550 10 9760 https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/9ced7563b0046930f748a9499ee064e5.pdf 1c9efda09c22f099b283fdc1da8a68bd PDF Text Text Editor’s Choice From Learning to Education A New Paradigm for the Community College Chad M. Hanson Casper College, Wyoming In the 1990s, community colleges underwent a shift in their guiding paradigm. The transformation in norms, roles, and values look place in the name of “learning,” as the change was driven by the goal of turning 2-year schools into “learning colleges.” In this article, it is suggested that the shift ushered in by the learning movement limited the focus of community colleges to goals that are narrowly private and psychological. An alternative to current organiza­ tional culture is proposed: an “education” paradigm that widens institutional focus to include goals consistent with serving social and public purposes. Keyword: learning colleges; student development; workforce training; learning paradigm or more than a century, community colleges have been an integral part of the undergraduate experience. Two-year college professionals have served students for more than five generations, and they have served the nation well. In a recent report on a survey commissioned by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jeffrey Selingo (2004) wrote, “Nearly 93 percent of the respondents agreed that higher education institutions are one of the most valuable resources in the United States,” and community colleges are among the resources we trust and value most (p. 1). The key to the growth and success of community colleges has been a long-standing commitment to students. In contrast to institutions with a wider range of duties, 2-year schools are single-mindedly devoted to student development. Thus, in the middle 1980s, when accrediting agen­ cies and state legislatures moved to emphasize accountability through the F Editor’s Note: This article is published as an Editor’s Choice selection. Editor’s Choice articles are selected by the editorial staff of Community College Review and have not gone through the peer review process. 128 Hanson / From Learning to Education 129 assessment of student learning (Lazerson, Wagener, & Shumanis, 2000, p. 14), community colleges were among the first to heed the call. In the 1990s, we began to focus on learning with a kind of zeal characteristic of social or political movements (O’Banion, 1998a, 1998b). Over the course of the past decade, the goal of increased student learning grew to the point where community colleges came to think of and refer to themselves as “learning coUeges” (Barr & Tagg, 1995; O’Banion, 1997; Tagg, 2003). By the turn of the century, the words of Robert Barr and John Tagg (1995) had hardened into truisms: “Our mission is that of producing learning with every student by whatever means” (p. 9). Never before has learning been a more central focus in 2-year colleges. Yet the heightened focus on learning has channeled the efforts of educators toward purposes that are limited in scope. The focus on learning, in lieu of education, limits the approach of staff and faculty merely to encouraging cognitive as opposed to social, moral, or aesthetic development (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Today, the goal of “producing learning” is seen as customary, but learning and education are not one and the same. Learning is private and psychological, whereas education is both social and public. It is possible that learning may be produced by whatever means. Learning can even take place anytime or anywhere (O’Banion, 1997). However, education is a social institution, and the process of becoming an educated person is complex and multifaceted. As the Russian psychologist Pavlov demonstrated, dogs are capable of leammg; so are ducks and mice and barnyard animals (Ciccarelli & Meyer, 2005). Learning is easy to produce and equally simple to measure. The same cannot be said of education, however. Education is rich, diverse, and complicated. Nonetheless, a well-educated citizenry is crucial to maintaining the health and sovereignty of free and self-governing nations (Barter, 1992). At best, cognitive development can only be a partial goal for public colleges. Our primary objectives must be social and cultural in character. Postsecondary schools bear the responsibility of “providing the next generation with the capacities, beliefs, and commitments necessary to ensure society’s goals” (Shapiro, 2005, p. 37). Shifting the focus of 2-year colleges away from the current emphasis on learning and toward a broad concern with education is consistent with the schools’ historic function as a cornerstone of democracy (Griffith & Connor, 1994; Hanson, 2002; Rhoades & Valdez, 1996). In honor of its place in the nation’s political fabric, the community college has been �130 Community College Review Hanson / From Learning to Education referred to as “democracy’s college’’ (Diekhoff, 1950). A renewed insti­ tutional commitment to liberal or general education holds the promise of restoring our commitment to the once-proud designation, but the change also comes with potential benefits for colleges. The move from learning to education stands to make 2-year schools more competitive in the post­ secondary marketplace. In addition, by moving the focus of our efforts from learning to education, we equip colleges to fulfill their responsibilities as public institutions, and we position ourselves to make sound invest­ ments with tax dollars. Education Is Competitive in the Marketplace The postsecondary marketplace is competitive. Generally speaking, local, state, and federal higher education budgets shrank from coast to coast throughout the 1990s, and the trend continues here in the first part of the new century (Roueche & Jones, 2005). In addition to budget short-_ falls, public 2-year colleges were also forced to compete with a host of new institutions geared toward serving private sector interests (Boggs, 2005). In response to the competition, community colleges began changing their public image to match that of the growing number of for-profit train­ ing institutes. In effect, over the course of the past decade, community colleges have worked to become more like their competitors. According to Richard Alfred (2000), “Most institutions focus on keep­ ing pace with rivals and, as a result, their marketing strategies tend to con­ verge’’ (p. 14). In the case of community colleges, the strategy has hinged on the notion that 2-year schools should become convenient places for students to acquire labor market skills. Higginbottom and Romano (2001) suggested, “Community colleges see themselves as the workforce training centers of the 21st century,’’ and they went on to explain, “Increasingly this is taken to mean short-term training of job-related skills, as opposed to the broader goals of general education’’ (p. 255). Through the process of identifying themselves as vocational centers, public 2-year schools shifted their missions (Ayers, 2005) and organizational culture (Levin, 2001) to match the norms and values found in the private sector; Nordstrom’s department store is even used as an organizational model (Pickelman, 2005). 131 Through the course of trying to emulate competitors, 2-year schools turned attention away from the practice of “establishing a brand identity that distinguishes it in the eyes of customers” (Alfred, 2000, p. 14). Instead of striving to establish a proud and unique public image, community colleges have refashioned themselves (Levin, Kater, & Wagoner, 2006) as job-training institutes, a distinction that does little to inspire respect or reverence in the minds of students. Like it or not, the nation’s postsecondary system is structured hierar­ chically. Status and prestige are intertwined with cost, selectivity, and purpose (Alfred & Horowitz, 1990). I suspect that many of us hope for a future where the arrangement is more egalitarian than at present, but there can be no question that Ivy League schools are perched at the top, com­ prehensive state universities occupy the middle rungs, and community colleges fall somewhere near the bottom of the ladder. Potential students are conscious of the status differences, and economic models suggest that, when it is possible, consumers choose the highest level of prestige at the lowest price (Breneman, 1996). In the words of Lyall and Sell (2006), “As students become customers, they become more price sensitive, brand-name aware, and quality oriented. These factors, which have been at play in the private university sector for some time, are gaining impor­ tance in public higher education as well” (p. 51). The same authors went on to note that “the ‘public-ivy’ universities now generate far more demand than they have capacity to satisfy” (p. 51), and public community colleges have the ability to generate similar levels of demand. As part of the process of securing their position in the marketplace, institutions of all types work to create an image that appeals to potential students, and for pragmatic reasons, that identity or image should be set as high on the status hierarchy as possible. Students predisposed toward lower rungs on the ladder are likely to be motivated by a chance at high status, without an associated rise in costs. Similarly, prospective students inclined toward the middle may be drawn to the low cost of community colleges, if the choice could be made without a corresponding loss of prestige. By contrast, those same students, leaning toward the middle, are likely to steer away from schools lowering themselves to the bottom of the hierarchy by making vocational training the central feature of their enterprise. Community colleges have everything to gain by becoming more like institutions in the middle or at the top of the postsecondary ladder, and the move is well within our grasp, as public 2-year schools are endowed �132 Community College Review Hanson / From Learning to Education with assets that for-profit colleges can only dream about—campuses and full-time faculty. Community colleges are premier public places, where citizens from across a locality can join together for the purpose of higher education. When these strengths and advantages are explained to stake­ holders and constituents, the results are palpable. For instance, students at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina, describe the school in the following terms: “It is a real academic institu­ tion. It has a beautiful campus. Classes are small and instructors really care” (Alfred, 2000, p. 18). Two-year colleges have more in common with high-status institutions than they have with private training organi­ zations with no commitment to public service. Thus, community colleges are in a unique position to use the prestige and purpose of the liberal arts to strengthen their foothold in the marketplace. Education Is Public Public 2-year schools are heavily subsidized. Community college students pay a fraction of the cost of their education in the form of tuition. The bulk of their education is subsidized by local, state, and federal tax­ payers (Romano, 2003). Still, students conceive of themselves as cus­ tomers, and colleges relate to them as such. Of course, within our culture it is routine to approach students from the standpoint of customer service, but public colleges enter an unbefitting realm when they use prospective students’ private and personal interests as a foundation for marketing strategies and, as of late, community colleges have worked to create public images designed to appeal to self-interest. The situation is prevalent enough that it prompted Zemsky, Wegner, and Massey (2005) to write, “As more people have viewed higher education as offering mainly personal advantages . . . colleges have virtually given up defining themselves in terms of their contributions to the community, state, or nation” (p. B6). The same authors went on to explain, with respect to the tendency for colleges to identify themselves as commercial entities, “When a college is wholly dominated by market interest, it sacri­ fices much of its capacity to serve its public purposes and sometimes even its fundamental mission” (B6). The fundamental mission of public 2-year schools is to serve the social and cultural needs of the communities of which they are a part but, in the words of John Levin (2001), during the 1990s, “the purpose of the institution 133 endt individual and community betterment to economic colleg^rwerepreparation” (p. 170). Community FranfNeZma^ Am? / “dergo the shift. According to rank Newman (2000), former director of the Futures Project at Brnwn niversity institutions of all types underwent a similar change and he suggested that the focus on economic development holds the Dot’ential m c™ti“ w?ot? for higher edu Xe-haJ^hld?"’-, state-owned and pmfitaet.vldesanJ?nadcS^^^™:“:^ In short, we are moving toward a point where “education could be con- notT indulgence that, whatever its value to an individual does not deserve public support” (Shapiro, 2005, p 90) fm“S?g institutions, community colleges depend on public Education Is for Life “FdVrf psychologist B. F. Skinner (19641 ized the limit?' J? P^onuMot psychologist of the 20th century real- �134 Community College Review Hanson / From Leaming to Education educated people. In the shadow of such venerable goals, the aim of pro­ ducing learning shrinks by comparison. Still, the president of the American Association of Community Colleges has suggested, with regard to 2-year schools, “The mission should be student learning, and we should measure our effectiveness based upon student learning outcomes” (Boggs, 1995, p. 26). Cognition is one element of student development but, arguably, not the most important (Weidman, 1989a, 1989b). Educational institutions have a deeper capacity and a larger responsibility of changing students’ self­ concepts or identities (Chickering, 1972), and human identities are bun­ dles of recollections (McCall & Simmons, 1966; Mead, 1934). For the graduate, a college is a collection of memories—an alma mater—confer­ ring social status and ordering behaviors over the life span. Howard Bowen (1977) wrote, “The impact of higher education is likely to be determined more by the kind of people college graduates become than by what they know when they leave college” (p. 270). Hence, “The proper study of the effects of college . . . is the study of lives” (Sanford, 1962, p. 809). Because learning is relatively easy to produce and simple to measure, the current tendency is to focus on the short term and the observable; however, the focus on learning has forced us to sacrifice the goal of preparing citizens to fill long-term social and political roles within our communities. Community college curricula and advertising currently focus on appealing to students’ self-interest and their desire for convenient access to credentials, but this move is out of step with the mission of a public institution. In the near term, students may have an interest in the fastest and most convenient route to becoming certified as members of a profes­ sion, but if we oblige them by offering mere convenience, we do students a disservice, and we also fail to live up to our own obligations. Colleges have different goals from those of the armed forces, but they are both institutions with a commitment to public service. Therefore, colleges could learn from the example set by the military, with respect to their approach to new recruits. In the case of the Air Force, the historical call was to “aim high.” The Army issued a challenge to “be all you can be,” and the Navy currently implores recruits to “accelerate their lives.” These institutions challenge prospective service people to use their individual abilities to serve a higher purpose. As institutions, the Army, Navy, and Air Force serve as reminders that selflessness and social responsibility are necessary to the health and maintenance of a free and democratic nation. 135 Community colleges could serve as a similar reminder. However, if we emphasize self-interest and convenience in our efforts, we circumvent the expectations placed on us as institutions, and we also deprive students of the self-respect that accompanies hard work, commitment, and sacrifice When ^aduates reflect on their community coUege experience, they are entitle^o better and more meaningful memories than “That was convenient ” Ibere IS no question that contemporary students approach prospective colleges from the standpoint of asking, “What can this school do for me*?” V’ t^ornmunity colleges have an obligation to teach students to there is a more important question to ask: ‘What can this college help me do for my community?” Conclusion to the mid-1990s, *e Wingspread Group on Higher Education, funded y the Johnson Foundation, issued a warning to postsecondary educators An American Imperative: Higher Expectations for Higher Education suggested to leaders m 2- and 4-year schools alike, “A disturbing and dangerous mismatch exists between what American society needs of higher education and what it is receiving. Nowhere is the mismatch more dan­ gerous than in the quality of undergraduate education provided on many campuses (Wingspread Group on Higher Education, 1993, p. I). The authors of An American Imperative then went on to recommend a means of addressing the mismatch. In their words. Every student needs the knowledge and understanding that can come only from the ngors of a liberal education. Such an education lies at the heart of ^*evelopmg both social and personal values. If the center of American Society "" ** experience Recently, John Roueche and Barbara Jones (2005) pointed out that many 2-year colleges “merely hit the snooze button on the national wake­ up call provided by the Wingspread Group (p. x). Some schools even worked to circumvent their own liberal arts curriculum by offering shortteim certificates with little or no general education. In effect, community colleges bec^e invested in a pattern President George W. Bush describes smbemTn! r expectations for tudents. By limiting our focus to leaming, community colleges engage �136 Community College Review Hanson / From Learning to Education in a pattern of relating to students as if they were purely one-dimensional, as if economically valuable cognitive skills are the only traits they are competent to possess. Students are increasingly thought of and described as “workers” in the community college, and in the process, their lives as citizens and members of communities are systematically neglected. Community colleges serve historically disadvantaged groups; women, minorities, people of low socioeconomic status, and first-generation college students (Adelman, 2005). As professionals, our challenge is to provide those students with an education of the same nature and character that one finds at the top levels of our postsecondary network. To offer community college students anything less is to partake in a subtle but socially consequential form of bigotry. Unfortunately, when we limit the scope of our efforts simply to producing learning, we deny our students the broil education for citizenship that takes place at the upper levels of the postsecondary hierarchy. The most effective way to widen the narrow and limiting approach to education ushered in by the learning movement is to change the paradigm shaping our beliefs and values. Levin et al. (2006) suggested that over the course of the past decade, “community colleges have developed an overt entrepreneurial culture, with a ‘managed’ organization that can provide efficient and flexible programs tied to market demands” (p. 1). This culture of top-down management, together with the tendency to subordinate edu­ cational goals to the whims of the marketplace, stands opposed to any steps we could take toward improving or maintaining the status of the 2-year college as an honorable public institution, with firm roots in the social and political fabric of our nation. Thus, the time is right to restate our goals. The time is right to change the way we think, write, and speak as staff and faculty. Alfred and Horowitz (1990) explained, “The stature of an institution reflects its historical legacy,” and they went on to add that any effort to improve status “resists impulses to alter institutional domains of activity in response to rapidly emerging market forces” (p. 8). In the decade of the 1990s, and here in the first part of the new century, conununity colleges have given in to market forces and aligned themselves with private sector interests (Levin, 2001; Roueche & Jones, 2(X)5). The change in mission and culture that has accompanied the shift has caused us to forsake our social identity, and in the words of Constantine Curris (2006), “Our state institutions were not founded to be publicly supported alternatives to private colleges, but to fulfill public purposes” (p. B24). For the sake of our students and American democracy, the time is right for a change in the paradigm shaping 137 our noms and practices. The central focus of our efforts must be education in the broadest sense of the term, such that our actions are consistent with our historical goals and proud public responsibility. References Adelman C. (2M5). Moving into town~And moving on: The community college in the Uvea AirSL DC: U.S. Department of EducaUon. ® “ strategic weapon. Community College Journal, 70(A}, 12° 18 Alfred R & Horowitz M. (1990). Higher education and public perception: Dynamics of institutional stature. Journal for Higher Education Management, d(l), 7-28. Ayere. D. (2005) Neoliberal ideology in community college mission statements: A critical discourse analysis. Review of Higher Education, 2S(4), 527-549 B. dSM). amtocracyfor everyone: The polities of education and the future of America. New York; Oxford University Press. BiUT, R. & Tagg, J. (1995). From teaching to learning: A new paradigm.for undergraduate education. CAange. 27(6), 9-21. Boggs, G. (1995). The learning paradigm. Community College Jourtial, 66(3) 24-27 Boggs. G. (2005), Foreward. In J. Roueche & B. Jones (Eds,). TJie entrepreneurial BowTh^^Xw" DC: American Association of Community CoUeges. Bowen. H. Investment in learning: The individual and social value of higher educa­ tion. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. * Bienernan,D41996). Affordability and the private institution. fi/ucflnonaZ Record, 77(4) 14 17 Chickenng, A. (1972). Education and identity. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass ’ ’ Ciccarelli, S„ & Meyer. G. (2005). Psychology (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ; Prentice rlHll. nZ4. of Higher Education. /ocul New college in "“mMh'od'r democracy’s college: Town hall meeting as teaching method. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 27(3) 173-190 mty colleges. A case study of ctoss-puiposes. In B. Townsend & S. TXvombly (Eds) Zk private goods: The American struggle over educational goals. American Educational Research Journal, 39-81. Lazerson, M.. Wagener U., & Shumanis, N. (2000). Whai makes a revolution? Teaching and learmng in higher education 1980-2000. Change. 52(3), 12-19 New Yo“ �138 Community College Review Levin, J., Kaier, S., & Wagoner, R. (2006). Community college faculty: At work in the new economy. New York; Palgrave. Lyall, K., & Sell, K. (2006). The true genius of America at risk. Westport, CT: Praeger. McCall, G., & Simmons, J. (1966). Identities and interactions. New York: Free Press. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Newman, F. (2000). Saving higher education’s soul. Change, 33(5), 16-23. O’Banion, T. (1997). A learning college for the 21st century. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press. O’Banion, T. (1998a). The center of the learning revolution. Community College Week, 10(.^), 24-26. O’Banion, T. (1998b). The learning revolution: Perched at the millennium. Community College Week, 10(12), 12-15. Pascarella, E., & Terenzini, P. (2005). How college affects students: A third decade of research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Pickelman, J. (2005). NHMCCD: A community partner with entrepreneurial spirit. In J. Roueche & B. Jones (Eds.), The entrepreneurial community college (pp. 23-35). Washington, DC: Community College Press. Rhoades, R., & Valdez, J. (1996). Democracy, multiculturalism and the community college. New York: Garland. Romano, R. (2003, October). Financing community colleges across the states: An economic perspective. Paper presented at the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI) conference. The Complex Community College, Ithaca, NY. Roueche, J., & Jones, B. (Eds.). (2005). The entrepreneurial community college. Washington, DC: American Association of Community Colleges. Sanford, N. (1962). The American college. New York: Wiley. Seiingo, J. (2004). U.S. public’s confidence in colleges remains high. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 50(35), 1, 10. Shapiro, H. (2005). A larger sense of purpose: Higher education and society. Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press. Skinner, B. F. (1964). New methods and new aims in teaching. New Scientist, 122, 483-484. Tagg, J. (2003). The learning paradigm college. Bolton, MA: Anker. Weidman, J. (1989a). Undergraduate socialization: A conceptual approach. In J. Smart (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (pp. 289-322). New York: Agathon. Weidman, J. (1989b). The world of higher education: A socialization-theoretical perspective. In K. Hunelmann & U. Engel (Eds.), The social world of adolescents: International per­ spectives (pp. 87-105). New York: W. de Gruyter. Wingspread Group on Higher Education. (1993). An American imperative: Higher expecta­ tions for higher education. Rancine, WI; The Johnson Foundation Inc. Zemsky, R., Wegner, G., & Massey, W. (2005). Today’s colleges must be market smart and mission centered. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 57(45), B6-B7. Chad Hanson teaches sociology at Casper College in Casper, Wyoming. � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. 