In San Antonio, Texas, one memorial—the church-turned-fort-turned-shrine of the Alamo—dominates the landscape. At the Alamo, the artifacts, images, and captions on display tell a unified story: That martyrs died there for Texas independence and that their sacrifice will never be forgotten. The didactics urge the public to observe this history with solemnity and reverie.

Yet the story is one-sided. While there were many root causes of the Alamo siege, one of the most important was that Texas Anglos were fighting Mexican soldiers to uphold slavery. In San Antonio, as in many other cities, the histories of Latinx and Black communities are overshadowed by Anglo-dominated narratives.

In the summer of 2020, George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed prompted a national reckoning with commemoration. Communities began to think about what to do with controversial, often racist, statues, markers, and place names. Many wanted their landscapes to tell a different story—one that did not venerate racial violence.

The targets of these conversations have been mainly physical plaques and statues—but the resolutions are far more varied. New digital tools let scholars, students, and community members create new, and newly inclusive, forms of memorialization. Hitching historical research to new digital technologies helps tell different, more inclusive, and more nuanced narratives about the past. Malleable digital technologies can be much more creative and responsive than stone statues, soldiers in bronze, or iron plaques. In season three of “Western Edition,” the podcast we host at the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, we highlight some of these innovative efforts across the West, including in San Antonio.

One of these is the digital history project Mapping the Movimiento. Created by professors at the University of Texas at San Antonio and its Special Collections Library, the project functions like a “bus tour of San Antonio civil rights locations,” history professor Omar Valerio Jiménez says. Anyone in San Antonio with a smartphone can use the interactive map.

Mapping the Movimiento’s 15 sites span the 20th century. They include Edgewood High School, an anchor for the city’s Mexican American West Side and focus of important judicial rulings about public school funding inequities, and the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, founded in the late 1980s by Chicano and other activists working toward social justice in San Antonio and beyond.

Mario Cantú’s family restaurant is on the map, too. “Anybody who was anybody in the Chicano movement when they came to San Antonio met at Mario’s,” says historian Jerry Gonzalez. Known as “the first eating space in San Antonio to desegregate its food counter,” the restaurant served as a vital social hub for the city’s Mexican American community in the 1950s. Today, the restauarant building has been demolished and the land upon which it once stood is part of the downtown campus of the University of Texas at San Antonio. No physical plaque marks the space. Visitors to Mapping the Movimiento’s website can see artifacts and images from the restaurant’s heyday and learn how Cantú became a key figure in the city’s Chicano and civil rights activist communities.

Similarly, San Antonio’s Safe Spots for Negro Motorists, an initiative of Texas A&M University–San Antonio historian Pamela Walker, uses digital mapping to commemorate the sites and experiences of Black San Antonians during the Jim Crow era. In partnership with the San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum and the San Antonio Office of Historic Preservation, Walker’s team of student-researchers reconstructed the histories of more than 20 locations included in the Green Books—gazetteers that mapped safe tourist destinations for Black travelers in the Jim Crow era. QR codes placed around the city connect passersby to a digital map of Black San Antonio and a richly researched essay for each featured site.

One of Walker’s students, James Thomas, researched the Carter Undertaking Company, a funeral home at 601 Center Street. Now called the Carter-Taylor-Williams Mortuary, the institution has been continuously operated and family-owned since 1906, and its funeral directors played a crucial role in social justice work of the mid-20th century. Black-owned businesses provided Black families with financial stability, enabling protests against Jim Crow Era abuses and helping in turn to provide safety nets for neighbors, Thomas writes. They provided for elders “who weren’t getting the proper care that they needed,” and contributed in significant ways to “build a better community on the East side for the African Americans.”

Like Mapping the Movimiento, San Antonio’s Safe Spots for Negro Motorists includes sites that still exist and sites that have disappeared from the city. Reading the Green Books in present day offers a glimpse into the vibrant world of Black San Antonio during the era of Jim Crow, but also shows how much of it had been lost to urban renewal. For instance, student Delaney Byrom researched the former State Theater, which hosted plays and movies from 1929 to 1960 at 209 North Main, now the site of a parking lot.

Byrom spoke with patrons of the theater such as Walter Dykes, now in his 90s, who watched films there as a child—dressed up for the occasion in a tie, but still mischievously inclined toward throwing popcorn and making noise. Byrom’s grandmother, Liana Reyes, also frequented the theater as a teen. She remembers it as a segregated place, where she—a Mexican American—could sit in the front, but Black patrons had to enter through the back and sit in the balcony.

Walker hopes her project’s digital markers will be a first step to giving the stories of Black San Antonians “a permanent footprint on the landscape.” Digital memorialization initiatives are important, she says, because, when it comes to historical markers and sites, “there have been far too many communities, especially Black communities and communities of color, who haven’t been able to have a say in [creating memorials that reflect] what’s important to them.”

The landscape of memory and commemoration and race is shifting in the U.S., thanks to historians, students, activists, and community members who are reimagining it in exciting and innovative ways. Pairing grassroots historical research with emerging digital technologies democratizes: It allows communities, individuals, and institutions that have for far too long been left out of public history-making and memory to see their stories heard and respected. The questions Mapping the Movimiento and Safe Spots for Negro Motorists’ researchers grapple with—concerning race, belonging, and legitimacy—lie at the heart of a healthy American democracy, one that can link memory and reckoning.

The post In San Antonio, Remembering More Than the Alamo appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Comedian Steve Martin once said that teaching is like show business. Keeping this metaphor in mind, I try to approach each of my lectures like a live set. The idea is to keep my students present and engaged so that we can learn together in real time.

But what happens when the entertaining professor gets upstaged by a chatbot that can produce the lecture as well as write student papers and take the final exam? Does the college class become a meaningless joke?

Well, no.

There are people who fear that ChatGPT, Bard, and other generative AI bots will let students outsource their own learning. But I teach media history. I know that new media technologies do not make people obsolete. Video did not kill the radio star.

So rather than slip some language about ChatGPT in the policy section of my syllabus about plagiarism (which won’t stop students who know about the apps that can rewrite papers to evade detection), my plan this fall is to focus on creating interactive lessons that incorporate chatbots directly into my teaching.

