Post 28.

"We live in an era of growing inequality." Thus begins Vincent Bates's latest Music Educators Journal piece. Educational institutions often worsen inequality by sorting students, which is done at the district level (success on national tests), school (this is the good elementary school), and within-school (academic track/non-academic track) levels. And school music hasn't avoided this inequality. In music education (like in birdsong), it's a hierarchy connected to mating: I married someone that was in band, not in the vo-tech track. We teach within, in Bates's words, "a competitive system," and "those with a head start are usually the ones who win." Bates suggests music teachers 1., "learn about and embrace the musical traditions of less affluent students," 2., "teach for lifelong music-making," 3., "make school music free for everyone," 4., "let musical participation be its own reward," and 5., "use music as a means to teach about economic disparities." Bates commented on the sustainability implications (an interest that we share) of his 3rd point. I'm going to focus in on the 1st and 5th points, specifically discussing implications for sustainability.

Like Bates, teachers embracing the musical traditions of our students is at the core of my work, what I have called a philosophy on soil. In an article I wrote for Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education, Music Educated and Uprooted, I use the Foxfire approach as an example of a rooting pedagogy. They are well known for producing a magazine, but their approach isn't merely about producing a magazine. It is a way of teaching rooted in students' out-of-school life. They send children home, where they talk to their relatives and other community members. They collect folk knowledge, which includes musics. There's no reason this can't be the starting point for music teaching. Teaching should not be a practice of bringing generalizables, those published artifacts we learn about in universities, like evangelists but our sacred artifacts are Percy Grainger scores and Carl Orff's instruments instead of the image of the Madonna. Music education should rather begin with human beings in a specific place. Music educators can begin their careers by recognizing the place they're entering, valuing it as a resource. This is the start of the metaphor of roots.

Estelle Jorgensen, back in 1995, already recognized the need for rootedness in music teaching and learning. She writes, "Place also provides a sense of rootedness. Individuals share ties to and roots in this place that stabilize beliefs and practices and promote cross-generational traditions, personal feelings of identity, security, and connectedness with this place and the people in it. ... People's disconnection from family and friends causes them to feel insecure, unsure of their identity and where they belong. The decision to make a home and stay put in this place, become identified with it, share in its responsibilities, challenges, and limitations, and joys, is a personal affirmation of the importance of rootedness in one's life." If disconnection from a sense of rootedness leads to insecurity, why is so much of schooling dissected from the communities we ostensibly serve? This is the question that Jorgensen and Bates and other music education scholars have wrestled with. We ask ourselves, What does it mean to actually be in a place?

Since some places cultivate more of a sense of rootedness than others, it follows logically that some places are more sustainable than others. It has been long noted that poor city neighborhoods and poor rural towns, where intergenerational knowledge is commonplace since everybody's relatives live within a few blocks of one another, are less polluting than suburbs. But our university system promotes, as the American ideal, suburban living. We export that ideal around the planet, to uproot rooted communities. We call it globalism. University professors treat as a right their hour-long commutes, ecologically disastrous suburban lawns, internationally owned shops (rather than local bodegas and Ma and Pa shops found throughout non-suburbia), globetrotting jobs, not knowing neighbors, not having porches, and seeing family just once a year. None of this is sustainable. Humans were made to walk. Everything we need must be within walking distance, so that when we choose to drive somewhere it's a choice, not a necessity. If we want to support our soon-to-be 8 billion human population, we need a return to home. To the inner-city and rural neighborhoods too many of us have fled for the illusion of social mobility. All hierarchies are unjust. That includes the hierarchy that places suburbia above traditional urban and rural living.

On to Bates's 5th point, that music teachers can use songs that teach about economic disparity. One of my favorite such songs is John Prine's old country classic, Paradise. My dad used to sing this song while we were walking. This song can be used in classrooms to raise a number of questions with students. These questions, this questioning-infused-pedagogy, can lead to greater ecological literacy. What can be gleaned from Paradise? Moving away from home was already normalized. And not just for upper-middle-class professionals. My own parents moved to D.C. for construction work in the 1960s. I didn't reroot in Patton, PA until the 1980s. 4th grade. In the song, Paradise was destroyed. "Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away." Memories are how Paradise is kept in the heart for uprooted people. How is it cared for though? Are uprooted masses, suburbanites, impotent to lend a hand and stop Mr. Peabody? And what is the Paradise story for those who stayed? For those who don't participate in "the progress of man"? For those who don't just remember the loss of Paradise, but need to live on the poisoned soil that progress has lead to?