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Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_07 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>Community College Review</em> is published by Sage Publications https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/641c7ce895d653bd36ee5aa50cf6bb5c.pdf 42b27090beb83e72368a1a0b068a5c80 PDF Text Text Downloaded By: (Hanson. Chad] At: 15:45 20 July 2007 Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 31: 547-561, 2007 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1066-8926 print/1521-0413 online DOI: 10.1080/10668920600851522 Routledge Taylor & Francis Croup THE LEARNING COLLEGE MOVEMENT: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Chad M. Hanson Department of Sociology, Casper College Casper, Wyoming, USA In this article, 6 key texts from the literature of the learning college move­ ment are examined with the technique of critical discourse analysis. The rhetorical strategies found in the literature are discussed from the stand­ point of critical linguistics, and excerpts from the texts are presented as examples of the discursive practices favored by learning advocates. The cultural and political implications of the movement are also addressed, as the learning college movement is placed in historical context. The community college is a major American institution. As of 2004, there were 979 public two-year schools in the United States, serving roughly 40% of all undergraduates (Phillippe & Gonzalez Sullivan, 2005). For more than 50 years the two-year college has been a pillar of the U.S. education network, but in the last decade the institution’s mission and purpose have changed (Levin, 2000, 2001; Ayers, 2005). The social role of the two-year school has shifted. In the 1990s, the community college underwent a revolution (O’Banion, 1998a, 1998b). The revolution was cultural and linguistic in nature, and it was staged in the name of “learning” (Barr & Tagg, 1995; Boggs, 1995). Personnel in colleges caught in the throws of the change altered their beliefs and practices to match an agenda put forth in the literature of the learning college movement (O’Banion, 1997b). The transformation began in the middle 1990s and, by any measure, the initiative was a success (Marchese, 1997; Tagg, 2003). Today, roughly one decade from its inception, the tenants of the movement are widely accepted. Faculty, staff, and administrators in two-year colleges quickly adopted the language found in learning college texts. Address correspondence to Chad M. Hanson, Department of Sociology, Casper College, 125 College Drive, Casper, WY 82601. E-mail: chanson@caspercoUege.edu 547 �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] At: 15:45 20 July 2007 548 C. M. Hanson Now, in the first part of the new century, the terms and conditions outlined by learning advocates are engrained in the discourse of two-year colleges. The shift was dramatic enough that it prompted William Flynn (1999) to note, “Whether the topic is the Learning Revolution, a Learning College for the 21st Century, the Learning Organization, or the growth of franchised learning centers through­ out the country, we are in the grip of learning-mania” (p. 8). It is fair to say that the revolution emerged, took hold, and blos­ somed uncontested. There are few debates about the nature of the learning revolution in the literature of two-year schools, and few dis­ cussions of the matter among faculty or staff (Hanson, 1998, 2003). Community college personnel have placed a longstanding emphasis on student welfare and, as such, there was little or no resistance to the move toward a language and paradigm alleged to be “learner­ centered” (Barr & Tagg, 1995). In practice, however, there are heavy consequences attached to the process of focusing institutional attention on learning as opposed to education. The revolution has meant more than a mere adjustment to the way two-year college personnel write and speak. In short, the shift has the effect of moving the mission and purpose of community col­ leges away from public service and toward private sector interests. John Levin (2001) explains: With the concept of a learning college emerging as a beacon of change, the purpose of the institution decidedly moved from individ­ ual and community betterment to economic ends: development sites for workforce preparation, (p. 170) In the learning college literature, the aim is to shift the purpose of two-year schools away from objectives that are public and social and toward goals that are private and psychological. However, the shift is discussed with no mention of the costs or alternatives. The change is simply described as inevitable. Still, William Tierney (1991) claims “a concern with institutional purpose is essentially a moral question that demands a wider range of political and theoretical consideration” (p. 35). Learning college authors make use of terms that sound beneficent: learning, efficiency, and productivity, for example. But a close read­ ing of the texts associated with the movement reveal a pattern of dis­ course with significant implications. In what follows, I use the technique of critical discourse analysis to expose the interests embed­ ded in the texts of the learning college movement. �The Learning College Movement 549 Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] At: 15:45 20 July 2007 METHOD: CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS As a method, critical discourse analysis (CDA) has roots in the field of linguistics. Critical linguistics (CL) is a framework based on the perspective put forth by the faculty of the Frankfurt School of Social Science and their contemporary heir, Jurgen Habermas (Horkheimer, 1972; Adorno, 1973; Habermas, 1977). One of the central assump­ tions of Frankfurt School theorists is that language is a medium where power is exercised. Critical linguists assume that authors use words and the ideas associated with them to move readers toward a particular view of the world, and they also draw attention to the potential for words to incite action. Ayers (2005) suggests, “CDA is grounded in a view of language not as a simple tool for communi­ cating information, but as a means of ordering social activity” (p. 534). More so than other social science methods, CDA is closely linked to its theoretical framework. True to the spirit and intent of the Frankfurt School project, CDA researchers maintain a “particular interest in the relation between language and power” (Wodak, 2001, p. 1). The link between CL and CDA is significant enough, Fairclough claims that CDA is “as much theory as method” and, as a consequence, he suggests the approach is best considered “a theoretical perspective on language which gives rise to ways of ana­ lyzing language” (Fairclough, 2001, p. 121). In the following, he describes the levels of analysis applied to texts in the process of undertaking CDA: Discourse, and any specific instance of discursive practice, is seen as simultaneously (i) a language text, spoken or written, (ii) discourse practice (text production and text interpretation), (iii) sociocultural practice. (Fairclough, 1995, p. 97) In this study, I consider Fairclough’s first two levels of discursive practice, but I pay particular attention to the social and cultural implications of learning literature. More so than one finds in other bodies of work in education, the authors of learning college texts are attuned to the notion that their words hold the potential to restructure norms and values. For example, in a 1997 article for Trustee Quarterly, Terry O’Banion quotes Ian Wilson on the capacity for two-year college administrators to conjure visions with the power to affect institutional change. Wilson writes: �Downloaded By: (Hanson, Chad] At 15:45 20 July 2007 550 C. M. Hanson If a vision is to shape the future and drive action, the leader—and others in executive positions—must communicate it broadly, consist­ ently, and continuously, until it becomes an integral part of the orga­ nization’s culture. (1996, p. 5) O’Banion also suggests, with respect to making the turn away from education and toward learning, “The message must be driven home again and again through speeches, newsletters, meetings, articles, interviews, surveys, and actions” (O’Banion, 1997a, p. 12). The intent of learning college texts is often less than subtle; however, in what fol­ lows, I make a case that the authors also choose words with the intent to conceal or obfuscate. In this analysis, I use the perspective and method of CDA to exam­ ine the language of the learning college movement. In the process, I abide the words of Terry Locke, who writes on the use of CDA, “With respect to educational research it has the potential to reveal the way that power is diffused, through the prevalence of various discourses, throughout an education system” (Locke, 2004, p. 2). Through the use of CDA, it can be demonstrated that the literature of the learning college is ideological. Kindly messages about learners and learning aside, it can be shown that the revolution has had the effect of granting privileges to moneyed interests in the private sector. I use CDA for the purpose of generating a critical discourse on the learning college movement. Ronald Barnett suggests, “Ideology can be counteracted to some extent through the formation of critical discourse,” and I support his contention that “it is in this critical dis­ course that a genuine higher education will be attained” (Barnett, 1990, p. 89). A SAMPLE OF THE LEARNING COLLEGE LITERATURE I draw from six texts essential to the success of the learning revolution. Robert Barr and John Tagg’s 1995 article “From Teaching to Learn­ ing,” laid the rhetorical foundation for the initiative and, in the words of Change editor Ted Marchese, “No recent article in Change has attracted the attention of...‘From Teaching to Learning; A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education’ which has been reproduced for countless conferences and faculty meetings” (Marchese, 1997, p. 4). The Change article was written for a general audience, but at the time the piece was published Barr and Tagg were both two-year college practitioners. Barr was director of institutional research and Tagg was associate professor of English at Palomar College. �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] At: 15:45 20 July 2007 The Learning College Movement 551 In the same month that Barr and Tagg’s work appeared in Change, George Boggs (1995), then president of Palomar, published “The Learning Paradigm” in the Community College Journal. Concep­ tually, Bogg’s work mirrors that of Barr and Tagg, but his 1995 article tailors the learning rhetoric to the mission of two-year schools. William Flynn (1999), Dean of Community Learning Resources at Palomar, published “Rethinking Teaching and Learning,” four years later. Flynn’s position matches that of Barr, Tagg, and Boggs. His work is a restatement of the arguments outlined by Palomar College staff in the middle 1990s; however, I include the text here because it represents an effort to carry the movement into the new century. In addition to the work of Palomar personnel, I sample three texts by O’Banion, one time director of the League for Innovation in the Community College, an organization with the expressed purpose of promoting the learning college agenda. O’Banion is the most prolific author in the learning literature. In this study, I consider three of his 1997 publications. The first was written for an audience of college trustees. “The Learning Revolution: A Guide for Community College Trustees,” (O’Banion, 1997a) appeared as a special issue of Trustee Quarterly. I also sample from O’Banion’s (1997b) book, A Learning College for the 21st Century and from a monograph pub­ lished with the support of the Peoplesoft Corporation, Creating More Learning-Centered Community Colleges (O’Banion, 1997c). These six references are a sample of the books and articles calling for fundamental change in the mission of the two-year school. The sample was taken purposefully, with the intent to capture the charac­ ter of the learning college movement. Although other texts are avail­ able, the six samples I consider represent a cross-section of the widely read and broadly referenced works in the literature. DISCOURSE ANALYSIS The analysis is presented in two sections. In the first, I examine the rhetorical strategy found in the texts. Throughout the body of work, learning college authors make “proposal” arguments; they ask their readers to “act in a certain way, to do something” (Ramage & Bean, 1989, p. 270). As a point of fact, they ask nothing less of their audi­ ence than to “overhaul the traditional architecture of education” (O’Banion, 1997c, p. 11). In the opening section of the analysis I document the techniques learning college authors use to move read­ ers toward enacting change. �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] At; 15:45 20 July 2007 552 C. M. Hanson In the second section, I consider the impact of the revolution. I give attention to the shift from education to learning in the discourse of the movement. I also discuss the implications of faculty bending their conception of two-year schools away from that of a public institution and toward that of a business providing services to corporations. I also stress the consequence of college staff conceiving students as products. Hostility to Academic Norms, Roles, and Values In the 1990s, learning college authors faced a tough task in convinc­ ing two-year college personnel that a revolution was necessary. Then, as now, both community college professionals and citizens at large were satisfied with the character and performance of public colleges. In an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jeffrey Selingo (2004) described the results of an annual survey designed to measure American attitudes toward postsecondary schools. In 2004, the sur­ vey was administered to 1,000 randomly selected men and women aged 25 to 65, and their views are summarized as follows: The public’s trust in colleges stands near the top among all kinds of institutions, right along with its faith in the U.S. military and in churches and religious organizations. Nearly 93 percent of the respon­ dents agreed that higher education institutions are one of the most valuable resources in the United States. (Selingo, 2004, p. 1) Public satisfaction with the community college has always been high (Adelman, 1992), and in an environment where people are satisfied, “proposers of change face an extraordinary burden of proof. Specifi­ cally, they have to prove that something needs fixing” (Ramage & Bean, 1989, p. 272). For supporters of the learning college movement that meant strong measures were needed. When the public or a given readership is satisfied with a state of affairs, rhetoricians pushing for change normally accept that “you can’t argue what we have is bad,” and they hold to a line of reason that suggests, “what we could have is better” (Ramage & Bean, 1989, p. 272). But learning activists pursued a different strategy. They set out to disparage traditional academic culture and institutions committed to the liberal arts, even in spite of their widespread esteem. They began publishing books and articles designed to convince faculty and staff working in two-year schools that the historic norms and values of higher education were detrimental to the health and �Downloaded By; [Hanson. Chad] At: 15:45 20 July 2007 The Learning College Movement 553 success of community colleges. Each author sampled here makes an effort to suggest that the goals and objectives of two-year schools are not consistent with those of the academy, (see Table 1) Of the authors sampled here, O’Banion’s work is the most hostile to the institution of education. In his 1997 piece for Trustee Quar­ terly, he quotes Lewis Perelman to the effect that, “The principal bar­ rier to economic progress today is a mind-set that seeks to perfect education when it needs only to be abandoned” (Perelman, 1992, p. 24). In addition, he borrows the language of George Leonard who paraphrases President Ronald Reagan in the context of edu­ cation (O’Banion, 1997a). The Leonard quote appearing in the O’Banion text reads as follows: “The time has come to recognize that school is not the solution. It is the problem” (Leonard, 1992, p. 26). O’Banion’s attempt to clear the way for an alternative to the liberal arts are the boldest in the learning literature, but each author sampled here makes a similar attempt to signal the danger involved in uphold­ ing academic values and traditions. Barr and Tagg, Boggs, and O’Banion all rely on the work of the Wingspread Group on Higher Education, funded by the Johnson Foundation, to make their case against the academy. Boggs and O’Banion even quote the same passage from a 1993 Wingspread report, titled An American Imperative: Higher Expectations for Higher Education. The authors of the report explain: Table 1. Discursive practices that signify hostility toward academic norms and values Authors/Dates of publications O’Banion (1997a) Boggs (1995) Flynn (1999) Barr and Tagg (1995) O’Banion (1997b) Selected excerpts Creating a learning-centered institution means tossing hundreds of stones into the pond, dumping boulders into the pond, and perhaps even filling in the pond and digging a new one. (p.l2) The time has come for us to change the way we define the mission of the community college. The paradigm that has guided our institutions from their inception in the early 1900s no longer fits as we approach a new century, (p. 5) We are trapped inside a house of our own creation, prisoners of a system, structure, and history, (p. 10) After centuries of respect for the academy and the professorate, the focus is now on the learner, (p. 8) In the learning paradigm, learning environments and activities are learner-centered and learner-controlled. They may even be “teacherless.” (p. 17) It is the business leaders of this country who will confront the academy and prevail, (p. 39) �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] At: 15:45 20 July 2007 554 C. M. Hanson A disturbing and dangerous mismatch exists between what American society needs of higher education and what it is receiving. Nowhere is the mismatch more dangerous than in the quality of undergraduate education provided on many campuses, (p. 1) The situation sounds dire, and learning college activists use the dis­ quieting language of the Wingspread publication to persuade readers that change is needed, but the authors sampled here are purposeful in the way they excerpt from the Wingspread document. They use the report to sound an alarm, but they steer a wide path around its con­ clusions. The Wingspread Group (1993) offers the following as a sol­ ution to the problem they present in An American Imperative'. Every student needs the knowledge and understanding that can come only from the rigors of a liberal education. Such an education lies at the heart of developing both social and personal values. If the center of American Society is to hold, a liberal education must be central to the undergraduate experience of all students, (p. 9) Learning advocates have made routine declarations along the lines that the liberal arts curriculum is “just a bunch of courses. It doesn’t mean a thing” (Willimon & Naylor, 1995, p. 57). Barr and Tagg’s, Boggs’s, and O’Banion’s appropriation of the Wingspread report’s opening sentiments and disregard for its conclusions must be seen as disingenuous. Their selective use of the report points toward a tendency for learning college authors to place the goal of advancing their cause above their obligation to uphold the standards of unbiased scholarship. From the perspective of critical discourse analysis, it is important to consider the motivation for the extraordi­ nary steps taken to convince readers that liberal arts education is worthy of scorn. In the context of British higher education, Barnett (1990) has argued that similar calls for reform in the UK were motivated by a growing number of adherents to a culture of science and technology. Barnett claims that scientists define education in different terms than those in the arts and humanities and, in his words, “there was an underlying gulf in the conceptions of what higher education stood for” (p. 106). Accord­ ing to Barnett, scientists see through a lens of measurement and quanti­ fication, while those in the humanities are likely to see the college experience as a meaningful part of a student’s ongoing development, dif­ ficult to assess except in narrative or qualitative terms. �Downloaded By; (Hanson. Chad] At 15:45 20 July 2007 The Learning College Movement 555 Similarly, in the United States, John Bean suggests that calls for reform have been driven by a growing culture of masculinity that values efficiency and productivity over what are perceived to be more feminine concerns; morality, scholarship, and community (Bean, 1998). But Bean offers the most compelling explanation of the under­ lying force that propels learning college authors when he points out with regard to the terms they use, “it is the language of counting, accountants, accountability and, to a greater or lesser extent, it is how we imagine our enterprise” ( p. 497). The learning college move­ ment is driven by the language of business. Learning college activists have worked to disparage the word “edu­ cation,” traditionally associated with broad public purpose. This was done to help elevate the term “learning” to prominence. Learning is easier to conceive in private and individualistic terms, and the word “learning” is also more palatable to educators than the term “train­ ing,” a favorite in the private sector. The discourse of the learning college movement is designed to sweep the language of public pur­ pose aside. The purpose is to make room for the instatement of terms that narrow institutional focus down to the level of learning out­ comes valuable to corporations. Learning college authors take delib­ erate steps to disparage the traditions of the academy because they are at odds with the flat assertion that, “The learner’s purpose is to please employers” (Ayers, 2005, p. 542). The Consequence of Shifting from Education to Learning An examination of O’Banion’s “six key principles” for learning col­ leges creates an understanding of the extent to which an author will go to replace the idea of public education with terms that are more individualistic (O’Banion, 1997c, p. 15). O’Banion’s principles consist of six sentences. Within those sentences, the terms learn, learner, or learning appear 17 different times (see Appendix A). Within the learning college movement, the terms student, teacher, and education are conspicuous by their absence. From a linguistic standpoint, the word “student” implies “tea­ cher,” and in a learning college, teachers are thought of as barriers to the creation of “environments and activities” that are potentially “teacherless” (Barr & Tagg, 1995, p. 17). The terms student and teacher also carry other connotations. The words student and teacher suggest an institution: education. For learning advocates, traditional liberal arts education with a broad public purpose is anathema to the goal of turning community colleges into learning colleges with the expressed purpose of subsidizing corporate training costs. When �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] At: 15:45 20 July 2007 556 C. M. Hanson community colleges become learning colleges, two-year school practi­ tioners begin to assume that the sole objective of their work is to move students toward meeting standards set by employers. Accord­ ing to Ayers (2005), in the minds of learning activists, “needs tan­ gential to this purpose are irrelevant” (p. 542). Furthermore, as community colleges make themselves over into learning colleges, organizational structures start to match those found in the for-profit sector. Levin (2000) offers the following prediction for the American two-year school if the learning college movement goes unchecked: ... community colleges will function more on a model compatible with business norms: a fluid organization, with little reverence for aca­ demic traditions, little evidence of a dominant professional class of faculty and more evidence of a professional managerial class, more emphasis on technology and less on full-time labor, (p. 21) The learning movement is an attempt to transform community col­ leges into business-like employee training camps for entities in the economy. Yet, in the transition from community college to learning college, “There is little or no consideration of the possibility that on occasion the interests of the community and that of employers might actually be opposed” (Dougherty & Bakia, 2000, p. 221). The character of the movement is captured by a slogan made popular in the decade after World War Two, “What is good for General Motors is good for America.” In the articles by both Boggs and Barr and Tagg, the General Motors Corporation is held up as an example for colleges to follow. In the learning college movement, the GM model is used to encourage faculty to imagine community colleges as organizations where the bottom line is all that matters—training employees for service to multinational companies. Comparing two-year colleges to auto manufacturers has the effect of minimizing the importance of educational processes, and the com­ parison also has the effect of heightening the conception of students as products. For example, Boggs (1995) uses the GM analogy to cre­ ate a sense that there would be grave consequences “if General Motors were to see its business as defined by the assembly line rather than the production of automobiles” (p. 6). Barr and Tagg (1995) continue the metaphor by mocking colleges that care about the nature and the quality of the process students move through on their way to graduation. They claim an overt focus on the process by which students are educated “is like saying that General Motors’ business is to operate assembly lines” (p. 9). In addition, they go on to harden their preference for products over �The Learning College Movement Table 2. Discursive practices that define education as a product Authors/Dates of Publications Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] At: 15:45 20 July 2007 557 Barr and Tagg (1995) Boggs(1995) O’Banion (i997c) Flynn (1999) Selected excerpts In the learning paradigm a primary drive is to produce learning outcomes more efficiently, (p. 11) The mission should be student learning, and we should measure our effectiveness based upon student learning outcomes, (p. 6) “What does this learner know?” and “What can this learner do?” arc questions that provide the framework of documenting outcomes, both for the learner and learning facilitators, (p. 20) Curriculum should be designed around the critical learning outcomes necessary for success in a field, (p. 12) A curriculum built on outcomes gives learners the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are valued by employers, (p. 13) processes by dictating the overall mission of higher education. They write, “Our mission is that of producing learning with every student by whatever means” (p. 9). (see Table 2) In the automotive industry, lengthy considerations of the manufac­ turing process are secondary to the assessment of final products—fin­ ished cars and trucks. It is fair to assume that automobiles can be manufactured by whatever means; the means that are most efficient or the means that contribute the most to quality. Car parts have no preference for one manufacturing process over others, but that is due to the fact that car parts do not own either minds or memories. In contrast, students possess both. The discourse of production and efficiency are appropriate for manufacturing, but when applied to education the terms lose concep­ tual purchase. Educational institutions change identities (Chickering, 1969) and the human self or identity is a collection of memories (Mead, 1934; McCall & Simmons, 1966). For graduates, a college is an alma mater, a set of experiences, and a bundle of recollections that confer social status and order behaviors across the course of entire lives. In the words of Howard Bowen, “the impact of higher education is likely to be determined more by the kind of people college graduates become than by what they know when they leave college” (Bowen, 1977, p. 270). Accordingly, “The proper study of the effects of college... is the study of lives” (Sanford, 1962, p. 809). CONCLUSION In the words of the eminent psychologist B.F. Skinner (1964), “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] At: 15:45 20 July 2007 558 C. M. Hanson forgotten” (p. 484). Colleges focused solely on cognitive learning outcomes cannot fulfill their social or public obligation. When col­ leges focus exclusively on learning they abrogate their responsibility to make prudent long-term investments with public funds. Learning colleges discount their commitment to education for the common good, and in the process they short-change both students and society. The authors of the texts I sampled ask two-year school professionals to focus on the short term and the observable, under the assumption that community colleges must alter their curriculum and practices at a pace that matches that of the economy. In fairness, the economy is changing fast, but the abilities that make a person a successful member of a community have not changed at any point in American history. The thoughts, dispositions, and habits of mind that make someone an educated person and an asset to a community are the same now as they were when Washington crossed the Delaware. Once students find themselves in possession of those traits, they last. The success of the learning revolution has hinged on the ability of authors to conceal or minimize the importance of proud phrases like “public education for the common good,” and with terms like “pub­ lic” and “education” removed from the discourse, learning activists installed a more individualistic goal for two-year colleges, “learning for the sole purpose of earning” (Levin, 2001, p. xx). At present, it would appear that learning advocates have reached their goal. The rhetoric of learning is so pervasive, many of us “imagine that no other world is possible” (Bean, 1998, p. 496). On the current state of our imagination, Zemsky, Wegner, and Massey (2005) write, “As more people have viewed higher education as offering mainly personal advantages... colleges have virtually given up defining themselves in terms of their contributions to the community, state, or nation” (p. B6). The same authors point out, with respect to the turn away from community and toward the needs of corporations, “When a college or university is wholly dominated by market interest, it sacrifices much of its capacity to serve its public purposes and sometimes even its fundamental mission” (p. B6). Despite the obvious lament of authors Zemsky, Wegner, and Massey, they suggest that “there will be no return to a simpler era when market forces played a less dominant role in American higher edu­ cation” ( p. B6) adding an air of inevitability to the transformation of our institutions. Yet, as unlikely as change seems in these times, community college professionals would do well to recall a key lesson of history. This is not the first era where market forces and the language of business have come to predominate. �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] At: 15:45 20 July 2007 The Learning College Movement 559 In the words of educational historians Camoy and Levin (1985), “Just as the period 1880—1929 witnessed the emergence and consoli­ dation of the political power of big business in America,” in the four decades that followed Americans saw “the decline of corporate power and the success of social movements in winning social reform” (p. 11). Those social reforms included civil rights, women’s advocacy and environmentalism, right up to and including the movement that gave birth to the rapid construction of two-year schools from coast to coast. In a speech delivered to the American Association of Community Colleges on April 26, 2004, President George W. Bush expressed the view that community colleges operate best when they are “willing to listen to the needs of those who are looking for workers” (Rouche & Jones, 2005, p. ix). Such sentiments represent a significant shift, as in the past community colleges served the needs of citizens. “Histori­ cally, the meaning of public education was precisely what it meant to belong to a public; education in the res publica—in commonality, in community” (Barber, 1992, p. 14). The needs and interests of American citizens are not the same as those of multinational compa­ nies. Similarly, the abilities essential for participation in the life of our democracy are different than the skills required to fulfill a role in the economy. Again, Barber’s words are instructive. He writes, “Education in vocationalism, pre-professional training, what were once called the ‘servile arts’ may be private, but public education is general.. .education for citizenship” (p. 15). Corporations are not obliged to contribute to the social, cultural, or political life of the nation, but public tax-supported institutions have responsibilities. If college faculty and staff do not take a pur­ poseful set of steps to win back the language of public education for the common good, the movement toward the terms of economic self-interest will continue to prevail. Words make a difference in the way we live and work. Thus, with respect to the American two-year school, I suggest the following: education is the focus, students are citizens not products, and in the spirit of our proud historic mission, the institutions are “community” colleges. REFERENCES Adelman, C. (1992). The way we are: The community college as American thermometer. