UND’s Gordon Iseminger: A professor of the old school
September 26, 2012 at 1:00 am in Grand Forks Herald
At the start of Gordon Iseminger’s class one morning last week, students received a lecture that had nothing to do with European history. Continue Reading
As a student studying US History & women & gender, I never studied with him. I did have him as a graduate advisor. He was always willing to do whatever he could to make it happen for the student. He is truly an icon
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Dr. Iseminger’s lectures will never put anyone to sleep. His classes seem to fly by because he is so interesting. Congratulations Dr. Iseminger for an award that is well deserved.
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I had him as an instructor twenty years ago, he was always interesting because he was so passionate about the subjects. He was a very tough grader and an excellant teacher.
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Dr. Iseminger is the last vestige at UND of the halcyon days when universities were institutes of higher education. When the best and the brightest students came to learn, think, and expand their knowledge. Universities today are businesses, run and that model, with the primary goal of spiralling up enrollment to generate greater revenue streams. This has entailed remedial courses which should have been learned in high school, and students whose sense of entitlement is so pronounced, they believe their default grade is an A the first day of class.
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The remedial classes are not the fault of a business model. The classes are necessary because parents don’t care whether their little darling learns anything. Their child is the best, brightest, cutest and all deserving no matter how much of an idiot they are. And, it is also the fault of accepting low standards in education throughout the years because we have become lazy, complacent Americans. Having to hire a coach and provide a teaching position to get them is a sad state. I’m not saying all coaches are bad teachers – but the majority of them I had were horrible teachers.
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They are the fault of the business model in the sense that universities, in their desire to explode enrollment, ignore their own admission standards. Thus they get students who are unqualified to be at a university. They attempt to prepare them by offering bonehead classes which should have been passed at the K-12 level. As an example, a UND memo announced that if Shirvani’s plan to employ standards went into effect, UND’s enrollment would drop 51%. What does that tell you about the students admitted there now?
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Gene, I am in agreement with what you’ve written on this subject. My question is that even though universities have changed, and even though remedial classes are now offered, is that necessarily bad? Are those students taking those remedial classes worse off than they would have been had they quit school after high school?
The role of the universities has changed, as has the role of all schools. As an elementary/middle school teacher for nearly four decades, I know we are doing more to help every student learn than was done when I was in elementary and middle school. It is frustrating, very frustrating, dealing with the “won’ts” but it is still better than simply giving up on them. Some of those “won’ts” come to their senses late and go to college. Maybe they should go to one of the community colleges before attending UND, however.
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While your sentiments lean toward Mao and the Beloved Leader.
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Don’t forget Castro, Lenin & Trotsky, all enemies of Adolph.
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I forgot to list Stalin in my list who made it possible for us to win WW ll with the loss of 35 mill. Russians. We’ve never had a shooting war with Russia/SU & yet most Americans have no use for what they meant to us as our ally in the war effort.
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He must have mellowed in his old age. While he definitely was not left, center right would be a more appropriate description; at least when I knew him.
He believed a college degree should mean something, and that not everyone is cut out to get one. That alone makes him unpopular in todays egalitarian at all cost world. Meritocricies by definition grade people along a line from good to not good.
It needs to be stressed from the outset that he would never put up with disenfranchisement based on externals such as color, religion, or sexual preferences. You got an A because you earned it. He could care less if you were green sleeping with blue or praying to purple.
That is why I could respect his views, even though I disagreed with many of them.
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Dr. Iseminger says, “Our school system failed people, our families failed them, people have failed themselves,” he said. “We have to keep students’ attention. They can’t handle English, they can’t spell, they can’t write, because they’ve never been required to.”
As I said doesn’t this have more to do with greater #s of students attending college so you have more that can’t do the work as well because they wouldn’t have aspired to higher ed. 30 yrs. ago?
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Why doesn’t he see it as an accomplishment that greater #s of students than ever in college is an accomplishment by the K-12 system?
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Spearman:
Greater numbers of students occupying seats and consuming oxygen is not necessarily progress. As you yourself pointed out, our graduation rates remain relatively stagnant (an increase from 20% to 25% when the number of people attending college has risen from 50% to 90% is not something to write home about).
I have repeatedly said the only proven cure for poverty is education. The only proven way for the majority of people to get out of wage slavery (que WalMart jingle and McD arches) is education.
That said, if you give it away it has no meaning. It simply insults all of those who actually had to work for their piece of paper. That is why Shurkey is correct about DSU.
We need less 4 year schools and more community colleges. 2 research universities for a state with a population similar to that of a suburb is plenty. Even if we manage to top 1 million people in the next 10 years, 2 universities and one 4 year school out west would be plenty. The rest should be community colleges.
