Like youth, money and education are also wasted on the young?

There were a number of reasons why I hated--yes, that strong an emotion--the college where I did my undergraduate studies. One of them was this: the pathetic library it had.

Now, maybe my expectations coming out of high school were unrealistic.  But, I had assumed that a college would have a library that would be way more than what my college offered.  Thus, whenever I went to Chennai, where my parents lived, I then spent quite some time at the libraries at the US Consulate (thank you, America!,) the British Council, and at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT.)

Sometime during my second year, I think it was, I had an unpleasant experience at the IIT library.  The security guy at the library door asked for my student ID.  I told him that I was a student at a different college not at IIT.  He said I couldn't go in because it was for students.  I got pissed off.  I got into an argument with him and asked to meet with the officer in charge of the library.

The security guy walked me over to some guy's office and I explained the situation.  He, too, said that it was for the IIT students and that he could make an exception if I proved to him that I was a student at the college in Coimbatore that I said I was.

This made me even angrier.  I explained to him that IIT was a government institution and that I had a right to use the library, whether or not I had an ID card. It being the India of 30 years ago where authority was to be respected--perhaps things haven't changed much since--my comments and arguments were not welcomed and I was shown the door.  That was, of course, my last time also at the IIT library!

The break ended, and I returned to my college.

I was asked to meet with the principal. I thought it might be over the graffiti that I had created in my dorm room ceiling.  Turned out that it was about my encounter at the IIT library.  Apparently I had created a bad name for the college with my behavior at IIT.  I thought to myself that there were a lot more things that the college had to be ashamed about and my behavior was not one of them. But, I kept my mouth shut.

Now, I am in a different part of the world, and in a completely different academic setting.  But, what troubles me is this: high school students and their families checking out our campus as one of their options do not seem to care much about the quality of academic programs or about what our library offers.  Instead, they are far more interested to know how good the gym facilities are.  They are more interested in whether the giant size television set will fit into the dorm room.  They want to know about practically everything that should not matter to them all that much.

What high school students and their families do not realize is that the more they ask those kinds of questions, the more colleges and universities are happy to provide state-of-the-art gyms with climbing walls.  Bigger and fancier dorm rooms.  Rich and tasty food opportunities.

What high school students and their families do not realize is that the more colleges and universities spend money on these, well, the more students and their families have to pay up as well.  They shouldn't be surprised at the end of it all that it is the students and their families who then end up in debt, which has now reached new heights (depths?):

The average debt load for each borrower receiving a bachelor’s degree this year is about $30,000, according to an analysis of government data by Mark Kantrowitz, publisher at student-marketing company Edvisors. That number has doubled over the course of a recent graduate’s lifetime. Even adjusting for inflation, the average debt burden was half that size 20 years ago.
Other groups put the average debt figure even higher. A poll from Fidelity Investments earlier this week found 70% of graduates had at least some debt, and the average was $35,200. That figure is higher in part because it includes debt owed to family and credit-card balances

Tomorrow, the campus will hold a rally on the "dire" funding situation for public universities like the one where I teach.  Accusations will be hurled at every possible direction except one: ourselves.  I am willing to bet that there will not be a single placard denouncing the wasteful expenditures on fancy dorms, on the fancy gym, on athletics, .... A good time will be had by all at the BBQ, which will be paid for by the students themselves.

I will not be there, of course.  I do not have the youthful energy that I had when I protested at IIT thirty years ago.

ps: one of the many announcements on the event tomorrow:

WOU 082 SEIU 503, Western Oregon Federation of Teachers (WOUFT) and the Associated Students of Western Oregon University (ASWOU) are pleased to invite you to the

First Annual Western Oregon United (WOU) BBQ and Rally Tomorrow at 12 noon sharp on the WUC Plaza