DJS

Link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0027432118803046
Link: https://www.routledge.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy/Shevock/p/book/9780415792578
Link: http://act.maydaygroup.org/volume-15-issue-4/act-15-4-30-55/
Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3333542
Link: https://youtu.be/x-SKCWXoryU

Post 27.

The United States is the second most carbon polluting nation in the world. As a percentage, we're responsible for 14.34% of the world's CO2 emissions. The European Union is third with 9.62%, and China is first with 29.51%. Taken together, the U.S., E.U. and China are responsible for 53.47% of carbon emissions. In a world of top-down political solutions, and both of our parties in the U.S. are global and top-down oriented, if these three would come together and find a solution, we could avert one of the worst ecological crises we face. But that's not all of the story. Per capita, the five most carbon polluting nations are Qatar, Kuwait, U.A.E., Australia, and Turkmenistan. The U.S. comes in 7th on that list, China 21st, and the E.U. 24th. If climate change were only a problem of individual action, the U.S., China, and the E.U. wouldn't be the worst culprits. A third factor, capitalism itself, needs to be taken into account, since nations and individuals aren't the only parties acting to affect climate change.

This blog post is an American post. I live here, where the U.S. (with immature rhetoric) and Canada (with more flowery rhetoric) BOTH rush to destroy the planet. Specifically in the U.S., in a commonwealth in the northern Appalachian mountains. Everybody needs to begin where they are. Every thinker ought to begin in place.

Why do I say a third factor needs to be taken into account? If we look at the list of most polluting nations per capita, it quickly becomes apparent that they are oil producing nations. The way we account for the numbers for pollution is problematic. Are Qatar and Kuwait really digging all of that oil for their relatively small populations? No. From what I can find about top trade partners: Qatar exports its oil to China. Kuwait to China, the U.S. and E.U. Certainly the U.S., E.U. and China are responsible for producing oil as well. But it seems that smaller countries, esp. in the Middle East, may be victims of calculation, rather than the worst carbon polluters. On that list though is Australia is a rich, Anglophone nation. Australia's emissions are the highest on record. The Labor Party suggests it will put Australia back on track to meeting emissions goals. But again, this is a top-down solution. Will Labor Party politicians in Australia really be able to overcome the marketing challenges to putting climate change front and center?

In the U.S., the two party political system has ignored climate change. For instance, there was little to no talk of climate change in the 2016 presidential primaries. Donald Trump is an overt climate denier. Trump put a Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court, which signals that Trump intends to destroy Mother Earth at any cost. Back when Anne Gorsuch ran the EPA into the ground, kooky anti-environmentalists were the outsiders in the Republican Party. But now they are the face of the Republican Party, with its primary aim being the destruction our livable ecosystem. I have yet to see hope in the Republican Party, that doesn't heed its environmentalist roots in Teddy Roosevelt's wildlife preservation or Edmund Burke's conservation.

"History's second most enthusiastic capitalist party," the Democrats raise alarms about climate change (careful not to mention any of the other ecological crises) when it's politically useful, such as when the Republicans control the presidency and Senate and they'll not have to do anything against their corporate donors. The Democrats have long considered climate change talk a political liability. As the Sierra Club stated this past summer, "as an institution, the Democratic Party has yet to figure out how to grapple with climate change. Almost two years after the election of Donald Trump—and less than 100 days from a midterm election that could redefine the balance of power in the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate too—the Democratic Party has yet to craft a unified message of climate action. Instead, the party as a national establishment seems to be moving backward, toward a policy that embraces a staid status quo rather than the kind of forward-thinking necessary to stop the climate crisis."