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Adorno, T. (1973). Negative dialectics. New York: Seabury Press. Ayers, D. F. (2005). Neoliberal ideology in community college mission statements: A critical discourse analysis. The Review of Higher Education, 4, 527-549. �Downloaded By; [Hanson, Chad] At: 15:45 20 July 2007 560 C. M. Hanson Barber, B. (1992). An aristocracy for everyone: The politics of education and the future of America. New York: Oxford University Press. Barr, R. & Tagg, J. (1995). From teaching to learning: A new paradigm for under­ graduate education.” Change, 6, 9-21. Barnett, R. (1990). The idea of higher education. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Bean, J. (1998). Alternative models of professorial roles: New language to reimagine faculty work. The Journal of Higher Education, 5, 496-512. Boggs, G. (1995). The learning paradigm. Community College Journal, 6, 5-8. Bowen, H. (1977). Investment in learning: The individual and social value ofhigher edu­ cation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Carnoy, M. & Levin, H. (1985). Schooling and work in the democratic state. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Chickering, A. (1969). Education and identity. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Dougherty, K. & Bakia, M. (2000). Community colleges and contract training: Con­ tent, origins, and impact. Teachers College Record, I, 197-243. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Ltd. Fairclough, N. (2001). Critical discourse analysis as a method of social scientific research. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 121-138). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Flynn, W. (1999). Rethinking teaching and learning. Community College Journal, 4,8-13. Habermas, J. (1977). Knowledge and human interests. Boston: Beacon Press. Hanson, C. (2003). The promise of democracy’s college: Town hall meeting as teach­ ing method. The Community College Journal ofResearch and Practice, 3, 173-190. Hanson, C. (1998). From teaching to learning: Are we still educating students? The Teaching Professor, 8, 1. Horkheimer, M. (1972). Critical theory. New York: Seabury Press. Leonard, G. (1992). The end of school. The Atlantic, 5, 24-27. Levin, J. (2001). Globalizing the community college: Strategies for change in the twentyfirst century. New York: Palgrave. Levin, J. (2000). The revised institution: The community college mission at the end of the twentieth century. Community College Review, 2, 1-25. Locke, T. (2004). Critical discourse analysis. London: Continuum. Marchese, T. (1997). A shift to learning. Change, 2, 4. McCall, G. & Simmons, J. L. (1966). Identities and interactions. New York: The Free Press. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. O’Banion, T. (1997a). The learning revolution: A guide for community college trus­ tees. Trustee Quarterly, I, 2-19. O’Banion, T. (1997b). A learning college for the 21st Century. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press. O’Banion, T. (1997c). Creating more learning-centered community colleges. Mission Viejo, CA: League for Innovation in the Community College and PeopleSoft, Inc. O’Banion, T. (1998a). The learning revolution: Perched at the millennium. Com­ munity College Week, 12, 12-15. O’Banion, T. (1998b). The center of the learning revolution. Community College Week, 4, 24-26. �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] At: 15:45 20 July 2007 The Learning College Movement 561 Perelman, L. (1992). School’s out—A radical newformula for the revitalization ofAmer­ ica’s educational system. New York: Avon Books. Phillippe, K. & Sullivan, L. G. (2005). National profile of community colleges: Trends and statistics. Washington DC: Community College Press. Ramage, J. & Bean, J. (1989). Writing arguments. New York: Macmillan. Rouche, J. & Jones, B. (Eds.). (2005). The entrepreneurial community college. Washington, DC: Community College Press. Sanford, N. (1962). The American college. New York: Wiley. Selingo, J. (2004). U.S. public’s confidence in colleges remains high. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 35, 1,10. Skinner, B. F. (1964). New methods and new aims in teaching. New Scientist, 122, 483^84. Tagg, J. (2003). The learning paradigm college. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing. Tierney, W. (1991). Ideology and identity in postsecondary institutions. In W. Tier­ ney (Ed.), Culture and ideology in higher education: Advancing a critical agenda (pp. 35-57). New York: Praeger. Willimon, W. & Naylor, T. (1995). The abandoned generation: Rethinking higher edu­ cation. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Wilson, I. (1996). The practical power of vision. On the Horizon, 2, 1-5. Wingspread Group on Higher Education. (1993). An American imperative: Higher expectations for higher education. Milwaukee: The Johnson Foundation, Inc. Wodak, R. (2001). What CDA is about: A summary of its history, important con­ cepts, and its developments. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods ofcritical discourse analysis Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Zemsky, R., Wegner, G., & Massey, W. (2005). Today’s colleges must be market smart and mission centered. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 45, B6-B7. APPENDIX: LEARNING COLLEGE PRINCIPLES • The learning college creates substantive change in individual learners. • The learning college engages learners in the learning process as full partners, assuming primary responsibility for their own choices, • The learning college creates and offers as many options for learning as possible. • The learning college assists learners to form and participate in collaborative learning activities. • The learning college defines the roles of its learning facilitators by the needs of the learners. • The learning college and its learning facilitators succeed only when improved and expanded learning can be documented for its learners. Source: O’Banion 1997c, p.l5. Note: italics added. � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Learning College Movement: A Critical Discourse Analysis Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2007-07 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_08 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>Community College Journal of Research and Practice</em> is published by Taylor &amp; Francis Group, LLC https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/9a45df639ef4c71244320d7ebb5cbee0.pdf d64d4372ec3524fc1c16c4b9bed93cd9 PDF Text Text Curriculum, Technology, and Higher Education by Chad Hanson ollowing the 1974 publication of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital^ sociologists began to sug­ gest that the work of teachers could be deskilled along the same line as industrial labor. In 1992, Apple and Jungck warn quence “when educational bureaucrats borrow the ideology and techniques of industrial management.” At the time, they drew attention to “the tendency for the curriculum to become increasingly planned, systematized, and standardized at a central level, totally focused on competencies.”’ By the end of the decade, public school teachers worked in an environment of standardized curriculum packages and state-wide testing. Apple and Jungck’s words were prescient, the profes­ sions of elementary and secondary teaching have been deskilled, and there are signs the twenty-first century is bringing deskilling to colleges and universities. F On the application of deskilling theory to postsecondary education. Managed Professionals author Gary Rhoades notes “The recent history of higher education is one of managers initiating the reshaping of colleges’ and universities’ missions, organization, and instructional programs,” and, he adds, “deskilling theory’s thesis that managers introduce new technologies to increase control over workers makes sense in this context.”^ In this article, I explain how the work of a growing number of educators is changing as a result of initiatives designed to manage the practice of college teach- Chad Hanson teaches sociology at Casper College in Casper, Wyoming. His essays, articles, and revie'ius have appeared in The Teaching Professor, College Teaching, Teaching Sociology, The National Teaching and Learning Forum, and The Journal of Higher Education, among others. His research interests center on exploring the social, cultural, and political roles of colleges and universities. FALL 2008 THOUGHT & ACTION �ing. Specifically, I use the case of the Worldwide Instructional Design System (WIDS) to demonstrate how the work of college teachers is undergoing a deskilling process. In the 1990s, driven by a culture of assessment and accountability, higher edu­ cation managers began searching for techniques to document student learning outcomes. Competency-based education (CBE), also known as mastery or per­ formance-based education, appealed to administrators because the approach requires a practice where teachers make use of curriculum models speeding the skills developed by students. The hallmark of competency-based systems is a pre- Thepush toward a competency-based curriculum 'is not an educational orprofessional movementbut a managerial movement. ’ occupation with outcomes, and postsecondary schools began adopting CBE under the assumption that the model offers a means to narrow the focus of large, com­ plicated institutions down to the level of measurable results. In June 1992, the Wisconsin Technical College System Foundation joined General Electric Medical Systems to create a curriculum package that could be used to ensure that college graduates met GE’s training specifications. he fruit of their effort was a computer program and support organization called the Wisconsin Instructional Design System, rooted in competency­ based philosophy. Ten years after the software was created, the WIDS client swelled to include all 16 schools in the Wisconsin Technical College System, the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, the University of Wisconsin-Stout, 20 Michigan community colleges, and an assortment of two- and four-year schools in 11 other states. By spring 2002, the list of colleges licensed to use the software spread over the border into Canada, prompting the change in the title from “Wisconsin” to “Worldwide.” CBE is often described in language that sounds beneficent. Advocates use terms like “student-centered ” and “learner-focused” to describe the approach— although a close reading suggests that in spite of appeals to students and learning, the push toward a competency-based curriculum “is not an educational or profes­ sional movement, but a managerial movement.”^ In 1992, Richard Bates noted that CBE did not grow out of an ambition to enlighten or enrich the lives of stu­ dents, but out of a desire to document that colleges and universities produce results consistent with the demands of businesses employing graduates. According to Bates, the purpose of CBE is “increased efficiency and increased articulation between industry and education.” CBE advocates conceive colleges and universi- T THE NEA HIGHER EDUCATION JOURNAL �CURRICULUM, TECHNOLOGY, AND HIGHER EDUCATION ties in terms of their contribution to workforce development. Public institutions arc thought of as a means to subsidize training costs sustained in the private sec­ tor. When a college moves to a CBE format, “the discourse of economics recon­ stitutes the meaning of education; the value and legitimacy of knowledge are determined purely by their market value.” When teachers use WIDS software to create course syllabi or lesson plans, they work through a series of steps, each step marked by a question. The first step is to ask “what” students are to learn. The “what” step is then followed by the ques­ tion of “when” students are to meet competencies. Finally, faculty describe “how” In a fVIDS classroom, teachers tell students vjhat to do and successfill students comply. At no point do teachers or students stop to ask, 'u)hy?' students are to demonstrate their skills. In a WIDS classroom, teachers tell stu­ dents what to do, and successful students comply. At no point do teachers or stu­ dents stop to ask, “why?” ichael Apple predicted the shift away from the “why” question as early as 1986, half a decade before WIDS was conceived. In Teachers and Texts he wrote, “The more new technology transforms the classroom in its own image, the more a technical logic will replace critical political and ethical understanding.” He went on to assert, “the discourse of the classroom will center on technique,” and suggested, “‘how to’ will replace ‘why.’” The missing “why” question is more than a careless oversight. CBE is not designed to provide students with a forum in which to wrestle with big, meaningful questions such as, “Who am I? What might I become? What is this world in which I find myself, and how might it be changed for the better?”’ The expressed purpose of CBE is to produce a trained and dutifiil workforce; students do not raise questions as part of the curriculum. “[CBE] is a conception that sees human beings as mere performers rather than reflective actors,” In The Limits of Competence, Ronald Barnett writes of CBE, “It is a phi­ losophy devoid of enlightened and critical reason.” In the WIDS model, there is no room for students to challenge the expectations they are given. Corporations may have profit-driven motives for placing rigid demands on employees, despite the employees’ needs or interests, but those motives are not consistent with the public purpose of colleges and universities. As Barnett observes, “Competencies and outcomes cannot provide guidelines for higher edu­ cation curriculum. It is the business of higher education to develop critical capac­ ities, which must include the evaluation and possible repudiation of contemporary competencies.”’ M FALL 2008 THOUGHT & ACTION �Historically, college and university faculty pursued knowledge within disci­ plines and shared that knowledge with students, often through the course of heat­ ed discussions. As a result, students carried new perspectives and habits of mind into society. In the WIDS model, the traditional process is overturned, and eco­ nomic institutions outside the academy determine what knowledge is important. The role of the teacher is reduced to transforming that pre-determined knowledge into training regimens. IDS is characteristic of Taylorist or “scientific” management. Frederick Taylor’s time and motion studies served as the basis for an engineering movement that altered the state of the industrial labor force. Under the banners of logic and rationality, scientific management transformed American manufacturing into an entity obsessed with productivity. For its part, the Wisconsin Technical College System Foundation takes pains to promote the impression that WIDS software is a logical extension of scientific principles. Even so, in spite of claims that WIDS is learner-centered, these competency­ based models reduce the role of students to merely passing through linear sets of preordained objectives. The nature of the educational process is secondary to the achievement of technical skills. In short, “this ideology is concerned much more with ‘learning outcomes’ than with the character of any pedagogical process. In this pedagogy, to arrive is infinitely better than to travel.”" Three decades ago, Harry Braverman argued that the intent of scientific man­ agement is not the advancement of science. Rather, it “enters the workplace not as the representative of science, but as the representative of management masquerad­ ing in the trappings of science.”" Despite efforts to promote a scholarly image. W THE NEA HIGHER EDUCATION JOURNAL �CURRICULUM, TECHNOLOGY, AND HIGHER EDUCATION Standardized curriculum software packages like WIDS are best seen, not as a means for improxdng the art or science of teaching, but as industrial-era manage­ ment strategies. With respect to the work of public school teachers, British educators Jenny Ozga and Martin Lawn wrote, “Proletarianisation results when the worker is deprived of the capacity to both initiate and execute work, it is the separation of conception from execution, and the breaking down of execution into controllable, simple parts.”*’ In colleges where WIDS has been adopted, faculty face three signs of deskilling: (1) a loss of the capacity to initiate and execute work, (2) the separa- In the WIDS models the ^ork offaculty is no longer consideredpart ofa disciplinary effort topass on and advance academicfields. tion of conception from execution, and (3) reducing complex professional activi­ ties to a series of simple parts. he college or university-wide adoption of WIDS often gives rise to a dispute over the terms or efficacy of the competency-based approach. But even in schools where the faculty are unionized, teachers have been unable to stop an insti­ tution from moving toward the WIDS model if there is an impetus from the administration or board of trustees. In fact, few have made an effort to resist. The lack of opposition is largely because “technology is seen as an autonomous process. It is set apart and viewed as if it had a life of its own, independent of social inten­ tions, power, and privilege.”’*' WIDS software is not neutral, however, and faculty who are made to use it would do well to ask, “Who gains power and who loses it when such presumably neutral technological innovation is introduced?”*’ In the WIDS model, the work of faculty is no longer considered part of a dis­ ciplinary effort to pass on and advance academic fields. Instead, faculty work is considered part of an institutional effort to document student learning outcomes, not a bad goal in itself, but hardly a substitute for the practice of academic free­ dom within scholarly disciplines. Another early questioner of the efficacy of CBE in higher education, Gerold Grant, offers a summary of the changes that take place when institutions adopt a competency-based curriculum: 11 |j( T Course planning is no longer the province of the individual teacher or the j E teachers disciplinary guild. The process of curriculum revision and course design in competence-based programs often leads to a coordinated syllabus, sometimes f |j expressed in a condensed form as a “grid” of outcomes and prescribed experiences. fj In this respect, syllabi in competence programs come to resemble those character- | istic of elementary and secondary schools.’^ la FALL 2008 THOUGHT & ACTION �Whether or not it is labeled as such, the competency movement has already taken a firm hold in elementary and secondary schools. WIDS merely represents the most recent attempt to move the model up to the postsecondary level, and it is a move that managers are evermore willing to make, as the model is consistent ^^dth the assessment and accountability movements shaping the norms and values of the academy. In fairness, there is no reason why software packages like WIDS shouldn’t be available to faculty. But WIDS is not presented as a choice. Instructors are forced to adapt their practices to the WIDS format in institutions that become licensed When a college or university adopts the WIDS model, the curriculum is standardized voith the intent that it can be passedfrom one group ofteachers to another, to use the software, and on the subject of changing teaching practices to match a technological agenda, Rhoades notes: Faculty’s collective input and control regarding these decisions is in part a proxy of their autonomous control of the curriculum. So, too, is their individual choice about whether to use new instructional technologies. To the extent that managers may direct faculty to utilize such technology in delivering courses, they have reduced faculty’s autonomy."' As faculty autonomy is reduced, faculty lose a share of their independence and decision-making power—and the loss of the capacity to conduct work on one’s own terms is a central feature of deskilling. ith respect to the separation of conception from execution—another feature of deskilling—the expressed goal of WIDS products and services is the development of an institutional curriculum that is “systemic, systematic, and sistent. In other words, when a college or university adopts the WIDS model, the curriculum is standardized with the intent that it can be passed from one group of teachers to another. Contributing to this, in the last decade more than half of the newly hired teachers in U.S. colleges and universities have been part-time or adjunct.” In the WIDS system, part-time teachers are asked to use curricula cre­ ated by full-time employees. Thus, WIDS creates a scenario where one group of faculty and staff develop a curriculum that legions of others follow—part-time teachers in particular. According to Rhoades, “In such cases, instruction is deskilled to consist of simply delivering a course developed by someone else.”^'’ In the next step of deskilling, reducing complex professional activities to a series of simple parts, the WIDS model was designed to limit the work of teach- W I tHE NEA HIGHER EDUCATION JOURNAL �CURRICULUM. TECHNOLOGY. AND HIGHER EDUCATION ers to a step-by-step set of procedures; faculty fill in the blanks. If a teacher sub­ scribes to the WIDS philosophy and uses the software the way it was meant to be used, every day of the week is prescribed and run according to a list of competen­ cies, assessments, and objectives. Faculty focus on measurable outcomes—as they should to some degree—but the narrow focus comes at the expense of an empha­ sis on larger social or educational goals, and according to Apple and Junck, “When complicated jobs are broken down into atomistic elements, the person doing the job loses sight over the whole process and loses control over her or his own labor.”^' Despite a strong emphasis on accountability in the CBE literature, WIDS There is no documentation available to shov) that fVIDS softvjare improves student development or the practice ofteaching in higher education. software and its accompanying training package have not been evaluated. There has been no attempt on the part of the software’s creators, or any of the colleges or universities that use the model, to assess the system. There is no record of fac­ ulty, student, or public satisfaction with WIDS, and there is no documentation available to show that implementing WIDS software improves student develop­ ment or the practice of teaching in higher education. n a culture of increased accountability, this lack of scrutiny may come as a sur­ prise, but deskilling theorists have argued that technological systems like WIDS have little to do with assessing or improving professions like college teaching. Instead, they argue that models like WIDS are extensions of management tech­ niques. WIDS is an attempt to break down, simplify, and manage the work of edu­ cators, who have historically conceived themselves as autonomous. It is safe to assume that attempts to standardize and oversee the work of fac­ ulty will become more common in the future. Pressure to introduce technological management systems into college classrooms will increase as well, despite evidence suggesting teachers perform best when they plot their actions according to the needs and interests of students, as opposed to a list of predefined outcomes. In the years ahead, it will be crucial for teachers to consider the implications of changing their practices to match the goals associated with course management technology, and it will also be vital for faculty to have a role in the discussions taking place over the re-ordering of the historic mission of our public institutions. Barnett suggests that CBE language, “has to be recognized for what it masks, embedded interests have to be dug out and exposed; otherwise, they will continue to influence and diminish our practices.In a limited sense, we have already allowed the process of deskilling to enter into postsecondary schools. If faculty are I FALL 2008 .y �to maintain their status as professionals, and if public institutions are to serve a broader purpose than pro^dding private-sector interests with “a free supply of trained subordinates,” competency-based curriculum models like WIDS must be understood for what they are: industrial-era management systems.“ As such, teachers and managers alike should question their place in higher education. GSI ENDNOTES ’ ’ ’ “ “ Michael W. Apple and S. Jungck, “You Don’t Have to be a Teacher to Teach this Unit,” 24. Gary Rhoades, Managed Professionals, 182. Richard Bates, “Barely Competent,” 4. Ibid., 4, David Franklin Ayers, “Neoliberal Ideology in Community College Mission Statements,” 545. Michael W. Apple, Teachers and Texts, 171. Mark Edmundson, Why Read?, 5. Ronald Barnett, The Limits of Competence, 77. Ibid.. 81. Winslow Frederick Taylor, The Practice of Scientific Management. Ronald Barnett, BeyondAll Reason, 151. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, 86. Jenny Ozga and Martin Lawn, “Schoolwork,” 324. Michael Apple, op cit, 151. Beverly Burris and Wolf Heydebrand, “Technocratic Administration,” 202. Gerold Grant, “Implications of Competence-Based Education,” 14. Gary Rhoades, op cit., 185. Robin Soine, “A. Framework for Learning Design,” 38. Eugene Rice, “The Future of the American Faculty.” Gary Rhoades, op cit., 201. Michael W. Apple and S. Junck, c?/>«?., 201. Ronald Barnett, op cit., 55. Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America,\AA. �CURRICULUM, TECHNOLOGY, ANO HIGHER EDUCATION WORKS CITED Apple, W. Michael. Teachers and Texts: A Political Economy ofClass and Gender Relations in Education. New York; Routledge, 1986. Apple, Michael and S. JungcL “You Don’t Have to be a Teacher to Teach this Unit: Teaching, Technology, and Control in the Classroom." in Andy Hargraves and Michael Fullan eds. Understanding Teacher Development. New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1992 Ayers, David Franklin. “Neoliberal Ideology in Community College Mission Statements: A Critical Discourse Analysis.” The Revieiv ofHigher Education 4(2005):527-49. Barnett, Ronald. The Limits of Competence: Knowledge, Higher Education and Society. Buckingham, UK: Society for Research into Higher Education and the Open University Press, 1994. . Beyond All Reason: Living With Ideology in the University. Buckingham, UK: Society for Research into Higher Education and the Open University Press, 2003. Bates, Richard. Barely Competent: Against the Deskilling of the Professions Via the Cult of Competence. Paper presented at the Seminar on Competency and Professional Education, University of Canberra. September, 1992. Braverman, Harry. Labor and Monopoly Capital- The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974. Burris, Beverly and Wolf Heydebrand. “Technocratic Administration and Educational Control.” in Critical Studies in Organization and Bureaucracy. Edited by Frank Fischer and Carmen Sirianni. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984. Edmundson, Mark. Why Read? New York: Bloomsbury, 2004. Grant, Gerold. “Implications of Competence-Based Education.” Pp. 1-17 in On Competence: A Critical Analysis of Competence-Based Reforms in Higher Education. Edited by Gerald Grant. San Francisco: Josscy-Bass, 1979. Ozga, Jenny and Martin Lawn. “Schoolwork: Interpreting the Labor Process of Teaching.” British Journal ofSociology ofEducation 3 (1988):323-36. Rice, Eugene. “The Future of the American Faculty: An Interview with Martin J. Finkelstein and JackH. Schuster.” Change! (2004):26-35. Rhoades, Gary. Managed Professionals: Unionized Faculty and Restructuring Academic Labor. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998. Soine, Robin. “A Framework for Learning Design.” Techniques 3 (2003):38-41. Taylor, Frederick Winslow. The Practice of Scientific Management. New York: W.W. Norton, 1967. Veblen, Thorstein. The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men. New York; Hill and Wang, 1957. FALL 2008 THOUGHT & ACTION � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Curriculum, Technology, and Higher Education Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2008 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_09 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>The NEA Higher Education Journal</em> is published by the National Education Association https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/7d97fc8690aa7b7968a8aed73a2b522f.pdf 0c3ed75f848d7525cd890acb8d5c15de PDF Text Text I Fled a Humorless University Job for a Sanctuary of the Liberal Arts 5 BY CHAD M. HANSON HEN I became a com­ I attended, rather than as a result of a munity-college teacher, particular set of educational policies or it meant resigning from practices. a position as a research As an undergraduate, I realized that associate in the University ofmy Texas ­ one of contrition. I was an rolesys was tem. Before I left, colleagues approached inconvenience to my professors, and I me one by one, well meaning and ear­ knew that. They were paid to conduct nest, warning me that if I went down the research, and if they were successful in ladder, I wouldn’t be able to climb back their writing and publishing, their re­ up again. ward included the chance to rid them­ That dire pronouncement made the selves of me and my kind. Even so, I transition feel risky and even a little bit ir­ muddled through, and then, years later responsible. I lay awake in the wee hours, as a graduate student, I took a job teach­ fretting about whether my impulse to ing part time at a community college teach at a two-year college would hurt my to help pay the rent. It was there that I career by scarring me with a stigma. In discovered the meaning and purpose of the end, I left my job at the university to postsecondary life. teach sociology at a community college. I have never been comfortable within More than a decade hence, I remain an the boundaries of academic departments. unrepentant two-year-college teacher. My unwillingness to stick within the I am a product of the American uni­ confines of a single field is so great that versity system. I have universities to my doctorate became interdisciplinary, thank for my ability to write and think out of necessity. Mainstream sociology and conduct myself as both a citizen and is empirical and quantitative, and al­ a scholar, but the university system is though I revel in the joy of sophisticated flawed. At times it seemed as if I earned multivariate analysis, I also appreciate my education in spite of the institutions Zen poems written by Chinese moun­ W tain hermits in the era before Christians began keeping track of time. When it comes to understanding or casting light on social patterns, I am convinced that both are valuable, and in the university such convictions come with a price—un­ employment. Despite the interdisciplin­ ary history of the social sciences, sprout­ ing as they did from the study of phi­ losophy, the lines between the sciences and humanities are rarely crossed by career-minded academics today, at least those on the tenure track. In contrast, community colleges offer a refuge for those with wide-ranging curi­ osities. Community colleges are sanctuar­ ies for generalists. When it comes to the advancement of knowledge, the contribu­ tion of specialists is obvious, but scholars with broad interests and abilities should find comfort in knowing that there are nearly a thousand public institutions in the United States with the express pur­ pose of offering the first two years of the baccalaureate, two years dedicated to pro­ viding students with a general education, the sole purpose of which is to sharpen wits and fuel imaginations. y first book was a col­ lection of short stories and literary essays about fly­ fishing, collected under the title Su'imming With Trout. The was published last fall, and to promote it, my publisher arranged a series of read­ ings and book signings. The first event was in Laramie, Wyo. When I walked M Educating tomorrow's leaders. 100% Online Degrees Partner Institutions Community College Research Center Teachers College, Columbia University http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu MDRC htip://www.mdrc.org Curry School of Education University of Virginia http://curTy.edschool.viiginia.edu Bachelor’s, Master’s, Doctoral Certificates of Advanced Graduate Studies The National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR) focuses on measuring the effectiveness of programs designed to help students make the transition to college and master the basic skills needed to advance to a degree. NCPR is currently pursuing research in dual enrollment; postsecondary remediation, including learning communities; and financial aid. Established through a five-year grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (lES) of the U.S. Department of Education, NCPR is housed at the Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, and operated in collaboration with partners MDRC, the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, and faculty at Harvard University. Through its research, NCPR aims to: • Reduce barriers to college and other education programs • Ease students' transition from high school to college • Make college advancement easier • Increase college completion rates Msit our website to learn more about NCPR research and to sign up to receive free electronic mailings. WWW, PostsecondaryResearch.org National Centerfor Postsecondary Research Teachers College, Columbia University 525 fTest 120th Street, Box 174. New York, NY 10027 phone: 212.678.3091 fax: 212.678.3699 ncpr@columbia.edu MEd now $285 a credit Monthly course starts No residency Many career building specializations BUSINESS • EDUCATION • PSYCHOLOGY NCU Ed students recently awarded Hawaii Teacher of the Year, Texas Teacher of the Year finalist. Outstanding E-Learning Faculty Award from ITC. NorthcentralUniversity Convenient. Affordable. Accredited. Contact us at 866-776-0331 • www.ncu.edu/CHE B30 THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION • COMMUNITY COLLEGES OCTOBER 31, 2008 �into the bookstore and introduced my­ self, the proprietor looked surprised and said, “Oh—I expected someone quite a bit older." She knew from my biography that I taught sociology, and she explained that she had assumed I had reached the end of my career as an academic, since I had found time to write a book meant for a general audience. I understood her surprise. University faculty members must prove themselves to a narrow audience of experts before they can take time to dabble in something as prosaic as writing fly-fishing stories. For community-college teachers, however, there is no waiting or hand-wringing over the timing or placement of publications. You can write and publish wherever and whenever you please, and without regard for disciplinary boundaries. The tenure process at community col­ leges hinges on student and collegial eval­ uation of teaching performance. I realize that earning tenure under such conditions might sound like a cakewalk, given that teaching receives more attention at com­ munity colleges than either research or service. But don’t be fooled: Students can be harsh critics. They are rarely qualified to assess a faculty member’s overall com­ petence, but they can tell whether they are receiving an education or not. A successful career at a community college depends on shifting one’s per­ ception. Students—even the snarling ones with baseball caps pulled down over their eyes and baggy pants hanging off their posteriors—must become the focus of one’s work life and the source of one’s job satisfaction. Regardless of whether they want or feel as if they need to take your courses, ill-prepared and unmotivated students show up in your classroom, and that fact often presents a challenge to new teachers. Even so, the good ones eventually realize that making ill-prepared and unmotivated students a priority is a luxury of sorts. At universi­ ties, educators take pride and pleasure in the challenge of securing grants to pay for new lines of research, but I have the freedom to make the surly, often-ill-pre­ pared kid in the back row the challenge of my professional life, and that suits me. laughter that makes your eyes water and your cheeks ache. I longed for that. I was surrounded by brilliant people who took themselves far more seriously than any­ body should, no matter how many ways you prove yourself or your intelligence. Once on a coffee break, I caught a look at myself in a mirror—short-sleeve shirt, bold-striped necktie, and a pocket pro­ tector lined with upscale pens and me­ chanical pencils. I looked like a ball of rubber bands wound too tight to be use­ ful to anyone. I knew I needed a change. Universities are high-minded, reward­ ing, and prestigious places to work. But HAVE COLLEAGUES who complain about the amount of time it takes to teach five sections of such stu­ dents per term, but the fact is that at comprehensive state universities, fac­ ulty members often teach four sections per semester, and they are also expected to find external sources of financing, to the point that the grant money offsets a share of their salaries. At community colleges, grant writing is encouraged but not required, and when faculty members are paid through a grant, that money is typically disbursed in addition to, not in lieu of, salaries. Community-college teaching can be lucrative. I received a pay increase when I left the tiniversity and took up teaching at a two-year college. But that’s not why I left my job conducting research. I left because, though the work was meaning­ ful, it was humorless. Near the end, as I sat in front of the computer in my of­ fice, I could feel the hours and days slip­ ping by without the kind of uninhibited I OCTOBER 31, 2008 each semester I look forward to meet­ ing my new batch of community-college students. I especially look forward to working with the sullen bunch that sits in the last two rows of desks, near the door in the back. I consider it my duty to make them smile at some point early in the term. Chad M. Hanson is chairman of the sociol­ ogy and social-iDork department at Casper College. He also torites poetry and short sto­ ries and is the author of Swimming With Trout (University of New Mexico Press, 2001). You can write and publish wherever and whenever you please, without regard for disciplinary boundaries. Is your IGREAT college a COLLEGES great place TO WORK FOR to work? CHRONICLE Be a part of The Chronicle's 2009 Great Colleges to Work For survey and find out. The survey, now in its second year, has generated research and insight that have helped many institutions with their goals of creating great workplaces. Your participation this year can help you understand your employees' perception of your institution, and can also provide a framework from which you can refine your recruitment and retention strategies. Due to the overwhelming response to last year’s survey, we have opened the 2009 survey to a wider variety of institutions, including community colleges. But space is strictly limited, and we expect to reach our cutoff point soon. Make sure your institution is included—go to ChronicleGreatColleges.com and sign up today. THECHRONICLE Essential Reacli'iig for Higlier Education COMMUNITY COLLEGES • THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATIONS B3 1 � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Magazine Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource I Fled a Humorless University Job for a Sanctuary of the Liberal Arts Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2008-10-31 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_10 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>The Chronicle of Higher Education</em> is published by The Chronicle of Higher Education Inc. https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/2dc83f69cf367415d48763f44eab1e3e.pdf f0ba602e1d657d9376170e1201d73fdc PDF Text Text Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 32: 999-1007, 2008 8^ Rai itloHno Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC {< , ,9® ISSN: 1066-8926 print/1521.0413 online « > TayloraFrandsCroup DOI: 10.1080/10668920701831274 PUTTING COMMUNITY BACK IN THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE: THE CASE FOR A LOCALIZED AND PROBLEM-BASED CURRICULUM Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] AC: 32:36 * November 2009 Chad Hanson Department of Sociology, Casper College, Casper, Wyoming, USA In this article the move toward international education in the community college is questioned. Who benefits when two-year schools are globalized'? An alternative to the current international approach is suggested. The case is made that community colleges serve the public interest when curricula are centered on solving problems unique to the communities that host and support them. I Started teaching sociology at two-year schools during the decade of the 1990s, a time when the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) was encouraging educators to adopt international curricula (Heelan, 2001). Their efforts were successful. Based on the results of a 2001 survey returned by 307 institutions, AACC researchers Blair, Phinney, and Phillipe reported that “82 percent of the colleges had international components in their courses, com­ pared with 40 percent in 1995” (2001,.p. 1). In addition, “The number of colleges with international business programs grew from 23 per­ cent in 1995 to 60 percent in 2000” (Blair, Phinney, & Phillipe, 2001, p. 1). The 1990s were watershed years in the move to globalize commu­ nity colleges, and the momentum continues into the new century. Speakers visit campuses to promote the idea, colleges host confer­ ences on the subject, and grant money allows instructors to add international components to their courses (Cissell & Levin, 2002). Address correspondence to Chad Hanson, Department of Sociology, Casper College, 125 College Drive, Casper, WY 82601. E-mail: chanson@caspercollege.edu 999 �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad) At: 22:26 4 November 2006 1000 C. Hanson Faculty leaders and administrators both remain committed to fashioning two-year colleges as institutions with an international flavor (King, 1990; Emerson & Newsom, 1995; Romano, 2002; Farnsworth, 2006). In the beginning, I was drawn to the idea. Sociologists like to think of themselves as worldly characters, and as such we are susceptible to movements that sound even vaguely cosmopolitan. But as I began learning about the effort to globalize two-year schools, the initiative began to seem inconsistent with my approach to teaching. And as I developed a better understanding of the move­ ment toward an international curriculum, I discovered that the move is out of step with the larger goals of social science or higher education. In the social sciences, international perspectives and cross-cultural comparisons are commonplace. They are regular parts of our courses. Sociologists have long understood that students learn about them­ selves by comparing their beliefs and values to those of others. We call the strategy “seeing the strange in the familiar” (Macionis, 2007). We view American life through the lens of other cultures. For example, in courses on crime and delinquency, the difference between American and Japanese parenting techniques are often discussed. The Japanese approach to discipline includes a practice similar to “grounding,” although when Japanese kids are grounded they are not allowed to be inside the home with their parents or sib­ lings (Barkan, 2004). By contrast, American children conceive time spent indoors as an infringement on their personal freedom, raising questions about how time spent with family came to be construed as punishment. Comparisons such as these abound in social science, but in the push to globalize public colleges, the intent has not always been to use the perspectives of others to cast illuminating light on our own norms or conventions. In particular, supporters of the new curricu­ lum are reluctant to use the views of others to raise questions about the actions or behaviors of international businesses (King, 1990). As I listened to speakers, and later as I read authors extolling the virtues of globalization, it became clear that the intent is to “shape student thinking primarily with employers in mind” (Farnsworth, 2006, p. B17). In the new curricula, little attention is paid to unfair labor practices or political movements meant to strengthen environmental laws. Similarly, global education advocates are seldom interested in test questions or in-class activities centered on the practice of outsourcing U.S. jobs or the techniques corporations use to avoid paying taxes. �• ' Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad) AC; 33:26 4 November 2008 Putting Community Back in the Community College 1001 The move to adopt an international curriculum is driven by freemarket values. The movement’s origins stem, not from social philoso­ phy or research on student development, but from needs that grew out of human resource departments in the private sector. Tow explains, “Corporate Personnel Directors say their companies need managers and employees with greater international knowledge and experience,’’ and in response to the demand for employees familiar with the language and customs of others, community colleges altered their curricula to curry favor with companies trading across national borders (2001, p. 30). The upshot of the effort has been a surge of funds from govern­ ment agencies and corporations, both attuned to the idea that col­ leges contribute to the economy by training students to use skills of value in the labor force (Stoessel, 2002). The move toward interna­ tional curricula has been lucrative for colleges (Levin, 2001). But in the rush to transform the community college into a global institution, staff and faculty have become inclined to adopt a naive, uncritical, almost cartoon-like appreciation for all things international. For example, in a 2001 article for the AACC’s Community College Jour­ nal, Farnsworth suggested that international education holds the potential to change students to the point that their experience matches that of Dorothy, the main character in The Wizard of Oz. He recounts the moment in the picture when Dorothy is lifted away from her community by a tornado: Dorothy is ripped away from the sparse black and white landscape of rural Kansas by the tornado. She spins through a whirlwind of confus­ ing sights and sounds, drops with a jarring thud somewhere comple­ tely different. With her dog Toto under her arm, she hesitantly opens the monochrome door of the old farmhouse, and with a slight gasp... walks into the glorious Technicolor world of Oz (Farnsworth, 2001, p. 10). Farnsworth goes on to connect the imagery of Oz to education, by suggesting that “Part of the learning process—of becoming an ‘edu­ cated’ person—now must involve opening the lives and minds of stu­ dents to the wonders of the new Oz’’ (2001, p. 11). Societies marked by free-trade agreements and inexpensive consumer goods are the new Oz to which the American Association of Community Colleges hopes to orient students. However, global education of the kind pro­ moted by the AACC lacks a sustained critique of world trade; and if the dominant approach to curricula lacks a critical component, the �1002 C. Hanson framework cannot facilitate critical thinking or critical literacy on the part of students (Shor, 1992). In the literature published by the AACC, societies and cultures increasingly shaped by the advance of global capital are conceived as Oz-like worlds of “glorious Technicolor,” but the image of magnificence and wonder stands in contrast to the picture of globalization painted by academics. University of Wisconsin sociologist Al Gedicks explains: Downloaded By; [Hanson, Chad] AC: 23:26 4 November 2006 From the Amazon Basin to the frozen stretches of northern Saskatchewan, to the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia and Central Africa—energy, mining, logging, hydroelectric, and other mega-projects have uprooted, dislocated, and destroyed native communities (Gedicks, 1993, p. 13). As public nonprofit institutions, colleges and universities are charged to encourage students’ social, moral, and cognitive development. Each form of development involves fostering students’ skills in such a way that they can compare and assess competing points of view. The goal is to create settings in which students and teachers struggle to build a thorough understanding of human endeavors. “The deep purpose of higher education is to steward this transformation so that students and faculty together continually move from naivete through skepti­ cism to commitment” (Parks Dolaz, Keen, Keen, & Dolaz Parks, 1996, p. 12). Public colleges have a duty to move students away from credulity and toward a capacity to make judgments with respect to the merit and morality of the cultural patterns unfolding around them. With respect to such patterns, any assessment of the business practices shaping life in modern societies makes it plain that interna­ tional corporations are not staffed with cheery munchkins or wellintentioned fairies. In the case of global giants such as Enron the offices are no longer staffed at all, as the organization imploded in a flurry of greed and malevolence. Further, of those organizations currently successful in the world market, an examination of their work reveals a wide-spread pattern of disregard for social problems that arise in the locales where they do business (Stiglitz, 2002). In the parlance of international economics, persistent global poverty, geographic dislocation, and environmental degradation are described as “externalities.” They are considered unintended consequences of trade, not central to the process of profit-making. The new world of global commerce may be wrought in Techni­ color, it may even be glorious in some ways and for certain entities. But the faculty of public colleges have an obligation to evaluate �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad) AC: 22:2$ 4 November 2008 Putting Community Back in the Community College 1003 international trade with a critical eye, and from a range of different perspectives. Unfortunately, international curricula fell into place before two-year college faculty debated their purposes. We have yet to conduct a close examination of the assumptions that lie at the foundation of the new approach to community college educa­ tion. In the absence of deliberations on the intent or consequences of the new approach, staff and faculty have come to believe that two-year schools exist to advance international business. With the wonders of inexpensive foreign-made goods dangled before us so as to produce an almost trance-like acceptance of the status quo, we find ourselves caught in the glow of international commerce, while matters of local concern smolder in our midst. For example, in the community college curriculum, we give scant attention to the battles waged by nonprofit organizations struggling to address the social and ecological problems that burgeon in the wake of eco­ nomic development (Schuyler, 1999). Consequently, in the spring of 2003 I presented a group of 35 students with a summary of a plan for drilling 50,000 new natural gas wells in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, 30 miles north of the Casper College campus (Beers, 2000; Lavelle, 2001). Students were dumbfounded. Certain of them had spent time overseas in nations such as Germany, Sweden, and Guam as members of the military or as part of high school or college student exchange pro­ grams. On the whole, the group was well-read and well-traveled, but they were unaware of the effort to turn a portion of Wyoming’s wide open spaces into an industrial landscape at the hands of global companies. Should natural gas development go ahead as planned, the commercial activity will benefit multinational corporations based throughout the U.S., Europe, and Canada. At the same time, the drilling rigs will degrade American public land and trample the geographic history and cultural values of long-time Wyoming residents (Duffy, 2005). My students were initially outraged by the prospect of their home state’s landscape becoming altered beyond recognition, and their pas­ sionate response to the threat posed by the new development fueled a lengthy in-class discussion about natural resources, consumer habits, and the stewardship of public land. Ideally, discussions such as these take place at meetings of the city council, the county commissioner, the state legislature, and in federal offices. As an educator, I can only hope the perceptions and sentiments formed in the context of college courses reach beyond the classroom, off the campus, and into our communities. I am confident, in the case of this example, that discus­ sions continue in other quarters. However, if I would have chosen a �Downloaded By; [Hanson, Chad] At: 22:26 4 November 2006 1004 C. Hanson topic far removed from local concerns, I could rest assured the dialo­ gue would have died as students stepped into the hallway after class. For instance, I could have planned an activity focused on an inter­ national problem such as deforestation in South America, but to do so would have kept students from the realization that global pro­ cesses have present and immediate implications. Without a strong focus on local issues and social problems, international education places a mask over forces and events that impact communities. More­ over, when conducted in uncritical terms meant to glorify students’ roles as consumers and employees, international education becomes apolitical, blinding students to their responsibilities as citizens. As a case in point, in the spring of 2001 1 asked a group of students in northern Wisconsin two questions with respect to the public ser­ vants representing them in our democracy. First, I asked them to write the names of all the Green Bay Packer’s players they knew or could remember. The lists were long. So lengthy, I was forced to give them more time than I planned. Roughly two-tliirds of the students finished the roster. Those students then began writing the names of retired players or athletes placed on injured-reserve. After they finished, I asked them to write the names of the officials that represent them at the city, county, state, and federal levels. Two-thirds of the students were familiar with the governor, roughly one half knew the city’s mayor, a handful of students cited one of the two senators represent­ ing them in Washington, but the majority either sat silent or laughed out loud in the manner of people asked to perform a hopeless task. My students are distracted from their duties as citizens in a self­ governed society. They are not alone, however. Whether we are pre­ occupied with sports, work, television or consumerism, the majority of us abdicate our role, our right, and our responsibility to play an active part in American public life (Putnam, 2000). Two-year colleges have the potential to serve as a hedge against the apathy that per­ vades our social and cultural networks. An engaged college classroom holds the promise of inspiring and empowering students to act upon the problems present in their localities. However, if the curriculum is centered on geographically distant themes, disconnected from com­ munities, then college courses simply serve as additional distractions. Higher education curricula must include international perspec­ tives—that much is understood—but the question is “Global edu­ cation for what purpose?” Currently, the international curriculum is aimed at equipping students with skills related to opening new labor markets (Tow, 2001; Farnsworth, 2006). The result of their work could well be a loss of jobs or a lower quality of life for neighbors and fellow citizens. By contrast, a genuine higher �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad) AC: 32:2fi 4 November 2008 Putting Community Back in the Community College 1005 education provides students with the ability to conceive global commerce in terms of its multiple and wide-ranging effects: social, economic, and environmental. A significant body of educational theory and research dating back to the work of John Dewey (1916) points toward the necessity of taking students from the local and particular, to the broad and general. Thus, from the standpoint of the two-year curriculum, the starting point is here at home, within our families, churches, schools, and neighbor­ hoods. For both social and educational purposes, our in-class activities must be drawn from our vicinities; and if public colleges are going to play a role in the effort to reconnect education to communities, it is going to mean “establishing or re-establishing relationships with com­ munity groups—and not just businesses” (Gamson, 1997, p. 13). Of course, courses and programs designed to spotlight local issues must eventually become regional if not global in scope. Responsible educators “pay careful attention to the patterns that connect the local and the regional with the global” (Orr, 1994, p. 160). But the intent is to create an environment where students develop the habit of analyz­ ing local conditions from the standpoint of how they are influenced by international forces. After all, if community college students are not willing and equipped to address the social and economic pro­ blems in their own communities, then who will address them? The citizens of other nations? Foreign governments? Neither scenario seems likely or desirable. In the preface to the 1983 Oz, Baum suggests that his story “aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out” (Baum, 1983, p. xvi). Similarly, the effort to internationalize the community college has been an attempt to sell the joys and wonders of globaliza­ tion, while drawing attention away from the “wars, pollution, starva­ tion, species extinctions, and genocides” associated with the new international order (Perkins, 2004, p. 57). It was an easy sell. The spectacle of otherness is seductive for both students and faculty, but the one-sided focus on the benign aspects of globalization puts us in the undesirable position of advocating, as opposed to evaluating international business or global politics. The literary critic Gore Vidal explains, “In sharp contrast to gray flat Kansas, Oz seems to blaze with color. Yet the Emerald City is a bit of a fraud. Everyone is obliged to wear green glasses in order to make the city appear emerald green” (1983, p. 258). In effect, by propagating uncritical probusiness international curricula, we are asking students to wear green glasses. Conversely, if colleges upheld their responsibility, the curriculum would function as a cold, clear �1006 C. Hanson microscope—classrooms serving as forums where global social and economic patterns could be assessed from the standpoint of human and ecological interests. In the light of clear and hard analysis, places like Kansas will seem less monochrome and more closely connected to global forces than students or faculty often imagine. Furthermore, if we put our communities back at the center of our efforts, students will likely come to see that “There is no place like home,” and that is a point upon which Dorothy and I agree. Downloaded By: [Hanson, ChadJ AC: 22:26 4 November 2006 REFERENCES Barkan, S. (2004). Criminology: A sociological understanding. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Baum, L. F. (1983). Preface. In M. P. Hearn (Ed.), The wizard of Oz: The critical heri­ tage series (pp. ix-xvi). New York: Shocken Books. Beers, C. (2000). It’s a gas. Wyoming Wildlife, 64(6), 22-29. Blair, D., Phinney, L., & Phillipe, K. (2001). International programs at community colleges. AACC research brief Washington, DC: American Association of Com­ munity Colleges. Cissell, A. & Levin, D. (2002). Federal funding for community college international education programs and activities. In R. Romano (Ed.), Internationalizing the community college (pp. 145-158). Washington, DC: The Community College Press. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: MacMillan. Dully, R. (2005). Political mobilization, venue change, and coal-bed methane conflict. Natural Resources Journal, 45(2), 409-440. Emerson, M. & Newsom, R. (1995). Further defining the role of the community college: A model taxonomy for international education programs. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 79(10), 501-516. Farnsworth, K. (2001). The values of a global perspective. Community College Journal, 8-14. Farnsworth, K. (2006). The four lessons that community colleges can learn from for-profit institutions. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 55(10), B17-B18. Gamson, Z. (1997). Higher education and rebuilding civic life. Change, 29(i), 10-13. Gedicks, A. (1993). The new resource wars: Native and environmental struggles against multinational corporations. Boston: South End Press. Heelan, C. (2001). Working toward a global view. Community College Journal, 77(4), 4. King, M. (1990). The community college’s international vision. AACJC Journal, 67(4), 37^0. Lavelle, M. (2001, March 12). High stakes on the prairie. U.S. News and World Report, 130, 52-54. Levin, J. (2001). Globalizing the community college: Strategies for change in the 21st century. New York: Palgrave. �Downloaded By; {Hanson, Chad] At: 22:26 4 November 2006 Putting Community Back in the Community College 1007 Macionis, J. (2007). Sociology. 11th ed., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Orr, D. (1994). Earth in mind: On education, environment, and the human prospect. Washington, DC: Island Press. Parks Dolaz, L., Keen, C., Keen, J., & Dolaz Parks, S. (1996). Lives of commitment: Higher education in the life of the new commons. Change, 25(3), 11-15. Perkins, J. (2004). Confessions of an economic hit man. San Francisco: BerretKoehler. Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Romano, R. (Ed.) (2002). Internationalizing the community college. Washington, DC: The Community College Press. Schuyler, G. (1999). A historical and contemporary view of the community college curriculum. In G. Schuyler (Ed.), Trends in community college curriculum. New directions for community colleges. No. 108 (pp. 11-15). San Francisco; Jossey-Bass. Shor, I. (1992). Empowering education: Critical leaching for social change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stiglitz, J. (2002). Globalization and its discontents. New York: W. W. Norton. Stoessel, E. (2002). Curriculum development: Using federal grants to strengthen business programs and activities. In R. Romano (Ed.), Internationalizing the community college (pp. 99-110). Washington, DC: The Community College Press. Tow, K. (2001). The global student. Community College Journal, 7I{4), 30-31. Vidal, G. (1983). On rereading the Oz books. In M. P. Hearn (Ed.), The wizard of Oz: The critical heritage Series (pp. 256-270). New York: Shocken Books. � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Putting Community Back in the Community College: The Case for a Localized and Problem-Based Curriculum Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2008-11 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_11 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>Community College Journal of Research and Practice</em> is published by Taylor &amp; Francis Group, LLC https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/5d332ddf21b4c5aa963b3ea3805f46d7.pdf abb619a103d9ddf6d344401498b42afa PDF Text Text Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 33: 985-994, 2009 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1066-8926 print/1521-0413 online DOI: 10.1080/10668920701831316 Routledge Taylor & Francis Croup THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE BACCALAUREATE: AN HISTORIC AND CULTURAL IMPERATIVE Chad Hanson Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] AC: 19:39 17 November 2009 Department of Sociology, Casper College, Casper, Wyoming, USA In this article, the debate over the community college baccalaureate is placed in the context of both political culture and the history of public education. Bachelor's degree programs are discussed from the standpoint of their contribution to civic life, and a case is made that academicallyinclined colleges are crucial to fostering a public sphere marked by engagement and participation. The community college is standing at the apex of a curve that turns up into the high country of academia. Recently, governing bodies in Utah, Texas, Florida, Nevada, and Arkansas passed legislation granting formerly two-year schools the right to confer the baccalau­ reate (Floyd, Skolnick, & Walker, 2005). But despite the growing level of acceptance, four-year programs have engendered a debate among scholars, trustees, and lawmakers. The baccalaureate has both ardent supporters (Walker, 2001; Martin & Samels, 2001; McKinney, 2003; Garmon, 2004; Samels & Martin, 2004) and a group of critics committed to questioning the place of four-year degrees in commu­ nity colleges (Wattenbarger, 2000; Eaton, 2005; Townsend, 2005; Campbell, 2005). Schools interested in creating bachelor’s programs are praised for the attempt to serve students by new means, but at the same time they are also condemned as status-seekers, stepping out of place in the postsecondary hierarchy. Address correspondence to Chad Hanson, Casper College, Department of Sociology, Casper, WY 82601. E-mail: chanson@caspercollege.edu 985 �986 C. Hanson Downloaded By: [Haneon, Chad] AC: 19:39 17 November 2009 THE DEBATE OVER THE BACCALAUREATE The debate over whether community colleges can or should develop baccalaureate programs takes place primarily in journalistic forums such as The Chronicle of Higher Education and Community College Week. Thus far, questions have been raised with respect to whether baccalaureate programs are cost prohibitive (Eaton, 2005), whether they limit access to other educational services (Levin, 2004), whether community colleges are capable of providing quality upper-division courses (Wattenbarger, 2000), or whether four-year programs signal a shift of institutional identity (Townsend, 2005). Within the past 30 years, a small group of scholars raised larger questions about the role of the community college in society (Zwerling, 1976; Pincus, 1980; Brint & Karabel, 1989; Dougherty, 1994; Rhoads & Valdez, 1996). But the current debate over the baccalaureate centers on practical concerns related to questions about whether bachelor’s-degree-granting colleges promote work­ force development or contribute to students’ economic well-being. Critics of the move toward the baccalaureate suggest that degrees granted from community colleges are likely to be seen as secondclass, thereby hindering graduates in the job market (Wattenbarger, 2000; Eaton, 2005), but the foundation of the claim is untenable. Associate degrees and short-term certificates suffer an even greater lack of prestige in relation to bachelor’s degrees from four-year institutions, and low status did not keep community colleges from successfully building and maintaining a wide range of subbaccalaure­ ate programs. On one hand, it is difficult to see why low status should keep them from offering bachelor’s degrees. On the other hand, it is fair to assume that status matters to students and employers. But if status is the issue, then the baccalaureate represents a chance for community colleges to rise up alongside well-respected institutions. In contrast to critics, advocates champion four-year programs on the basis of the value they stand to generate in the workplace (McKee, 2005). Supporters even suggest that community colleges should develop an “applied” or “workforce” bachelor’s degree, tailored to the specific and ephemeral needs of corporations, and unmoored from the practices associated with “academic pedagogy” (Walker & Floyd, 2005, p. 96). Generally speaking, the arguments for and against the baccalaureate both turn on the question of whether the degree can serve as a vehicle for economic growth or personal mobility. It is only when the conversation turns to the subject of institutional mission that one finds a discussion of the social roles community �Community College Baccalaureate 987 Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] At: 19:39 17 November 2009 colleges fulfill. Supporters and critics alike question the effect of the baccalaureate on the schools’ overarching purpose, but critics stress this side of the argument. For example, one of the strongest objections to four-year programs is expressed when critics press the charge of “mission creep” (Mills, 2003). A small cadre of authors is concerned that colleges may shift attention and resources to bachelor’s programs as they become more commonplace. In the process, they imply that col­ leges may neglect or short-change students that are uninterested in or deemed unfit for the baccalaureate. On this note, Levin issued a caveat: As long as the baccalaureate community college offers programs... such as special education programs for the mentally challenged, high school completion, and General Equivalency Diplomas (GED), and certificate vocational programs including welding, automotive, pipe­ fitter, small appliance repair, and the like—then they will carry with them their traditional community college identity, which highlights open access and a comprehensive curriculum. (2004, p. 19) Although a concern for underprivileged groups lies at the founda­ tion of Levin’s attempt to remind community college staff of their duties, it should be noted that the school’s traditional identity was neither vocational nor comprehensive. It is true that the colleges were originally meant to serve groups that found it difficult to access higher education, but historically, community colleges served the pur­ pose of offering the freshman and sophomore years of bachelor’s degrees. Roksa explains, “Community colleges originated as transfer institutions, with the majority of students participating in a four-year college preparatory curriculum” (2006, p. 501). Thus, one could argue, the real mission creep in the community college has been a long and slow but decisive creep away from the baccalaureate and toward narrow career-related associate degrees and certificate pro­ grams. However, when community colleges crept down the ladder of prestige, the critics were silent. COMMUNITY COLLEGES AND THE HISTORY OF HIGHER EDUCATION The history of higher education is replete with change. Early American colleges patterned themselves on an English model emphasizing undergraduate education and character development. But in the mid-20th century, American colleges adopted a research orientation similar to that of German institutions (Hofstader & Smith, 1961). �Downloaded By: [Hanaon, Chad] AC: 19:19 17 Novenber 2009 988 C. Hanson For example, normal schools and teacher’s colleges became state colleges and, later, comprehensive universities, as they added gradu­ ate schools and doctoral programs. In the United States, institutional advancement occurred at all levels of the higher education network, except at the bottom. Over the course of its lifespan, the public community college clung to the lowest rung on the ladder. Scholars have examined the history of the community college and come to different conclusions about the cause of its stagnant character. Levin (2001) suggested that adminis­ trators favored occupational programs as a means to match their per­ ception of workforce needs; Dougherty (1994) documented the degree to which government agencies influenced the community college curriculum; and Labaree (1997) explored the role of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) in setting a course for the institution. In the words of Labaree, “The community college was confined to the lowest rung on the ladder,” because members of the AACC “wanted to see it remain a two-year institution and continue to play its vocational role;” presumably, as a means to court students for whom bachelor’s degrees seemed out of reach (1997, p. 192). As a result, the community college was kept from “following the same trajectory of institutional mobility that had served its predecessors” (Labaree, 1997, p. 192). Although the influence of the AACC on particular schools undoubtedly varies, there is no question about the historical intent of AACC leaders with respect to maintaining the community college as a vocational institution. For example, after learning in 1929 that 90% of community college students aspired to the baccalaureate, Walter Crosby Ells addressed the annual meeting of the AACC as follows: It will be most unfortunate if the junior college becomes so successful as a popularizing agency that it makes all of its students plan on full university courses. Probably the proportion of those continuing should be nearer fifty than ninety percent. This report of ninety percent is a distinct danger signal ahead. (Ells, quoted in Labaree, 1997, p. 201) Community college leaders, from the 1920s to the present, used their organizational position to craft a market niche for the commu­ nity college that differs from that of academically-inclined institu­ tions. In opposition to four-year schools and universities committed to the arts and sciences, AACC officials sought to identify the �Downloaded By: (Hanson. Chad} AC: 19:39 17 November 2009 Community College Baccalaureate 989 two-year college as a career-oriented alternative to education aimed at preparing students for participation in public life. In other words, for the sake of organizational interests, AACC leaders worked to shape and reshape community colleges to meet the changing needs of the marketplace, as opposed to preparing students to meet the steady and timeless responsibilities placed upon citizens in a democracy. Two-year colleges flourished under the influence of the y^ACC, and the push to vocationalize the community college succeeded. Still, there are consequences associated with the move toward occupational programs. Labaree suggests that AACC officials placed personal and organizational objectives above broader social or educational goals in the process of striving to create a market niche for community colleges. In effect, whether the AACC intended to or not, the group created a legacy that grips the institution like an anchor. Labaree intones: Seeking to preserve the vocational mission of the community college within the socially efficient division of education labor, public and private officials have generally been able to block its institutional mobility by denying it the right to award the bachelor’s degree, thus freezing it in a permanently junior status within higher education. (1997, p. 213) Labaree understands the effort to promote the schools’ vocational role, from the standpoint of community colleges as organizations try­ ing to establish a place for themselves in the higher education market; however, he suggests “that place is socially dysfunctional” (Labaree, 1997, p. 4). Community colleges succeeded in promoting their role as career-related training sites. But to the degree that colleges propagate vocational curricula, they create a scenario where the graduate of an associate degree or certificate program “may gain technical or profes­ sional training in one field of work or another, but is only inciden­ tally, if at all, made ready for performing his duties as a man, a parent, and a citizen” (Labaree, 1997, p. 201). By comparison, “Most liberal arts graduates do not earn their liv­ ing in a manner directly connected to their major. The justification for majoring in English, history or mathematics as an undergraduate does not primarily reside in the idea that the major will be directly connected to some obvious employment opportunity” (Botstein, 1997, p. 182). In contrast to the current focus on job training and workforce development, public colleges were originally meant to serve a public purpose, the only purpose that could justify substantial public investment. �990 C. Hanson Downloaded By: [Hanaoa, Chad] AC; 19:39 17 Novenber 2009 THE COMMUNITY COLLEGERS CULTURAL ROLE The conversation surrounding the community college baccalaureate is focused on economic concerns; although, the discussion could easily run parallel to the broad debate that took place over the nature of high school curricula in the early part of the last century. In the words of Carol Schneider, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, two groups with opposing views struggled to determine the character of high school education in the United States in the early 1900s, “One group of educators thought that all high school students ought to take a strong academic foundation in history, literature, science, mathematics, and language. But others—the progressives of the day’—thought the students who where were not college bound would be better served by less academic forms of learning” (2005, p. 63). The outcome of the debate is clear today. “The proponents of a rigorous liberal education in the schools lost this battle,” and as a result, “the pubhc schools invented differential curriculum tracks” (Schneider, 2005, p. 63). There is an academic or college prepara­ tory track for middle-class and upwardly mobile students, but there remains a vocational track for students with lower aptitudes or less familiarity with the liberal arts. At the time the tracks were formed, as now, “The dividing lines were economic, with the afflu­ ent moving in one direction and the poor, including people of color and first generation families, moving in quite another” (Schneider, 2005, p. 63). For more than a century, American conceptions of schooling have been tied to the notion of economic or social class mobility. However, the late Christopher Lasch suggested, “A careful look at the historical record shows that the promise of American life came to be identified with social mobility only when more hopeful interpretations began to fade” (1995, p. 59). Lasch explains, “The concept of social mobility embodies a fairly recent and sadly impoverished understanding of the American Dream” (1995, p. 59). In The Revolt of the Elites, he draws attention to the idea that in recent U.S. history “money has come to be regarded as the only reliable measure of equality.” But he notes, in the prior century, “opportunity, as Americans under­ stood it, was a matter more of intellectual than material enrichment” (1995, p. 59). In the past, the life of the mind added an element of equality to a society characterized by economic polarization. Today, by contrast, intellectual pursuits are unhinged from political culture, and educational institutions are conceived largely in terms of their contribution to state or regional economies. �Downloaded By; [Hanaon, Chad] AC; 19:19 17 November 2009 Community College Baccalaureate 991 Lasch stops short of turning his attention to contemporary high schools or community colleges, but scholars working in education confirm his point that it is the logic of cost-benefit analysis that structures our understanding of the purpose public institutions serve. “According to this logic, schools are producers of educational commodities—credentials—and must adapt themselves to meet the demands of the consumer” (Labaree, 1997, p. 4). In other words, institutional attention has been turned away from social goals and aimed at fulfilling personal ambitions. In the quest to cater curriculum and institutional mission to the demands of the marketplace, colleges and universities alike pursue narrow paths of specialization. Through the process of creating degree plans to match students’ career interests, and the needs of employers to fill vacancies at each rank in their organizations, higher education institutions structured themselves on hierarchical lines. As a result, we maintain a system marked by double standards. For the sons and daughters of the wealthy there are institutions committed to the civic arts and leadership. For the masses, we offer training in occupational fields. According to Lasch, this arrangement is not compatible with the goals of a democratic nation, where citizens are equally responsi­ ble for maintaining a vital public sphere. In his words, “Common standards are absolutely indispensable to a democratic society. Socie­ ties organized around a hierarchy of privilege can afford multiple standards, but democracies cannot” (Lasch, 1995, p. 88). Those who stand opposed to the community college baccalaureate often express their opposition in the name of underprivileged students. Supporters of the two-year curriculum wish to keep the community college at the bottom of the postsecondary network. They fear that if baccalaureate programs expand, the community college might fail to serve students from low-income backgrounds. Yet, the challenge is not to provide underprivileged students with an education of less value and of a different type than one finds at four-year institutions. The challenge is to provide those students with an education of the same nature that one finds at prestigious colleges and universities. For the sake of compassion and concern for poor and minority students, those who wish to hold community colleges in their subbacca­ laureate status unwittingly press for the continuation of a pernicious double standard. Lasch is uncompromising on this point: When the ideology of compassion leads us to this type of absurdity, it is time to call it into question. Compassion has become the human face of contempt. Democracy once implied opposition to every form of double standard. Today we accept double standards—as always, a �992 C. Hanson recipe for second class citizenship—in the name of humanitarian concern. (1995, p. 105) The best means to address class-based inequality is not continued double standards in higher education. The best approach is egalitar­ ianism. The baccalaureate is the standard postsecondary credential, and if large numbers of students are educated in subbaccalaureate institutions, then the democratic ideal of equality is compromised. Downloaded By; [Hanson, Chad) At: 19:39 17 November 2009 CONCLUSION As a mass of heretofore excluded Americans entered postsecondary schools in the middle 20th century, higher education changed. When colleges and universities enrolled an exclusive group of elites, the curriculum focused on leadership and public service But as women, minorities, and students of modest means gained access to higher education, the focus on academics gave way to career-oriented programs. Whether the change came about through haplessness or cynical intentions, it is difficult to say. With respect to community colleges, Dougherty argued the schools inadvertently became contradictory institutions when they moved away from academics and toward a mission centered on training in job-related fields (1994). Labaree concurs and suggests, “The community college seems to be caught in a bind that was constructed historically, as it sought to accomplish the contradictory aims of promoting political equality and market inequality within a single institution” (1997, p. 221). The bind Labaree describes should be the subject of debate among staff and faculty. But the goal of training workers to private sector criteria became so engrained in the culture of the community college, especially in the decade of the 1990s, college professionals lost touch with the era when their institutions served the sole purpose of preparing students for success in a four-year course of study. Ironically, the current move toward baccalaureate education holds the potential to stir demand and increase enrollment on the same line as the AACC had in mind when they sought to transform two-year schools into technical institutes. As colleges and universities sought to identify themselves as research-oriented institutions in the past half-century, a gap was created in the market. We currently lack a network of public four-year schools committed to teaching and undergraduate education. For the sake of organizational interests, community colleges will do well to fill this empty space in our postsecondary system. �Community College Baccalaureate 993 Downloaded By: (Hanaoa, Chad] AC: 19:39 17 November 2009 More important, however, the community college baccalaureate affords us an occasion to discuss the role of education in society. But in order for the conversation to be genuine, it must involve voices other than those who would simply use public institutions to subsidize training costs sustained in the private-sector; and the discussion must be conducted in terms other than that of economics. Decisions about the future of public education must be decided on educational grounds, and with respect to public interests. The potential for the community college to contribute to American life is too crucial for the debate to be settled on the basis of economic goals alone. REFERENCES Botstein, L. (1997). Jefferson’s children: Education and the promise of American culture. New York: Doubleday. The diverted dream: Community colleges and the promise of educational opportunity in America, 1900-1985. New York: Oxford Brint, S. & Karabel, J. (1989). University Press. Campbell, D. (2005, July 4). Florida: Bellwether for the future of the community college baccalaureate? Community College tVeek, 77(24), 4-5. Dougherty, K. (1994). The contradictory college: The conflicting origins, impacts, and futures of the community college. Albany: State University of New York Press. Eaton, J. (2005, October 24). Why community colleges shouldn’t offer baccalaure­ ates. