Adapt or Die!

In my teaching days, I used to tell my students that evolution is a law of history.  They might, if they chose, deny evolution as a biological principle, but they'd never understand history without it.

Human institutions adapt and evolve in the face of changing circumstances - or  they die.

Adaptation often flies in the face of human expectations.  We tend to assume that the future will be much like the present, only more so.  Change, we suppose, goes in only one direction.

We assume, for example, that growth is natural.  Things start small, and if they are successful, they become ever larger.  This assumption is built into our present economic system - corporate consumer capitalism - which we assume to be permanent.

There is, of course, no such guarantee.  The theory of markets has a certain logic, and will probably be with us for centuries to come.  But our present economic system evolved to meet a specific set of circumstances - and, as those circumstances no longer prevail, it will either evolve, or it will die.

We have entered a reality very different than that prevailing in the 2oth century.  In the new century, bigger will not inevitably be better.  Often, the opposite will be true.

Which could be beautiful thing. 

Consider the birds flitting about in your yard.  Most of us like birds.  Many love them.  By some measures, one in four Americans is at least a casual bird-watcher. 

But the birds were not always with us.  Evolutionary biologists are fairly sure that birds evolved as the result of catastrophic events which led to the extinction of the great dinosaurs.

Some dinosaurs, preferring evolution to extinction, became the first birds.  

The mockingbird harassing your cat, the robin hopping around your lawn, the chicken in your refrigerator - all are lineal descendants of fearsome ancestors. 

All things considered, a pretty successful case of down-sizing.

For the past century, in this country, education has become an enormous - and enormously expensive - sector of our national economy.  Every Federal administration - Republican or Democratic - has increased our investment in schools and universities, and the scope and power of the bureaucracies which govern them.

Conservatives and liberals will do battle over what is taught; how students are disciplined; how much teachers are paid; and how resources are allocated among school districts and universities.

But our schools and universities - exercising a virtual monopoly over the certification of educational attainment - have been virtually untouchable.

Until now. 

Recently, I've experimented with my first MOOC - a massive, open, online course - a technology-based course offering online lectures, reading materials, interactive learning tools, tests, research assignments - even discussion groups.

I've found it to be a reasonably challenging, college-level course.

And the remarkable thing is that anyone with access to the internet - anywhere in the world - can enroll in this MOOC.   For free.

MOOCs are a new thing under the sun, and they raise legitimate questions about the delivery of content.  If it's now possible for anyone to have access to some of the best teachers on the planet - experts in their fields - at little or no charge, do we still need all the secondary school teachers and college professors we now employ? 

Do we need all the school buildings, lecture halls, and dorms? 

The answer, almost certainly, depends upon defining what our schools and universities are supposed to be doing for us.

If the purpose of schooling is to deliver content - facts and concepts - then clearly, our big educational institutions are in danger of obsolescence. 

What use is a high school teacher who is neither a subject-matter expert nor an outstanding lecturer, when his students have access to both expertise and star-quality teaching online?

What use is four or more years at a residential college - at enormous cost - when better quality instruction can be had at your kitchen table or local coffee shop?

Most importantly, why should we -  as taxpayers, parents, and students - continue paying vast amounts of money for the personal delivery of inferior products, when better products are available online, at almost no cost?

It's a question our schools and universities are already scrambling to answer.

My guess is that, at the K-12 level, many of the answers will come from the home-schoolers - a growing community which has already rejected the public school model and is oriented to taking advantage of every new resource as it becomes available.

At the university level, I suspect that solution might well be found in the tutorial model prevailing at England's elite universities.  Students would obtain their information from a variety of sources, including MOOCs - and their professors would meet with them individually, or in very small groups, to develop their understanding of the material and their critical thinking skills.  

In both cases, the calculation will involve such questions as the relative effectiveness of online lectures and labs at conveying information - and the educational value added by individual or small-group tutorials.

There are, of course, many other possibilities.  But whatever the eventual outcome, online learning has arrived.  As Americans become comfortable with this new mode of learning, existing schools and universities will have to adapt - or they will surely die.