As a party, Democrats have seen ecological sustainability as opposed to economic growth. But, I have seen some hints at a different rhetoric in this time as the opposition party. Not from the center of the Democratic Party leadership, but on the periphery (e.g., Independent Bernie Sanders). But, will it last? Emily Atkin writes that climate change is an issue that is "rising in importance within the party." Party outsiders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have put forward the idea of a New Green Deal. If the Democratic Party can become a counterweight to the Republican war on the planet, it will have to remove its anti-environmental elements. Too bad those elements are good at fundraising. One must sell the future of our ecosystem to be a good fundraiser at the dollar numbers American politics have reached.

Fifteen year old climate activist Greta Thunberg points out the problems with politicians at Katowice, "you are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children. But I don't care about being popular. I care about climate justice and a living planet. Our civilization is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people, to continue making enormous amounts of money. ... It is the sufferings of the many that pay for the luxury of the few. ... We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis." In the U.S., what Thunberg rightly identifies as immaturity is on display every day on FoxNews, MSNBC, and CNN. Every moment of the Trump presidency has been an expression of immaturity. But, as I pointed out above, governments (politicians) and individuals are not the only two vested parties in climate change. Even if 90% of individuals and 90% of government officials want to fix the climate crisis, the third party, the corporations, have a vested interest in destroying the planet's long-term health for the sake of quarterly growth. FoxNews, MSNBC, and CNN are all corporate entities, and they'll play at climate rhetoric ONLY when it moves forward their corporate agenda, which includes the destruction of the planet for profit. It is the thorn inherent in capitalism form its 19th Century start. You can read capitalist pollution in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, written in the 1930s and 40s. You can read capitalist pollution in Dickens's 1843 classic, A Christmas Carol.

Capitalism = pollution. Global capitalism = global pollution. This is because capitalism is wasteful of people and things.

Thunberg continues, "We have not come to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in the past, and you will ignore us again. We have run out of excuses and we are running out of time. We have come here to let you know that change is coming whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people." Of course global politicians have ignored us. When politicians don't, corporations portray them as fools. Howard Dean found that out decades ago. Ultimately, the corporate boards of FoxNews, MSNBC, and CNN are the boards of ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP. Their interests are not different, and all campaign finance comes from these boards, and all "news" comes from these boards. If an individual board member wanted to value the survival of the species or ecosystems, they would lose their job. Their job is profit at all cost. Someone will do it, if you won't. We find it odd when the corporations mess up--when their message becomes too obvious. Too scripted. For corporate media, it's a game. Who can best fool people. Who can play both sides. Which role do you want today as we play the game? For us, the people of earth, it's a matter of survival. Thunberg is following the history of many environmental activists, Thoreau, Muir, Aldo Leopold, Ivan Illich, Murray Bookchin, and Vandana Shiva, who have recognized that we need bottom-up, placed solutions. The problems have been top-down, multi-nationalist capitalist problems. The solutions must be rooted.

I suspect one way that we can heed Thunberg's message, that is, empowering the people and not the multinational corporations and their pet governments, is to do what we do every day in a way that cultivates ecological literacy. I have recommended this for music education. Ecological issues are at the core of other social issues. Bad economics and bad ecologies are intertwined. The refugee crisis is a pollution crisis, as rural farmers are moved from their homes to the cities, and later because of increased war and other violence, moved to wealthy polluting countries during extended droughts. What can you do to cultivate ecological literacy, which is a political as well as a scientific literacy, every day, right where you stand? How can ecological talk be at the center of everything we do, including our work, church and prayer, leisure, book clubs, family life, and associations? How can your job become about ecological literacy?

DJS

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
Link:https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/13/australias-carbon-emissions-highest-on-record-data-shows
Link: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/03/hillary-clinton/yes-donald-trump-did-call-climate-change-chinese-h/
Link: https://isreview.org/issue/65/left-case-against-democrats
Link: https://newrepublic.com/article/152599/democrats-hit-tipping-point-climate-change
Link: https://youtu.be/HzeekxtyFOY
Link: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/50-largest-u-s-companies-board-members/
Link: https://youtu.be/aGIYU2Xznb4
Link: https://www.amazon.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy-Philosophy-Autoethnography/dp/0415792576/

Post 26.

