The real and the unreal

Coming soon: bulletproof #2 pencils

Last Line of Defense (Inside Higher Ed)
     U. of Maryland at Eastern Shore's new whiteboards double as bulletproof shields. The $60,000 investment is part of a "proactive approach" to safety.

Comes in handy in a firefight

'Real Education' (Inside Higher Ed)
     It’s a question many professors may be asking themselves this month, as they prepare for another academic year: “Why teach?”
     Mark Edmundson, professor of English at the University of Virginia, answers the question in a new book, Why Teach? In Defense of a Real Education, out Tuesday from Bloomsbury.
. . .
     Although neither exists in pure form, the predominantly “corporate city” institution is an extension (and a shaper) of “good” high schools, where students succeed by being “all-arounders.” That means getting an "A" in every course, even if it equates to using SparkNotes for an English class in order to squeeze in a session with the math tutor between sports and clubs. Deep engagement of the material suffers, but with a turbo-charged resume, it hardly matters.
     Corporate cities are easy to spot: “Most of the students – and many members of the faculty – are buzzing from place to place, always feeling a bit self-important, always feeling a bit left behind, like that poor rabbit in Alice in Wonderland,” Edmundson says.

ACCJC: proactive attire soon required

     And the people representing corporate cities? They’ll talk “a lot about new computer initiatives, about partnering with business, and about the creation of young leaders. They’ll talk about kids who have hit the Silicon Valley jackpot. …You’ll hear the word ‘excellence’ about a billion times.”
     By contrast, the “scholarly enclave” teems with students “seeking knowledge so as to make the lives of other human beings better.” They’re students who want to become teachers, scientists, soldiers, doctors and legal advocates for the poor because the work matters to them more than the status a title brings, Edmundson says….