Tenure – a Major Cornerstone of Education

As you know, I tend to avoid highly contentious topics on this blog. Today, however, I feel compelled to talk about something near and dear to my heart: tenure.

There is a national movement to change and/or eliminate tenure – in public schools and universities. In fact, here in Florida, the state Legislature passed and the Governor signed a bill promulgating that “as of July 1, 2011, all newly hired teachers will be offered 1-3 year contracts and tenure will no longer exist for new hires.” In many universities, similar policies also are being considered and/or implemented. The most important aspect of tenure is that it is primarily intended to guarantee the right to academic freedom: it protects teachers and researchers when they dissent from prevailing opinion, openly disagree with authorities of any sort, or spend time on unfashionable topics.

As a former high school teacher and for 40 years a professor at four different universities (including being a Department Chair three times and once an Associate Dean), I indeed have seen the misuse and abuse of tenure; yet I certainly have seen the benefits of tenure as well. Tenure is one of the major cornerstones of any educational system, and to suggest that it be eliminated because of a few troublesome and undesirable tenured teachers is akin to suggesting that democracy be eliminated because we elected a few troublesome and undesirable legislators. Interestingly, in my novel, Fear of Feeling Loved, the heroine, Marcia, is a newly hired university Assistant Professor and is focused on doing what she needs to do to eventually qualify for tenure. Her friend and mentor, an older Professor, explains to Marcia the importance and virtues of tenure (as well as the unofficial politics involved).

With tenure, a professional school teacher will feel fee to develop his or her courses and individual classes based on what their students need (which on occasion may not be what the students want), and give students, their parents, school administrators and others in society their best professional opinions (which on occasion may not be what they want to hear). With tenure, university professors will openly and honestly honor their commitments to teaching, research and community service.

Without tenure and thus a fear of losing ones job, for example, a pubic school biology school teacher may understandably be less committed what science may say about evolution, and a political science professor may be reluctant to be honest when asked about an upcoming election or an elected official. In addition to generating knowledge, disseminating knowledge and facilitating critical and creative thinking, in many ways our society’s educators play a very important gad-fly role for the ultimate betterment of everyone.

Question: What are your thoughts regarding tenure?

Bill

Think About Japan: How Easy it is to Lose Sight of Ones Priorities

For me, yesterday was an incredible day. After a motorcycle ride South over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, enjoying the beautiful, accommodating chamber-of-commerce weather, meeting my brother and sister-in-law for a few beers at a packed, outdoor, live-music-filled biker bar with almost a thousand motorcycles parked all over, I fixed a cup of coffee and sat out back on my screened-in porch to watch some sports on my small old TV.

As I was trying to simultaneously follow golfer Gary Woodland through the last few holes on his way to winning the Transitions Championship and the exciting March Madness college basketball games, I felt my frustration starting to escalate. “Poor me,” I said to my two dozing cats who were trying to stay awake enough to watch the boats motoring by on the Intercoastal waterway, “I only have this one TV out here and it doesn’t even have PIP (picture in a picture).” With that, their dozing morphed into something more akin to napping. By then as I was adding to my self-pity, “Even my two cats don’t even care about how much I’m struggling here!”

Then I glanced at one of the cover stories on the St. Petersburg Times on the table and it hit me: there are thousands of people dead and missing in the aftermath of the 8.9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that recently struck Japan. Not only that -- the nuclear power plants in the region are on the brink of a major disaster. The earthquake was ten times stronger than the 7.6 quake that struck Taiwan in 1999! Further pondering reminded me that as the Japanese government is working to fix the nuclear reactors and restore order, it has asked the major manufacturers to shut down operations until further notice so that all energy can be used for emergency purposes. This, of course, will have major implications to the global supply chain depending on how long these factories are asked to be shut down.

Hold it, I reconsidered: thousands dead and thousands missing, and here I am feeling sorry for myself because I can’t simultaneously follow two of my favorite sports. Yeah right – “poor me...!” Not only that, but talk about a psychologically- and philosophically-healthy culture… through all of this, sans heart-breaking tears of mourning, there have been no riots, looting or pillaging. Indeed, we Americans could learn a lot from these incredible people!

Out of what I believe was genuine compassion (okay, including a pinch of guilt), I opened my i-phone and made a donation to the American Red Cross. While I then enjoyed watching Gary Woodland win the Transitions and see some of my bracketology picks win their games, I did so with less frustration and Angst -- albeit still feeling saddened by what’s going on in Japan... as well as thankful and blessed.

Question: How has what’s going on in Japan affected you?

Bill

The Role(s) of Control in Life and Loving Relationships

It is amazing how frequently I see that people tend to think of “control” as being a less than good (or even bad). Yet let’s remember two things: (1) control is the ability to purposefully direct, suppress and/or change; and (2) if we didn’t exercise some controls in our lives, our lives would be in total chaos. When talking with my “pro bono clients” about control issues in their lives, I frequently challenge them with two questions: (1) are you controlling things in your life in ways that make your life and the way you live it better? and, (2) are there any other controls that you could exercise that would improve your life and the way you live it?