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If more attending isn’t better then why do all the experts, i.e. counselors et al, advise everyone to get some education beyond HS even if it doesn’t result in a some kind of degree. If your poverty eliminated by education was correct then the maldistribution of wealth all over the world has nothing to do with oligarchic control of wealth whose purpose is to maintain exploitation & poverty. As many commentators are now saying in this political season, the Ayn Randers go through an adolescent phase enamored of her & some never grow out of her sophomoric world view that education is the only solution to the problem of poverty.
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BTW MSP has 100 suburbs & not one is over 90,000, that being Bloomington & not 650,000 as you say. There are other states with not much more than the ND pop. that have 2 state research univ., i.e., SD, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico.
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Ok Spearman, I hate to interrupt your emotional argument with facts, but here they are: % of the US Population with ______
HS Diploma: 87.6
“Some College:” 56.9
Associates or certificate: 40%
Bachelors: 30%
Masters: 8%
Doctorate: 3%
In order for education to bring you out of poverty you are either talking a marketable Associates degree (like nursing) or a Bachelors at a minimum. If you want to make your Jewish grandmother happy and become a doctor or a lawyer … the numbers speak for themselves.
“Some College” will not get you very far. However it is the difference between E1 and E3 when ENLISTING in the armed forces. If you want to be an officer (where the real money is at) you will need a Bachelors to start and a Masters to get above O3 – O4.
I don’t make the rules, just live by them.
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We need to get you out more often. “SD, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico” are hardly representative of the lower 48. In addition, if you combine them all together, you have less electoral college votes than any of the swing states.
PHX metro area has a population over 3,000,000 and it is barely considered a large metropolitan area by the census folks. For Pete’s sake man, we have several years to go before the population of ND equals that of Omaha, NE.
Lets keep things in perspective. The suburb of Denver I grew up in had 500,000 people 20 years ago. Who knows what it is now, and most people would never have heard of it if it wasn’t for some wing nut shooting up a movie theatre.
Finally, the reason most states have two universities is the same reason we do: LAND GRANT COLLEGES. Thank Abe Lincoln. If ND had to pay out of pocket for NDSU do you really think we would keep two research universities?
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So more students aren’t going to college?
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At one time, the purpose of a school was to provide an education. The three R’s.
Nowdays, sports is the prime reason that schools exist. Classes released early, so players can go to sports games. Does the janitor spend more time cleaning the classrooms or cleaning the gyms? How about the amoutn of time a school maintenance staff spend on maintenance? Is the time and effort spent maintaining the classrooms or the athletic complex.
While it is nice to have a few sports programs, do we need them all?
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Much more time is spent maintaining the classrooms than the sports facilities. How much time do you spend in schools?
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You’re asking how much time I spend in a school?
I currently work in a school.
Enough said…
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I’ve spent the last 37 yrs. in schools. Maybe if you’re in a one room schoolhouse more time is spent on the athletic field than the classroom.
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With mostly all due respect sprearman, after ’37 years in schools’, you confirm how badly our education system has failed.
Keep your cards ‘n letters coming, you’re always very entertaining.
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Richard, I can’t help that you are stuck in a 19th century world view & can’t comprehend discussions here.
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Yes, we need them all the sports to give more kids opps. to develop healthy exercise habits.
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In this instance I agree with you 100% . Dropping PE and physical recess and then wondering why 30% of the boys are on ADHD meds is a no brainer.
We are fat and not all that smart. That is not how a society maintains its preeminence. If these trends continue I would suggest learning Spanish and Chinese. English will be superfluous.
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Spearman, if I would have listened to my hs counselor I would currently be a plumber (nothing wrong with that). He said I would not be able to handle higher education courses because my hs teachers said I was lazy. Was I lazy yes, did I get straight A’s, yes. High school courses are a joke along with the majority of new age teachers who teach them. Anyways, that counselor was recently arrested for buying prostitutes so I guess his advice wasn’t great after all
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In the 70s & 80s HS counselors were actually advised by the feds to divert students to something other than a 4 yr. college. The theory was that there wouldn’t be enough jobs for too many college grads So therefore parents would lose faith in their govt. if they spent all that tuition money with no job for their kids upon grad. Of course that is what we have now because the 5% oligarchy has moved jobs out of the country to take advantage of lower wages abroad. The transnational corps. run by the 5% have no loyalty to their home country.
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We have had this discussion before but it is worth repeating: why is our educational system in the 21 century modeled after one from the 19 century?
The 9 month school year was made for an agricultural society where you needed to be off to help with the planting/harvest. Even in ND that does not describe the majority of the students.