Instead of letting chatbots change the learning process, I’ll show my students that anything that chatbots can do, they can do better.

Many of my students were already trying ChatGPT out last year. Because chatbots can be especially useful for performing routine tasks, one student explained that she had started to use ChatGPT at her job in customer service to generate quick responses to complaints, which she would then rewrite to improve.

While chatbots are able to do that kind of task well, more complicated tasks, such as historical essays, can be a disaster. But these limitations also open the door to teaching exercises that show students how to utilize this technology in their work.

Professors teaching writing skills can have chatbots generate outlines, drafts, and other lists of ideas. Then, the professor can direct students to work in small groups to rewrite the text for greater originality.

Chatbots also offer an opportunity to teach critical thinking and media literacy skills. ChatGPT is prone to making up false information out of the data-driven cloud—a phenomenon its handlers euphemistically call “hallucinations.” This means that students have to learn how to check facts and verify information, using citable sources and databases.

Professors can also teach students to be alert to the systemic racism and sexism that AI bots can perpetuate and amplify because of the source texts they’re drawing from. I once asked ChatGPT to write a list of some of the leading scholars of the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment. Its response only included white men—as if no person from another background, ethnicity, or gender ever studied the U.S. Constitution.

A solution to this problem? Show students how they can give the chatbot follow-up prompts that generate more complete answers—say, specifically to include persons of color, different genders, and diverse backgrounds. When I did this, ChatGPT readily listed Kimberlé Crenshaw, Ange-Marie Hancock, and other prominent constitutional scholars.

For my classes this fall, I’m also creating “AI Moments,” where my students will get a chance to see who does it better: the robot or the professor.

After I present a new lesson and talk about it with my students, I’ll prompt ChatGPT to give a lecture on the very same subject.

To test out this idea over the summer, I asked ChatGPT to rewrite my short lecture on the history of broadcast media. Unsurprisingly, the text it generated was horrible. Just one cliché after another. It was as cold and dull as that slice of ham still relaxing in my refrigerator from the Fourth of July. Now there’s an unexpected image for you—the kind of surprise turn that ChatGPT will never accomplish. The AI-generated draft also made bad word choices—replacing the word “media” with “platform” (not all media are platforms).  It also changed my question, “Did the emergence of broadcast TV mean the end of going to the movies?” and instead asked “whether the emergence of broadcast TV resembled the demise of cinema attendance caused by the rise of radio.” This word choice altered the meaning of the point, which is that new media does not replace the old.

When I recreate this exercise in my classroom, I plan to have my students search ChatGPT’s lecture for bad writing that they will rewrite, turning each cliché into original imagery and poor word choices into something more precise. I’ll also ask them to find and eliminate bias and fact-check for inaccuracies.

What I learned from my practice matches with ChatGPT is that I know more about teaching journalism, writing, and media history—even though the chatbot can draw from vast amounts of information on the internet. And more importantly, it cannot share ideas accurately or in a creative and engaging way.

This is the kind of realization I want my students to have this fall when we engage with the AI-generated text, openly and transparently. My hope is that they will learn to learn to use AI effectively since these tools will become ever more common and maybe even indispensable in workplaces and in education. But also that through this they realize that when it comes to the contest of students versus robots, they will always come out on top.

The post Anything ChatGPT Can Do, My Students Can Do Better appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

And don’t bother bringing Californians another four lords-a-leaping or eight swans-a-swimming, St. Nick. What we need this year are nearly 5.9 million tutors—one for each and every one of our public school students.

Because you could fill a giant sack with all the research showing that one-on-one tutoring is students’ best bet for playing academic catch-up, which is needed more than ever right now.

St. Nick: Most of our kids, both the nice and the naughty, would need a team of flying reindeer to get back to grade level after two long, pandemic-disrupted years. In testing last spring, more than half of California students failed to meet state standards in English. In math, two-thirds of all students fell short; four out of five Black, Latino, and low-income students couldn’t make those same standards. California eighth graders now test at a fifth-grade level in math.

Tutoring is the best gift you could give these kids right now, and not just because it’s been shown to be the best way for students to make rapid advances in achievement. California children, after years of isolation, desperately need both the instruction and connection that tutors can provide.

Of course, just having a tutor isn’t enough. You need to gift us tutors who know what they are doing—retired teachers, paraprofessionals, older students with real training—and in turn give them sufficient time with students, ideally three sessions a week, adding up to 50 hours per semester.

None of this information is a secret. But no one likes to talk about it much. Teachers’ unions have been reluctant to acknowledge all the learning loss. And elected leaders have too often tried to spin the problem; the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a press release emphasizing that the drops in California test results were less than in other states.

Which is why we need your intervention, Santa.

You always get us what we need, while California, for all the good intentions of its adults, can’t manage to deliver the resources kids need to thrive. Despite recent increases in school funding, this state fails to get kids high-quality teachers, counseling, and classes. Despite massive expansion of health programs to cover kids, California children aren’t that healthy, and struggle to access care. Despite promises of universal child care and pre-school, parents must scramble to find options for young kids.

Instead of creating one efficient system to solve any of these problems, California ends up placating different interest groups by creating smaller piecemeal programs that don’t really fit together.

The same thing is happening with tutoring.

Instead of focusing on a comprehensive tutoring effort to reach every child, the state has decided to spread educational recovery funds around the state to smaller and sometimes targeted programs. California sent nearly $5 billion in federal stimulus funds for learning loss to local school districts, with little oversight or accountability. We don’t know how much was spent on tutoring, or how much that tutoring helped students.

A second, more recent grant, the nearly $8 billion Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant, is more promising because it has more restrictions. Intensive tutoring is one of the few things school districts can spend this money on, along with literacy intervention, counseling, and additional learning time. But it’s not clear how much money will be devoted to tutoring.

Why not?

There are many reasons. One is that our volatile state budget, in surplus last year, now faces projected shortfalls with recession looming; it’s conceivable that some of that money might be clawed back to fill budget holes. Another is that our school districts, like employers everywhere, report not being able to hire or train enough people to be tutors. Still another: Teachers, exhausted from the pandemic (among other things), are leaving the profession, not clamoring to add tutoring duties.

As a result, we are building a piecemeal system of tutoring and academic support.