In my 33 years of work as a licensed psychologist, specializing in working with couples, one of the primary problem areas people in troubled loving relationships had to attend to was their “control issues” – within themselves and their loving relationships. “Control problems in relationships” typically are related to the couple’s boundaries and associated controls. For example, in my co-authored book with Dr. William A. Lambos, Our Loving Relationship, we discuss these two latter phenomena directly:

Boundaries are the limits of how far you can go and remain comfortable with yourself. Boundaries define the “space” in which a given individual is not invited or welcomed at a given time.

Controls are those things you do to assure that you stay within your boundaries and assure that other people do not violate your comfort zone.

In two of my three novels, “control” is directly and portrayed. For example, In My Sweetpea: Seven Years and Seven Days, as Sheila and Troy’s marriage starts to fall apart, his “active control” and her “passive control” quickly turns their relationship dance from a foxtrot to a Macarena. And in If Ever Again… It’ll be for Love, after Diane divorces her over-controlling husband, recovers and then starts to fall in love with Michael, she subconsciously perceives many of his loving gestures as controlling. (As I discuss in Chapter 4 of my pop-psych book, Living Life, Anyway – 2^nd Edition, “…we can control things actively by ‘what we do’ and we also can control things passively by “what we don’t do’.”)

Interestingly, when my “clients” who are in recovery tell me that they are staying sober because they “gave up control” (e.g., “Let go, let god.”), I ask them: “When you choose to give up control, isn’t that a form of control?”

Aspects and phenomena regarding “control in life” and “control in loving relationships” easily could entail a book’s worth of address and discussion. To wit, this herein discussion doesn’t even scratch the surface. Nonetheless, I hope my musings have challenged you to think about the issue(s) of control and how it interfaces with your life and the way you live it... as well as your adult loving relationships.

Question: How was or has been “control” been good (or bad) aspects of your life and your loving relationships?

Bill

E-books, Old Dogs and New Tricks

One of my Christmas presents from my girlfriend, Sharon, was a Kindle e-book reader. Being an “old dog” who for the past half century has been a veracious reader of “tree books,” I approached my enjoyment of e-book-reading suspiciously. To my surprise and delight, however, I have been enjoying my Kindle immensely. Then a couple of weeks ago, I attended an excellent Florida Writers Association “E-book Publishing Workshop” conducted by my friend and fellow writer, Jim Swain, and left with my enthusiasm for e-books ratcheting onward and upward. This is the future!

Regarding some basics, an e-book is an electronic book (also e-book, ebook, digital book) is a text and image-based publication in digital form produced on, published by, and readable on computers or other digital devices. E-books were originally developed by Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to “encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks.” Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, PG it is the oldest digital library. During our Workshop, moreover, Jim mentioned that:

• by 2009, sales of digital books were 2.5% of the book market;
• in September 2010, Publisher’s Weekly announced that sales of e-books in the United States had reached 8.5% of the total book market, representing the only growth segment in the book industry, worldwide; and,
• in November, 2010 Publisher’s Weekly reported that the sale of e-books will reach $1 billion by 2011, and may account for 50% of the total book market by 2015.

This indeed is the future!

My own relatively brief research on e-books revealed numerous websites and assorted information – such as poignant articles on advice and information; copyright resources; e-book compilers, promotions, readers and resellers; e-publisher services and associations; and web publishing. I also enjoyed a very interesting online article on “How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write.”

As my fan-base readers know, three of my 27 published books are novels – romance novels involving assorted, pivotal and psychological aspects of loving relationships between a heroin and a hero, and interwoven with family issues, courtship, marriage and divorce, and single-parenting issues, among others, and spiced with wit, humor and what has been described as “subtle steamy sex.” Having the digital rights for such, I worked with an excellent e-book formatter, Michael Campbell, who did a superb job of formatting my three novels into Kindle and e-Pub formats. Then I posted the three novels on the Internet and they now are available from amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com:

· My Sweetpea Kindle NOOKbook

· Fear of Feeling Loved Kindle NOOKbook

· If Ever Again… It’ll be for Love Kindle NOOKbook

You also can see these three novels are now spotlighted on the first page of my Website: http://emenerbooks.com/default.aspx

I invite you to check them out… and remember: if you have a Kindle, you can download a Sample of each of these novels: if you don’t like what you’re reading, no harm, no foul; and if you like what you’re reading, you can purchase them (for about 20% of what they cost in their “tree book” versions).

In closing, let me remind you of something I have said on numerous occasions – verbally as well as in writing – something very pertinent to the essence of this blog:

“Old dogs are capable of learning new tricks…

sometimes it just takes a little longer.”

Ciao for now,

Bill