Why I Chose Stanford

It's official, I've accepted Stanford's offer to attend their Learning Sciences and Technology Design PhD program starting next fall.  Initially I'll be studying under Roy Pea and Hilda Borko, both - since we're talking about, you know, Stanford - renowned researchers and well-respected in their field.  I know Roy from my time as a Master's student, during which my friend and co-conspirator Coram and I consulted Professor Pea as often as we felt we could get away with while working on our project.  As a result, I'm certain I'll be able to work with him and learn from him.

Ultimately, this decision was not an easy one, even though Stanford is an "obvious choice."  To the common layperson, the name Stanford alone is worth so much that, when I have posed my conundrum to certain people the response has been a resounding, "you mean there's actually a question?"  My answer is, yes, there is (or was) a question.  You see, PhD work is less about prestige and more about fit.  My decision, then, was not about trying to find the "best" program, but to find the program that most matched my own learning style, research interests, pedagogical biases, and general outlook on the world in general.

The Communications department at the University of California, San Diego matches me very well in almost all of those areas.  Their pedagogical model is highly discussion driven, the amount of reading and writing that students do their lines up well with the amount of reading and writing I do of my own volition, their conversations are lofty and philosophical, and the people are quirky, critical, and equal parts cynical and optimistic.  In short, a lot like me.  Indeed, had I chosen to attend UCSD I'm sure I'd be having a number of conversations with a variety of people right now in which I would be pointing out exactly that: I definitely fit at UCSD, and that's the most important thing.

So why not UCSD?  Well, I also fit at Stanford.  In fact, I think I fit better at Stanford.

While the people at UCSD are a perfect match for me, and while I would have the freedom to pursue my research interests, I'm actually not convinced that the general outlook of the department matches my own and that, even more importantly, the pedagogical bent of the program would suit me.  I don't mean to say I think there's anything wrong with the outlook or pedagogy at UCSD, I just think they wouldn't work for me.

As a graduate of St. John's College, I come from a strange academic tradition.  I'm a student of the so-called "Western Canon" at a time when a lot of the academic world - and places like UCSD in particular - seriously doubt whether there really ought to be such a thing as a canon.  The questions at the heart of this objection are valid, and look like this: How can you determine which books are Great, or even if there is such a thing as Greatness?  Isn't that a hegemonic, colonial tool to marginalize the values and cultures of all of those people who are not white male Europeans?

By themselves, these are important questions that, frankly, St. John's probably doesn't do a good enough job answering.*  The problem, to me, is the double-reversal jiu-jitsu that comes next.  Because those are good questions, the answers are assumed to be, basically, that there is no such thing as Greatness, that the Great Books are a total sham, and that any curriculum that reads them and takes them seriously on their own merits (instead of through alternative cultural and contextual lenses) is itself an instrument of intellectual and cultural tyranny.  The result, of course, is the laissez-faire, anything goes attitude towards ideas that pervades the post-modern world.  That attitude says, "your ideas and my ideas are equally valid, because they each come from our own perspectives.  Right and wrong are relative, and meaning is personally constructed, and if we all just agree to disagree and get along the world will be all right."  To me, that's a shameful intellectual surrender.  Maybe this is a hegemonic idea, but I like to think that there's more value in consensus - and, even more so, the effort to get there - than there is in tolerance.**

* Of course, any graduate of the college who continues in academia will inevitably have to confront these questions anyway, and will be - I think St. John's would argue - equipped to do so because of the critical thinking skills they've gained as Johnnies.  I suspect a great many St. John's graduates end up being heavily critical of the curricular content of the Great Books program precisely because it is so Anglo-European centric.  So it's hard to criticize the college for picking a narrower curricular goal that it can achieve in four years, instead of trying to bite off more than it can chew when it knows students will get there after-the-fact anyway.  That's just good curriculum design.

** That the position of tolerance for differing ideas is also held be many self-proclaimed radicals - many of whom are only actually tolerant up to a point - only serves to remind me of this Eva Brann (St. John's Dean, not wife of Hitler) quotation: "To the radicals we might say: you don't begin to know what radical is; we are the ones who go to the roots."

Now that's not to say that I know anything like enough about UCSD to say where the institution as a whole stands relative to this issue.  In reality, I'm sure there are a range of opinions.  I did, however, get the sense from the brief time I spent there and the one class I visited that I would likely end up very frustrated by the "make connections" instead of "find meaning" model that goes with their post-modernist academic culture.  That each week's reading on the syllabi I saw included multiple and intentionally disparate authors in order to build background and force cross-cutting interpretations rubs against my Johnnie sensibilities, in which those things are not exactly bad, but nevertheless can undercut the effort to actually understand a given text's content, instead of just its context or impact.

Again, I'm not sure that there's anything wrong with the way UCSD is doing things, I just don't think it's right for me.

