olive Tree , followed by The World is Flat and Hot, Flat, and Crowded . He has made a career of looking at technology and its effects on the global world; he also sees issues not ...

Lately, tests are not my friend. After my sleep study, the doctor let me know that I did indeed have sleep apnea, so I'll be going soon to get the adjustments for my "continuous positive airway path," the machine that will become my new nighttime entertainment. If that test was not enough, I gave a test to my freshman writing students last Friday. I guess I am not surprised to find that they can't fix grammar, punctuation, and mechanics in incorrect sentences. I keep trying, and I keep failing to get it into their brains. In five weeks, I won't be able to repair their 12 years' inadequate emphasis on reading and writing, and I feel down about that. I want them to enjoy reading and writing, but it's not going to happen. One of my students is on the football team. He seemed interested when I taught Bloom's taxonomy of learning: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Alfred Bloom created the so-called "ladder of l...

One evening, early in my married life, I invited my Mom to come over for dinner with Herbie and me. I don't remember what I fixed, but when dinner was over, Mom started to help me clear the table. She and Herbie had both worked all day, and I had been home, so I told them to go watch the evening news; I would do the dishes and join them shortly. When I finished up and went to the living room, I found my husband, stretched out on the sofa, sound asleep and snoring heartily. In the recliner chair across from the sofa, my Mom was also asleep and alternately snoring, not breathing, and gasping. Douglas Edwards--or maybe Harry Reasoner--was reading the news on CBS, but no one was listening. I took a chair and watched the rest of the news, then woke my Mom up and sent her home. This anecdote took on new meaning recently when I traveled overnight in the car with my daughter. After the trip she told me I snored, stopped breathing, and gasped. Funny, but I am now the same age my Mom was whe...

It's early in the 2012 campaign, but I've already had enough of Michele Bachmann. Call me an elitist if you must, but I don't want someone who doesn't understand American history--and tries to distort it--to be my President. Bachmann has painted herself as a woman of the people. She (more likely her husband)raised five children and they housed 23 foster children; I'd like to hear her five children's opinion on that. She claims her roots in Waterloo, Iowa, home of John Wayne -- no, wait--that's John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer! Doesn't she have a speechwriter ? I had the feeling that she searched John Wayne on Google, and was in such a hurry she missed the "Gacy" part. The Tea Party, which Bachmann claims to represent, may have some good ideas, but Bachmann is not the person to convey them. She is warm and friendly when speaking to crowds who are programmed to believe her inaccuracies and who don't recognize the errors that she makes, ...

Being literate used to mean a person was able to read and write; comprehension was implied. Today, many of us can read and write, but few of us comprehend what we read in the deep and satisfying ways we used to. We've become a nation of people eager to gather data, but slow in understanding what that information means. And we have new forms of literacy to consider. Digital literacy is vital for almost anyone who holds gainful employment these days. At my organization, you have to be able to use a computer to apply for work as a housekeeper or groundskeeper; paper applications are no longer accepted. And perhaps the most vital type of literacy is information literacy. Can you look at a Web page and determine whether it is current, reliable, authoritative, and accurate. Can you determine its purpose? Is the page posted to inform you, persuade you, or to sell you something? Many years ago, my mother told me about a medicine that she thought would be good for her arthritis. She had rea...

One of the best books I have selected in a long time is Susan Jacoby's new work, Never Say Die . Jacoby is a strong writer, researcher, editor, and investigator, so I knew I'd be stretching my intellect. The subtitle of the book is ""The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age," a phrase guaranteed to spark interest in anyone over a certain age. While she certainly covered the variety of anti-aging products promoted regularly in the evening news and in the Reader's Digest, she also took a close political, cultural, and social look at what it means to be older in America. One startling fact she points out is that although America's fastest-growing demographic are those ages 80-100, no one in government has recognized that this is an economic issue destined to create a major gap between the young and old. As younger Americans work to keep Social Security afloat, more and more older Americans are signing up for their checks which, as she points out, are seldom...