We hope for a sun break but have inclement weather plans and a dry place for lunch and our incredible speakers. Please bring a jacket or umbrella because, rain or shine, we will be outside for a few minutes. We are Western and a little rain can't keep us down. LUNCH IS PROVIDED.
Tomorrow is about celebrating what staff, students and faculty have in common. The three groups will not always agree, but let's find where we do and work together to benefit all. One such place is state funding of higher education. Appropriations are falling. Tuition is rising. Services are decreasing. Benefits are falling. Wages need improvement.
It is apparent, business as usual is not working.
I think there is a better way. We need to move beyond fighting each other for diminishing funds with diminishing returns. Such tactics serve only to distract from the real issue -- the need for Oregon to reinvest in public higher education. Let's resist the politics of division and fund higher education without doing it on the backs of students. Or those who proudly serve them.
This won't be easy, change rarely is. However, change starts tomorrow. Join staff, students and faculty by gathering as close to 12 noon as possible on the WUC Plaza.

How many will support a petition to end petitions?

A few years ago, I had included in the syllabus a reading on the crisis in Darfur--this was back when it was a major problem.  I provided students with a map of Africa, with the outline of the political boundaries of countries without their names, and asked them to identify Sudan and a few other countries.  One student later wrote in an assignment how she had passionately signed up to the Save Darfur campaigns without ever caring to find out where exactly that place called Darfur was in the real world.

I think that her experience is not uniquely about Darfur alone.  I am willing to bet that the other favorite slogan, "Save Tibet," will also show a similar one--most passionate petitioners wouldn't be able to identify Tibet on a map.

The issue is not about simply geographic illiteracy either. While geographic illiteracy is one reason, I suspect the larger reason is that way too many people sign on to way too many petitions without really thinking through. They do that because maybe it just feels right.  Or their peers do it.  Or whatever.  Signing on to a petition is rarely a decision based on acquiring relevant information and thinking through.

I have always been suspicious of petition drives.  Even when the petition is on issues I care about.  Further, signing a petition means that we want to emphasize that issue, whatever it might be, as a much higher priority than most other issues of the day.  But, how do we know that deserves a top billing?  What are the tradeoffs that I am looking at?  Not that I never sign petitions; I do.  But, only after I carefully examine the argument and if I find that it is being ignored despite its importance and severity.

Two academic presidents--one of Lewis and Clark, and the other of Northwestern--write about taking "a vow against joining the lists":

we eschew petitions because, as researchers and teachers, we know that any important issue deserves more serious thought and discussion than can be captured in a list of demands. 

Exactly!  Especially when we are in the very business of critical thinking, right?

They note how many of the petition drives originate from change.org.  And they note the irony of it all:

Click around the website Change.org, the organization from which several of our petitions come, and you'll find photos of 164 employees. A page labeled "We're Hiring!" lists more than two dozen additional positions. "Like most companies," the site proclaims, "Change.org has a business model that allows us to grow rapidly and be financially self-sustaining, providing tens of millions of people with a free empowerment platform for change."
Change.org also sells advertising—though it calls them "sponsored petitions." We're considering buying one that calls for divestment in companies that propagate petitions. We suspect others will enthusiastically sign on.

Yes, a hilarious Monty Pythonesque petition to end petition drives.  Like a bumper sticker that I once saw on the car that was ahead of me: I hate bumper stickers!

What does it mean to be human?

The introductory class that I am teaching this term made me wonder and question, yet again, what exactly higher education is about.  

I have noticed over the past couple of years that students get a lot more focused when we discuss the economic rationale behind why anything that can be outsourced will be outsourced, and why activities that can be automated will be automated.  It is understandable--students immediately see the link between the concepts and their own lives and futures.

From the back row, a student’s hand went up.  "If robots do our work, then what happens to finding our purpose in life through work?  What about human interactions?"  Her voice seemed laden with emotions.

When it comes to such questions on what it means to be human, students know what my answer will be.  With a smile, I remind them that those questions are beyond the scope of the course in economic geography, and that I hope they would  take courses in the humanities and the social sciences to understand such important issues.