Now you might be thinking that Stanford is vastly different.  It isn't.  If anything, it's less discussion and dialogue oriented than UCSD, and it is just as much concerned with post-modernist questions and processes.  The difference, then, is that Stanford is not just talking and reading and dancing around the theories and philosophies of these issues, but is, in fact, actually out in the world doing.  My experience as an LDT student was one of project-based classes and practice-oriented learning, which lines up well with modern learning theory.  While not every professor I had was a brilliant teacher using the more cutting edge pedagogy and technology, many - including Roy, incidentally* - were just that.  For all of its stuffy, privileged, businessy, ivory tower reputation, Stanford really does strive to practice what it preaches.

*Or not incidentally at all.

Being political (in the root, Greek sense of dealing with society) has its drawbacks.  It can be frustrating to try to make a difference.  But as much as I'm sure I'll have days and nights when I feel like I'm just a small, insignificant part of a broken system, and I can't do much to improve the situation, I think that Stanford will encourage and support (and, really, actively enlist) me in fighting the good fight.  The potential for myopia at UCSD, on the other hand - the ability to remove myself from the world and just do whatever I want - frightens me much more than the frustrations I'm sure I'll feel at Stanford sometimes do.  I am, despite myself, equal parts idealism and practicality, and I feel like Stanford understands that dichotomy (and supports both sides of it) better than UCSD does, at least in my case.

There are, I suspect, a great many other things I could say about what draws me to Stanford (including my previous experience there compared to the relative unknown of UCSD), but they would be variations on the theme from above.  The truth of the matter is, both programs were the "right decision," but in different ways, and I was fortunate to have an opportunity to pick between the two, even if it meant the decision was a difficult one.

On Leadership

Over the past two weeks, as I've been running our NALU 102 session along with my trusty co-teachers, I've been thinking a lot about leadership, both because of my role, and because of the expectations we ask our students to live up to.  While I have been a "leader" at various times in the past in both academic and extra-curricular settings, my new position as Director of NALU Studies is the first professional leadership position I've held.  While I am only some six weeks into the job, I'm finding the experience a very different kind of challenge from the ones I faced as a student at Stanford, or as a teacher with NALU when I was a mere part-time helper.

Similarly, I think our students sometimes struggle with the difference between titles and leadership, and rightfully so.  One of the things I'm learning is that it is a lot easier to be a leader in a situation when you already have the title that signifies that leadership.  There is less need to be assertive, to show off one's physical or intellectual powers, such as they may be.  Not so for students who are title-less; they often feel that, without leadership granted to them, it is not theirs to take.  I think this is both an astute observation on their part and an unfortunate fallacy, but the reasons why will not be readily apparent until we define leadership.

What is leadership?  Traditionally, leaders are the people who get to make decisions, who get to shape things according to their desires and interests.  The easiest thing for a leader to do, given the power that goes with leadership, is to make use of that power to orient situations and environments so they are more favorable for the leader in question.  That's a broad and probably uninteresting observation, but I think it is important.  Even the most progressive, forward-thinking leaders in the world know how and when to use their titles, their networks, and their other assets to transform a conversation into a representation of power dynamics.  Stated more simply, without sometimes taking control of a situation, a leader cannot display leadership at all.

There is, however, something missing from the conception of leader as executor of bestowed (or taken) power.  Leadership, I would argue, has a lot to do with listening, weighing options, and making choices based upon the needs of others.  Indeed, that stuff is way more important than ensuring positive outcomes for oneself.  That's not to say leadership is a selfless role, but rather than it is not an entirely selfish one.  It is a balance, wherein the needs of a great many people must be considered.

It is here where the myriad titles that make a leader are not really important.  What matters is an individual's actions, instead.  A leader-in-title who merely exercises his will is no more than a selfish child, where a unremarkable, unassuming student who steps up quietly and makes sure that an upset friend's opinion is heard is clearly displaying leadership.

Of course, all of that is stuff you've probably heard or thought about before.  The wrinkle, here, to me anyway, is that leadership is really a lot easier when the leader is less selfish.  Whereas I think there's a natural disposition, especially in our exceedingly greed-driven society, to think that with leadership comes money, which results in a less holistic and empathetic world view, I believe that model is flawed.  That's not to say that most leaders in this country (and around the world) are not well paid, but rather that most of the excessively rich ones end up working too hard and achieving little of real value.  The problem with being even a rich capitalist, you might say, is that you're always looking over your shoulder at the next generation of greedy, clever up-starts who can take you down.

It's easy for me to say as director of an education program that things should be different than that.  But I do honestly believe that even in a major company, good leaders do not spend the majority of their energy organizing situations for their personal benefit.  Consider companies like Zappos, whose CEO takes down a pittance of a salary, or Southwest Airlines, whose founder and CEO was long the least well-compensated CEO relative to the income of his company in the country.  Those companies are innovative, customer-focused, effective, and generally not evil, thanks in large part to their unselfish leadership models.

