November 26, 2004

  • Topic: Links…comments will come later


    This ad was in today’s New York Times…


    www.mymoralvalues.com


    The following article can be found on the American Democracy Project website of the New York Times college section (that’s where my internship starts Monday!!!)


    http://www.nytimes.com/college/collegespecial2/


    Survey Gauges College Experience


    By BECCA GARRISON, Cavalier Daily, U. Virginia

    Published: November 16, 2004

    (U-WIRE) CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Step aside Princeton Review — the next generation of college applicants may change their selection from the school with the best parties to the school with the best student engagement.



    The National Survey for Student Engagement, released this week, is a yearly chance for institutions nationwide to find out what their students are getting out of their college experience, NSSE Senior Associate Director John Hayek said.


    For instance, this year’s survey shows that while 81 percent of students are getting mostly As and Bs, they are studying on average half as much as professors believe they should be.


    The survey also found that 40 percent of first year students and a quarter of seniors never discuss ideas from their classes with a professor outside of the classroom.


    Student engagement comes in two forms, Hayek said. The first is the amount of studying and work towards learning performed by students and the second, the part NSSE focuses on, is the way institutions “promote practices that get students engaged,” Hayek said.


    The data collected in surveys of 472 different institutions reflected opinions of first and senior year students. Engagement is based not only on preparation for class, but the class’s involvement in the community and students’ motivation to continue learning outside of the classroom.


    The University of Virginia was involved in the survey in 2000 and 2002, but has not participated since.


    Hayek said it is common for institutions to participate every few years because results are very similar from year to year and “it takes a while for meaningful change to happen.”


    First-year College student Sarah Lunsford said the University’s academic environment is not as encouraging as it should be.


    “I don’t discuss ideas outside of a classroom,” Lunsford said. “I think that professors reinforce the availability of office hours but generally, they do not provide the most welcoming environment from which students can feel comfortable seeking help.”


    Hayek said the survey is meant to spur discussion about solutions to student disengagement.


    The results from NSSE have inspired such programs as “learning communities” in which a small group of first year students study a focused subject while living in close quarters.


    “Research tells us that commonalities allow students to engage more in their educational process within the first year,” Hayek said.


    Other statistics from this year’s survey mention that almost a quarter of all students never attend cultural and performing arts events during the year, while a solid quarter does frequently. Also, the number of students who have serious conversations about social, political and religious views has increased 10 percent in the last five years.


    “No single survey would be the sole basis for making decisions about new programming, policies or other changes,” said Virginia Carter, director of external affairs for the University’s Student Affairs Office.


    These statistics will be used nationwide to aid institutions in improving their student engagement levels, Hayek said.


    And…it turns out the author who managed to engage me in a 700 eye-opening read of US history, is still actively writing about US politics, here’s a link


    http://www.progressive.org/nov04/zinn1104.html



    It Seems to Me Howard Zinn


    Our War on Terrorism


    E-Mail This Article




    Howard Zinn photoI am calling it “our” war on terrorism because I want to distinguish it from Bush’s war on terrorism, and from Sharon’s, and from Putin’s. What their wars have in common is that they are based on an enormous deception: persuading the people of their countries that you can deal with terrorism by war. These rulers say you can end our fear of terrorism–of sudden, deadly, vicious attacks, a fear new to Americans–by drawing an enormous circle around an area of the world where terrorists come from (Afghanistan, Palestine, Chechnya) or can be claimed to be connected with (Iraq), and by sending in tanks and planes to bomb and terrorize whoever lives within that circle.


    Since war is itself the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory. Is it strange, or normal, that no major political figure has pointed this out?


    Even within their limited definition of terrorism, they–the governments of the United States, Israel, Russia–are clearly failing. As I write this, three years after the events of September 11, the death toll for American servicemen has surpassed 1,000, more than 150 Russian children have died in a terrorist takeover of a school, Afghanistan is in chaos, and the number of significant terrorist attacks rose to a twenty-one-year high in 2003, according to official State Department figures. The highly respected International Institute for Strategic Studies in London has reported that “over 18,000 potential terrorists are at large with recruitment accelerating on account of Iraq.”


    With the failure so obvious, and the President tripping over his words trying to pretend otherwise (August 30: “I don’t think you can win” and the next day: “Make no mistake about it, we are winning”), it astonishes us that the polls show a majority of Americans believing the President has done “a good job” in the war on terrorism.