Classism, racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, urbanormativity. Educators face challenges and opportunities most teachers weren't even conscious of a generation or two ago. In music education scholarship, we look at each of these issues. Sometimes these concerns are lumped together under the umbrella phrase "social justice." But are all of these concerns "social" at their core? I suspect that depends on how we define "social." I take an ecofeminist approach to music education scholarship. In ecofeminism we can find a way each of those issues is truly linked. What does ecofeminism mean, and why is it so radical in critical music education scholarship?

Jessica Schmonsky writes, "The central tenet of ecofeminism is that social and environmental issues are not separate, that the causes for the mistreatment of women, people of color and the environment stem from the same place. Therefore, from an ecofeminist perspective, it is best to view all of these issues collectively." Does our field's social justice research take seriously the interconnected nature of social and environmental issues? If not, why not? I want more of our social justice oriented scholars to reach out and make those connections, like hyphae in the soil. Just because your last research study separated gender from race, class, place, and climate change doesn't mean your next study needs to be so narrowly focused. This isn't to take anything away from the value to our profession of deep studies, looking at a single issue narrowly. There are distinctive aspects to each of these: ecology, gender, race, ability, and class. But we must also get beyond the distinctive, to the deeper interconnected roots of injustice. I think the problem is philosophical.

Schmonsky continues that, in nature, relationships, care, and love are central to survival. This is true, regardless of species. Geoscientist Lynn Margulis's body of research has long recognized that biological evolution depends on symbiosis, at least as much as it does the more well-known evolutionary concept, competition. Novel species (diversity) emerge due to the close, symbiotic relationships with specific other species. This isn't always for the better (the more diverse), such as is the case with invasive species. But, even small local places are highly diverse. There are no monocultures in wild nature. There are no monocultures in human communities either, urban, suburban, or rural. What can we understand about the place of music education scholarship with this evolutionary philosophy? How might we cultivate locally diverse relationships, care, and love? How might we teach symbiotically?

Many philosophical systems have been developed, to horrible ends, from an understanding of evolution as competition: specially, Herbert Spencer's ghastly idea, "survival of the fittest." In education survival of the fittest emerged as Recapitulation Theory, which is evident in the scholarship of G. Stanley Hall and, in music education, Satis Coleman (who I research). Today, those who hold to that old tenet can argue against the old racist excesses of previous generations in the name of survival of the fittest, but they cannot argue against the conclusions those theorists held. Philosophically, wholesale acceptance of survival of the fittest leads logically to racism, sexism, classism, and eugenics. Spencer was one of the best known proponent of laissez-faire capitalism, which has caused uncountable horror for most of the planet. Some competition evolutionists today long for a better eugenics, such as expressed in the movie Idiocracy. Famously, survival of the fittest prophet Sam Harris pushes the idea that certain races are less intelligent. Anyone with a little understanding of history sees how Harris's evolutionary argument parallels those arguments made a century and more ago by Herbert Spencer, Charles Davenport, and Otmar Von Verschuer. Perhaps more problematic is that much of our scholarship, even in social justice areas, still looks like survival of the fittest evolution, philosophically. I mean, it dissects what exists as interlinked. It puts poor people in competition with Black  people, in competition with women and LGBTQ+ people, in competition with rural people. In contrast, for me, ecofeminism opens space for a social philosophy that captures Margulis's biological insight into evolution as symbiosis in a way previous philosophies of evolution have not.

One of ecofeminism's founding mothers, Vandana Shiva talks about evolution within seeds: "The seed in its essence is all of the past evolution of the Earth, the evolution of human history, and the potential for future evolution. The seed is the embodiment of culture because culture shaped the seed with careful selection—women picked the best, diversified." Here we see the importance of ecofeminist insight, that nature and culture are not different. We can dissect the children of a culture, move them to the suburbs and to university tenure-streams, but we cannot really bring the culture itself to the university to be preserved museum-like. Because cultures are linked to seeds. To soil and place. Nature, in all of its evolutionary glory, is interconnected with culture, with human doings. Using Shiva and Margulis together, I want to say that our understanding of evolution improves or degrades our philosophy as music teachers, depending on if we take Margulis's symbiotic evolution seriously or not. Perhaps, music education scholarship can use symbiotic evolution as a model for understanding all of the social justice crises we face. Maybe. But, we certainly need to do better than just talking about each issue in isolation, which is what survival of the fittest evolution theorizes. Or giving lip service to intersectionality without working to understand how our research projects actually intersect with seemingly unrelated injustices. We can start by not allowing any scholars use the word intersectionality without them giving specific examples. Else-wise, intersectionality becomes another meaningless jargon-term of an ineffective institution.