Some of those pieces are quite useful. The state just invested $250 million in hiring literacy coaches in low-income elementary schools over the next five years. The California State Library is providing free online homework assistance for California K-12 students, available through HelpNow, a 24-hour live, real-time platform with qualified tutors answering questions. Gov. Newsom recently launched the College Corps, a California version of AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps. Half of its first class of 3,250 California community college and university students are working as tutors and mentors in school districts and after-school programs.

There is no shortage of ideas about expanding tutoring, inside and outside of government, for California to draw upon. The founder of Khan Academy is trying to create an online tutoring marketplace. An MIT professor is pitching a way to use artificial intelligence for tutoring aimed at academic recovery. And at the federal level, there are proposals in Congress to expand AmeriCorps’ national community service network to make tutoring a priority.

But none of these amount to what is needed: dedicated tutors, who can teach one-on-one multiple times a week, win our kids’ trust, and get our students caught up.

Perhaps, in a different state and country, in a different time, a moment like this might be seen as an opportunity to remake public education into a more personalized and effective system.

But that’s not happening. Because in 21^st century California, providing what is necessary would take a miracle.

So, it’s up to you Santa. Just how many tutors can you fit in your sleigh?

The post All California Kids Want for Christmas Is a Tutor appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

When an irreplaceable foundation of our free society is threatened, an independent body must investigate so that there’s accountability for those responsible, and the attack doesn’t happen again. That’s why the January 6, 2021 sacking of the U.S. Capitol—an assault on the nation’s electoral democracy—merits a commission. It’s also why the ongoing California cataclysm that began on March 13, 2020—effectively an attack on the state’s children and their future—needs its own commission.

On that fateful day, California, facing a new pandemic, shut down the foundation of its economy, its culture, and its civic life—our schools. The state mandated the closure abruptly, with little notice, debate, or planning, and in defiance of California’s constitutional guarantee of education for its children.

Fifteen months later, the schools are still not fully open, with more than half of students still remote, and thousands having disappeared from education altogether. And California has yet to determine the damage this ongoing catastrophe is doing to kids, families, teachers, schools, and the future of the state itself—much less repair that damage.

All of that is awful, but the worst may be in front of us. The decision to shut the schools on 3/13, and to keep them shut, has never been fully explained, or credibly justified by any legal or health standard. We’re left with a frightening precedent going forward. If we don’t establish a clear and understandable rule for when schools must be open and when they can close, what is to prevent state or local officials from shutting them down indefinitely in future emergencies, or even at their whim? If we don’t figure out how to better protect our schools in this century of apocalypse, how will we ever be able to guarantee California’s children the education to which they are entitled?

This is why we need a 3/13 Commission to investigate and produce a report that all Californians can trust.

We need a clear set of facts and a blow-by-blow accounting of behind-the-scenes decision-making about our all aspects of our schools over the last 15 months. Was closing schools really necessary back on 3/13? Why were schools caught so flat-footed—were there systemic failures in planning for such an emergency? And were there moments when schools could have been safely reopened under scientific and health guidelines—as some pediatricians and infectious disease experts argued—but weren’t? If schools were so unsafe for students, why were many schools still open for paid daycare and movie shoots?

Then there are the questions about leadership, and the ongoing confusion about who can close and open schools. Why did Governor Newsom repeatedly suggest that he would use enormous emergency powers to open schools—and then why did he keep failing to take that action? Which people, levels of government, and institutions were really making decisions? What disagreements did health and education officials have? What decisions were mistakes? And which mistakes were the product of the confusion of a novel coronavirus, and which were the result of raw politics, donations to the favored charities of the powerful, or even deceit and fraud?

To answer these questions and hold officials and institutions accountable, the 3/13 Commission must have real authority. This includes the power to compel testimony of anyone and subpoena records—from schools, from different levels of government, and from companies and unions that are part of this story. There are white-hot debates about school closures and reopenings, especially between teachers and parents. The commission must dig deep and evaluate those claims and counter-claims.

The commission also should have the power to assess California students—so it can determine just how much children have lost academically, socially, and emotionally as a result of closures and reduced instruction time. This power is necessary because school districts and the state have cancelled or delayed assessments—effectively covering up the human costs of their school closing.

Of course, answering these questions about the present and recent past should be only half of the commission’s work. The second, more important half is to look forward. What specific lessons can we take from the failures of education during the pandemic, and how do we apply them for the future? How should we make up the instructional days and hours lost to COVID—or future emergencies that necessitate closures?

And then there’s the biggest question of all. What steps must California take to make sure its students never experience prolonged closures again? This could involve significant changes to school buildings and transportation, to make them safer and more resilient. It also could mean changes in school funding to give districts more flexibility, and in labor and educational law to require kids and teachers to be in school during emergencies.

And it means setting clear standards and metrics for when the state or local districts can close schools.

Think this is too much? You’re wrong.

Even before the pandemic, California’s public schools were being closed more often, costing more children instruction time. CalMatters found that in 2018-29, schools were shut in record numbers because of disasters, emergencies, maintenance crises, or shooting or bomb threats.

And, since 3/13, we’ve seen how easy it is to close schools, and how hard it is to reopen them. We’ve also learned what happens to schools when a big emergency hits and it’s unclear what the rules are, or who is in charge: The most powerful people in education and politics get what they want. And children and families are left to scramble, and bear the burdens and costs. The schools most likely to stay closed in the pandemic have been those in places with more poverty.

Despite the urgency of these questions, it will be hard to get the governor, facing a recall, to support such a commission. But Newsom wants to retain his emergency powers even as the pandemic eases. That’s leverage for the legislature, which should demand a powerful 3/13 Commission as a condition of keeping the governor in the driver’s seat. If the legislature won’t act, Californians who support education, and care about the future, should create a 3/13 Commission via ballot initiative.

The post California Needs a 3/13 Commission to Investigate School Closures appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

“The premise of this whole conversation is that higher education needs to be transformed,” said the evening’s moderator, Jennifer Ruark, deputy managing editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Why,” she asked, “is there such a deep and extensive need for change?”