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 52(10), B25-B26. Floyd, D., Skolnik, M., & Walker, K. (Eds.). (2005). The community college baccalaureate: Emerging trends and policy issues. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Garmon, J. (2004, April 12). The new and improved community college baccalaure­ ate. Community College Week, 76(18), 4-5. Hofstader, R. & Smith, W. (Eds.). (1961). American higher education: A documentary history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Labaree, D. (1997). How to succeed in school... without really learning. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Lasch, C. (1995). The revolt of the elites and the betrayal of democracy. New York: W.W. Norton. Levin, J. (2001). Globalizing the community college: Strategies for change in the 21st century. New York: Palgrave. Levin, J. (2004). The community college as a baccalaureate granting institution. The Review of Higher Education, 25(1), 1-22. Martin, J. & Samels, J. (2001, July 23). The community college baccalaureate: Moving outside the box. Community College Week, 13(25), 4-6. McKee, J. (2005). Westark’s workforce baccalaureate. In D. Floyd, M. Skolnick, & K. Walker (Eds.), The community college baccalaureate: Emerging trends and polity issues (pp. 129-138). Sterling, VA: Stylus. �994 C. Hanson Downloaded By; (Hanson, Chad] AC: 19:39 17 November 3009 McKinney, D. (2003, April 14). We need a baccalaureate now. Community College Week, 4. Mills, K. (2003). Community college baccalaureates: Some critics decry the trend as mission creep. National Cross Talk. Published by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. Available at www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/ ct0103/news0103-community.html Pincus, F. (1980). The false promise of community colleges: Class conflict and vocational education. Harvard Educational Review, 50{i), 332-361. Rhoads, R. A. & Valdez, J. R. (1996). Democracy, multiculturalism, and the commu­ nity college. New York: Garland. Roksa, J. (2006). Does the vocational focus of community colleges hinder students’ educational attainment? The Review of Higher Education, 29{4), 429-526. Samels, J. & Martin, J. (2004, April 12). One step back to take two steps forward. Community College Week, 76(18), 4-5. Schneider, C. (2005), Liberal education: Slip-sliding away? In R. Hersh & J. Merrow (Eds,), Declining by degrees: Higher education at risk (pp, 61-76), New York: Palgrave, Townsend, B, (2005), A cautionary view. In D. Floyd, M, Skolnick, & K, Walker (Eds.), The community college baccalaureate: Emerging trends and polity issues (pp. 179-190). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Walker, K. (2001). Opening the door to the baccalaureate degree. Community College Review, 29(2), 18-28. Walker, K. & Floyd, D. (2005). Applied and workforce baccalaureates. In D. Floyd, M. Skolnick, & K. Walker, (Eds.), The community college baccalaureate: Emerging trends and policy issues (pp. 95-102), Sterling, VA: Stylus. Wattenbarger, J. (2000, April 17). Colleges should stick to what they do best. Community College Week, 72(18), 4-5. Zwerling, S. (1976), Second best: The crisis of the community college. New York: McGraw-Hill. � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Community College Baccalaureate: An Historic and Cultural Imperative Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2009-11 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_12 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>Community College Journal of Research and Practice</em> is published by Taylor &amp; Francis Group, LLC https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/373bb2263bca49d5ac9d598fc0c62567.pdf 39f93496d3153f82fd276b77536f6e61 PDF Text Text V AM Conversations AMCIUCAM SOCIOLOCAOU AS$OCMTfOM Teach Softly and Debunk with a Big Stick: A Response to “Evolution, Biology, and Society: A Conversation for the 21st-Century Sociology Classroom” Teaching Sociology 38(1) 50-53 © American Sociological Association 2010 DOI; lO.1177/0092055X09354075 http'7/ts.sagepubcom ®SAGE Chad Hanson' I would like to begin by thanking Richard Machalek and Michael Martin. Their work serves as a reminder that our discipline is diverse and dynamic. I appreciate the effort to urge us to include genetic concepts in lower-division courses, but I do not share the enthusiasm for sociobiology. In what follows, I suggest that the call to include genetic principles in the sociology curriculum is part of a historic effort to discuss social patterns in terms that are individualistic, and in the end I offer my views on the role of freshman-level courses in an academy where the boundaries of fields are shifting. I reviewed Machalek and Martin’s (2010) essay in the spring of 2009. Al that time, I felt surrounded by the field of biology. The year marked the bicen­ tennial of Charles Darwin’s birth, and also the 150th anniversary of the publication of On t/ie Origin of Species. Television news covered the occasion, and the blogosphere buzzed with discus­ sions of Darwin’s contribution to science and humanity. The completion of the Human Genome Project added meaning to the event, and in the wake of that accomplishment. Social Forces (Guo 2006) and the American Journal of Sociology (Bearman 2008) both published issues committed to exploring the link between genes and behavior. A story even appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, boasting a subtitle that claimed, “Genetic research finally makes its way into the thinking of sociologists” (Shea 2009). Machalek and Martin’s suggestions for teaching hinge on the thought that 21st-century break­ throughs in biology now warrant the inclusion of genetic concepts in our lower-level classes. But there has been no revolution in the field of sociobiology. The preceding suggestions are instead part of a slow but long-running attempt to use biology to explain or account for human trails and actions. The attempt begins, arguably, with Herbert Spencer’s 19th-century social Darwinism; the effort runs through the 20th century with the controversial publication of books such as The Bell Curve (Hermstein and Murray 1994); and the line of thought continues here in the 21st cen­ tury, up to and including this very conversation. There is nothing new about attempts to use genetics to interpret social life. For example, when Machalek and Martin present biological concepts for faculty members to include in soci­ ology courses, the citations date back 27 years or more. When they describe how our personal traits grow out of an interaction between genes and the environment (p. 42), they quote from Sociobiology and Behavior, a 1982 book by David Barash. When they mention that we pos­ sess a nearly universal potential for language (p. 42), they turn to the 1975 work of the linguist Noam Chomsky, and when they explain how human beings are biologically prone to develop skills that allow us to detect behaviors such as 'Casper College. WY. USA Corresponding Author: Chad Hanson, Casper College. Department of Sociology. 125 College Drive. Casper. WY 82601, USA Email: chanson@caspercollege.edu DownHtaMd from nnpjAto.taoapub.csm at WYOMING COMM COLLEGE LIBRARIES on January 27,2010 �Hanson 51 lying and cheating (p. 42) they cite a study con­ ducted in 1966. Machalek and Martin are right to point out that there is an increasing tendency to look toward individuals and their unique biology to e?q}Iain social behavior, but that tendency has not been driven by persuasive new research or evidence. The completion of the Human Genome Project marked a significant breakthrough; however, that undertaking concluded that humans are 99.9 percent identical. Even though that still leaves room for wide-ranging variety, the finding suits most soci­ ologists, as we tend to assume that our similarities outweigh our differences, at least at birth. The heightened focus on genetics has resulted not from new, compelling explanations of behav­ ior but rather from a shift of emphasis in our soci­ ety. Geneticists and sociobiologists have been more successful than others when it comes to con­ vincing the public of the value of their work and perspective. Alvin Gouldner (1970) first discussed this matter almost 40 years ago. He suggested. The most basic changes in any science commonly derive not so much from the invention of new research techniques, but rather from new ways of looking at data that may have long existed. Indeed, they may neither refer to nor be occasioned by “data,” old or new. The most basic changes are in theory and in conceptual schemes, especially those that embody new back­ ground assumptions. They are thus changes in the way the world is seen, in what is believed to be real and valuable, (p. 34) At this stage in our history, the genetic explanation for behavior enjoys a privileged position in the marketplace of ideas. An unschooled observer might ask why we do not turn to the humanities for an understanding of the human condition, but I have doubts about whether the editors of the American Journal of Sociology have plans to pub­ lish an issue with the American Academy of Poets. With few exceptions (Miley 1988; Moran 1999) I am also unaware of any “Conversations” in Teaching Sociology in which authors plea for the inclusion of poems or sonnets in the sociology cur­ riculum. For reasons that relate to the exercise of power, attention is lavished on some fields, to the exclusion of others. Within the academy, the histor­ ical record is unequivocal: masculine, hypothesis­ testing, hard sciences triumphed over soft, feminine accounts of social history or personal biography (Bean 1998). At present, the fields of biology and medicine dominate discussions of a broad spectrum of issues, including obesity, homicide, and alcohol­ ism. Thus, grant money flows toward researchers who take a genetic approach to such topics. In the American Sociological Association’s 2005 presidential address, Troy Duster (2006) docu­ mented the difference between grants awarded to life scientists and those who emphasize the role of social structure in the analysis of social prob­ lems. The differences were noteworthy. In the supplement to the 2008 volume of the American Journal of Sociology, Freese (2008;S28) also suggested that attempts to understand the link between genetics and social structure are currently considered “hip,” and he is correct, at least with respect to the views of those in a position to award grants or publish articles. As a case in point, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided partial funding for the American Journal of Sociology's genetic supplement (Bearman 2008). The foundation’s goal is to improve health care delivery. In The Medicalization of Society, Conrad (2007) suggests that genetic explanations for behavior are welcomed into public conversations. He explains that our culture has been primed for the genetic point of view, because of “an abiding faith in science, rationality, and progress; the increased prestige of the medical profession; and the American penchant for individual and techni­ cal solutions to problems” (p. 8). As a nation, our assumptions about the underpinnings of our actions lean toward biological science. With respect to undergraduate students, socio­ biology is the perspective that they bring with them to class. In my introductory courses, students start each semester assuming that violence, greed, and selfishness are all part of the natural order. In my courses on marriage and family, students imagine that new mothers are guided by the benevolent hand of parental instincts, and when I teach criminology, I find that students believe that the high U.S. crime rate is the result of prolonged, elevated levels of testosterone. Thus, the question becomes. What are we to do as teaching sociologists? 1 do not know anyone who would deny that our lives rest, delicately, on foundations of biology. Familiarity with one single case of autism or Alzheimer’s disease is enough to remind us that we are all trapped in OcMMoaded front nOpJfaoM^tpub.oom al WYOMING COMM COLLEGE LIBRARIES on January 27,2010 �52 Teaching Sociology 38( I) the web of genetics. For most, the web is support­ ive. For some, it is unthinking and ruthless. Still, I believe I can speak for at least a subset of us when I say that we became sociologists because, after careful thought, we determined that geneticists will always be limited to explaining a small por­ tion of our similarities and differences. Most of us surely came to realize that the variables that shape who we are and what we become are historic and cultural. We manage our identities and determine our actions as we observe norms, enact roles, and share the values maintained within the groups to which we are meaningfully attached. As such, are we obliged to include a wide range of genetic terms and concepts in our lower-level courses? I say no. I see no need for an adjustment to the way we address biological views on human character or potential when we teach introductory courses. In my class, 1 take time to talk about the dubi­ ous history of sociobiology. I discuss the most egregious of the attempts at eugenics. Then I move to a more immediate application of biolog­ ical principles. 1 tell students that my male pattern baldness is a sign that my genes are more highly evolved than those of them with lush, full, apelike heads of hair. At this point in the term, they know when I am playing the role of the court jester. Machalek and Martin paint a more sober picture of biological research. They work to make a case that our thoughts and actions often proceed on the basis of a “common, biological platform shared by all humans" (p. 42). Of the concepts they describe, 1 plan to use the “startle response” as an example of the degree to which our genes deter­ mine our behaviors (p. 43). I know that my students will appreciate the discovery that people all over the planet squint their eyes and clench their back­ sides when a firecracker goes off unexpectedly. Introductory students deserve the best of what our discipline offers. I realize that priorities are subjective, but from my standpoint, sociobiology is not our field’s finest or highest achievement. There is a place for sociobiology within the disci­ pline, but studies of genetics and social structure are best reserved for graduate students or upper­ division undergraduates. The population of stu­ dents who take the introductory course have differ­ ent goals than those who enroll in our advanced classes. Most introductory students are not sociol­ ogy majors. They take our courses as part of the liberal arts curriculum. The introductory class is often their only exposure to the field. Thus, the survey course serves a distinctive role. Students take introductory biology and psychology along­ side sociology in their freshman or sophomore years, and at that time we should offer an effective counterpoint to the views espoused in fields where attention is focused on individuals, as opposed to historic and cultural context. I am sympathetic to the call to cross the bound­ aries of disciplines. My background is interdisci­ plinary, and I cherished the time I spent in pursuit of a multifaceted degree, but I did not venture into other fields until after I earned two credentials in the field of sociology. I benefited from having an intellectual home, so to speak, and I have done my best to pass that lesson on to my students. Wellestablished disciplines are needed to make the most of projects where researchers take an interdis­ ciplinary approach. Each field brings something valuable to a study—a method or a perspective. Without strong and unique fields, interdisciplinary woric simply becomes undisciplined. No matter where genetic principles are taught in the curriculum, however, the suggestion to stay apprised of new biological research is laud­ able. For my part, I have already taken the steps that Machalek and Martin suggest, although for different reasons than they had in mind. If discus­ sions with students are part of your courses, then the views, if not the data, of biologists are already present in your classroom. We owe it to students, and we owe it to ourselves, to stay engaged with scientists working to unravel the mysteries of genes. I can think of no better way to make our debunking sophisticated. With respect to our colleagues in the life scien­ ces, Machalek and Martin are right to point out that they have begun to see the limits of a narrow, biological perspective on human endeavors. For the sake of advancing all the fields of the acad­ emy, we should be in a position to help them bring social theory and social research to bear on what are ultimately social problems. That will likely mean sharing concepts and vocabulary. It should also mean collaboration on research that brings out the best in diverse disciplines. The improvement of our understanding of humanity gives us reason enough to consider the data and findings of biochemists and geneticists. 1 keep a quotation from one of my favorite poets in the top drawer of my office desk, however. It is a line in a poem by Muriel Rukeyser (1968). In The Speed of Darkness, she wrote, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms” (p. 111). OownloMM from nttpJ/taoaa^tpub.ooni « WYOMING COMM COLLEGE LIBRARIES on January 27.2010 �Hanson 53 REFERENCES Barash, David P. 1982. Sociobiology and Behavior, 2nd ed. New York; Elsevier. Bean, John. 1998. “Alternative Models of Professorial Roles: New Language to Reimagine Faculty Work.” Journal of Higher Education 69(5): 496512. Bearman, Peter. 2008. “Introduction: Exploring Genetics and Social Structure.” American Journal of Sociology 114(Suppl.): v-x. Chomsky, Noam. 1975. Reflections on Language. New York: Pantheon. Conrad, Peter. 2007. The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Duster, Troy. 2006. “Comparative Perspectives and Competing Explanations: Taking on the Newly Configured Reductionist Challenge to Sociology.” American Sociological Review 71(1): 1-15. Freese, Jeremy. 2008. “Genetics and the Social Science Explanation of Individual Outcomes." American Journal of Sociology 114(Suppl.): Sl-35. Gouldner, Alvin. 1970. The Coming Crisis of ff'estem Sociology. New York: Basic Books. Guo, Guang. 2006. “The Linking of Sociology and Biology.” Social Forces 85(1): 145-49. Hermstein, Richard and Charles Murray. 1994. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press. Machalek, Richard and Michael W. Martin. 2010. “Evolution, Biology, and Society: A Conversation for the 21st-Century Sociology Classroom.” Teaching Sociology 38(1):41-51. Miley, James. 1988. “By Its Right Name: The Relevance of Poetry for Sociology.” Teaching Sociology 16(2): 173-76. Moran, Timothy Patrick. 1999. “Versify Your Reading List: Using Poetry to Teach Inequality.” Teaching Sociology 27(2): 110-25. Rukeyeser, Muriel. 1968. The Speed of Darkness. New York: Random House. Shea, Christopher. 2009. “The Nature-Nurture Debate, Redux.” Pp B6 Chronicle of Higher Education. January 9. Bio Chad Hanson teaches sociology at Casper College in Casper, Wyoming. When he is not in the classroom he studies the behaviors of brook trout; up to his knees in mountain streams and with a fly rod in his hand. His book The Community College and the Good Society: How the Liberal Arts were Undermined and fVhat we can do to Bring them Back is forthcoming from Transaction Publishers. DownMaM (rem hBpJMo.Mgepub.oom al WY0MN6 COMM COLLEGE LBRARIE5 on Jwtuary 27,2010 � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Teach Softly and Debunk with a Big Stick: A Response to "Evolution, Biology, and Society: A Conversation for the 21st-Century Sociology Classroom" Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2010-01 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_13 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>Teaching Sociology</em> is published by the American Sociological Association https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/bdf418fd00adaad3942056f8ceeb3668.pdf 2f561c353fa8762f5021d5add64a4a6d PDF Text Text The Nevada Review Vol. 4 Spring 2012 No. 1 �A Field Guide to the Trout Stream in Your Heart Chad Hanson Early in the morning on the fifth of August, I start north out of Casper up the east flank of the Big Horn Range. The prairie is green on account of a wet spring and a storm in late July. My course will take me past Sheridan up to the town of Ranchester, where I catch a route through the mountains. Once I’m over the summit, I plan to head north one more time, across the Montana border, and onto a dirt road that leads to a canyon with Ram’s Horn Creek stirring at the bottom. While I’m driving I take note of the hawks perched on fence posts and telephone poles. Hawk number seven swoops toward the ground but I lose sight of him as he drops into the sagebrush. I assume he ound a field mouse or a prairie dog. It makes me wonder what hawks think about when they spot their prey from above. Do they see tender eg muscles? Do they begin to imagine the taste of a heart? I bet they do. Why wouldn’t they? I ask myself, ‘Why don’t I think along those lines?” I do not think of food when I see animals. Sometimes I skip breakfast when I’m on a fishing trip. Even with hunger pulling at my attention, when I catch a trout I do not see fillets. I admire the form and the colors. Then I put the fish back in the water. When I flush pheasants from the brush beside a creek, I do not think of drumsticks as they fly away, and when I see cattle in a pasture I don’t picture them as cheeseburgers. We are not the same as other animals. My friend Beck believes that we are driven to fly fish by the forces of biology. He claims that we are no different from any other predator, n his mind, it is an inborn lust for blood that drives us to lakes and rivers. For years, I sat in the passenger seat of his pickup, listening to stories about how our choices are determined by nature. Finally, I said, Chad Hanson lives with his wife and two cats in Casper, Wyoming. He teaches sociology at Casper College, contributes to academic journals, and writes poems in the haiku tradition. His essays and mort Stones have appeared in Sky Journal, Mountain Gazette, Third Coast, Pilgrimage, South Dakota Peview, and Morth Dakota Quarter^ among others. His first book. Swimming with Trout, is available from' the University of New Mexico Press. �Beck. I do what I want. I do things when I want and how I want I’m not driven by anything.” , , . He didn’t like that.' He appreciates the thought that his fly fishing habit comes to him as a primordial instinct. I am sympathetic. I warn an explanation for why I spend so much time up to my knees in moving wamr, and the biological explanation is easy, but I know it’s not the I take a left onto the road that meanders over the Big Horns The dimb to the top is drawn out over twenty miles. I take my time on the switchbacks The views get longer as I twist up the east slope. When I reach the summit, the road straightens and tracks off to foe west. I make a stop. Before foe road bends down toward foe lower elevations, it runs within two miles of foe Medicine Wheel The site has been preserved by foe managers of foe Bighorn National Forest Curious travelers park their cars and hike to foe edge of a butte where native people placed stones on foe ground in foe shape of a circle. The form is sixty-five feet in diameter. A second circle marks foe center of foe wheel, and foe center is connected to foe rim by twenty-eight spokes or lines made with rocks set into foe soil. Historians and anthropologists have spent generations trying to assess the meaning of foe Wheel. The spokes align with astrophysical patterns over foe course of a year. There are spokes that point toward foe rising and setting sun during foe solstices. The total number of spokes correspond to foe lunar cycle, and there are spokes that line up with stars like Rigel and Sirius. Even so, foe intent of foe Wheel’s creators has been a source of contention. No one knows who built foe circles and their motivation is unclear. Crow elders can only offer that foe site was built by people vX a chance that foe Medicine Wheel exists in its place and shape because foe builders liked its looks “Aesthetic reasons” have been offered as a rationale for its size and location. Standing alongside foe stones—staring two hundred miles into the distance—that speculation feels on target. It is hard to imagine ' that people built foe Wheel because they were biologically driven to place rocks in circles at foe edge of scenic overlooks. It’s even tougher to see how instincts could have played a role in producing any of the meaningful things that we created over foe course of humanity—music. �71/ Chad Hanson philosophy, or the; great works of literature. Through art we transcend our biology. Last year I served as a member of a panel convened to discuss the subject of writing about fly fishing. I sat at one end of a table. To mv flght sat a hero of mine, Ted Leeson, weU known for The Habit ofTdvers To his right sat another hero, John Gierach, famous for Trout Turn and a dozen other well regarded books. When the presentation started, each of us talked for ten minutes about the process we go through when we write stories or egsays. As the low ranking member on the panel I spoke first. Then Leeson addressed the group, and Gierach finished the presentation. We left thirty minutes for questions. The first person to raise a hand directed his comment to Gierach. A man in the front row asked, “Why fly fishing?” I sat there thinking” Thank you . I imagined that I was going to hear our guru address the’ rundamental issue that we face. • Gierach stared at the ceiling for a second. A room full of fly fishers waited with anticipation. He looked back at the audience. Gierach turned his gaze to the person who posed the question. Then he said “It’s pretty.” ’ I _ I wasn’t the onjy one thinking, “What?” I could see it on the faces in the crowd. Fly fishing is “pretty?” While I pondered the answer Gierach talked about the first time he saw someone cast a fly rod’ I thought about the first time I watched somebody casting, knee deep in a mountain stream. The beauty struck me, too. Fly fishing is not the most effective way to catch a trout. If you just want to put a fish in your net—you carry a carton of worms to a local waterway. Everyone knows that live bait works the best. But here we were, a crowd full of people who had disavowed the most effective way to catch a fish, because a fly line looks better. The Navajo are fond of the saying, “Go in beauty,” and Gierach is right. Fly fishing is at least one way that white people abide. Leeson went next. He took the same question. He started with a story about waiting for a flight in the Pordand, Oregon airport For five minutes no one understood his point. He painted a picture of the scene in the concourse. He described how he sat next to a woman with a^two year old resting in a collapsible stroUer. He explained that the child started crying when one of the airline employees barked an announcement through a microphone. �In response, ±e mother held up a quilt and stretched it in front of her face, hiding herself from the child. Every ten seconds she pulled the blanket^^away. Then she stuck her face up toward the toddler and cooed, Peek-a-bool” Soon the kid was giggling and squirming. It s a scene we ve aU enacted. We have been behind the quilt, and we have been in the stroller. I wasn’t sure what that had to do with fly fishing, but then Leeson made a transition to talking about one of his trips to the Deschutes