If you read the newspapers or watch Fox News (nobody here pays attention to Fox News, right?) you may come away with a skewed perspective of the hierarchy of power at universities. Here’s a helpful perspective, with myth on the left, reality on the right.
The only omission is the absence of coaches, but maybe that’s OK. Coaches don’t actually make any decisions or contribute to academic life, they are off to the side, grinning happily as they skim off millions of dollars, with which the trustees and donors fill their pockets.
The students return to my university today. I’ll try not to infect them with my cynicism.
What would Statler and Waldorf be? Animal?
My cable provider in Sweden initially carried Fox alongside many other foreign channels.
A while into the war in Iraq Fox News was quietly dropped.
When you can check one channel against your own country’s news channels plus BBC and a lot of other foreign news channels the con becomes obvious.
Statler and Waldorf would be Jon Stewart and John Oliver.
I confess to watching Baseball Night in America; but other than that, I don’t get anywhere near Fox.
The TV news shows I regularly watch are DW News from Germany and BBC World News America, both of which I get on PBS’ “World Channel”, and on which I can get information about many places in the world, not just the US.
I usually have my NBC affiliate’s local newcast on; but I have the sound turned off, and I’m doing something else on my computer, until they get past the leads that bleed, which sometimes doesn’t happen until the weather report near the middle of the program. I used to watch the PBS Newshour regularly; but for the last year or two, it’s all old news to me by the time it comes on.
I still mostly like CBS’ Sunday Morning, but it hasn’t had the same high standards since Charles Kuralt left.
But back to the real point of your post: yeah…reality…how does that work? It’s too bad that our current batch of late-stage capitalists have successfully turned attention away from themselves and given poor folks other people to blame for their problems (women, POC, LGBTQ+ folk…you know the list).
Anyway, best of luck for your (penultimate?) year of teaching. I hope you can get through the day without much pain from your tendons, and without much hassle from the folks identified in the graphic as those who are actually in charge. 8-)
billseymour #4
The quality of that program dramatically decreased in just the last 15 years. It used to be something worth waking up early on a Sunday morning for. You were guaranteed to learn something interesting even if you were an otherwise knowledgeable person.
No longer. It’s basically celebrity pablum now. It seems like they interview David Copperfield every two months. If some singer has announced their retirement, it’s a foregone conclusion they’ll appear on that show. The non-celebrity segments aren’t much better.
I cannot agree with the first clause of the second sentence.
Coaches make admissions decisions. They also restrict the majors (and minors) of those who
work for themgenerate revenue for the school, even in so-called non-revenue sportsare on their teams. Go ahead, count the number of scholarship athletes taking classes with Saturday laboratories… or any laboratory that might theoretically cut into practice time or team meetings. Specific example: a head football coach’s proclamation that his athletes didn’t have the time for — slight paraphrase, it was a while back — meaningless made-up labs done on the cheap with last-century equipment in which students learn only if something goes seriously wrong. (Meanwhile, that same coach rejected oversight on teaching/training methods from professional educators because those educators had “no experience with the unique demands of [nameofsportwithheld].”)Coaches also strongly influence disciplinary decisions regarding Other Problems With Athletes. One grad school stop: A Big Ten university just barely emerging from a recruiting/admissions scandal in one revenue sport and plunging into a gambling-and-carefully-hushed-up-sexual-harassment scandal in another. No athletes or coaches suffered any consequences; several administrators, however, “sought other opportunities.”
Maybe PZ can enlighten us further about what the pedagogical purpose of a science lab is; but I’d guess that it includes things like how to properly record your results, and how to recogize what the results even are. I’d also guess that learning about the details of how to use particular pieces of equipment is the easy part and can wait until you actually need it.
Does that coach have any knowledge of pedagogy generally, or any experience with, say, making lesson plans?
Sounds like somebody on the low end of the Dunning-Kruger* curve who thinks he doesn’t have anything to learn (and so probably votes for Trump).
*Just using Dunning-Kruger as a metaphor, not as a claim of anything scientific.
As in the USian hierarchy of power the oligarchs have been omitted from view in that cartoon. One of the primary circus rings that keep the populace happy and not in the streets rioting is industrialized sports. Its invisible leadership controls the demand for inclusion of competition in all levels of education, with organized sports being most important in high school and college. Beginning with early emphasis on many various competitions not associated with sports, continuing with the grading system and the inherent competition it represents, then an introduction to sports as a route to physical fitness. Sports, whether played or just watched, gets the students ready for the competition that is adult life in the US of A, and is epitomized by the usually mandatory school spirit rallies in high school. All of this is cemented in young psyches by the incessant sports advertisements and deification of sports celebrities. Keeping sports talked of much of the time during many aspects of everyone’s lives is what schools are used for by our oligarchy to indoctrinate the competitive nature of the US capitalist society. Add an ever-expanding set of sports with new ones invented or old ones repurposed – chess in the Olympics? – leads to the goal of getting money spent on tickets, sports channels, and streaming; food, drink, and snacks before and during the games; clothing, paraphernalia, and other team identity tie-ins; and gambling. Organized gambling, aka fantasy leagues and sports betting. I can’t imagine what the workplace fantasy leagues are like now having retired over twenty years ago, but they represented a large portion of the fall and winter discussions in the male dominated profession I worked in. Many billions of dollars are spent on sports and associated activities, much of which trickles all the way up to that hidden highest layer in the university hierarchy.
In Oz its called Sky news and we also have Murdoch’s malign media near monopoly especially with newspapers which I used to read regularly but now very rarely bother.
Sky is Pay TV here – and apparently from England but basically all Murdoch rubbish :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_News_Australia
There’s also commercial free to air telly with a channel owned by reichwing billionaire Kerry Stokes who also pushes a heavily reichwing agenda. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerry_Stokes)
@ billseymour :
Here in Oz – at least Adelaide, South Australia & I think nationally – we get Aussie ABC, SBS & NITV (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Indigenous_Television ) which allhave some good news and docos. They also esp News 24 -the ABC news channel broadcast some BBC, DW, NHK (Japanese) and other international news shows.
^ PS. FWIW I don’t and never have had pay TV. Just free to air proper telly & internet.