Introductory Political Science Teaching
at Los Angeles Valley College
Van Nuys, California 1997
By
Lawrence C. Jorgensen,
Professor: History & Political Science
I
About ten years ago, attending an
Americanized Irish wake for an elderly father of a friend and colleague of
mine who had become a senior administrator in the District, I was asked by
other former Valley College colleagues, "How goes the old
college." Already a 25 year veteran of the campus, and one that had
participated in many of the activities and actions of the "60s,"
my liberal and progressive credentials, I thought, were impeccable.
Yet when I observed that the character
of the student body had profoundly changed during my 25 years in the
classroom, with more and more recent immigrants now attending Valley
College, class room teaching had become more challenging and less academic
than it had been. Teaching was still extremely exciting and personally
rewarding; but it was not the same as it had once been. In fact, I
emphasized, large numbers of our students were totally unprepared to
function effectively in an English language college environment.
Amazingly, though not so much now in
retrospect, I was chastened with the comment, "I never thought I
would hear something like that from you." That comment, both its
source and the manner it was thrown at me, stuck with and bothered me for
some length of time. I was truly puzzled at their criticism to my objective
response. What had I said, what had I done that elicited such disapproval?
In my apparent naivete, I didn’t even realize that I had violated one
of the basic rules of political correctness, telling the truth. I
didn’t even know what political correctness was.
Introductory Political
Science, Poly Sci 1, is one of those few college classes that most every
student has to take. Aside from the occasional Political Science or History,
or Law major, or the intellectually curious, most of our students are those
required to take Political Science in order to graduate, to successfully
transfer to a four-year institution, or to complete some certificate
program. While none of the courses offered in the HHLPS (History,
Humanities, Law & Political Science) department have any pre-requisites,
including literacy in English, many of the department’s more advanced
offerings only attract those students interested in that particular subject:
Ethnic America, Comparative Governments; Political Theory, Economic History
of the United States, Asian History, Religion in America; etc.
Public and private
colleges and universities in the State of California, as often elsewhere in
the United States, mandate that students must take a certain number of
American Institutions courses in order to receive a basic degree, regardless
of the student’s major. Typically, as near as I can ascertain, the
American Institutions requirement is primarily met with what LA Valley
College calls Political Science 1, History 11, and History 12 (both of which
are United States History, separated by 1876/77), as well as a few other
alternatives.
Unlike the College’s
various Science, English and Math departments, all of which have certain
pre-requisites for most or all of their classes, the HHLPS department has
no pre-requisites, including, if I may repeat myself, one called English
literacy. Certainly, to successfully take an English 1 or 2 (the basic
combination) class, one should have to be reasonably literate in English.
That is no surprise, and it seems quite reasonable to most folks.
Yet, to
take United States History and/or Political Science, no English literacy
test can be proffered. It is actually forbidden. But in what language
should we read the Declaration of Independence, the United States
Constitution, its Bill of Rights and its 14th Amendment as
well as all the subsequent Court Cases that have expanded the originally
narrow definition of citizen, of liberty, of equal rights and equal
opportunity? The Los Angeles Community College District forbids such a
basic English literacy test for entering any of the HHLPS Department
classes. You figure. III
Thus, the typical
Political Science 1 class is probably the most ethnically and
otherwise diverse classroom, at any given hour, on campus. Recently,
for example, I counted 22 different countries of origin, not counting
New Jersey, out of a class of 45 students. Almost always, the number is more
than I/3 of the total. I know this, because I ask. Whether or not I am
always told the truth, is another matter.
It certainly is a challenge to the
professor to instruct such a mix of students. No question about it; and I
can easily appreciate how some might wish they were teaching at UCLA, at the
University of Chicago, or at Oxford. But they are not; we are not. We are at
Los Angeles Valley College, Van Nuys, California.
The immediate problem
confronting urban Community College instructors in general is the dramatic
and traumatic demographic change in the composition of the community
colleges’ student body. The Los Angeles Community College District,
certainly Los Angeles Valley College, bears little resemblance to the
District of one or two generations, 20 or 40 years, ago. While dynamic
change has always been a central characteristic of American national life,
the accelerating rate of that change since the Second World War has impacted
America’s great urban centers the most, and in ways rarely beneficial.
Perhaps nowhere have these changes become more obvious and demanding than in
the greater Los Angeles area of which our community colleges are a part.
According to demographic
numbers recently released by Matriculation/ Research of LA Valley College, only
25% of our students are "full time," taking 12 units or more;
and a mere 18% are under age 20. Clearly, a small percentage of
Valley’s students are stereotypical American college students. More, over
50% are 25 and older, with almost half of those older than 35. Lastly, 40%
take 6 units or less. The majority of our students are older, working
people responsible for their own economic and family obligations.