    I can think of two reasons for this.


    First, the press and television have not played the role of gadflies, of whistleblowers, the role that the press should play in a society whose fundamental doctrine of democracy (see the Declaration of Independence) is that you must not give blind trust to the government. They have not made clear to the public–I mean vividly, dramatically clear–what have been the human consequences of the war in Iraq.


    I am speaking not only of the deaths and mutilations of American youth, but the deaths and mutilations of Iraqi children. (I am reading at this moment of an American bombing of houses in the city of Fallujah, leaving four children dead, with the U.S. military saying this was part of a “precision strike” on “a building frequently used by terrorists.”) I believe that the American people’s natural compassion would come to the fore if they truly understood that we are terrorizing other people by our “war on terror.”


    A second reason that so many people accept Bush’s leadership is that no counterargument has come from the opposition party. John Kerry has not challenged Bush’s definition of terrorism. He has not been forthright. He has dodged and feinted, saying that Bush has waged “the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.” Is there a right war, a right place, a right time? Kerry has not spoken clearly, boldly, in such a way as to appeal to the common sense of the American people, at least half of whom have turned against the war, with many more looking for the wise words that a true leader provides. He has not clearly challenged the fundamental premise of the Bush Administration: that the massive violence of war is the proper response to the kind of terrorist attack that took place on September 11, 2001.


    Let us begin by recognizing that terrorist acts–the killing of innocent people to achieve some desired goal–are morally unacceptable and must be repudiated and opposed by anyone claiming to care about human rights. The September 11 attacks, the suicide bombings in Israel, the taking of hostages by Chechen nationalists–all are outside the bounds of any ethical principles.


    This must be emphasized, because as soon as you suggest that it is important, to consider something other than violent retaliation, you are accused of sympathizing with the terrorists. It is a cheap way of ending a discussion without examining intelligent alternatives to present policy.


    Then the question becomes: What is the appropriate way to respond to such awful acts? The answer so far, given by Bush, Sharon, and Putin, is military action. We have enough evidence now to tell us that this does not stop terrorism, may indeed provoke more terrorism, and at the same time leads to the deaths of hundreds, even thousands, of innocent people who happen to live in the vicinity of suspected terrorists.


    What can account for the fact that these obviously ineffective, even counterproductive, responses have been supported by the people of Russia, Israel, the United States? It’s not hard to figure that out. It is fear, a deep, paralyzing fear, a dread so profound that one’s normal rational faculties are distorted, and so people rush to embrace policies that have only one thing in their favor: They make you feel that something is being done. In the absence of an alternative, in the presence of a policy vacuum, filling that vacuum with a decisive act becomes acceptable.


    And when the opposition party, the opposition Presidential candidate, can offer nothing to fill that policy vacuum, the public feels it has no choice but to go along with what is being done. It is emotionally satisfying, even if rational thought suggests it does not work and cannot work.


    If John Kerry cannot offer an alternative to war, then it is the responsibility of citizens, with every possible resource they can muster, to present such an alternative to the American public.


    Yes, we can try to guard in every possible way against future attacks, by trying to secure airports, seaports, railroads, other centers of transportation. Yes, we can try to capture known terrorists. But neither of those actions can bring an end to terrorism, which comes from the fact that millions of people in the Middle East and elsewhere are angered by American policies, and out of these millions come those who will carry their anger to fanatic extremes.


    The CIA senior terrorism analyst who has written a book signed “Anonymous” has said bluntly that U.S. policies–supporting Sharon, making war on Afghanistan and Iraq–”are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world.”


    Unless we reexamine our policies–our quartering of soldiers in a hundred countries (the quartering of foreign soldiers, remember, was one of the grievances of the American revolutionaries), our support of the occupation of Palestinian lands, our insistence on controlling the oil of the Middle East–we will always live in fear. If we were to announce that we will reconsider those policies, and began to change them, we might start to dry up the huge reservoir of hatred where terrorists are hatched.


    Whoever the next President will be, it is up to the American people to demand that he begin a bold reconsideration of the role our country should play in the world. That is the only possible solution to a future of never-ending, pervasive fear. That would be “our” war on terrorism.




    Howard Zinn, the author of “A People’s History of the United States,” is a columnist for The Progressive.

     

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