Arizona State University President Michael M. Crow voiced his concern about the classism that’s infected America’s colleges and universities. “One of the things we have messed up in higher education is that we have allowed ourselves to be socially hierarchically structured in a ranked system of status,” said Crow, who is also the co-author of The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education. “That is deeply and negatively impacting our society and it affects everything, and so we’ve got to figure out how to fix that.”

If one of the problems, Ruark said, is that the current system is built to reinforce competition among colleges instead of collaboration, “how do you overcome those forces in order to collaborate more?”

“There are enough seats in American higher education for every student who is qualified,” said Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr. She pointed to the common application, which allows students to apply to many colleges easily, as one example of how colleges have created an artificial sense of scarcity. “What we have to do is protect the ability of every kind of institution to fill those seats and give the best education. That is really my concern,” she said.

Joseph I. Castro, the former president of Fresno State and newly minted chancellor of California State University (CSU)—and a first-generation college graduate himself—agreed. “I do think there is a place for students who want access to higher education. We just need to work together to ensure that those who are place-bound, like those I used to serve in the Central Valley, that they have a place to go.” Castro said.

One of his goals is to enroll more first-generation students and families in the CSU system. “There are so many … in California and throughout the country that have not yet been touched by higher education.” But he is concerned about the pipeline to get them there. “I worry a lot about men of color.” he continued. “Because even as we’ve seen more students of color come to CSU, the number of males of color have not increased, and I do think that has something to do with how we’re educating our students in K–12.”

In what ways, Ruark asked the panelists, has the pandemic made them rethink higher education?

Starr said that Pomona professors have told her that the past 10 months have given them a better sense of who their students are. “They see their students in their homes, where they study,” she said. “You learn so much more about a student by being where they are rather than the student having to be where you are.”

Castro spoke to the hardships experienced by students, faculty and staff. “I can feel the stress,” he said. On the other hand, he added, CSU has also found new ways forward. “We’ve basically pivoted 80,000 courses virtually in just a few days,” he said—a “silver lining” to the pandemic.

Crow also spoke to the way the pandemic’s challenges have stretched ASU to grow. “We’re not even the same institution we were a year ago,” he said. “I’m optimistic about the ways in which we can be even more innovative in the future after going through this experience.”

A robust audience question and answer session—with questions submitted via live chat—addressed a range of issues. Why, asked one audience member, does America lag behind other countries in social mobility—and have colleges elsewhere done a better job of addressing this problem? “There’s a tremendous system of social mobility [in America], but one that has been lagging as our economy has become more mature and aged,” said Crow, referring to the last 40 years. “We have to go back and rethink this.”

Another audience member asked whether there’s a path to one California higher education system, to which Castro replied, “I am seeing silos break down.”

Ruark wrapped up the evening by asking the panelists a hypothetical: If you could wave a magic wand, what’s one change you’d make in higher education?

“No more rankings based on inputs,” said Crow. Changing the way schools are evaluated would create “massive change.”

Castro called attention to the thousands of Dreamers across the country who have remained in the U.S. thanks to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and lack the financial support necessary to access higher education. “On top of my list is support for our Dreamers,” he said.

Starr finished off the wish list by touching on another group in need of more support: community college students. “[I’d] make it as easy as possible for students to go from community colleges to four-year colleges across every single state,” she said, “so that they can begin to maximize their educational attainment.”

The post Can America’s Status-Obsessed Universities Figure Out a New, More Inclusive Way Forward? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

But my experience of this generation, as a college professor of environmental studies, centers on another salient quality: Young people aren’t just motivated by climate change, they are downright traumatized by it. They are freaked out about the future of our planet, with a sense of urgency most of the rest of us haven’t been able to muster. This has profound political implications: Young people like my students are committed to making our world a better place. It’s my job, I’ve begun to think, to make sure that people in this “climate generation” don’t get swallowed up in an ocean of despair along the way.

The Gen Z students I am teaching now are different from those I’ve taught for 12 years. The students who used to choose environmental studies as a major, even as recently as five years ago, were often white outdoorsy types, idealistic, and eager to righteously educate the masses about how to recycle better, ride bikes more, eat locally, and reduce the impact of their lifestyles on the planet. They wanted to get away from the messiness of society and saw “humanity” as destroying nature.

By contrast, my Generation Z students care a lot more about humans. They flock to environmental studies out of a desire to reconcile humanity’s relationship with nature, an awareness that humanity and nature are deeply interconnected, and a genuine love for both. They are increasingly first-generation, non-white, and motivated to solve their communities’ problems by addressing the unequal distribution of environmental costs and benefits to people of color. They work with the Movement for Black Lives, Indigenous sovereignty groups fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline, and organizations that dismantle barriers to green space, such as Latino Outdoors. Unlike my students from earlier days of teaching, this generation isn’t choosing environmental studies to escape humanity; on the contrary, they get that the key to saving the environment is humanity.

It’s a vision of wholeness and hope—but it comes with a dark side. Digging into environmental studies introduces young people to the myriad ways that our interconnectedness in the world leads to all kinds of problems. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports predict that climate change and habitat destruction will increase the spread of infectious disease; climate also exacerbates health disparities between white and African American people in the U.S., including Black women’s pregnancy risks. Studying these sources makes it clear that the devastations of climate change will be borne unequally.

Some of my students become so overwhelmed with despair and grief about it all that they shut down. Youth have historically been the least likely to vote; but I’ve also seen many stop coming to lectures and seminars. They send depressed, despairing emails. They lose their bearings, question their relationships and education, and get so overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness that they barely pass their classes. One of my students became so self-loathing that she came to think the only way to serve the planet was to stop consuming entirely: reducing her environmental impact meant starving herself. Most young people I know have already decided not to have children, because they don’t want their kids growing up on a doomed planet. They barely want to be alive themselves. They often seem on the brink of nihilism before we even cover the syllabus.

The young people I am teaching say they will bear the worst consequences of processes they did not initiate, and over which they have little or no control. They speak of an apocalypse on the horizon. My students say they do not expect to enjoy the experiences older adults take for granted—having children, planning a career, retiring. For many youth, climate disruption isn’t a hypothetical future possibility; it is already here. They read the long predicted increases in extreme weather events, wildfires, sea level rise, habitat destruction, worsening health outcomes related to pollution, and infectious disease as clear signs that their worst fears will be realized not just in their lifetime, but right now.

