Open Letter from Ashley Pryor to David Nemeth

Ashley Pryor to editor, David, me

Hi [Bloggie],

Sorry if I am not sending this to the correct person, but Professor Nemeth and I have been having an exchange about his post on the A& S College Forum website. He let me know that IC reporters would be talking to him today and encouraged me to send you a copy of the open letter I wrote to him, and also sent to the blog to be posted. I am copying Jim and "Bloggie" in the spirit of continuing a collegial exchange on these important issues.
Best,

Ashley

Letter begins here:

Jim,

I am one of those people who is troubled by your recent post, “Hub of Mediocrity: Inviting the Playground into our Classroom,” on the “Arts & Sciences College Forum (The Blog Formerly Known as Arts & Sciences Council e Forum).” I am taking the time to write this because the way we frame our urban schools directly impacts my family, but also because I have had the pleasure of teaching so many wonderful students this semester-- exceptionally bright, motivated, ambitious, students, many of whom are the first members of their families to attend college. I am terribly concerned about the message that they might take away from posts that seem to unproblematically equate urban schools with anti-intellectual attitudes and behavior problems. To cut to the chase, here are the two passages that I have questions about:

“I have asked repeatedly to our group why UT is interested in recruiting and then retaining (at great cost in dollars and reputation) academically-unmotivated students rather than recruiting on-record high-performing academically-motivated students? Are we after a top-tier quantity ranking or top-tier quality ranking? These questions have so far gone unanswered.”

“The floodgates are already opening up: the discipline problems and anti-academic attitudes that have already trashed the academic aspirations of our urban public primary and secondary schools are apparently soon to be invited, accommodated and formally implemented into our own A&S College curriculum, scholarship, teaching/learning modalities, space and graduate studies. The huge internal contradiction and false claim in this Roundtable Report is that it claims to be taking the High Road to Top-Tier Ranking while it is obviously mapping out instead in this Roundtable Implementation Report a Low Road to Mediocrity -- or worse.”

Your first assertion is that, “UT is interested in recruiting and retaining academically-unmotivated students.” I don’t know of any formal policy to recruit underprepared students. Are you serious? The only change in recruitment practices that I know about is the UT Guarantee, a program that recruits high-achieving (minimum 3.0 average), financially challenged students from the state’s 21 urban centers. In the absence of any information about a new formal policy of recruiting and retaining academically-unmotivated students, and knowing only about this new program, I wonder if you are willfully mischaracterizing the UT Guarantee program as recruiting academically-unmotivated students. I look forward to hearing you clarify your meaning. In the next paragraph you seem to characterize disciplinary problems and anti-academic attitudes as a problem endemic to our urban schools, but never acknowledge that under-prepared, unmotivated, and undisciplined students also come from our suburban schools (btw here I am presupposing racial and ethnic diversity in both settings). If your intent is call attention to the problem of anti-academic attitudes, disciplinary problems, etc., so that we can find ways to address them on campus as they arise, why not just focus on these issues? Why focus on students from urban schools?

I wonder how our students will read the flurry of anonymous exchanges on this blog, which is unfortunately still named the “Arts and Science Forum,” even though it no longer officially represents A&S Council. Today two of our students came before council to express their concerns about language that they characterized as “racist” and found to be offensive. And while I can appreciate that some faculty were reluctant to comment upon or decry a blog entry they had not yet seen, I hope faculty will be concerned about what students (and colleagues at other institutions, and our constituents throughout the state of Ohio) will see on this blog if they visit. Consider this entry, posted a few days ago by an anonymous blogger: “If I am reborn in this World as a UT A&S College professor I will consider inviting student clickers, tweeters, cell phones and other recreational devices into my classroom. Just allow me my taser.” Just what kind of message are we sending to our students with this kind of talk? And what is it about this site that seems to elicit so many anti-student sentiments? Is this really something that we want up on a blog that is still named the Arts and Science Forum? I for one think not.

Ashley Pryor