DJS

Link: https://www.routledge.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy/Shevock/p/book/9780415792578
Link: https://voicesforbiodiversity.org/articles/the-growing-importance-of-ecofeminism
Link: https://www.amazon.com/Symbiotic-Planet-New-Look-Evolution/dp/0465072720
Link: https://youtu.be/WGp06vMPERE

Post 25.

Part 3

I'll never have my name posted on a university wall. You know, those white lettered names with office numbers that are found at every university. Part-time adjuncts don't get those here. I'll never be able to apply for an Associate Professor, or senior researcher, or endowed chair position posted in my field. It won't matter how much I research and publish. Only tenured faculty can apply for those. I'll never win an award for my scholarship (at least I've never heard of anybody getting one who wasn't tenured faculty). I'll never be able to apply for funding to attend conferences (only full-time faculty are allowed to submit applications for funding; I had to turn down an invitation to speak in the U.K. recently for this reason). I'll never be able to take a sabbatical to study a music education system abroad (I get paid per credit I teach. I don't teach, I lose my job). I'll never be able to follow and mentor an undergraduate throughout their 4-years of study, but rather see them for a semester and they're gone. I'll never be able to do a lot of things that are done by faculty. If my university is the same as others, then, by far, most people teaching classes at universities will never be able to do any those things that are part of being a professor. Those things that make the professoriate a profession. Each of those and more make the university a placeless place, a no-where, for most faculty.

So, what's the problem with placelessness? Why isn't an uprooted society sustainable? The Bedouin and other nomadic peoples have lived sustainably for countless generations, so why not jut call moderns (cosmopolitans) "nomads," like some theorists have, and call it a day?

For one thing, traditional nomadic cultures are nothing like uprooted modern living. I'm getting my information about traditional Bedouin life at this link, and am using these to exemplify some differences between nomadic life and uprooted life. This only includes traditional Bedouin ways of living (culture) rather than moderns living in cities with Bedouin ancestors or relatives (who are often then uprooted, depending often on their career choices E.g., factory workers are, for obvious reasons, often less uprooted than university professors).

1.Traditional Bedouins live in tents with close ties among extended family members (specifically "in-law related domestic units"). Uprooted moderns often eschew their extended families.
2. Bedouins return to the same place every winter, throughout their lives. Uprooted moderns may return for a day or two during the holiday season, but only if their parents aren't also as uprooted as they are. Moderns move every few years, suffering from a well-known disease called the 7 year itch. (University faculty often leave for new jobs after 7 years)
3. Bedouins live closely with animals whose milk and meat sustain them. Uprooted moderns may have a dog, but they're not going to milk her, and she, more often than not, isn't a guard dog.
4. Very young and old Bedouins stay year-long in their "winter camp," providing a place for ritual, for being born and dying. Uprooted moderns do the same, but with hospitals, where the noises of medical machinery have long replaced the old songs of birth and death.
5. Bedouins have a distinctive tradition of well ownership, guiding who uses water sources and when. Water use is guided by ecological limits. Uprooted moderns usually have no idea where their water comes from, and use the same amount of water whether they live in wet Carolina or arid California. The only limits for uprooted moderns is how much they can buy through the magic of math done in banks (not even green pieces of paper or gold anymore).

Ultimately, then, nomadic life is not an uprooted life. Rather nomads life a place-infused being, rooted in social and geographical relationships among specific human and non-human beings, and within specific limits that are sustainable for generations in the future. It is misinformation to call uprooted moderns nomads. Nomads have more in common with less-nomadic "tribes" or indigenous peoples around the globe, who also live among extended family units, within the limits of specific geographical places, in close contact with animals who sustain them, and with rituals to mark one's life that have intergenerational meaning.