This sense of doom is more widely felt, beyond college classrooms. Psychologists and environmental scholars are coming up with a whole new vocabulary to describe these feelings of despair, including solastalgia, climate anxiety, eco-grief, pre-traumatic stress, and psychoterratic illness.

Whatever one calls it, all of this uncertainty can immobilize young people when they feel they can do nothing to fix it. Their sense of powerlessness, whether real or imagined, is at the root of their despair. I have found that many young people have limited notions of how power works. My students associate “power” with really bad things, like fascism, authoritarianism, or force; or slightly less bad things like celebrity, political power, or wealth. They have little imagination about how to engage in social change, and even less imagination about the alternative world they would build if they could.

Without a sense of efficacy—the feeling of having control over the conditions of their lives—I fear some may give up on the difficult process of making change without even trying. Psychologists call this misleading feeling of helplessness the “pseudoinefficacy effect,” and it has a political dimension that may keep individuals from working to help others. This feeling may also sync up with Americans’ recent cultural and economic history of seeing ourselves as consumers. Some scholars have argued that limiting our ability to imagine ourselves as having agency beyond being consumers has resulted in the “privatization of the imagination.” The combination of the feeling of misplaced despair and the feeling that they can only make changes through lifestyle choices creates a sort of ideological box that blocks real democratic political change.

Meanwhile, there is very little in the mass media to suggest that young people have real power over changes in the climate at large—or even our political system. The 24/7 news cycle thrives when it portrays a world on fire. And mainstream media offers few stories about solutions or models for alternative, regenerative economies. The stories that are covered often only tackle technological or market solutions that have yet to be invented or produced. By portraying climate change as a problem that is too big to fix, and suggesting that the contributions of any single individual are too small to make a difference, these messages leave young people with little sense of what can be done. Amid the clamor of apocalyptic coverage, few are talking about what it would take to thrive in, instead of fear, a climate-changed future.

We cannot afford for the next generation of climate justice leaders’ dread to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Their psychological resources of resilience, imagination, efficacy, and, against all odds, their fierce capacity for joy, are just as necessary for the future of a viable planet as natural resources like clean air and water. Activists and teachers of my generation must help Gen Z learn to push on the levers of technical, political, cultural, and economic change, and to draw on existential tools or “deep adaptation” in times of crisis.

There’s hope in the images on the streets and on social media: Today’s protests against police brutality are a testament to young people’s power and evidence of their commitment to their future. It isn’t an especially large leap from fighting a racist justice system to improving the planet; indeed, many in this generation see them as inextricably connected—that’s the point. And the rapid and radical changes that society has undertaken in response to COVID-19 is further evidence that change is possible. Humans can sacrifice and make collective changes to protect others—hopefully, in these difficult weeks, my students will be able to see that.

The trauma of being young in this historical moment will shape this generation in many ways. The rest of us have a lot to learn from them. And we would do well to help them see that their grief and despair are the other side of love and connection, and help them to channel that toward effective action. For their sake and that of the planet, we need them to feel empowered to shape and desire their future. They have superpowers unique to their generation. They are my antidote to despair.

The post The New Faces of Climate Justice appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Don’t let us adults destroy your futures! This time of “distance learning” and COVID-19 chaos is the opportunity of a generation—maybe a century—to fix what’s so very wrong with how California treats you. And right now, you have unprecedented power. I am begging you to use it.

Before COVID-19, California wasn’t doing well by its 9.1 million residents under age 18. Now in crisis, the state’s adults are conspiring without your input to make things even worse for you. By June’s end, your governor and legislature will likely pass a budget that cuts a record $15.1 billion from your schools, further hurts the economy, and guts other programs essential to your growth.

You may think that you can do nothing to stop this—after all, you are being ignored as politicians and powerful adult interests make decisions about your future. Even at your own schools, few of you are being asked for your suggestions about how to improve distance learning or how to make your own classrooms safe and productive for your return.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Right now, with schools closed because of the pandemic, California’s children and teens have more leverage than ever before.

This leverage comes from the fact that education can’t restart in California without your consent. If you kids act together, you have the power to keep the schools shut down. This applies to distance learning, which can’t work if you refuse to sign on to the internet, as well as to physical school reopenings, which won’t happen until you agree to walk back onto those campuses.

Your advantage is not just practical. It’s moral. School districts—having thrown you into hastily organized online classes that have led to a massive learning loss—can no longer pretend they have your best interests at heart. But your greatest power is using your financial standing. California school funding is based on daily attendance. If you stay home, or refuse to open educational apps, school districts, which are already in fiscal crisis, will shut down. They won’t get funding if you are absent.

If schools can’t open back up, neither can the rest of California’s economy. Billionaires dream of having that kind of leverage.

I know that you want to go back to school, and that skipping class may feel wrong or irresponsible. But one irony of these times is that not showing up is the most powerful and responsible action you can take.

So, as the father of three of you, I’d like to suggest that now, with the budget being written, is the moment to organize and start pressuring your elders. A student-led movement could dictate the terms of how returning to school would go and of funding for education and other children’s programs—if it could credibly threaten a statewide student strike in the fall.

What should your demands be? You will figure those out for yourselves, as you meet online. Given California adults’ record of failing you, you shouldn’t trust any of us, including this columnist, to set your agenda. But I can offer you a picture of how California treats children. It’s not pretty.

The 2020 California Children’s Report Card, from the non-profit, non-partisan organization Children Now, offers a comprehensive review of the horror show you’re living in. It also demonstrates your state’s hypocrisy: California brags about being the home of the future, while failing its future citizens.

You already know firsthand that California ranks low in education funding. Who is paying the price for this neglect? You. Fewer than half of you meet state standards in English Language Arts and Mathematics. Only 42 percent of high school students meet the state’s own criteria for being “prepared” for college. And equity? Your generation has some of the biggest student achievement gaps—based on race and poverty—in our very unequal country.

California leaders love to tout the health insurance coverage they’re providing you, but they rarely mention that you’re not getting enough actual health care. The state ranks especially low on giving kids preventive health screenings, dental care, nutrition assistance, and mental health and substance abuse services.