Technological advancements, which are difficult to keep up with anymore, will raise challenging questions on what it means to be human.  Even now, most public policy questions that we are grappling with are all variations of that very question.  The examples are endless and include abortion, healthcare, social security, unemployment benefits, and war. Technological advancements will only further muddy the issues.

Our responses to each and every one of the public policy issues depend on our own constructs of what it means to be human, and what it means to belong to a society and to a country.  Above all, what it means to be one of the more than seven billion humans on this wonderful planet.

One would imagine that education, especially at a level beyond high school, would prepare adults for such inquiries.  Unfortunately, that is rarely the case, for at least two important reasons.

The first is the simplistic formulation that higher education is about economic betterment.  Hence, for instance, all the rah-rah for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and professional-sounding majors.  This is flawed for a number of reasons, especially when we think about the fact that these jobs are subject to those same outsourcing and automation dynamics. I should note in this context that my undergraduate degree is in electrical engineering.

The second reason that students do not get to systematically think about these questions is because colleges and universities have practically abandoned those in their curricular offerings.  On their part, students typically treat the humanities and social science requirements of a liberal education to be nothing more than items on a checklist to be completed on their way to getting the diploma.  In order to attract the uninterested students, academia has gone after making courses “attractive” to them. My favorite, of the ones I have come across in the news, is a course on Lady Gaga.  It will require quite some effort on a student's part to use that course as a vehicle to understand what it means to be human!

The result is that I doubt whether students will really have enough structured opportunities to think through the kind of important questions that the student raised.  If this is how we "educate" students and prepare them for the rest of their lives that begin with Commencement, then what have we really accomplished?

What else do you do after a 100-day hunger strike?

When we were kids, my brother and I once were upset with something--the details I have forgotten now, and I am sure it was something absolutely trivial--and we decided that we would go on a hunger strike. I couldn't have been even at a double-digit age, and my brother is two years younger, and there we were refusing to eat my mother's tasty cooking.

What shocked me was this: my mother didn't get angry but was hurt.  It was almost like we had punched her awfully bad.  Yes, I know that kids do stupid things, but that image of my mother pleading with us on why we were torturing her that way was unbearable.  More than the hunger itself, we brothers simply could not bear to inflict that kind of a pain on mother and we ate in silence.  One of these days I ought to apologize to my mother for this.  But then that is one in a long list of apologies that are way past due!

When we care about the other human, it is impossible to watch a fellow human starve himself/herself as a protest.  I suppose Gandhi lucked out with his fasting to protest the British--the British were human enough to respond.  Imagine if Gandhi had protested against Hitler!  With that White Man's Burden, the British had no choice but to often yield to Gandhi's demands.  And when Gandhi fasted in order to end religious violence, even the killer mobs had no option but to put an end to their fanatical killings.  All because even the murderous mobs were not psychopaths--else, they would have gladly sent Gandhi off on an even earlier exit from this planet.

Hunger strikes are powerful.  They test the human in each and every one of us.

Which is why I am so shocked at the lack of media coverage on the hunger strike in Guantanamo that is now more than a hundred days old.  More than a hundred prisoners refusing food for more than a hundred days and yet this is being sidelined in favor of an incredible nonstop coverage of the hyped up Tea Party-IRS issue?

Out of 166 inmates, 102 are on hunger strike at Guantanamo, with 30 being fed through tubes. One inmate continued to be hospitalised but prison officials said his life was not in danger.
Inmates are restrained and a feeding tube is pushed through their nose and into their stomach - a practise the UN compares to torture.

Perhaps it is a sign of me getting old when I worry that we are rapidly losing any perspective on what it means to be human.  But, I don't think it is merely my old age at play. There is something seriously wrong here.