The same, of course, is true in the education space.  My primary goal as a leader at NALU Studies is to grow the organization into a successful force for positive change in at-risk education in Hawaii.  That's not the vision of the organization, or the mission, but it is at the heart of my decisions as a leader.  It is worth noting that achieving this goal would be good for me as an individual - I think the idea that the success of a business or non-profit and the success of its leader are mutually exclusive is a silly one - but it is also the case that I cannot succeed in making a difference in at-risk education simply by looking out for myself.  It is also the case, and this is the more important point, that I cannot simply act according to my own comforts and passions.

I think, less than outright greed, the greatest flaw that leaders of small organizations exhibit is the tendency towards making the organization nothing more than a reflection of themselves.  Decisions are too often made that do not reflect the best interests of the organization or its stakeholders because the correct - or at least better - decisions would force the leader into a position that is uncomfortable or outside of his expertise.  To me this is an understandable, but avoidable flaw.  Understandable, because I think the fear of taking risks and failing is so widespread as to be almost unavoidable, even among those who articulate and understand the problems with failing to take risks.  Avoidable, because I think leaders who are also general enough in their expertise are liable to not be intimidated by not having the requisite expertise to execute a decision.  Why?  Because a good generalist knows both where to find an appropriate expert, and also knows how to have the necessary conversations with said expert (or experts) in order to get enough information to make a decision.

Enough is a key word here.  Perhaps, more than anything else, asking the right questions in order to get enough information is at the heart of leadership.  No one person can know everything about everything, even in a simple situation with simple options and simple decisions.  Instead, the leader is the person who is capable of making a decision with enough information.  The 80/20 rule is the leader's best friend.  If the first 80% of the information you need takes 20% of the work to acquire, and the remaining 20% takes the other 80% of the effort to acquire, best to make your decision based on 80% of the information.

For a high school student, all of that is probably a bit beyond their interest.  The kind of leadership that occurs within a cohort of ten students in a two week program is of a different kind.  Only, it's really not.  There's a lot to be said for intuition, and it seems to me that good leaders arise even from among students because those students also know how to operate at the level of "good enough," and also know how to subsume their personal interests to those of the cohort (or, rather, realize that their personal interests and those of the cohort are the same thing).  I suppose the challenge for we teachers - as leaders in hopefully both title and deed - is to empower those leaders among us to articulate not just their understanding of a situation, but their metacognition, their recognition of their own leadership and what makes it go.

Stress as a Choice

It is not uncommon, just about everywhere, to hear people talk about how stressed they are. This usually stems from having too much to do and not enough time to do it, and manifests itself as a self-fulfilling inability to actually be productive. While stress certainly has external contributors, I believe that it is, at its heart, a personal decision about how to respond to those external contributors. Without going into psychology or trying to dissect that, I think it's fair to point out that there are many people who feel overwhelming stress when they have fairly little work to do, while others skate by whistling and smiling despite working almost non-stop.

Choosing stress, however, does not strike me as a conscious decision. Few people would say: "Oh good, I have enough to do now that I can start feeling stressed about it." Granted, there are certainly people who need the threat of a looming deadline in order to actually complete a task (similar to the people who need the threat of a torturous afterlife in order to be moral?), but that, I feel, is a different kind of stress than the crippling, miserable, and unhealthy stress that is so prevalent. Indeed, I might call a deadline motivation, and while you might say that's just the same thing as stress, I would say, in response, that that is my point. The words we choose to describe a similar phenomenon tell us a lot about our intellectual habits.

What is the original of this choice, then? Why do so many people choose stress? Being unconscious, I suspect that stress is a habit started very early in life. Children who have stressed parents are probably quick to learn stress themselves, and are likely to respond in concert. Add to that our achievement-driven academic system - which rewards neither intelligence nor effort, really - and you have children at every tier of the system terrified about how they are possibly going to succeed (and out-compete their friends). "That's life," you may say, but that again is exactly the point: we choose a stressful world, and impose it upon ourselves and our children.

I firmly believe that too much work gets done in the world (that's a post for another time), I think it is even more troubling that so much time is spent worried about getting work done. There is something backwards about a culture that is more concerned with what it does and how it is to do those things than why. Choosing stress is about forgetting why, if not personally, then societally. Of course, the widespread epidemic of stress in the world - especially in Western countries - is probably a symptom of an unexamined why. If purposelessness breeds stress and frustration, it is no wonder a culture built upon profit is rife with them.

That's probably also a post for another time. Meanwhile, I don't think there's a need to delve too deeply into the cosmic - or at least cultural - sources of stress. More important is the personal decision, which is tied so closely to personal habits and expectations. I have seen people who respond to mountains of work as a fun challenge to be overcome - even when that work is not ostensibly engaging - which seems to me a better choice.

Call that attitude "life as a game," where there is always fun to be had in almost any effort, if you make that choice. Sometimes that might involve a good deal of fantasy; sometimes, perhaps, too much. But we already know what too much stress looks like.