The Nixon Pardon Was a Death Knell

The basic tenet of democracy is that no one is above the law. This is the bedrock upon which all other democratic ideals and lofty aims is built. 

The United States of America heard the death knell of democracy on the day that Ford pardoned Nixon. On that day, the fact that those in power would not be held accountable was on full display, and there was no outrage. 

The US is failing the test of basic kindergarten:

Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal. 

If it’s not yours, don’t touch it.

Be respectful, and whenever possible, be kind.

A kindergarten teacher, fed up with the incessant tattletale activities of her students, installed a phone in the coat closet just for the children to report the infractions that they saw. It worked amazingly. Children reported pulled hair, lunch money infractions, being late, saying mean things, everything that you would expect. They tattled on their parents as well as on each other. This, in so many ways, is the epitome of democracy: reporting an infraction, regardless of the status of the offender, expecting that the rule of law will swoop down and have its say, setting everything to rights. Children have an unerring sense of fairness. But this is not about Rawls.

The experiment worked until it suddenly didn’t. 

It didn’t take long for children to notice that nothing was coming of their reports. Not for wearing un ugly outfit or for pulling hair. Not for their parents or adults, and not for the children. When this anticipated accountability failed to materialize, the children’s participation waned and then disappeared altogether. The children had given up. 

The Nixon pardon stands out, but it is far from the only instance of those in power in the US slipping free from accountability. What makes it so distinct in my mind is the lack of outrage. Everyday adults—not only just the cronies of the perpetrator—took the pardon in stride, defended it even, as simply what one would expect. This was presented as sincere, a genuine belief that this pardoning of corruption was defensible and ought to be done, not merely expected. Impeachment, the highest crime in the land against an elected official, would simply and predictably be pardoned by his successor.

Today, we are faced with rampant corruption, and at times there seems to be outrage, but more than anything there is a thread of cynicism, a shrugging dismissal as though to say It’s all unfair; what are you going to do? 

This stance of political powerlessness by the citizenry is the antithesis of democracy.

Saturday, July 5

Out our window this evening, a thunderstorm has rolled through once again, this time with enough rain to lift my spirits. Today was hot-but-not-blistering, a perfect summer day. We met with a friend for breakfast, then ran pre-Scotland errands and grabbed a perfect lunch downtown before going to see Supergirl at the Grandin. Huzzah for summer—the last six weeks have been nothing short of excellent for our peace of mind. I think the burnout is finally starting to recede for real, and we have a peaceful, easy feeling.

After the movie, I tended to dog sitting things and thought about reading, but mostly just rested through the afternoon and evening. Geo is simply the best, and I feel blessed to get to spend this summer together. As we were wrapping up at lunch, I said “I love our downtown life,” and he heartily agreed. 

The Scotland Packing is proceeding apace. We have a couple last-minute small items to pick up tomorrow afternoon after I get back from dog sitting and then a trip to the library to print a couple documents I’ll need this week. 

The qualifying exam looms on the horizon beginning this Fall, but I’m letting myself enjoy every last minute of this summer break. Thank you, Universe. 

Thursday, July 2

Out the window, it’s blistering hot. The oppressiveness isn’t readily apparent with the temperature, but even the briefest of walks leave us covered in perspiration, our clothes clinging clumsily, and our brains start to fog up. We are spending time indoors, as only makes sense.

Geo continues to be the delight of my soul. We are enjoying our scheduled rest-and-prep week before he goes to Scotland. It’s a perfect set of activities for this blasted heat wave.

I just started reading Project Hail Mary, and it might be even better than the movie. Geo and I are watching Gargoyles together and The Hardacres on BritBox keep me company while I knit the Thistle Blanket. July is a month of movies, and we ventured down to the Grandin to see a summer showing of The Hunger Games. I hadn’t read the book since it came out all those many years ago, and Geo and I both want to read the series again.

When apparent stability disintegrates

When apparent stability disintegrates,

As it must—

God is Change—

People tend to give in

To fear and depression,

To need and greed.

When no influence is strong enough

To unify people

They divide.

They struggle,

One against one,

Group against group.

For surgical, position, power.

They remember old hates and generate new ones,

They create chaos and nurture it,

They kill and kill and kill, 

Until they are exhausted and destroyed,

Until they are conquered by outside forces,

Or until one of them becomes

A leader

Most will follow,

Or a tyrant

Most fear.

—Earthseed: The Books of the Living

I’m booked

It’s official: I’m registered for the Qualifying Exam.

Bookmark this space, and expect the long-winded, rambling rants about the commodification of education to continue. 

At some point, I’m going to have so much formal education that the only thing I’ll be qualified to do is walk around a field following sheep.

Agentic AI and the Commodification of Education

 “Revising our assignments, however, is not sufficient for adapting to The AI Age,” Jason Gulya writes in his opinion piece “Will Agentic AI Break Higher Education?” in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Focusing on how to retool the assignments is not, in fact, assigning work that AI can’t do. The problem is not AI. Soon agentic AI will not only log in and satisfy the assignments in Canvas, it will also create the assignments, lectures, and tests that the students will offload. And it will do it because it can. Agentic AI will be able to craft the coursework and then satisfy it because the system of education has become so commodified that it is now more system than education.

If we want to create work that AI can’t do—as professors and as students—we need to return to the model of education that rejects tools in favor of substance; that is, we must prioritize inquiry over test scores. Inquiry-based education is education, to many of the philosophers and critical theorists who have investigated what it means to educate, including Dewey, Marcuse, Freire, and hooks. We ignore the critical writing of the last century at our peril, as educators, as students, and as a nation.

The educational process is exactly that: a process. Over the last 40 years, we have divested and defunded education until it is now merely a matter of ticks in boxes: attendance, test scores, and property valuations are not the scaffold on which to build an inquiring mind. We have so prioritized “accurate” answers that we have harrowed out the question altogether.

Critical thinking skills in the United States remain abysmal; literacy is on the decline; maths classes continue to report that students are far behind their peers in other countries. And yet the response, in all levels of education, seems to be to have more tools and less funding. Larger class sizes, lead by remote professors, built on syllabi that are increasingly rubric based are incapable of achieving the results we say we want: sharp, quick minds able to problem solve in holistic and creative ways, investigating beyond the borders of one syllabus or one subject.

Gulya sees the problem in education to be one of transactionality, but truly the problem runs much deeper than that. We have turned all the elements of education into levers and switches to be thrown for reflective conformity, a performance of one-dimensional regurgitation by both student and educator. To ask questions of the question, to investigate “wrong” answers is now seen as a waste of time, a waste of resources, and a failed education. Investigation is engagement. We cannot stifle one without stifling the other.

The brightest minds on the planet are not being taught in classrooms with the best technology and tools; they are found in small groups under a tree in some of the poorest countries. The dialectic inquiry that this classroom affords cannot be replicated by AI in any way.

Do more of that, and we will have education.

What it will cost us is the assessment-based commodification and indifference we, as policy makers, have consistently imposed upon the very idea of schools.

Fu

 福 (fú) good luck, prosperity, and well-being, a sentiment of positive energy and good fortune, the pursuit of a happy life, and expectations for a better future. 

 Leaving behind the introspective year of the Snake, we turn a page to the Fire Horse and welcome in adventure, vitality, and momentum. Never have I needed it more.