Go to Dr Jacks Loft (bottom of page) to see extent of classes Dr Jack  taught at Kent State as opposed to current online courses and instructor currently offered. Dr Jack never got a bad evaluation in 22 years at Kent, yet was never offered tenure.
Cake Photo Caption

A FINAL WORD

I have spent over 40 years in classrooms and have had over 9000 students some of which liked me and some who did not. (Of course, there is a reciprocity to that!) Through those years and the years in which I grew up (the forties and fifties) I witnessed a great ride from the mechanical to the virtual or electronic age. All along, however, people fabricated my construction of reality of which I am grateful. It is people who I met, experienced and reacted to as well as them reacting to me that made life sometimes a joy and sometimes misery, but that is the way it goes. One does not become a whole person without personally growing through interaction. The classroom taught me that if one is self-centered and can not take criticism - they had better look for another job because the day a teacher believes they are a good one, is the day they become a bad one! It is all predicated on dealing with people, People and the times change  which is reflected in education.  This change is seen in the proliferation of online courses.  Online courses have significantly altered and mutated the nature of human existence. No longer do people have to interact with what is happening because they can see it on the computer. The problem is they may not understand nor  learn anything about themselves from this paucity of experience. (Many gauge their self by the number of face book hits they have which is nothing more than mediocrity elevated to self aggrandizement.) The only way one grows as a person is to put those personal ideas out there and see how well they stand up. Contemporary times cultivate a lack of understanding one's talents and failures. One has difficulty  who they are existentially other than what the little screen blatantly tells them. I thank the students for  for being critical of my lectures - it put me in a certain place that I could experience creatively. (Sounds nice but no one likes to be criticized!) That is THE important change the  sociologists miss - not the change whereby one becomes another lemming and  just "go along with things."  Sometimes the best learning for me occurred when I or someone else was aggravated. Then we had to find out just what kind of a person we were in terms of defending or regretting what was said. Usually it worked out, BUT at least it was better than being a monumental wimp and hiding behind a "not offending" philosophy. People are complex, different and no one (honestly) is equal to anyone else. Some are better and some are less - so it goes. Respect and strive for your personal best, but never believe there is not someone better than you. There always is. That is the challenge - a personal standard of excellence built on face-to-face contact. It is hard to do, but a hell of a lot better that going out on your knees.
Go to Dr Jacks Loft


Forty percent of Kent - East Liverpool is now online courses with instructors in absentia. This is an educational disgrace. It is not about learning, but simply about money at the student's disadvantage. A contemporary student starts school in debt with loans and "scholarships" and concludes with debts to be paid in 20 years with no resort to bankruptcy along the way.  Management at Kent usually spends their morning time drinking coffee and going to meaningless meetings where they talk numbers, not education. The afternoons have always been a mystery in management as to what is accomplished.  Schools can be much better and less expensive, but those in management are not going to give up their overblown salaries and extraneous positions for being a sedentary watchdog. Instructors are no better with their meetings designed to guard tenure and faux fairs, conferences that have little to do with learning. Education is for the public, but what public are we talking about?