California is also awful at child care and special education. Elected officials have been promising quality universal preschool for 20 years without delivering it. And there is no state worse than yours at providing sufficient educators, counselors, support staff, and administrators for your schools. Sixty percent of your school districts don’t have even one full-time nurse. And the student-to-counselor ratio in California schools is 600 to 1.

The problem in California is not a lack of money—we are rich—or good intentions. It’s that adults are selfish and lazy, and refuse to coordinate the different agencies, programs and levels of government that should serve you.

Another problem is that adults have denied you any real democratic representation. You constitute 23 percent of California and still can’t vote or hold elected office. Neither can non-citizen immigrants, which hurts your representation, too, because half of all California children have at least one immigrant parent. As a result, you have to suffer under funding formulas, laws, and decisions made without your assent. The worst rules have been on the books since long before you were born.

In this extraordinary moment, there are many demands you could make. My suggestion—take it with an adult-sized grain of salt—is that you start by saying you won’t return to campus or sign into Google Classroom until all cuts to children’s programs are reversed.

Your logic would be simple: Before COVID, kids were getting systematically screwed in California. During COVID, your schools have shut and you’re stuck with your families at home. So it’s intolerable that adults are cutting tens of billions of dollars from schools and other programs.

You also might look beyond the current horrors and demand better in the future. Extensive studies have shown that to meet your educational needs, the state should have been spending between 25 and 50 percent more on schools than it was before COVID. You could demand that the state, starting next year, fund schools based on educational goals. That would mean eliminating the current Prop 98 formula, which bases school funding on tax revenues and economic growth.

You also might consider demanding your democratic rights. This year, because it’s the centennial of women’s suffrage, you may have heard about celebrations of “universal suffrage.”

What about suffrage for children? It isn’t a wild idea. Countries around the world have elected youth parliaments.

In fact, children have already made changes in the way our state works. The most successful youth-led organization here might be California Youth Connections—a group of foster children who have worked with adults to secure recent reforms to the child welfare system. CYC’s stated vision is “that all foster youth will be equal partners in contributing to all policies and decisions made in their lives.” The same sentiment should apply to all kids.

Of course, some adults will dismiss you as immature for threatening not to return to school. Ignore them. Adults are already making that very same threat. Just last week, the superintendents of six large school districts—L.A., San Diego, Long Beach, San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento City—threatened to not reopen schools in the fall unless they get more money from the state.

A little political advice. Don’t bother with challenging your local school board or principal. Train all your fire on Gavin Newsom. The governor has near-total power on budgeting, and he won his office on a platform of investing in children, from “cradle to college.”

I want to put your mind at ease about one thing. If you have to strike in the fall, that doesn’t mean you have to stop getting an education. Many schools around the country have developed excellent distance-learning curricula—better than what you’ll find in California—and offer them for free online. A few months ago, your education depended upon the whims of your local school system. But that’s no longer the case. You have options now.

With greater choice comes more power. Use that power. The only people who can save California’s kids are California’s kids.

Sincerely,

Joe Mathews

The post Why California’s Kids Should Go on Strike appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Many faculty members objected to the holiday, but few were as visible and vocal as professor Burt Green Wilder, who would go on to become a defining, if little-known, figure in American higher education.

Spring Day built upon a relatively new tradition: During the 1890s students began holding a dance and fundraiser, the Navy Ball, prior to major fall regattas. Not surprisingly, on the day of the regatta, class attendance was low. But attendance became even more abysmal in 1901, when the students moved the Navy Ball to March and reorganized it as a “circus parade” and noontime concert to benefit the Cornell Athletic Association. Faced with almost no students in classes, the administration capitulated and declared Spring Day a holiday. But Wilder, a pioneering physician, anatomist, and natural historian, hated it—for reasons that turned out to be prescient.

Hired in 1867 as one of Cornell’s original professors, Wilder was a man of 19th-century values but 20th-century sensibilities. Whenever the Spring Day festivities took place in front of McGraw Hall, where his office was, he made clear his feelings about the concession, by writing his disapproval in five languages on a large blackboard, according to the Ithaca Journal-News. He began in French, “O athletique, que de folies on commet et ton nom,” and continued in English and Latin—“In an individual folly may be merely a fault; in a university it is a crime. From fake show to fake scholarship facilis descensus (it is easy to descend).”

Yet students who dismissed him as a curmudgeon or an anachronism were wrong, or at least not entirely right. Wilder could be grumpy, surely. But what is the point of aging if you can’t be grumpy? And Wilder’s case of grumpiness is instructive. In the ways he insisted upon applying traditional values to the culture of higher education, he proved to be a man well ahead of his time.

The second half of the 19th century was a time of exceptional transformation in the United States. An older culture that had emphasized the importance of character and stressed moral qualities was eroding. By the turn of the century, a new one emphasized materialism, scientific and technical improvement, leisure time and recreation. The concept of character was replaced by a focus on personalities, one that stressed the need for respect, admiration, and above all, success.

Wilder felt the tension of being caught in between. As a scholar of anatomy, he was an agent of change and progress. And he was optimistic by nature. But he was also grounded in the principles of his youth, principles that were fixed in the crucible of the Civil War. The words that Wilder associated with his youth were words such as duty, discipline, work, honor, reputation, morals, and integrity.

Wilder was born in Boston in 1841 to parents who were “members of the New Church,” also known as Swedenborgians; as such they were homeopaths, haters of oppression, and strict vegetarians. Late in life he summarized his parents’ influence. From his father he inherited “a hopeful spirit and tendency to seek new facts and to devise original methods.” From his mother, he gained a disposition “at once active and cautious, an unwillingness to sacrifice principle to expediency, and a tenderness towards animals which has prevented his hunting for sport and restricted his physiologic experiments to such as are painless.” From both parents he drew a life-long commitment to personal and societal improvement.

When Wilder graduated from Harvard with a comparative anatomy degree in 1862, he knew he should join the Army of the Potomac but he believed he lacked both the training and aptitude necessary. Fortunately, he was offered a position as an acting medical cadet in a Washington hospital.

The war, which was transforming American medicine and medical research, created the opportunity for a bright comparative anatomist with little medical background but with a compulsive work ethic, an ability to perform autopsies, and access to medical texts to grow professionally. Wilder soon found himself at the forefront of anatomy and medicine.