So, what's wrong, then with  university faculty jobs being so uprooted? In our society, university is where new knowledge is made. The ancient Greeks may have gone to Delphi, and Medieval monarchs may have gone to the Pope, but today we go to peer-reviewed journals when we want to know the truth of matters. And those are less accessible than Delphi and the Pope. I remain a university adjunct, despite the low pay and uprootedness of the job, because I have access to that information. If I were to give up this job, I wouldn't have access to countless dissertations, journal articles, research studies, critique, and commentary. Its not just about my field of expertise, music education. When I have a question about politics, or ecology, or government, or the law, I go to the university library, where I can instantly access crucial information the general public cannot. But, there's no doubt that all of that information is constructed by uprooted moderns. Usually diversity means diversity among uprooted moderns, often using a recently uprooted modern to be a "culture bearer" (carrying his/her culture around like a weight) for the way of life he/she recently left. Uprootedness then, affects what we are able to know through our research, critique, and commentary. The uprooted university values some, and ignores or demeans others. One need only look at the history of American Indian research to know how much researchers don't get American Indian cultures. They still don't! Seriously. Listen to some episodes of Media Indigena about researchers today. We do not understand them at a fundamental level. It may be impossible for an uprooted modern to truly understand a rooted culture. If you hate your aunt, its hard to understand why a whole culture would be built around relationships with aunts. Most cultures don't want to sacrifice their children to be dissected and re-placed into suburbia, where they can be "culture bearers."

Finally, uprootedness breeds ecological disaster. Wendell Berry often talks about the nonsense of talking about climate change without mentioning the waste of material and people that is at the root of climate change. We uproot poor rural people to the cities, to work in factories where they commit suicide. We in the cities demand so much food that rural farmers in India are committing suicide too. We ship the product of labor to "rich" countries (like the U.S.), where we can pretend the evils of capitalism ended in the early 20th Century when we started shipping factories from Pennsylvania to Myanmar. The left-half of the normal curve in PA goes unemployed (wasted), and the overall economy is violently brutal. Everything we buy has violence in it. I write this on a computer that has somebody's blood in its making. Some child labor. Some ruined local, rural culture. And so, I use my computer I bought in 2011. The least I can do is not waste it just because better ones are made today. If I were to recycle it, it'd be shipped (carbon/oil) to some "poor" country in the Global South where it will pollute their soil. We waste carbon, and lithium, and soil, and forests, and animals, and people. This, I think, is a sin.

Check out my book or get it from the library. Or do both, and write a review on Amazon so my book shows up on searches.

DJS

Link: http://factsanddetails.com/world/cat52/sub331/item1987.html
Link: https://www.mediaindigena.com/about/
Link: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/dec/14/toxic-ewaste-illegal-dumping-developing-countries
Link: https://www.amazon.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy-Philosophy-Autoethnography/dp/0415792576/

Post 24.

Part 2

There's a lot of weight in being a part-time adjunct. That is, emotional weight that is hard to carry.

For instance, this week I received an email from Penn State Altoona's HR, a contract for next semester to be returned in three days. That's quick turnaround, since my home printer is down. And I notice my title changed. This semester, rather than being a part-time Lecturer, my title is part-time Instructor. The contract had a representative to contact to discuss the contract, who I emailed. While the difference between a lecturer and an instructor may be meaningless to Penn State, it does seem to mean something in many people's minds. Lecturer seems like a higher title than instructor. Because of this understanding (perhaps misunderstanding) I would prefer my title not to change from lecturer to instructor next semester. Sadly, the representative I am to contact about my contract is out of town, according to her email's automatic reply. Its now past three days, and I haven't heard back from her. One more needless worry. There's a lot of weight placed on the shoulders of adjuncts. Unnecessary weight.

When I was offered the full-time position out-of-state in September, my boss at Penn State Altoona replied quickly, suggesting he was going to try to open a full-time position. But he couldn't guarantee anything, of course. That is certainly not the reason I chose not to accept the out-of-state position, which I mentioned in my previous blog post. And it was odd returning to my position at Altoona to find other part-time faculty there already, having not been told I decided to stay (one was to be on an overloaded "part-time" position). Lots of people love this work, even at its worst. But, having not heard back from my boss by November, I decided to email him to ask if anything came of the possible full-time contingent faculty position at Penn State Altoona. He replied that he "forgot" all of that began with me, and that he was not supported in creating a new line. More weight on my shoulders.

