August 18, 2013: Mysteries of the Unengaged

Just finished a week at the beach, re-charging my batteries and thinking of another academic year soon to begin.  In a week, at various college presentations and workshops, we will be reinforcing student engagement as a key to retention.  My week of sand, (unrelenting) surf, and sun provided me time to contemplate--the mysteries of life, the mysteries of education, and, frankly, just really good mysteries.

One of the mysteries I read (The End of the Wasp Season, by Denise Mina) had a great line about police officers and the almost natural way they can distance themselves from victims: "The men had every right to be in it for their pay, but the problem was deeper, their lack of engagement was becoming entrenched, a badge of honor, something they boasted about to each other."  Are we talking police officers or college students?  Even worse, are we talking police officers or college faculty?  Too many times, one can hear in a faculty lounge, "These students don't care, why should we?" 

Complacency burrows in and settles at the heart of the policemen, or these students, or these faculty (I have no doubt that idea of entrenched disengagement fits for many other professions, also, but I will stick with what I know).  In the case of students and faculty, it appears that a dozen years of hand-fed information to secondary education students has made them complacent, unable to engage in the healthy ways they need to survive as adults.  At least, this is the scapegoat called out in the faculty lounges.  So, college faculty, we have had the scapegoat delivered to our hands, what do we do?  Burn the sacrifice in some pagan belief that it appeases the gods of higher education.  I've got a secret for you: those gods don't care.  If we can't sacrifice the goat, what can we do?

The life of a faculty member is a mostly cerebral one, an environment that can breed complacency.  It's not that our minds don't seek out and embrace change, but we are prone to fall back on what we know and what has worked in our past.  The great challenge of education in the 21st century is re-wiring all of these well-learned brains to see engagement, our own and our students, as the highest priority for education.

I referenced in my last blog (August 7) a ridiculous notion that the best colleges in the country are naturally the ones that foster the greatest collaboration -- via social media.  Part of the fallacy in that notion is that being "wired" across the internet, through Twitter, via Facebook or Pintarest does not engage minds in the ways that truly create collaboration, or even more importantly, problem-solving.

In a world of constant change, I know it is dangerous to cite a two-year old article on the dangers of this "wired world," but this New York Times editorial by Bill Keller from May 2011 has it right: "the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human: our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy, a sense of community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity."  One doesn't have to read many of my blogs to know I especially bemoan the presence of snarkiness.

I have contemplated all of this because for the next two weeks I meet with faculty in various settings to discuss what SMC faculty need to embrace: student engagement, student mentorship, student advising, student recruitment.  For a lot of faculty at more high-brow institutions, these are phrases tantamount to treason: "I teach, therefore I am." At two or three dozen of those high-end institutions, this philosophy may be enough. For the rest of us, to quote a phrase from a dear colleague we don't get to teach the students we want, we have to teach the students we get. For us, our philosophy needs to be "I engage, therefore I have a job."