He also had his consciousness expanded. By May 1863, he had accepted a commission as an assistant surgeon in the newly formed black 55th Massachusetts Volunteers. During the 28 months that he served in the regiment, he developed a profound respect for the courage and commitment of the black soldiers.

His army experience also let him develop professionally. In what little time he had when he was not attending the sick and wounded or studying medical books, he collected species for his natural history collection, including a large silk-spinning spider he discovered on Folly Island in 1863, that was later given his name (Nephila wilder).

In the two years after the war, Wilder obtained a medical degree from Harvard while also working at its Museum of Comparative Zoology and publishing a half-dozen scientific papers. That, and a glowing reference from Louis Agassiz, a prominent naturalist, led to his appointment as Professor of Natural History at Cornell University, one of the new land-grant colleges. He would teach there until 1910.

At Cornell, he developed a reputation as an innovative teacher and a captivating lecturer. He pioneered pre-med education, introduced dissection and laboratory methodology into undergraduate courses, built up a natural history museum at Cornell, and established the Cornell Brain Collection. As president of the American Neurological Association in 1885 and the Association of American Anatomists in 1897, he used his research on the human brain to challenge the scientific racism and gender biases of the time.

In 1893 his former students recognized his contributions to Cornell and their debt to him by producing one of America’s first Festschrifts—a German term for a collection of writing published in honor of a scholar.

While Wilder was a progressive where science and society were concerned, his perception of student conduct remained rooted in an earlier era. By the turn of the century, that brought him into greater conflict with some he called “stoodlums.” Cornell students in 1900 were different from the first students whom Wilder had taught. Students now expected an element of fun and diversion while at college. Football had become an all-encompassing passion.

Wilder disagreed. He had always argued that university students were a special and privileged group. Given the sacrifices that others made on their behalf and the benefits which they would receive, Wilder believed college students should be more strictly held to account than their peers. “Leniency towards transgression, particularly when intoxication is pleaded in extenuation, is seldom really kind to them,” he wrote to the university president in 1909. It was also unfair to well-behaved students.

A portrait of Burt Green Wilder in 1889. Courtesy of Kevin S. Weiner.

Wilder had a long list of student activities he opposed. He was foresighted in his targets, pointing at activities that still create problems for universities today. He objected to secret societies, intercollegiate athletic competition of any kind (on-campus sports were fine), betting and gambling, hazing, campus smoking, alumni buffoonery, Spring Day, leaves of absence for other than personal or scholastic reasons, and “stamping in class-rooms.”

He gained national notoriety in the 1880s and 1890s for his opposition to the growing popularity of football. Not only did that sport take students away from their academic work, he argued, but it caused more serious injuries than other activities and also coarsened its audience.

Wilder was always willing to challenge authority in ways that might resonate today. In June 1905, Wilder responded to an article by U.S. Senator Albert Beveridge in the New York Daily Tribune titled “The Young Man and College Life.” Among other things, Beveridge had written, “I never took much stock in the outcry against hazing.” How could the senator defend the practice, Wilder railed, when his government, after a long investigation, had just dismissed cadets and midshipmen from West Point and Annapolis in 1901 for their hazing abuses? Hazing, Wilder continued, corrupted law, morals and ethics by giving one group of students’ arbitrary power and authority over others. Hazing always implied a preponderance of power or advantage on the part of the aggressors. As a result it was not only brutal and unjustifiable, Wilder believed, “but mean, despicable and cowardly.”

Wilder, who had long supported women’s rights, took even greater exception to another of the senator’s paragraphs headed, “The More Fun the Better.” Beveridge claimed that nobody cares how mad the student pranks were. Wilder challenged Beveridge’s argument that, “We cannot change our sex or the habits of it. A young man is a male animal after all, and those who object to his rioting like a young bull are in a perpetual quarrel with nature.” Although Wilder accepted that, “we cannot change our sex” as a truism, he was convinced “there are many, in college as well as without, whose unsexing would render this a cleaner and safer world.” While agreeing that the “habits of our sex” might not be changed in a day or a decade, Wilder was adamant that change was possible—and had to be possible if man was to be more than an animal.

Sometimes, perhaps, an anachronism is really not an anachronism.

The post The Pioneering Cornell Anatomist Who Sought to Bring ‘Honor’ and ‘Duty’ to College Life appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Instead, keep your eye on rankings that rely upon a different set of numbers: Namely, graduation and retention rates. That’s because the current trends in enrolling and graduating low-income and minority students threaten social justice in higher education.

American Council on Education statistics show that college enrollment among low-income students has fallen to 46 percent, 20 percent below the national average. While African-American and Latino/a enrollment is rising somewhat, there are troubling gaps in outcomes for these students.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, among students enrolled in four-year institutions only 41 percent of African-American students and 53 percent of Latino/a students ultimately attain bachelor’s degrees. That’s compared to at least 70 percent of Asian counterparts, and 63 percent of Caucasians.

To see these contrasts in detail, just take a look at the chart accompanying this text. It’s based on data from the U.S. Department of Education, the Education Trust, and University of California Riverside, where I’m chancellor.

While some institutions focus on efforts to ensure low-income and minority students en masse get their degrees and move into rewarding careers, they’re probably not listed among the private colleges and universities that dominate the top 10 lists in the U.S. News & World Report, Wall Street Journal, or Forbes rankings. The nation’s public higher education institutions, less frequently cited at the top of these rankings, enroll more than 70 percent of all four-year college students—including a preponderance of low-income and minority students.

So applicants and their parents should look to other higher education resources to gauge more relevant measures. For example, the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard allows you to compare tuition and living costs, graduation rates, and income after graduation.

Furthermore, there are important questions students should ask about any school they’re considering:

What is the diversity picture? Will you be 1 in 100 on your campus, or 1 in 5? Statistics show having a critical mass of diversity in the student population makes a difference. If you have a group of people like you on campus, you are more likely to succeed.

Does the institution offer first-year programs such as learning communities, which help create small cohorts of freshmen studying particular courses? Experience has shown that these programs help students keep up with studies and get off to a good start toward graduation. At larger institutions, learning communities can help keep the collegiate experience from being overwhelming for freshmen. Thanks to learning communities, we’ve been able to recently increase our freshmen retention rates at UC Riverside by more than six percent, with particular success among women, Hispanic, Asian-American, first-generation, and low-income students.