We also use a primarily force fed lecture system which was proven ineffective 100 years ago. There are different ways to teach kids that have much higher success rates, yet doing away with the old is considered anathema, especially by the teacher’s union.
Inertia is a horrible thing. It prevents people from growing. There is no better example of this than education
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We only rate 1st in expenditures on ed. worldwide if you include what is spent on post sec. ed. We are the only country that doesn’t pay for ed. 100% from the fed. level cuz the US Constitution says states should take care of ed. As a result you have a teacher, let’s say in Rolla, ND, pop. 2000, with pay after 20 yrs. of $40,000 while across the border in Boisivain, Manitoba, pop. 2,000 pay of $60,000. A Canadian teacher makes the same whether they are in rural Manitoba or Toronto, Ont. In GF, pop.54,000, a teacher makes significantly less than a teacher in EGF, pop. 8,000. In Japan a public school teacher has a college professor’s daily schedule & they don’t work on Sat. as people think. The kids go to the school on Sat. but only to clean the bld. U.S. teacher unions are not to blame for this state of affairs. Teachers have fought for yrs. in Mn. for one statewide contract but because the pie to divide is only so big it never passes. Urban teachers fear their salaries would be lower. Solution: One federal contract. It will never happen until there is a constitutional convention.
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Nationwide would never work. It cost much more to live in NYC (not to mention your chance of getting shot) than Fargo.
State wide makes sense to me. As does paying for preparation. Every teacher has at least a BA, many have MA/MS and more than a few (principles mostly) have PhD.
Education (both K-12 and higher) is one of the few professions that has such a high barrier to entry with such a low compensation package. Part of it is the “female profession” stigma, like nurses. The other part of it is people want Cadillac service with Kia cost. It simply is not going to happen.
Like nurses, many of the best teachers leave the classroom for something else (administration, college professor, real estate) because loving your fellow man is good and all, but they want to buy a house and drive a decent car.
Can’t say as I blame them.
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Like I said rural Manitoba pays the same as Winnipeg, Toronto Montreal etc. It works there because they use “vat” taxes to fund many things we can’t. Whether you do the teaching in GF or NYC the work involved is basically the same. The pay should be too. NYC teachers would see teaching west of the Hudson R. as hardship pay & wouldn’t gripe about a national salary schedule like every other industrialized country provides. Thus their higher student outcomes.
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Found online…
“I have taken several courses with Prof Dubois, and find him absolutely amazing. He uses no lectures notes, just talks to people as if it were a conversation. He seems to know everything: names, dates, places. In his lit courses he draws everything together, the works, the history, politics; all the things that shaped what we studied. He also has a hilarious sense of humor. This is one prof who wants everyone to get the most they can out of his courses.”
–Nice review Mr. Dubois.
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So much for FN’s comments about forced lectures.
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Just as I thought…
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From 3 days ago FN said, “We need to get you out more often. “SD, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico” are hardly representative of the lower 48. In addition, if you combine them all together, you have less electoral college votes than any of the swing states.
I say, “who said they were representative of the lower 48. The point is there other states that have 2 research Univ. about the size of ND. Youact as if ND is some freak”.
FN said,”PHX metro area has a population over 3,000,000 and it is barely considered a large metropolitan area by the census folks. For Pete’s sake man, we have several years to go before the population of ND equals that of Omaha, NE”.
I say, “MSP & PHX have about the same metro size pop. of 3 mill. If they aren’t large then what is large? They rank in the top 16 largest US metros. You don’t have to be large like NYC, Chicago, LA to be large.
FN said, “Lets keep things in perspective. The suburb of Denver I grew up in had 500,000 people 20 years ago. Who knows what it is now, and most people would never have heard of it if it wasn’t for some wing nut shooting up a movie theatre.
I say, “in fact Aurora, Co. has, as of the 2010 census, 325,000 people not 500,000 20 yrs. ago as you state. If you don’t know the pop. of the place you grew up in than you have little cred. about this issue.
FN said, “Finally, the reason most states have two universities is the same reason we do: LAND GRANT COLLEGES. Thank Abe Lincoln. If ND had to pay out of pocket for NDSU do you really think we would keep two research universities?”
I say, “That is irrelevant to the this discussion. Of course there wouldn’t be 2 research univ. Where did I suggest it was functional to have overbuilt the system?” Quite a few states did overbuild. That’s another issue.
BTW, why are so many people in many countries out of poverty without a 2 or 4 yr. college degree? Could it be because the oligarchy has had to cough up its oversized share of the pie so the masses have not only public schools but national health care & many other worker achieved perks that keep citizens out of poverty even without higher ed. So much for your Randian worldview you use to explain America’s ills.
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