Decoration Day

A friend of mine - a Northern Virginia attorney and conscientious liberal - is starting a campaign to remove the statue of a Confederate infantryman from outside the courthouse in one of NoVa's exurban counties.

  

His argument, as I understand it, is that some of his clients feel intimidated when they see that statue standing outside the courthouse in which they are about to face trial.

While I have the greatest respect for my friend, I cannot bring myself to support his latest crusade - nor to feel much sympathy for any client who is such a quivering mass of gelatin as some of his seem to be.

A statue of a Confederate soldier is, after all, just a chunk of stone.  Fifty years ago, brave men and women had to walk past such lifeless monuments on the way to face living white judges and all-white juries whose daddies and granddaddies had been actual Confederate soldiers - and who were absolutely determined to re-create the Old South in the middle of the 20th century.

We've come a great long way since then, as even the most timorous defendant must know.

Besides, a weathered, old statue of a Confederate soldier - an infantry grunt - is hardly a statement about race.  It is, primarily, a statement about courage and self-sacrifice - as all soldiers' memorials should be.  Admire the cause or deplore it, the millions of men (and more than a few women) who wore blue or grey fought for what most soldiers fight for - their comrades and their homes.

Most of the men, North and South, who made the war possible were too old - or too "important" - to risk their own lives on the battlefield.

There is a troublesome nostalgic tendency among modern liberals.  They love to wade  about in their imagined guilt for past injustices in which they played no part.  They glory in the struggles of the Civil Rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement, when issues seemed clear-cut.

It's so much easier than working up the energy and courage to confront modern challenges, such as building an educational system which provides every child with - not just an equal education - but a good one.

Or reining in the absolute corporate dominance of every aspect of our political system.

Or doing something serious about the gathering storm of global climate change.

My friend's campaign against the old Confederate statue seems to me an evasion of this type - and a plain waste of time.

Still, as it is Memorial Day - a holiday which had its beginning as a celebration of those who died in the Lost Cause - this might be the right time to propose something a bit more useful than pulling down a statue.

How about putting one up, instead?

For some years now - ever since I read a biography of the man - I've wished to see a new equestrian statue on Monument Avenue, honoring a gentleman who was -  yes - a white Virginian and a general who rose to prominence during the Civil War.

Indeed, there are serious military historians who rank him as the best of an outstanding generation of strategists and battlefield commanders.

His name was George H. Thomas.  His troops called him "Pap".  Admirers called him "the Rock of Chickamauga". 

Civil War buffs will immediately recognize the symbolism of adding Thomas to Monument Avenue's ranks.  Thomas, a native of Virginia's Southampton County and the son of a slave-holding family, fought for the Union. 

In 1861, Thomas - an active-duty officer since his graduation from West Point - faced the same choice which confronted his good friend and professional colleague, Robert E. Lee.  But Thomas arrived at a different decision.

He honored the oath he had taken upon joining the United States Army.  Enduring the suspicion of his fellow Union officers - to say nothing of the icy silence of his family, which disavowed him - Thomas stolidly performed whatever duty was assigned him.

In January, 1862, Thomas won the Union's first major battle, at Mill Springs, in Kentucky.  

His stand at Chickamauga, in 1863 - when his commander had fled the field - won him fame and promotion to the command of the  Army of the Cumberland.  His victory at Nashville, late in the war, destroyed General John B. Hood's army, removing it permanently from the field.

Unlike other commanders, Thomas preferred to spare the lives of his troops.  Through careful preparation, excellent logistical planning, and maneuver, he won victories without sacrificing lives unnecessarily.  This characteristic is often put forward to explain his chilly relations with his commander, U. S. Grant, who showed no such concern.

I admit it's a strange fancy, the idea of putting a Union general on Monument Avenue.  But if old-school liberals mush waste time on something, a statue to Thomas would be a better use of it than "disrespecting" an anonymous Confederate foot-slogger standing outside a courthouse.

Besides, it would - in a tiny way, at least - deal with something relevant.  A new traffic circle - replacing a set of traffic lights - would make a small contribution to reducing our profligate use of fossil fuels.

And that would, in itself, be memorable.