River. Once again he took care to describe the setting: swift water, peaks in the distance, a forest of larch and pine. He talked, about flipping a blue-winged olive forty feet upstream. He explained how he had to mend his line to make sure the fly found a sweet spot. He told us how the olive looked as it spun down the bank. As we listened to Leeson, we became children nestled in our seats. Then he cooed, “Peek-a-boo!” A redside trout attacked the olive. Trout don’t say “peek-a-boo” when they attempt to eat an artificial fly, but they might as well. We fly fish, in part, because we like surprises. Gierach offered us beauty. Leeson gave us unresolved mystery and the pleasure that follows when something uncertain becomes clear. All I had to talk about was a modest childhood, spent in central Minnesota. I grew up on a creek set in between a swamp and a hardwood forest. But I didn’t teU the crowd about the water or the woods, at least not in the beginning. I started out by asking the audience if they’d ever seen somebody look at a piece of scenery and say, “This reminds me of...” Memories are uncanny. It is incredible what we can store and then conjure up in our minds, but the long record of people, places, and events creates a precedent, which we use to judge and then compare each moment we live through. For most of us, there are portions of our childhoods that are tough to follow. I spent summers wading and splashing in a stream beside my parent’s home. I took naps on the bank me and the birds, fish, swamp grass, and snapping turtles. No politics. No financial concerns. No knowledge of pollution, climate change, or species extinction. Compared to adult life, our childhoods often shine like pure states of affairs, but they are gone. In the words of Jackson Browne, time is a “conqueror,” banishing the things we love into the past. We cannot get our youth back, but we can try, and I am not ashamed to admit that I do that with a fly rod in my hand. �Chad Hanson _ I take one more moment to look at the Medicine Wheel. Then I hike back to the car and continue down the west slope of the ranee After twenty minutes, I reach the road that ends at the mouth of Ram’s Horn Canyon. At this point, names like Ram’s Horn are nothing more than reminders of the fauna that used to roam the ranges of the West. Eight years ago, on our way to Yellowstone, my wife and I made a stop at die Bighorn Sheep Center in Dubois, Wyoming. The center sits on the south side of the road that runs through the middle of town. Inside the building there are mounted sheep, taken from every comer of the world. Some of the mounts hang on the walls. Others are placed on die faux ridges of carefully wrought exhibits. The displays are impressive. On our way out, I stopped at the counter to talk with one of the center s staff. The woman looked to be fifty years old. Her hair was pulled into a bun in the back of her head, and she wore a pair of wirerimmed glasses. I walked toward her thinking, “This woman wiU answer any question I can think to ask.” I said, “Howdy,” and she smiled. I explained that I have hiked into the Big Horns on dozens of occasions. I told her that I began making trips to the Horns when I was in college. Then I mentioned how the number of trips increased when I actually moved to Wyoming. I said, “In all that time, I haven’t seen a bighorn.” I asked, “Are there any bighorns in the Big Horns?” She said, “No. Not to my knowledge.” I put on a flabbergasted face and asked, “Isn’t that why we call them the Big Horns? The bighorns?” “Yes. We caU them the Big Horns because at one time they were covered with bighorns.” “What happened?” Her explanation started down a predictable road. She described how the wild sheep in the Big Horns were hunted to the brink of extinction. She pointed to a row of sheep’s heads on the wall and asked Wouldn t you want one of those above your fireplace?” I said “No' Thank you,” but my answer was beside the point. Mounted ’sheep heads were a status symbol in the early part of the twentieth century. �• The West was still the frontier, and at the time, people wanted a piece of that in their living rooms. Hunting regulations curbed the wholesale slaughter of the Rockv Mountiun bighorn sheep, but hunters were not the last threat they would face. Wyoming is known as the Cowboy State, but when the phrase w^ coined there were more sheep than cattle within our borders. Domestic sheep carry an infection called pasteurella. They’ve een carriers for years. They are immune to the disease. Domestic sheep can live full lives with no outward effects. But wild sheep are not immune. When bighorns and domestics range over the same landscape the infection IS passed from the tame to the wild animals, and it makes them disorders, pneumonia in particular. Epidemics of prt,r/vvvZh-i:;uiiccd pneumonia wiped out herds of bighorn sheen including those that used to roam the Big Hom Range. When she fimshed explaining the demise of the bighorns in the Big Horns, I asked, Doesn’t that bother anyone?” She said, ‘Tou’re the first person to ask.” I was flattered to think that I was the first to ask, but it turns out Aat I wasn’t the only one outraged by the thought that there were no bighorns in the Big Horns. In the fall of 2004, the Game and Fish Department air-lifted forty sheep out of an Idaho canyon, and placed ±em at 8,000 feet of altitude on the west side of the range. The department hoped the herd would grow to include 200 animals and stabilize. The group has not grown to that size, but the population is stable, and that makes me feel better about the condition of my favorite mountains. It takes a minute for my feet to grow accustomed to the water The creek is freezing cold. It stings at first, but then I start to cast, and forget that I have toes. Mayflies hatch on the surface, spread their wings, and flutter in the air. The trout watch bugs from behind rocks and sunken logs. A splashing sound catches my ear. I look in time to see a brook trout arching back into the current on the downside of a leap. I whip a cast along the bank. The rod arches and the bug lands upstream, but the fly does not have time to ride the current. It is hit by a brookie. His belly shines in the air as he rolls over, sweeping the fly underwater. �94 Chad Hanson With my line in tow the fish makes a run toward a pool. He swims hard, but I pull him close despite his determination. Once I have the trout in hand I am quick with the hook, although, I take a moment to appreciate the colors on his sides. I ask the fish to forgive me for the intrusion. Even though I do not fully understand my desire to insert myself into the food chain of a stream, the compulsion is too strong to deny. Two days before the trip to Ram’s Horn, I left the house at noon and rode my bicycle to a local burrito stand. There were seven people waiting to place an order. At the counter, there stood four boys in their early teens. They looked like they had come from a soccer practice. Three men in business suits waited behind the boys. The kids were wiggling all over. They were smacking each other and laughing for reasons that no one else could understand. The businessmen stood silent behind their neckties—faces resentful. As I thought about the distinction between the adults and the teenagers, it occurred to me that I was looking at the difference between wild and domestic human beings. In the past, I have worn ties and worked fifty weeks out of the year. I know the effect that such a life has on a person. It’s debilitating, but it’s hard to stop. We yearn for homes and cars and clothes and sporting goods. Our desires trap us on the road to what we think of as success, and that road does not have an exit. Sometimes, we drive into the weedy ditch beside the economic freeway of our lives. We do it because we know we gave up something when we became middle class. We know that something untamed stiS exists in the tall grass and sagebrush beyond the parking lots and close­ cropped lawns. We fly fish in part because we all harbor a sense of loss. We’ve seen fields of lupine bud-dozed and paved into subdivisions. We’ve had to watch people we love grow old and pass away. We’ve read the reports that explain how pikas, marmots, and polar bears are scheduled for oblivion. With all of the usual bad news on TV, we start to yearn. The feeling begins as a quiet longing, but it grows. We develop a need for sensual experience—the reality of moving water, jumping fish, tall peaks, and quaking leaves. We are the yearning creatures on this good green Earth. Hawks do not crave anything. Trout do not possess desires. Cats and coyotes long for nothing. We are different. We yearn our way into plastic, �throw-away lives, and then we yearn for a way out. We yearn for beauty, for what is gone, for whatever waits around the next corner, unseen. We might be kidding ourselves, with our vests full of gadgets, our brand-named waders, and our SUVs. We’re actors playing the parts available to us in our culture. Our society said, “Take a page from the screenplay of A VJver 'Bains Through If and head for a body of water.” When we can afford the costume and the props, some of us are happy to oblige. Our actions are not forced on us by genetics, but there is a thirst that afflicts people that come of age in this country. For those of us with fly rod tubes in our closets, the longing appears as an urge to stand knee deep in rivers, colorful rocks under our feet, birds chirping in the branches overhead, a light breeze carrying the seeds of cottonwoods— all of it thrumming to the rhythm of a stream. ■ � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Magazine Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Field Guide to the Trout Stream in Your Heart Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2012 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_14 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>The Nevada Review</em> is published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/42ed47191efc103f6dca32be63b083ca.pdf 19d21d15a675b2cb273f1bd09cb407bf PDF Text Text Life Writing VOLUME 9 NUMBER 2 {JUNE 2012) Brown Trout, Pantheists and Me Downloaded by [T&F Internal Users], [Anita Braun] at 13:15 03 May 2012 Chad Hanson Keywords self-Reflection; travel; fly fishing; spirituality In the first sentence of A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean offers a line that explains the essence of his childhood. He writes, ‘There was no clear line between religion and fly fishing’. 1 first saw those words 21 years ago. At the time, I wasn’t sure what he meant, so this year I reread the story. I assumed that I missed themes and details. As it turns out, I missed a lot. I still have questions about the relationship between faith and fishing, but rereading Maclean forced me to think about prayer. Praying and casting share a likeness. They’re both shots into the invisible world beyond our vision or capacity to know. They both rely on an ability to hope. In the past two decades, I’ve cast more lines than prayers, and at times that made me feel a little uneasy. I felt like I fell from the fold. I learned to pray by whispering a series of requests. Some of them bordered on the menial. Some of them had to do with the outcome of particular college hockey tournaments. As an adult, I became less inclined to place demands on the creator of the universe. That meant I prayed less, and as I prayed less, I started spending more time in the library. I needed to find out if my actions were going to buy me a ticket to eternal damnation. I discovered that prayers are offered in a range of ways. They also come with a variety of intentions. I like Emerson on the subject. He wrote, ‘Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life*. In his mind, there are no requests. There is no admission of sins or transgressions. The act of prayer is like an acknowledgement or a meditation. When I ponder Ralph Waldo’s definition, it feels like permission to think of the time I spend appreciating life as a prayer. I also take comfort in the words of Mary Oliver. She is wiser than me, but she is equally confused, and that makes me feel good. She once wrote, ‘I don’t know what a prayer is, but I do know how to pay attention’. I’m usually kept from paying attention to anything that is not on my to-do list. Like everyone else, I’m bound up in our culture of speed, but each summer 1 take time to travel on foot ISSN 1448-4528 print/1751-2964 online/12/020221-08 n Routledge © 2012 Taylor a Francis http;//dx.doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2012.667739 �Downloaded by [T&F Internal Users], (Anita Braun] at 13:15 03 May 2012 222 HANSON with a backpack. On the bank of a creek, with a fly rod in my hand, the world receives my attention. This year, I pencilled ‘Wind Rivers’ on to the calendar in August. The Winds are scenic and remote. They are a land of dark forests and lucid creeks. Native Americans camped in the foothills and hunted the slopes for 15,000 years. White settlers marvelled at the beauty of the peaks and the bountiful game—including the cutthroat trout. The ancestors of modern cutthroats found their way to the region through the tributaries of the Snake River. Until the twentieth century, they were the only trout to swim the waters of the Wind Rivers. That started to change in 1930, when a fishing guide by the name of Finis Mitchell started stocking fingerlings in lakes above 9,000 feet. Over the course of a decade, he packed more than two million trout into the range, in wooden buckets strapped to the backs of donkeys. He’s been described as the ‘Johnny Appleseed of Trout’. He wandered all over the mountains, planting fish in the water. Four generations of fly fishers are familiar with the work of Finis Mitchell. Some vrish he would have left the lakes and streams as he found them—solely occupied by cutthroat trout. Others are happy to catch brookies, browns and rainbows. Mitchell even stocked his favorite lakes with golden trout from California. I know people who make an annual pilgrimage to the Winds in search of golden trout. But the jury is split. For every fly fisher that would have thanked him for filling the waters with a variety of species, there are others who shrug their shoulders and wish the ecosystem looked the way it did before he stocked non-native fish. When a discussion of Mitchell’s work comes up in Wyoming, there are questions about his motivation. Some are quick to point out that he made his living as a guide. To Mitchell, more fish in the lakes meant happier clients and therefore more bookings and higher profits for his business. It is easy to imagine how money might have moved him to sow the seeds of new trout populations, and I am typically satisfied to use greed to explain behavior, but not in the case of Finis Mitchell. In 1999, the University of Utah published a guidebook that he wrote entitled Wind River Trails. It’s not a regular guidebook. The editors collected Mitchell’s sketches and maps of routes through the mountains. Then they placed them in an order that corresponds to trailheads. That is a standard arrangement, but the book is distinctive because it begins with his autobiography, and it is unique because it’s sprinkled with poems. I have 20 guidebooks on the bookshelf in my office. None of them contain poems. In his verses, Mitchell reveals his purpose. When you read the poetry, you picture an evangelist, spreading the word as he spreads fish. He makes it plain that he felt moved to plant trout in the Wind Rivers, and then share them vrith every person he could enlist to tag along on fishing trips. In a poem titled ‘My Thoughts’, he says, ‘To enjoy life, we must help others do likewise’, and in a scrap of verse titled ‘My Pledge to Future Generations’, he sheds light on the �BROWN TROUT, PANTHEISTS AND ME 223 force that compelled him to stock the Winds with fish from the West coast, Germany and New England: Downloaded by [T&F Internal Users], [Anita Braun] at 13:15 03 May 2012 V/hile here on earth I shah endeavor with all my ability and steadfast efforts to preserve and add to our wilderness, so all who follow in my footsteps might have the same opportunity to use and enjoy it as I have. I understand Mitchell’s desire to protect the natural world. I feel the same sense of responsibility that inspired him, and I also share his enthusiasm for wild places. My only question has to do with our capacity to ‘add to our wilderness’. On the way to the Wind Rivers, Highway 23 weaves through the Sweetwater Rocks, a region of granite uprisings. The planet pushed mountainous stones up out of the high prairie, and then the wind sculpted them into monoliths. The scenery makes it tough to concentrate on the road or my steering wheel. After a quick stop in Lander, I jump back into my wagon and point it toward the trailhead. There are no paved thoroughfares or passes over the range, so a trip to the Winds involves driving on gravel streets. I roll over the crest of a hill and come upon a group of antelope. A buck and three lady admirers eat grass on the shoulder. Pronghorn often graze between the fences that line roads. Cows eat the plants on the lee side of the barbed wire, but in the ditches where the cows can’t go, the vegetation flourishes. I startle the animals. The buck raises his head when he hears the car. He stands like a silhouette for a second, and then he bolts, smashing into the fence on the roadside. In the moment that it takes to pass the antelope, I watch the buck crash into the fence another time, with the females nervously milling around in the bottom of the ditch. Pronghorn antelope can’t jump. I shouldn’t say that. They could jump. It’s just that they don’t. Or they won’t. It never occurs to them to use their legs to lift them over anything. Pronghorn evolved on the prairies and basins, in between the ranges of the Rocky Mountain states. For half a million years they had no reason to think about leaping. There were bears and lions to outrun in foot races, but there were no obstacles. No logs or sticks of any size. No rocks that they could not avoid by turning to the left or right. White people changed the formula. We fenced the West. By the end of a century, pronghorn faced barriers that stretched before them to the horizon. Our history has been tough on their migratory patterns. If you look closely at pronghorn in states like Wyoming, you will notice the hair on their backs is teased up and the skin is often scarred. They spend too much time scraping through horizontal layers of barbed wire. It’s ironic that we refer to fences, houses and outbuildings as ‘improvements’. Antelope don’t likely see the fencing of the prairie as an improvement. Our actions are motivated by self-regard. We often build and change and destroy without thinking of the consequence. That is a new way of relating to the planet, however. We have a longer history of pantheistic thoughtfulness. In the �Downloaded by [T&F Internal Users], [Anita Braun] at 13:15 03 May 2012 224 HANSON second century BC, Marcus Aurelius said, ‘Everything is interv/oven’, and he went on to add, ‘The web is holy’. I am not sure that Finis Mitchell thought about the degree to which everything is interwoven, but I know that he would have agreed with Marcus Aurelius on one thing—the web is holy. I ease the wagon to a stop at the trailhead. I spend a minute stuffing food and clothes into my pack. Before I step on to the trail, I spread my topographic map over the hood of the Subaru. I haven’t hiked here in the past, so I try to memorize the route before I have to wonder where I’m going in the vrilderness. I start on a trail that leads into the north, along the bank of New Fork Creek. I plan to follow the path up to 10,000 feet, cross three ridges, pass by the south side of the Lozier Ponds and reach my destination on the shores of Elbow Lake, resting below Sky Pilot Ridge. I plan to take two days to reach the end and two days to hike back. That leaves a day to fly fish and meander through the rock and ice. Hiking down the bank of the New Fork, I am reminded of a phrase used by the Russian writer Gogol. He described the world as a ‘surging immensity’. Water rushes beside the trail. The green ghost-backs of trout slip in between boulders. Nuthatches chirp in the pine trees, and a flock of turkey vultures circles overhead—snow-covered peaks in the distance. Three miles from the parking lot, the path leaves the shore of the creek and switchbacks up a ridge between Dome Peak and Double Top Mountain. I arrive at the Lozier Ponds in the light of dusk. I’m exhausted. I intended to fish today, but my eagerness waned as I struggled up the final climb. Mosquitoes attack every patch of skin I’ve left exposed. All I can think about is setting up my tent. In wilderness areas, the Forest Service insists that you leave 100 feet of ground between your shelter and a body of water. I’ve always obeyed the rule. You never know when a flood could rise up and steal you from the bank of a river. That is not the only reason to comply, though. Animals come to drink in the evening. If they see people on shore they shy away, and they need the water. Behind the walls of the tent I take time to eat a sandwich, but I am not tired enough to go to sleep. In what remains of the alpenglow above the peaks off to the west, I decide to stroll through the ponds of the Lozier valley. I walk through a stand of willow bushes to the north. I pass between ponds on a strip of land, and from my map I learn that I am closing in on the last of the pools. Then I step through a row of branches and I’m greeted by an acre of water. A bull moose wanders out of the willow shrubs on the bank to my left. I sink into the grass and hold my body motionless. Moose are keen when it comes to detecting movement. The bull walks knee-deep into the pool. He turns back toward the shore and nibbles on the branch of a willow. He makes a puffing sound through his nostrils. He swings his rack toward the water, and then back to the shrubbery. I can’t take my eyes off of the moose. I feel like I’m getting a gift—a chance to watch a beast, four times bigger than me, caught in the moment on the bank of a spring pond. Hiding in the wings, I am reminded that I am not the center of the universe. I begin to doubt the universe has a center. If it does, I think it might exist in the heart of this animal or maybe in the sand and gravel underneath his feet. �Downloaded by [T&F Internal Users], [Anita Braun] at 13:15 03 May 2012 BROWN TROUT, PANTHEISTS AND ME 225 It’s getting dark, and I still have to hike back to the tent, so I stand up and start to v/alk away. After 10 paces, I look back and find the moose studying my retreat, but he is not concerned. When our eyes meet he goes back to chewing the willow. I sleep well next to the Lozier Ponds. In the morning, I’m up at sunrise and so are the mosquitoes. I boil water, make a cup of coffee and then enjoy it from behind the screen door of the tent. When the caffeine settles in my veins, I pack my gear and start down the trail to Elbow Lake. I make it to shore by mid-morning. Even before noon the light from the sun is palpable. I set up camp on the edge of a stand of white bark pine. The site offers a view of the lake and the ridge above. Geologists refer to the landform as a cirque. 70,000 years ago, glaciers crept over the region. They scraped the soil away and revealed granite from the Pre-Cambrian age. As I stake my tent to the ground, the 20-storey wall of stone pulls on my attention. My eyes drift away from the tent to linger on the rock that soars above my site. After I put the last stake in the ground, I assemble my fly rod and walk toward the bank, but before I make it to the water I stop to sit on a boulder. Years ago, I discovered that 2000 feet of granite have the effect of shrinking your ego to the size of a raisin. It’s easy to feel big strolling through the rooms of your own house. When you roll down the sidewalks of your town, the setting feels like it’s been catered to you, but a 20-storey cirque can bend your sense of where you fit in this world. In relation to the rock, my 40 years amount to the time it takes for a bubble to form and then pop on the surface of a creek. I used to test myself against the elements. I used to choose routes that were long and steep enough to challenge my strength and endurance. If I finished what I set out to achieve, I went home feeling accomplished. My approach is different, today. When I spend time at high elevation, beneath cliff walls made of granite, it is to remind myself that it doesn’t matter if I live up to expectations. We turn to dust. I spend half an hour letting my eyes wander over the wall of stone that foists the ridge up close to 13,000 feet. Six stories up and to the right a rock outcropping plays host to a row of pines that cling to life on the side of a cliff. The trees remind me of a conversation that took place between my wife and me outside Cooke City, Montana. Lynn and 1 sit beside the Lamar River. We’re staring at the peak they call The Thunderer. We pass a pair of binoculars between us. Four pelicans follow the river toward the west. Lynn sees a strip of pines higher than the tree line, and she wonders out loud how they grew up above the forest. I can’t resist an opportunity to speak. I slip into professor mode and hold forth on a lesson from the biology course I took as a sophomore. I explain how birds eat seeds, fly them up to ridges, poop them out and start new stands of trees. She lets me finish. Then without looking my direction, she says, ‘I thought God planted the trees on that ridge’. I take a quiet sip of coffee from our Thermos. Then I say, ‘Yeah. I suppose he did’. �Downloaded by [T&F Internal Users], [Anita Braun] at 13:15 03 May 2012 226 HANSON I stand up and walk toward the lake, but on my way, I turn to look at the boulder that had been serving as my perch. It’s a piece of granite from the wall above. Over the course of time, water seeps into the crevices of rocks. In the fall when the temperature drops, the water expands and presses on the fissures. That widens the crack and busts the stone. In other words, a cup of water pried this three-ton boulder from a cliff. Think about that, next time you fill a glass tumbler at your sink. Buddhists have long held that water is the Earth’s most powerful force—not volcanoes, not earthquakes, not killer whales—nothing flashy or dramatic. When I leave home for more than a few days, I store my acoustic guitar in its case along with a freshly dampened sponge. The sponge is made for this purpose. It has a hook on one end that allows it to dangle into the body of the instrument. When I return, the first strum is an octave higher than before. The water evaporates and the wood absorbs the liquid through the air. That forces the guitar to swell and stretch its strings. Loren Eisley wrote one of my favorite lines on this subject. He said, ‘If there is magic on this planet it is contained in water’. I walk toward the bank. Mosquitoes buzz over the lake, so I choose a fly to match their appearance. I loft a cast into the air. A light wind riffles the surface. I let the fly sit still for a moment. Then I jiggle the line to make the fake bug look alive. I watch the fly for ten more seconds. No takers. The lake is deeper to the left, so I walk the shore sending casts into the blue water. I haven’t seen any fish, so I assume it’s going to take something special to coax one up to take a fly. I sift through my tackle until I find a Stimulator, an oversized orange tuft of fur with a hook on the inside. It hasn’t been used lately. I ruffle my fingers through the hackle to spruce it up and give it life. While I fiddle with the fly, I notice a piece of plastic on the ground. It is a leader bag. The retail sticker on the outside says, ‘Three Pack!’ I catch myself whispering, ‘What the hell?’ I wonder what kind of person hikes to a spot like this one—marches two days away from anything— only to junk the place up with reminders of our throw-away society. It is tough to imagine. Chet Raymo suggested that Americans are autistic when it comes to our relationship with the land. He claims that we are incapable of making a genuine connection to the world, which is odd for a nation that declares itself to be Christian, and thus loving in every direction. In his book When God is Cone, Everything is Holy, Raymo recounts our long-running relationship with our environment. He explains that we’ve been at odds with nature for most of our history. Plagues wiped us out. Droughts starved children, wild animals chased us and fires burned entire villages. Nature used to make us feel afraid. Thus, people harbor a deep-rooted sense of anger. Fear, hate and disrespect are a nuclear family. They live in an apartment in the basement of our temperaments. I tuck the plastic bag into the pocket of my shorts. I figure it won’t kill me to carry it off the mountain. I keep casting. Then the wind picks up. The breeze makes it difficult to fling the fly, but I continue anyhow. I watch the lake like a sailor. Ripples on the surface let me locate the next gust and when I see a break I take a cast. I’m able to send the Stimulator 40 feet into the air, past a drop-off into deep water. �Downloaded by [T&F Internal Users], [Anita Braun] at 13:15 03 May 2012 BROWN TROUT, PANTHEISTS AND ME 227 The waves begin to toss the fly. I can barely see the bug, bobbing in between whitecaps. With the fly still 30 feet from shore, I lose sight of it completely. I lift the rod to bring my line up into view—and there’s a splash. Then my rod bends as a trout makes a run toward the depths. The fish’s attempt to shake the fly takes him down into the water, but the line keeps him from running away. He swims to the right, and I hike along shore to match his pace, reeling and easing him toward the bank. At this point, the trout’s identity is still a mystery. By now a rainbow would have jumped twice—shaking and tossing its head. I think to myself. It’s a golden trout. I’ve never seen one in person. I have photographs and paintings of them, but I haven’t seen one in the flesh. The fish has more energy than he should. It takes longer than I expect to lure him into the shallows. I take up line, but then he pulls it back with charges toward the center of the lake. Two more minutes and I pull him in past the drop­ off, into water less than three feet deep. I see the fish against the bottom. His shape, color and markings are familiar. It is a German brown. He’s beautiful. 1 step into the lake. As the water laps onto my knees I reach down, grab the fish, and raise him up so I can pull the hook out of his mouth. He isn’t gold, but I don’t care. His belly is awash in copper. Orange spots cover his sides. I do not hold the trout for too long, but in the moment before I release him back into the lake, the situation strikes me as a miracle. I am aware that there is no mystery in the daily operation of a fish. We know where they came from. We know the purpose of every cell in an animal’s body. In other words, we know how a trout works, but we don’t know the answers to all of the questions. In particular, we don’t have answers to the pesky little question, ‘Why?’ I ask myself. Why this fish? Why this mountain? Why are we here, together, in this corner of the otherwise barren cosmos? Like ours, trout’s bodies are made of water. As I slip the fish beneath a wave, it occurs to me that I am pouring water back into water. The trout swims across the shallow shelf extending out into the lake. I watch him while he shrinks away—a band of fog—a pack of molecules that agreed to take the shape of a brown trout. I sit on a boulder near the bank. I am not through casting, but the fish gave me an occasion to contemplate. The Bible paints a picture of the afterlife: pearly gates, streets made of gold, angels on high, etc. I know people who spend hours trying to imagine the details. I cannot think along those lines. Most of the time there is too much in front of me to try to comprehend. My views lean toward those of Thoreau, who wrote, ‘Give me one world at a time, please’. For my part, I would shrink the request further. I say, ‘One trout at a time’. Giving a fish my reverence might be the best I can do in the way of prayer. References Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Self-Reliance and Other Essays. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1993. �228 HANSON Downloaded by [T&F Internal Users], [Anita Braun] at 13:15 03 May 2012 Eiseley, Loren. The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature. New York: Vintage Books, 1959. Gogol, Nikolai. Dead Souls. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004. Maclean, Norman. A River Runs Through it and Other Stories. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Oliver, Mary. The House of Light. New York: Beacon Press, 1990. Richardson, Robert. Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brown Trout, Pantheists, and Me Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2012-05 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_15 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>Life Writing</em> is published by Taylor &amp; Francis, LLC https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/58d148fec0c353e414771069391e55ae.pdf aed9bc57850d2557f0f944431bd05909 PDF Text Text CHAD HANSON Call the Wild by its Name I don't drink the way I did when I was young. It has been years since I drank un­ til I turned into a green giant. It's been even longer since I drank until I became an iguana man. But I am off to a good start. I'm feeling large and it's not even ten o'clock. The occasion is the fall fund-raiser for the Wyoming Wilderness So­ ciety. The group spent the last five years trying to pass a bill that would list Rock Creek, on the east slope of the Big Hom Range, as a "wilderness" protected by the government. Their efforts have not been a success and the cost of the endeav­ or saps their savings every year. The disposable income in my budget is usually enough to buy a medium pizza, but I do what I can at the Society's donation jar. I talk too much when I drink tequila. Sentences are shooting from my mouth like water through a fire hose. I've talked with everybody in a ten-foot radius, so my eyes start to wander toward a row of pictures of Rock Creek taped up near the entrance to the bar. There are satellite photos posted next to topo­ graphic maps. I've hiked all over the Big Homs, but I have not been to Rock Creek, so I study the images. One of the members of the Wilderness Society takes note of the man staring with his face pointed toward the wall. He wanders over and asks, "Do you have any questions?" I say, "Yes. 1 am a question mark. Do you like tequila?" He is sober—bless his heart—so I try to reign in the drunk talk. Even though I know the answer, I decide to make conversation by asking, "How's it going with the effort to make this place a wilderness?" He explains that they've faced setbacks in the struggle to protect the creek. He tells me that senators from both of the coasts and the Midwest pledged sup­ port for a bill that would create the Rock Creek Wilderness, but he adds, "The congressional delegation from Wyoming has been skeptical." Since I am drunk I cannot help myself. I say, "Fucking Republicans!" Then I realize that 1 spoke too candidly. He gives me the hand signal for, "Please. Mister. Not so loud." He tells me they have had good conversations with our senators and our representative. He says, "We're hopeful. They're plan­ ning to hold a series of meetings with ranchers and business people from the town of Buffalo. We believe they favor the wilderness designation. That might earn a vote or two." The Society's staff are earnest and professional. They work with whoever we happen to elect. They don't let politics or vendettas keep them from pursuing their objective—to save rivers and mountains. He asks, "Have you hiked into Rock Creek?" I say, "No." 48 [ The Chariton Review CHAD HANSON �He points to the map and mentions a green valley and a series of rock cliffs, but I am not listening. I have reached the limit of my alcohol-shortened attention span. When I am sober. I'm a decent listener. When 1 am drunk—1 do the talking. He can sense I am distracted, so he says, "Anyway. You need to go up there. In the spring, after the snow-melt, check it out." I say, "Okay. Sounds good. I'll go." Tequila shots or not, I gave the man my word. In March, I begin to look for my copy of Hiking Wyoming's Cloud Peak Wilderness by Erik Molvar. Cloud Peak is the only wilderness in the Big Homs. By comparison, the Wind Rivers are home to three separate wilderness areas: Bridger, Fitzpatrick, and Popo Agie. The proposed Rock Creek Wilderness would lie adjacent to Cloud Peak, so Molvar includes a route along the South and Middle forks in his rendering of the area. The Hunter Trailhead serves as a starting point for travelers headed in four dif­ ferent directions. I choose trail #396, but I discover that the path is not marked or identified. I spend ten minutes poring over topographic lines and conclude that the trail I'm on is probably #396. It's a jeep road running up a slope, cov­ ered with lodge pole pines. A mile into the hike I meet a group of people riding ATVs. The lead rider shoots me a wave. Despite the noise I raise a hand, wave back, and manage a smile. By the lime the third rider passes, a cloud of dust fills the air. I pull my shin over my nose to protect my lungs from the dirt rising up from behind the machinery. The last two riders are not amused by my attempt to keep from hav­ ing to use my asthma inhaler. They scowl as if to say, "Yeah. Yeah. We're the bad guys. Big, bad, noisy four-wheelers, ruining the hike of a nature lover." We all know the narrative. Most of our public property is managed for "multiple use." That means the land is open to a mixture of activities: recreational, industrial, motorized, non-motorized, etc. Throughout Wyoming and the West, however, the doctrine of multiple use has been seen as a way to justify coal mining and drilling for oil or natural gas. Voices from the industry cry out, "Multiple use!" They claim that drilling and strip mining deserve the same level of acceptance as hiking or bird watching—a use is a use, right? Not exactly. Some uses prohibit others. In the West, this point has proven difficult to grasp. I will never understand, for example, why hunters, fly fishers, and other outdoor people vole for politi­ cians who they know to favor a single use for public land: petroleum drilling. A popular bumper sticker around the turn of the century said "Sportsmen for Bush." As a former oil company executive, George W. Bush set a clear preference for public land use: drill here, drill now, and drill as fast as possible. I always wondered what the Sportsmen for Bush tribe imagined as an ideal hunting trip. I figure they must have been hoping for a chance to prowl through oil derricks CHAD HANSON The Chariton Review | 49 �looking for lost elk, stunned and confused by the industrial development. Actu­ ally, I know better than that. Hunters avoid strip mines and drilling rigs, just like the deer and antelope. Despite the shortcomings of "multiple use" and the flaws in our land manage­ ment policies, I lumber on. The dust settles. The sound of the four-wheelers fades, and I cover three miles in silence. Then 1 enter an area that was burned eleven years ago. New trees took the place of the old. Today they stand fourteen feet tall. The young trees form a tight forest, lining both sides of the trail. Hiking through the pines reminds me that I'm not sure if I am on the right pathway. A sense of trepidation strikes. In the past I've taken hikes to nowhere. I used to have a theory about the North American landscape. I believed that when white people moved west and found beautiful places, they linked them to hell or the devil. I assumed they did so to keep people from worshipping the land as opposed to the man up in the sky. My beliefs were formed in sev­ enth grade. My family spent the day at the base of Devil's Tower on a summer vacation. My views were then confirmed on a trip to Hell's Gate in the Tonto National Forest. With rocks like these providing evidence to support my theory, I took off toward anyplace associated with the Prince of Darkness. For example, in Arizona there are five places called "Diablo Canyon." I've been to every one of them, and in each case I returned tired, scratched, dehydrated, and, for the most part, unimpressed. I start to call the trail I'm on "Diablo Path," but then I notice a sign marking a crossroad. Forest Service trail #477. The sign confirms that I am heading to Rock Creek. I hear the sound of water running over a streambed. As I walk, the whisper turns into a roar and then the trail splits to the left and right. My map says the path to the right follows the South Fork of the creek. The original plan included a hike down the South Fork to its confluence with the Middle Fork, but the volume is louder to the left, and I am tired, so I take the short route to the brook. After five minutes, the path crosses the stream and then runs up the side of a mountain. From my map I learn that the trail leads to Gem Lake, but 1 am not climbing a mountain, not even to prospect for a gem. The bank of the creek looks like a fine place to make camp. 1 take off my pack, shuck the boots off of my feet, and change into sandals. When I was young, I didn't think I would slow down until I retired. 1 had no idea what the decade of my forties held in store. A blister bums my right ankle. My left knee squeaks because the cartilage is thin, and the arches in my feet ache 50 I The Chariton Review CHAD HANSON �to the rhythm of my stride. I find a flat rock on the shore. Then I sit and dangle my feet in the aeek. I feel weightless with the pack off of my back. For fifteen minutes, the water massages my tendons. The longest part of the journey is over, so I take a moment to look at my sur­ roundings. It's a disaster of a forest. This is not a well-groomed park. It's not a tourist attraction. Great trees lie prostrate on the ground, their roots tom up and thrust into the air. Stumps and broken logs cover the area and the boughs of ponderosa pines create a canopy over the land. They make the place feel dark, although it's still the afternoon. I walk downriver to the spot where the trail meets the creek. A row of logs jut out from the bank. Their ends have been sawed off and one of them holds onto a braided wire cable. The metal looks fifty years old. A bridge stood here, but now it's gone, and that makes me happy. Before the government will chris­ ten a place as a wilderness, it must be free from signs of human tampering. I'm exhausted. I need a boost of energy. I set my stove on a boulder. Then I boil waler and pour it through a portable coffee filter. Sometimes, when I drink coffee, I get too canied away. After a cup, I decide I'm going to lake the hike to the Middle Fork with my fly rod and a banana. After I make ii to the confluence, I plan to fish my way back upriver. The plan requires me to walk three miles of creek with a fly rod in my hand—not making casts? It doesn't take too long to figure out that the hike is not going to work like that. For the first ten minutes, I am not tempted. White­ water rushes down the creek bed, so it's hard to see where I could lay a bug on the surface. Then I reach a spot where hikers have to ford the stream. At the point where people cross, the creek pools up and runs slowly. A century of bustling feet pushed the rocks across the bottom, creating a pool where the cur­ rent can slow down. I find myself approaching still waler. I crouch and waddle toward the shore. Brook Trout. It looks like there are four trout. Maybe more trout? 1 don't know. They're ghosting around on the downstream side of the pool. They're holding in the current above the rocks that churn the stream into rapids. My first thought is to fire my fly onto the surface, but I can't. My fishing rod is made of fiberglass. I can't fire anything with this pole, even when my senses urge me to rush into ac­ tion. 7116 rod bends like a loosely coiled spring. Quick motions are impossible. Fiberglass rods have taught me a number of things. The most important lesson has to do with time. Nothing happens fast with fiberglass. Catching fish with this stick takes more patience than 1 usually possess. Back in the workaday world of our culture, I blast through life like everybody else. I throw myself at each week and then I struggle to clean my desk so I can start over on Monday. CHAD HANSON The Chariton Review | 5 J �Beside the stream I have to tell myself, "Calm down." I decide to hold my place three yards from shore. 1 imagine that two false casts will carry the fly upstream from the trout swimming closest to me in the water. Boing. Boing. The rod whisks line with gentle ease. My fly falls onto the surface and the trout peels away from the squadron. Then he bites the bug. I lift the rod at the right time, the line jumps up off of the pool, and I am bound to a brook trout. It only takes a minute to bring the fish to hand. He's seven inches long. I turn him sideways in the creek so I can slip the hook out of his mouth. That gives me a chance to see the fish's length in its entirety. Pink dots and blue circles cover his belly and shoulders. I am mesmerized by the shimmering life. Brook trout are not native to the Rockies. They were planted here by wellmeaning people, smitten by the colors holding my attention now. For some, the non-native status makes their presence seem unnatural. I understand the point, but my feelings are halfhearted. Despite the long eastern roots of his family tree, this fish was bom in Wyoming. He is as wild as the wind that shakes the branches of the pines. I slip him back into the pool. He doesn't pause. He races upstream into whitewater. I have to ford the creek another four more times before reaching the con­ fluence of the South and Middle Forks. I catch a brook trout at each one of the crossings. The trail splits at a fork where the two waters meet. One branch follows the Middle Fork into a canyon. The mouths of canyons always feel like invitations and this one calls to me in a familiar tone. I cannot answer. It's too late. I already ate my banana and I figure I am going to need the rest of my energy to make it back to camp. Then I hear my voice out loud, even though I am alone, "Maybe I'll take a look," I walk six paces up the Middle Fork and then across the water on the tops of two rocks that break the surface. On the far side of the creek, a game trail snakes up a short ridge. I hike the path, stepping through shrubbery, and find a field of lupines in full violet. The meadow reaches up a sleep bank to the left, climbs five hundred feet up a hillside, and then disappears around a bend. In front of me, the flowers climb up one more rise. The peak looms ten stories above. At the top, a rock formation suggests a lookout over the conflu­ ence of the South and Middle forks. The summit tempts me to continue. I take a moment to scan the slope. It appears that I could hike up to the peak. I set my fly rod on the ground and mark its place next to a tree, and then I start up the meadow. It occurs to me that I am not on a trail. I've been on a path since I started hiking. Now I am meandering over a field. 1 feel liberated, but constrained. Trails serve a purpose, but they act like mental cruise control. On a hiking trail, my mind is free to wander over all kinds of tenain—real or imagined. I conjure memories and mull over questions, most of them unrelated to the place I travel 52 [ The Chariton Review CHAD HANSON �through. Walking through the foliage, I have to think about every step. The hill is steeper than I imagined. I switchback left and right to shrink the angle of the climb. My heart pounds in my chest. There is too much to see. I don't know where to concentrate; the endless trees, a rock outcropping, purple flowers at my feet? After twenty more minutes the choice becomes obvious. 1 step onto the summit. Then 1 turn and face the scene below. 1 find myself staring over the valley that cradles the two forks of the creek. The land tilts up at me in every direction. Treetops melt together to form a blan­ ket of green, arching up from the lowlands, reaching high onto the rock ledges that guard the valley's rim. In four places, spires of granite burst up through a wash of pine needles, announcing their victory in the battle against erosion. It's all too much. I have to sit. I drop onto the ground and cross my legs. I scan the view stretching before me to the north and south. The air is motion­ less. In Wyoming, the wind rarely ceases from blowing. When it does, the world slows down and time whispers to a standstill. I find myself in the midst of a pure moment. My mind is absorbed with the scenery in front of me. Not one stray idea. No words or phrases running through my consciousness. The moment lingers for ten minutes. Half an hour? I can't tell. When I come out of the trance my first thought has to do with mountain climbing. I'm a canyon rat. 1 have never been a mountaineer, but on top of this nameless ridge in the proposed new Rock Creek Wilderness, I think I understand why people spend so much time scratching their way to the tops of peaks. It's the beauty. The art historian Joseph Connors once said, "The beautiful is that which cannot be changed except for the worse." By his definition, the Rock Creek watershed is beautiful. I imagine some visitors might prefer a different kind of sight, rows of cabins or town houses, for example. Some might look upon these forests and see a tree farm or potential for a copper mine. From my standpoint, any such changes would constitute a moral transgression. I am aware that changing landscapes is what we do in our culture. I live in a neighborhood in the city. 1 spend my days shuffling through our built environ­ ment: homes, offices, and retail stores. The architecture of our communities is shaped by one force—economics—the maximum size built at the lowest price. Sometimes 1 ride my bicycle through rows of apartments, through trailer parks, and down sidewalks that line the fronts of mini malls. Artists do not waste canvases on malls, trailers, or apartments. They offer no promise, no mys­ tery, and nothing to explore with our eyes or feet. It is no accident that painters don't set up their easels beside suburban tract houses. I think about how we mortgaged our future to make these places possible. Now and then, we all rec­ ognize that we've become hostage to the soulless vinyl villages that we call our own hometowns. For that feeling, the only cure I know is untouched wilderness. A raven squawks at me from the forest below. He reminds me that I have to retrieve my fly rod and hike back to camp before sunset. 1 have to fight the urge CHAD HANSON The Chariton Review | 53 �to stay and stare some more. I do my best to bum the view into my memory. Then I turn to make the trek back down the hill. On the first step, my left knee shoots me a bolt of pain, as if to say, "No sir. Not downhill. Climbing up this ridge was bad enough." Sitting cross-legged at the summit gave my tendons time to grow stiff and rebellious. I resign myself to the idea that the trip back to camp will test my body. I'd like to stay and rest, but I cannot. I left my water in the pack, and the temperature is about to drop to thirty-eight degrees. I stagger downhill, telling myself that I'll feel better when I'm back on level ground. It starts to feel like my endless trips to remote places are numbered. People who oppose the creation of new wilderness areas do so for different rea­ sons. Some want to use the areas to generate profit. The argument is not subtle. The principle at work is greed. You would expect high-ranking people to dismiss this line of thought, but the greed-heads have a tight hold on the law-making process and the protections we afford to wilderness limit commercial endeavors. Some opponents of wilderness take a populist approach. They argue the wilderness designation limits public access to the land. Therefore, they claim, wilderness areas are undemocratic. Mechanized travel is not allowed. The only way to see a wilderness is on foot or on horseback. Opponents worry that those unfit to hike will be barred from driving their diesel pickups and thirty-two-foot travel trailers up the ridge that I just climbed. The opponents of wilderness hide behind the phrase "multiple use." They claim, "Some people walk. Some people drive. I'm okay. You're okay." I say, "Bullshit." As a management strategy, the multiple use idea breaks down when one use suppresses others. In the case of wilderness, there are few uses that don't infringe on the experience, and the wild places in the West are vanishing. Nations like ours were the first to make a distinction between wilderness and civilization. Historians suggest that is true because European societies spent much of their time setting themselves apart from nature. In contrast. Native American languages don't contain a word for wilderness. Generally speaking, in their minds, the world is just the world. They consider themselves part of the creation. "Shizen" is the term for nature in Japan. The translation is "self-thus." In other words, no artifice. Nothing contrived. The term is meant to describe the version of your self that is left when you are not acting—not playing the role of spouse, friend, parent, employee, or customer. For the Japanese, the process of finding one's self depends on the ability to strip away the norms and trappings of our social lives. Solitary travel through a wild place offers a chance to find out who you are. 54 [ The Chariton Review CHAD HANSON �In my academic life, I extol the virtues of community. I am not going back on all the things I've said and written in favor of creating and maintaining net­ works of people that live together and care about one another. Throughout his­ tory, however, even the most tightly knit communities made solitude and the experience of nature a routine or a rite of passage. Buddhists withdraw from daily life through meditation. Sufi mystics seek caves to commune with the di­ vine. American Indians embark on quests to search for personal visions. Even Jesus spent forty days in the desert to iron out the wrinkles in his attitude. We suffer if we do not protect the ability of those who are so inclined to seek a landscape that remains free from the workings of our culture. Without such places, we have no baseline against which to judge the age we live in or the human world we've created. In a collection of essays on the southern states, Andrew Lytle wrote, "Prophets do not come from cities, promising riches and store clothes. They have always come from the wilderness, stinking of goats and running with lice and telling of a different sort of treasure." I am sympathetic to those who advocate for public access to nature. I am a populist, myself. "I'd like to buy the world a Coke." The truth is I'd like to even things out in more important ways than that. As I hobble down the hillside between lupines, however, I realize that this place is best left as it is, without roads or ramps or handrails or convenience stores or parking lots with space for thirty-foot trailers. Looking down onto the slope that 1 struggled to climb, it occurs to me that monasteries are nearly always built in out-of-the-way places. They are purpose­ fully hard to reach. If we built them differently—if they had drive-up windows, for example—the wisdom they produced would not be worth a thing. I am aware that this is likely my last trip to the top of the ridge that afforded me a panoramic view. I'm not as strong as I was when I was young. It's going to take me a week to recover from the hiking and climbing. In a few more years, I won't have the mobility left in my knees to scale a ridge like the one that stands next to the two forks of Rock Creek. That is all right. Places like this should pose a challenge. If they were easy to access, people would access them and they would no longer offer their gift to humanity—the chance to step away from our norms, roles, and values so we can judge what we create against the standard of nature. I am glad the forks of Rock Creek are remote and inaccessible. I share the views of the Wyoming Wilderness Society; we ought to amend our laws in such a way as to guarantee that the place remains as it is, into the future, as far as we can legislate. If 1 never make it back again, that's fine. Maybe I will try. Maybe I'll die struggling to return to my perch at the top of the ridge. I would consider that an honest death, preferable to the plastic tubes and beeping techno-gadgets of our modern hospitals. When I return to camp, I drink the water left in my backpack. Then 1 pour a glass of cabernet. I go through all the steps that people go through when they hike— restocking water, cooking dinner, catching up in a notebook. The sun sinks in CHAD HANSON The Chariton Review | 55 �the west, but that doesn't matter. Light or dark. Either way there’s enough time. Instead of pitching the tent, 1 stake my ground doth to a flat slope along­ side a silver spruce. I lay a mat onto the cloth and then unfurl my sleeping bag. My tent is well-designed and comfortable. It's made with the best available ma­ terials, but I am not going to sleep beneath a barrier of nylon and aluminum. I don't want anything to come between me and the galaxy. 56 I The Chariton Review CHAD HANSON � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Magazine Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Call the Wild by its Name Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>The Chariton Review</em> is published by Truman State University Press