Thirty-eight percent
are "Whites," whatever that political construction currently
means. And it means Muslim and Coptic Egyptians; Syrian and Assyrian
Christians; Israelis of various European or North African ancestry;
Lebanese, Iranians and Persians of several religious affiliations; Armenians
from lots of places, excluding Fresno, in addition to those from the former
Soviet Armenia; all kinds of Russians, Ukrainians, and Beorussians, secular,
Christians and Jews, from all parts of the former USSR; and that is simply
part of what is currently called "white," or a category even more
absurd, "Anglo." And I haven’t even mentioned New Jerseyites, or
Kurds, or Azaris.
Thirty-one
percent are "Hispanic," another politically motivated
designation that has little to do with real-life, class room circumstances:
Cubans, Guatemalans, Mayans, Puerto Ricans from New Jersey; New Mexicans of
partial Apache persuasion; third and fourth and fifth generation southern
Californians, Salvadoran computer programmers; Mexicanos from all classes,
regions, ethnic identity, including indigenous. Uruguay? Chile? Columbia and
Peru? Give us a break: "Hispanic" makes about as much sense to
those of us in the classroom as does "White," or
"Anglo." None. Ditto with "Asians," at 15%;
"Blacks," at 7%; "Others," at 3%; and the great
"Unknown," at 6%. IV
Well, the point of this
essay, aside from the opportunity to ridicule the current politically
agendized ethnic classification scheme, is to demonstrate that Valley
College’s student body bears no resemblance whatsoever to some idealized
and stereotypical view of an "American college student."
Yesterdays’ educational
and administrative philosophies, teacher preparations and expectations, and
the increasing centralized managerial bureaucracy’s remoteness from the
classroom are all clearly failing the challenge of contemporary
urban community college education. As classroom instructors who daily
confront the growing inadequacies of our educational establishment’s
response, it does little good to pretend our world to be otherwise, to
engage in political sloganeering, or to even castigate and finger point. We
must learn to deal with what is before us. And what is before us, in our
classrooms, is a demographic mix, nationality, religion, ethnicity,
language, literacy, intelligence, age, class, generation, geographic,
gender, and other persuasions, too varied to categorize.
Still, the vast
majority of our students are Americans, whatever that means; or they are
in various stages of becoming American, whatever that will mean. As such,
they have every right to be here, and every right to expect from us the
very best we can do for them. They are going to be an important part of
America’s future. Our own self interest, as Americans who must also live
in that future, requires us to educate, to prepare, to expose, to challenge
them.
I am not suggesting that
we eschew any and all academic standards in some drive to maintain numbers
and to draw additional moneys from the state government in Sacramento. We do
none of our students a favor by pretending to be a college, while making
assignments and passing out grades as if we were part of the notorious LA
Unified District’s, and urban public schools’ generally, "dumbing
down" policy. To be sure, classroom instructors must oppose all
attempts at equal outcome based objectives. Either we maintain standards, or
we can kiss public education as we have known it good-bye.
I have taught in Chicago
public secondary schools and in adult education schools. I do not wish to
see Valley College, the urban community colleges generally, decline to
another adult education school system. We have to take the students as we
find them, particularly with an open door admission policy, and most
particularly with a no prerequisite policy for Political Science
classes, not even literacy in the English language. We have to take them
and do the very best we can for them, as members of the community by whom we
are employed, and with whom we have a social contract. And who, remember,
represent the future of our country just as much as those students who
graduate from the elite schools.
We can do
it. Not every student will pass the first time they take the class. Perhaps,
many will never pass. "So it goes." But we should never drive
students out of the class, without giving them a chance to experience our
teaching methods, our philosophies, our knowledge and our experience. While
many of the instructors have embraced the changing student population with
enthusiasm, other have not been able to do so. And their disservice to the
students is also a disservice to themselves. It cannot be pleasant to see
the disastrous attrition they suffer each semester. Either one must blame
the students, or question one’s own teaching. Since the latter is
extremely difficult after a certain age, people generally favor the former.
And, of course, that way lies not only rigidity, but a necessarily great
dissatisfaction with one’s job, with one’s career, possibly with one’s
life. V
From the beginnings of the Republic,
numerous foreign, upper class, educated observers of American life, its
politics, society, culture, have criticized what they perceived as excessive
democracy, an ignorant disregard for established tradition, a deliberate
disrespect for legitimate authorities and authority. Sometimes it has been
described as mob rule, as anarchy. Perhaps. But also from the beginnings of
the Republic, there have been as many voices calling for a more radical
extension of the democratic, egalitarian, and anti-authoritarian ideals of
the American Revolutionary period.
This latter tradition has
been most common in America’s experiment in mass public education, and
which, since the Second World War, has been especially extended into the
urban community colleges. It is an environment not made for everyone. Boards
of Trustees, teacher unions, district administrators, centralized
bureaucracies, some of the public, and of the students, as well as some of
the professors, are clearly not committed, regardless of their rhetoric, to
this great egalitarian experiment.
It is extremely difficult to change the
values, the ideals, or the habits of a lifetime. And I am not suggesting
that one should. Folks are what they are, and they have every right to be
such. However, when the way a person is, and chooses to remain so, manifests
itself in behavior that interferes with the task at hand, then something has
to give.
Lawrence C. Jorgensen
May 21, 1997
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