Some hard numbers: Of the 19 Integrative Arts faculty, 10 are part-time adjuncts like me (53%). Four of the 9 full-time faculty are "Teaching" faculty, meaning contingent full-time faculty. So, despite the good press Penn State gets, its efforts to improve the working conditions of contingent faculty help few of the actual contingent faculty, people teaching the bulk of the classes here. Most of us are outside of Penn State's concerns--invisible. One of the remaining 5 full-time faculty is emerita (retired). Of the four tenure-stream faculty, two are split with other departments. So, of the 19 faculty members in integrative arts (dance, music, theater), two are full-time dance/music/theater professors in a tenure-stream (11%). Tuition for each student at Penn State Altoona in 2018 is $14,214 in-state, and $23,466 out of state, not counting additional fees and housing. When I came to Penn State Altoona in 2015, tuition was $13, 658 and $20,890 respectively. Ten years ago tuition was $11,490 and $17,578 respectively. The cost of gas in 2015, when I started teaching at Penn State Altoona was $2.40, and in 2018 its $2.49. My commute is 58 miles, from my rental in State College to the campus in Altoona. My salary at Penn State Altoona has been $1000 per credit, which hasn't changed since I began. There is no cost of living increase for part-time adjunct faculty. In 2013, adjunct salaries were increased from $925, and in 2008, from $900.

During this time since 2015, I have been drawn, more and more, to old country. Not new country, with its oft-jingoistic messages, but old country. Old painful country music that was written to cry to. That is, country and western music about loss, divorced, and sadness. Very much, my career as an instructor at the university level has been like a marriage. I love my scholarship, and am invigorated by the possibility of adding new knowledge to the field. I love teaching my students, seeing where these undergraduates will go with their lives. But this marriage between me and university is a dysfunctional one. Here are a couple of country lyrics that have meant something more to me in recent years, with links to good versions on YouTube.

• I'll get along, you'll find another. And I'll be here if you should find you ever need me. Don't say a word about forever or tomorrow. There'll be time enough for sadness when you leave me. Lay you head upon my pillow. Hold your warm and tender body close to mine. Hear the whisper of the raindrops blowing soft against the window. And make believe you love me one more time. For the good times.
• When you found somebody new I thought I never would forget you but I thought then I never could. But time has taken all the pains away. Until now, I'm down hurting once a day. Once a day. All day long. And once a night, from dusk til dawn. The only time I wish you weren't gone is once a day, every day, all day long.
• Don't close your eyes. Let it be me. Don't pretend its him in some fantasy. Darling just once, let yesterday go. And you'll find more love than you've ever known. Just hold me tight, when you love me tonight, and don't close your eyes. Maybe I've been a fool, holding on all this time.
• I don't care what's right or wrong. I don't try to understand. Let the devil take tomorrow. Cause tonight I need a friend. Yesterday is dead and gone. And tomorrow's out of sight. And it's bad to be alone. Help me make it through the night. I don't want to sleep alone. Help me make it through the night.
• After three full years of marriage its the first time that you haven't made the bed. I guess the reason we're not talking there's so little left to say we haven't said. While a million thoughts to racing through my mind I find I haven't said a word. From the bedroom the familiar sound of our baby's crying goes unheard. But what a good year for the roses, many blooms still linger there. Lawn could stand another mowing. Funny I don't even care. As you turn to walk away. As the door behind you closes. The only thing I have to say. It's been a good year for the roses. 

Without a place in higher education, I find some comfort in recognizing, through music, other places. I certainly find joy in my students, who work hard and are paying too much in tuition. I garden and hike much more. I feed birds. But a lot of that is, if not masking a persistent melancholy, escapism. But its an escape to a real community, of family and non-human animals, where the anti-community the university is for contingent part-time faculty remains placeless.