The frozen status of the detainees has fueled the hunger strikes, which grew from about a half-dozen inmates at first to more than 100 now.
"This is kind of the only option they have left, to say, 'Hey, we're still here. We are still your problem. Are you just gonna let us rot in here until the end of time?' " said Cori Crider, a lawyer who represents several detainees.
About 30 of them refuse to take even liquid nutritional drinks and have to be fed through tubes shoved down their noses.
The American Medical Association has criticized the practice, calling it a violation of the profession's core ethics. "Every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions," AMA President Jeremy Lazarus wrote in an April letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
The Pentagon says the feeding program is lawful and humane. But Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the detention facility, acknowledges that the options for the administrators are dwindling.

While the UN might consider this torture, the 100-days is nothing compared to the hunger strike on the other side of the planet--in India.  Irom Sharmila began her fast twelve years ago as a protest against the use of the  Indian military against its own people.

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (Afspa), against which Ms Chanu is protesting, gives sweeping powers to the armed forces when they fight separatist insurgents or leftist radicals - powers which critics say are often misused.

She has been force-fed as well, and now Sharmila is being accused of trying to commit suicide:

Metropolitan Magistrate Akash Jain told her: “Madam, there is an accusation against you that you tried to commit suicide.” To this, Ms. Sharmila responded with an emphatic “No.”
“On April 20, 2012, an order was passed against you charging you under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code [attempting to commit suicide]. Do you plead guilty to the charge,” Mr. Jain asked.
Ms. Sharmila replied: “I don’t want to commit suicide. Mine is only a non-violent struggle to live as a human being.”
Mr. Jain said: “But the law of the land does not permit you to take your life.”
“I love life. I love life. I don’t want to take my life. What I want is justice and peace,” Ms. Sharmila replied. “I am protesting against AFSPA. If AFSPA is repealed I will take food again.”
The Magistrate told the activist that while he respected her sentiments, hers was a political stance, while the courts were concerned with the legal procedure. 

So, if a Sharmila can be set aside by a government for twelve years and be force-fed, then the Guantanamo prisoners can pretty much expect to be there forever?  Until their eventual death?

"Irom Sharmila Chanu is force-fed through a pipe in her nose"
Source

Don't wish me sweet dreams, please!

Paging Dr. Freud.

It is related to an important organ of mine for which he might have some answers.

No, not that organ.  The brain.

I want Dr. Freud to analyze why I had an awesome dream about a carrot halva.

It was a wonderful dream.  Some fuzzy face brought me a bowl of the reddish carrot halva.  The halva made from the red carrots that are available during the winter months in northern India.  

In the dream, the sweet was at just the right temperature.  I took a spoonful to my mouth and it was just the perfect texture and the right amount of sugar.  It was heavenly.

After I woke up, it was such a letdown to walk into the kitchen and realize again that it was all a dream.  

I made myself a dull and boring toast with peanut butter while the coffee brewed.

And soon after breakfast and a few chores, I set about making my dream come true.

I grated carrots, as Pandora offered me beautiful music.  I couldn't care about my tennis elbow as I repeated that same motion. 

Cooking is magic.  When everything is done, it is that awesome feeling of voilà!  Cooking is instant gratification, unlike hobbies like gardening or sculpting where it is a long time between the idea within to become real.  In the kitchen, the magic happens within a matter of minutes and hours.

I customized the recipe, true to my usual approach.  It is almost like somewhere back in my young age somebody whispered into my ears, "leave no recipe untweaked!"  Perhaps Dr. Freud can sort out why I am so unwilling to faithfully carry out recipes.  Why that rebellious attitude even in such matters?

I couldn't wait for the finished product to cool down to the appropriate temperature.  Anxiety meanwhile built up.  What if the entire thing turns out to be a disaster?  Not only will that be a waste of time and the ingredients, but the fact also remains that I am in an alien land where I can't casually walk to the nearest sweet shop and pick up carrot halva.

I took a teaspoonful to my tongue that was practically drooling all over.

It was awesome!

So, I then moved on to the next step.

A big scoop of vanilla ice cream in a bowl was the bed for a scoop of the halva.  On top of the halva, a small scoop of the same ice cream.

No reading anything.  No radio or music in the background. It was just me and this bowl.

If only making dreams come true were as easy as this carrot halva experience!