I first discovered my distaste for gardening early in my marriage. Fortunately, my husband was good at it, so we always ate well: beans, peppers, tomatoes, and enough zucchini to get ousted from the neighborhood. In our first July as homeowners,with a garden lovingly planted and cared for by my husband, Herbie said, "We need to pick the green beans after supper." I replied, "Sure, honey." I didn't realize that "we" meant him AND me. But I took the basket he handed me and stood where he directed me, bending down to pick the beans I could see. I worked my way down one row--about twenty feet--and came up with a good handful of beans. "Look,honey! My row is done!" "I don't think so," he said with best farmer grin, eyes wrinkling with amusement. "Look at this plant." And sure enough, when I went back and knelt down among the weeds and into the dirt, I had missed most of the beans. After he showed me how to lift the plant...

When the U.S. tallied up the results of its 2010 census, a new version of America came into view. Ethnically, we are increasingly diverse; as a population we have aged tremendously, thanks to the 76 million baby boomers. More than any other fact, I was shocked to learn that America's "old-old," those persons 80-100 years old, are the fastest-growing population, percentage-wise, in the U.S. There's really no reason for anyone to be surprised about the growing number of seniors. We've been told that American longevity is increasing, and we see older members of our families living longer and longer because their cancer was removed, or they stopped smoking, or they survived their first heart attack and changed their diet and life style. We are engaging in more preventive medical care, and we're finally beginning to focus on wellness. And, as an aside, if you're not focusing on wellness, you can always focus on pharmaceuticals. The evening news is almost always...

Now that I have finally entered my blog to work on it, I am overcome with embarrassment. I haven't written since January, and now it's June. Procrastination, thy name is Mrs. B. And I call myself a writer. Let me rephrase that. I used to call myself a writer. For the past three years I've been a teacher. I've done plenty of writing, but most of it is directed to college freshmen. I've often struggled at the keyboard, searching for the best way to tell a student (who wanted an A) that their B was a gift; they actually deserved a C. Some of my best work lately involves finding a gentle way to say that missing thirteen classes over the semester qualifies you for an F, but I'm giving you a D as a means of encouragement. But now it's summer, and I've had four glorious weeks of travel, visitors, meals with friends, and now it's time to end my procrastination and put myself back where I do my best work. No, not in the kitchen! At the keyboard. I have decid...

In April, 1978, U.S. News and World Report published a piece titled "Can the English Language Be Saved?" The unnamed author wrote that "Vigorous efforts to rescue the battered English language are under way from the [Carter] White House to classrooms across the country." More than 30 years later, in April, 2010, About.com writer Richard Nordquist wrote "The Endless Decline of the English Language," noting, with examples, that "Doomsayers have been tracking the decline of the English language for centuries." Please add this doomsayer to the list, not only for the decline of language, which has been co-opted by television and textspeak, but also for the decline of punctuation. When I first read Lynn Truss's great book, Eats Shoots & Leaves I found it mildly amusing; now that I've taught writing to 18- and 19-year old college freshmen for three years, I find it sadly true. Why can't America's young people write clear, understan...

Today I faced the music. I applied my ass to the seat of my rolling office chair and started the serious preparations for teaching five classes in the spring semester, which starts in 10 days. I'll be teaching four face-to-face classes and one on-line class in composition; this class is the second part of the two-semester series mandated by the USG Regents. My department chair made an effort to keep my 5 classes at 20 students each, but when I checked today, I found that most had 23 or 24 enrolled. Last semester I taught 5 face-to-face classses to a total of 120 students. In writing classes, this is a brutal load; most of our assessment is done through essays, written in multiple drafts. I got sick mid-semester; although the doctor said it was a sinus infection, I truly believe it was my body's reaction to reading bad writing. I took several rounds of antibiotics and now, just as I am getting ready to submit myself to this brutality again, I am beginning to feel better. Why do ...