Low-income and minority students should always ask about these types of programs and support systems. When it comes to enrolling, retaining, and graduating students, these are the efforts that make the difference.

Investment in a college degree transforms society, and improves an individual’s chances of getting ahead. University of California research shows that, within five years of graduation, UC students who qualified for federal Pell Grant aid have an annual income of approximately $50,000—more than double the combined salaries of their parents.

So start your college search not with a default to high-profile rankings systems, but with an earnest look at the measures that will guarantee your success in college and beyond.

The post Why College Rankings Are Anti-Diversity appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Is California abandoning its poorest students?

That question would be dismissed as absurd by our state’s education leaders, especially Gov. Jerry Brown and the State Board of Education. For years, they have been building a new educational architecture they say will do more for the poorest kids in the poorest schools.

But as the many elements of this architecture are put in place slowly—and I do mean slowly—they have begun to look like a Winchester Mystery House, so full of complicated rooms that the structure doesn’t fit together coherently. On its current path, the emerging educational architecture of California seems likely to undermine public accountability, resist meaningful parent and community engagement, and make it difficult to figure out whether disadvantaged students and the schools they attend are benefiting.

The new architecture is built on a foundation known as Local Control Funding Formula, a multi-piece formula that is designed to give more money and authority to local school districts, especially those with concentrated poverty. That formula was approved in combination with the establishment of new Local Control and Accountability Plans, intended to give parents and communities more say in how money is spent. The state also adopted Common Core standards for math and English that emphasize critical thinking, and combined the standards with a computer-based testing system to better track individual students.

And last month, the state wrapped all of these elements together in a new accountability system to track the progress of schools and students on new measures that go far beyond test scores.

The governing theory is that all these new educational structures—in concert with social programs to raise the wages, improve the health care, and provide more social services to poor Californians—will make it easier for a greater number of disadvantaged students to prepare for college and careers.

But examining the pieces in detail, the architecture is so hollow and unsteady that it’s hard to understand how students will benefit.

Consider the new accountability system, approved by the State Board of Education in September. The board passed it in a meeting that was heavy on self-congratulation, and light on detail.

The system introduces six indicators for measuring schools (such as college and career readiness, and the progress of English language learners) as well as local factors, like parental engagement and school climate. This was hailed as an improvement on a previous system that the board abandoned three years ago and had not replaced, leaving Californians in the dark about how their schools were doing.

But, at least for now, this new approach to accountability offers more clouds than sunshine. It could be years before data for some of the new measures exists. There are also real questions about how you could reliably measure parental engagement and school climate, or whether the effort would be worthwhile, given all the other demands on California districts.

Even worse, the board resisted urgent calls from many education and child advocacy groups to boil down this new system into something that the public might be able to understand. Instead, the board, defiantly, released a sprawling draft built around a confounding color-coded grid that deserves immediate induction, without the customary five-year waiting period, into the Hall of Fame for Bureaucratic Idiocy. “Making sense of it is practically impossible,” the Los Angeles Times editorialized.

Fixing this accountability system isn’t just a matter of redesign, which the board is saying it will do next year. The trouble is that the accountability system is built upon the other pieces of the new architecture, and those are similarly confusing. The new local control formula encompasses eight priorities, many of them hard to measure, and myriad sub-priorities and different grant formulas under those. And the Local Control and Accountability Plans required by the new formula are like the Holy Roman Empire—they aren’t local, they don’t really provide control or accountability, and they aren’t even plans. They are longwinded, technical answers to longwinded, technical questions required by a state template. School districts, naturally, have struggled to get parents and community members to participate in drafting these documents, which in many cases run to hundreds of pages.

And if all that doesn’t give you a headache, the new system could soon get even more complicated. The federal government is in the process of developing its own plan to help the worst-off schools, under the new Every Student Succeeds Act, the successor to No Child Left Behind.

The federal law requires states to identify the bottom 5 percent of schools and figure out ways to improve them. California’s emerging architecture doesn’t provide any easy way to identify those schools. Instead, state leaders are lobbying against the new federal system, and continue to design the state’s system in ways that are at odds with the federal law. Last week, Gov. Brown vetoed a bill, overwhelmingly passed in the legislature, to require the California system to align with the federal one.

In the end, it’s possible there will be not one but two accountability systems for California schools—one answerable to Sacramento, the other to Washington.

In watching this process, I can’t help but wonder if all the confusion isn’t cynically deliberate. Throughout, the state has followed the advice of its powerful teachers union, the California Teachers Association, which has opposed any system that offers coherent ratings, and thus meaningful comparisons, of schools. The union prefers to have as much evaluation as possible done at the local level, where they are most powerful. By enacting a state system that no one can manage or understand, California may effectively leave things in the hands of the locals.

What does that mean for making sure poor kids are actually making progress? It may mean that we never know. Gov. Brown gave the game away in an interview with CALmatters earlier this year when he questioned whether the achievement gaps between disadvantaged and other students can be closed, even with the help of his Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF).

“The gap has been pretty persistent,” he said, “so I don’t want to set up what hasn’t been done ever as the test of whether the LCFF is a success or failure. I don’t know why you would go there.” Closing achievement gaps is “pretty hard to do,” he added.

The defenses of the emerging system are equally lame. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson has argued that the complexity of the new system is a virtue—since education, and life for that matter, is complex.

The State Board of Education president Michael Kirst, a Stanford scholar whose writing on educational systems is distinguished by its clarity, has in this instance taken to issuing uncharacteristically foggy pleas for patience and delay. We’re still ironing out the kinks and the whole system will evolve continuously, he argues. “Concluding now that the system is too complex,” he wrote for the website EdSource, “would be no different than arguing that people would not be able to use a smart phone based on the engineering specifications when the device is still in development.”

Professor Kirst is right about the need for patience, in a way. It will take at least until 2019, when California finally gets a new governor, before Californians will have any chance to stop construction on this incomprehensible mess, and to focus coherently on our poorest students.

The post California’s New Education Architecture Is Already Failing appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.