Some Lessons Learned

Some Lessons Learned

by Marco M. Pardi

“Learn from others what to pursue and what to

avoid, and let your teachers be the lives of others.” Dionysius Cato. 4^th Cent C.E.

Disticha de moribus ad filium.

All comments are welcome and will receive a reply.

My calendar tells me another year is drawing to a close. I suppose I should look back and consider what, if anything, I’ve done.

Anyone who opens this blog site sees the column on the right listing all my previous entries. 176 of them. Going back to February of 2013. All still open for comment. I’ve written about things from mysticism to college teaching, ecology to politics, gun control to what to bring to a gun fight. I’ve even included some non-fiction fiction. I haven’t calculated the monthly average, but I do find myself slowing down over the past few months. It’s not age, despite the calendar. Nor is it lack of ideas.

When I started this blog I set up my site with WordPress as a free account. Even at that level I was provided with a multitude of data such as how many hits were received each day and from where they were generated (one has to just presume a hit meant that someone went ahead and actually read what was on offer). A couple of my offerings were hit in over 100 countries; they then stabilized at around 75 for quite some time. At no time have I ever had the identity of a reader, unless that person was kind enough to comment. Among the large offerings of data provided by this site I was also able to see how many followers I had. That number has steadily grown quite large. And so, to provide a better service to those followers I upgraded to a paid platform. I derive no income from this site, what you see is purely at my expense.

The site also allows me to automatically delete spam, or to see it in case an errant comment ends up there (that has happened). Interestingly, the ratio to spam to bona fide comments is roughly 100 to 1. I manually review and clean off up to a dozen spam comments daily.

In the early years I could count on several people to regularly comment. In responding to each one I have often expressed my deep appreciation for their efforts. In fact, I set up this blog for the comments, not for a mere platform to broadcast my views. I learned as a child that learning comes through listening, not through one way monologue. And the best lessons issue from dialogue. For me, life is learning. And, it is sharing that learning.

Yet, the number of “reads” far outweighed the number of comments. I admit I can be somewhat oblique at times, but I doubt my readers have to go back and re-read six or eight times before providing a comment. I also noticed that many of the “reads” came from guests, people not signed on as followers and apparently the recipients of forwarding through other media platforms.

The enhanced platform I purchased does some inspiring statistical analyses of the data it gathers. Looking at these I noticed cycles in the silent reader hits. In addition, and in parallel to a career in medical science I also taught college for twenty two years. The cycles of highest activity in the readership of the blog appeared to closely parallel those cycles within academic semesters when papers are due. These papers range from basic “position” papers to admission essays. They do not necessarily expound on subject matter intimately germane to any given academic course or subject. Thus, with a little editing, several of my blog entries could be submitted as original work by anyone.

And, not long after I noticed this association of reader cycles with academic requirements I began receiving solicitations from several companies asking to hire my services in writing papers they could then sell to students. Even had I never been in a teaching position I would have found this practice an appalling example of cheating. Yet, I know it happens on a large scale. As a professional dedicated to integrity in learning, I was inspired to vomit. But, although keyboards are cheap, I thought better of it.

I’ve seen several examples of cheating, some crude and some grand. I became bored at one small college where I was teaching and decided to do a research project very much like a marketing study for the college. The administration approved my protocol and I enlisted a couple of student volunteers to administer questionnaires to upper level high school students throughout the large County, soliciting their post high school educational preferences and their reasons for those preferences. After four months of data gathering and four weeks of data collation and analysis I wrote up an extensive paper, complete with recommendations to the college, and presented it in an administrative forum.

The paper was enthusiastically received and the college immediately embarked upon implementation of my recommendations, spending several thousand dollars in the process. The paper was published by and archived at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). I received Tenure the following year.

A year later the Dean of Instruction called me into his office. He asked me if I had read the Dissertation which had just won a Doctorate in Education, from one of the State Universities, for one of our administrative staff. I answered in the negative and was handed a copy. It was my paper from two years previously, with the title slightly changed and the administrator’s name in place of mine. All the rest was as I wrote it.

Getting over my shock I asked if, since the college had to now pay this person at a higher level, there would be any action taken to expose this. He said No. The inter-collegiate agreements in the State, regarding such things as transfer students, would be jeopardized if one school exposed another for wrong doing. If we refused to honor a degree from another university they could retaliate against our students. Sound baffling? I thought so.

The next year I had yet another administrative staff member in one of my classes; tuition was free for them. At the mid-term exam I wrote essay questions on the board, to be answered in writing in class. I noticed this staff person was visibly disturbed. When I reviewed the papers later in my office I found why. The person had written impeccable answers: To questions from a different course I was teaching. The answers, to questions from the Introductory Anthropology course, were submitted to the test for the Cultural Anthropology course. I gave the person a ZERO for the test. I did not dismiss the student from the class as I had a right to. At the end of the term the person had brought his/her grade up to a D. This person had a straight A GPA on all courses up to that point, and since the college was using the No-Grade instead of an F the person came to my office and asked me to change the grade to a No-Grade, thus not affecting the GPA. I refused, saying that were I to do so I would be complicit in cheating. My Division Chairman advised me to hold onto the mid-term test. I locked it, along with another student’s proper test paper, in my home safe.

Almost exactly one year later I was summoned to the Dean of Instruction’s office. That person who had cheated had filed a Federal Civil Rights suit claiming, along with other charges, I had acted out of racial prejudice. The case was to be heard in Federal District Court.

In the preliminary hearing I presented the test in question, next to the test from the non-cheating student. I also presented the test questions for each of the two courses at issue. The case was immediately thrown out of court. One can only wonder at the outcome had I not heeded my Division Chairman’s advice. But these are only two of many examples I can cite of cheating, some far worse.

Overall, I feel there was very little cheating going on in my classes. And, the classes were participatory to the extent the volume of material allowed. Of course, through the years of mostly lecture based teaching I have had innumerable instances in which the class ran to the hour with little or no movement from the students to ask questions or rebut a point. I understand that. But over the course of a semester there have rarely been students who have not participated in some way.

And so, Dear Reader, as you recover from your holiday spirit – or spirits, as the case may be, you may understand why, in the face of large amounts of “reads” and low amounts of Comments I’m spending this Season of Giving finishing this 177^th offering and considering my options. Before the next billing cycle I can shut down this site completely. Or, I can leave it open to float, perhaps dropping back to the Free level while I find more productive ways to use my time. Or, I can examine the list of Followers and trim off the ones from whom I never read anything. Some of them might appreciate no longer receiving email notification that a new gift is under the tree.

I’m reminded of the aphorism, Use it or lose it. If I knew who coined that I would certainly give her/him full credit. Anyway, I would like to know your thoughts even if they are captured in a single word. In our modern world of truncated communication that shouldn’t be out of the ordinary.

Happy Holidays.