DJS

Link: https://altoona.psu.edu/academics/bachelors-degrees/integrative-arts/faculty-staff-directory
Link: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Universities-Take-Steps-to/239693
Link: https://youtu.be/Ovb_iRWcqsc
Link: https://youtu.be/5rF_jr4RGe0
Link: https://youtu.be/LFOvehpV13I
Link: https://youtu.be/1hBWBVVFA4c
Link: https://youtu.be/CaUX08tJM80

Post 23.

Part 1

A major theme of my scholarship has been the idea of place. I first discussed place in my ACT article, Music Educated and Uprooted, where I use Simone Weil's 1952 analysis of roots: “A human being has roots by virtue of his real, active and natural participation in the life of a community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future. This participation is a natural one, in the sense that it is automatically brought about by place, conditions of birth, profession and social surroundings. Every human being needs to have multiple roots. It is necessary for him to draw wellnigh the whole of his moral, intellectual and spiritual life by way of the environment of which he forms a natural part" (footnote 7). In that article, I began to discuss the ways music education can be uprooting, for many people. There are many ways that professional music education generally, and university music education specifically, is placeless.

For many though, university music education can be rooting, that is, a placing experience. Many faculty have a "real, active and natural participation" in a community, which "preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future." They have daily contact with other faculty members, all aiming to do meaningful scholarship, each in their own way. I've seen faculties that thrive as a supportive community. Sadly, since graduating from my Ph.D. in 2015, my experience has not been.

In an article in Antipode, Skilled, Cheap and Desperate, Mark Purcell discusses the misbelief, the deception that university faculty jobs are a meritocracy. He writes, "Temps, adjuncts, lecturers, part-timers, non-tenure tracks: there is a growing majority of faculty in the American academy that isn't quite real. They are not fully there. They are in limbo in every sense of the word. They are not graduate students; they are not really members of the faculty. They are in between. They are waiting. ... They begin their career--publishing, teaching, attending conferences--even as they choke back the fear that their career will never really begin." This idea of being "not fully there" resonates with my experiences as a part-time faculty member at Penn State Altoona.

Upon arriving at Penn State Altoona in 2015, I contacted two faculty groups to offer my service. The first, which focuses on environmental issues, told me straight up that there were no opening for participation. The second, a qualitative research interest group, invited me to a meeting. When I arrived, upon hearing I was a part-time lecturer, they became less interested in my voice. Though I gave them my personal email, and they promised to contact me about the next meeting, I never received further contact. The next I heard from that group was at the end of the semester, through a university-wide email, when they shared all of the great things they accomplished at their meetings throughout the semester. This type of experience, early in my naive and hopeful university "faculty" "career" set the stage for the years go come.

Part-time adjuncting is a lot of work with little or no reward. I have had many interviews in the years since 2015 for full-time and tenure-line faculty positions, including far too many on-campus interviews (a grueling multiple-day process unlike anything else in other "professions"). This work certainly takes a lot out of a person, and the full-time non-tenure-line (1-year) faculty job I was offered this past year, I was unable to take for financial and personal reasons. I serve anywhere between 60 and 90 students semester, teaching 3 nearly-full, popular introductory music courses. The part-time adjunct salary at Penn State is very low (about 1/3 of the salary at IUP, when I was a part-time adjunct there), and hasn't increased in my time there (I asked, and I think it was 2012 or 2013 when the adjunct salary was last raised). Needless to say, one cannot live off of this salary, nor its lack of healthcare. But this isn't about low pay. My wife works very hard, and supports my dalliance as a "faculty" member. Rather, this post is about place. The material, economic realities of the job, though, do play a role in feeling welcome. Because while representatives tout the changes made to the approximately 25% of faculty who are full-time non-tenure track at Penn State (who now have titles, and can have career advancement), the 50% of faculty who are part-timers here are left invisible. I doubt Penn State is unique in this; but I suspect large, research-intensive universities take the most advantage of the adjunct class of laborers.

What is it like to be in a place where you are not wanted; where they want you to stay silent and do the bulk of the work of moving undergraduates through their curriculum to the more advanced classes taught by tenure-line faculty? What is it mean for a "faculty" who is not a faculty member to write this, when I can be fired at any moment without any recourse, from a job I've held and done my best at for more than 3 years? What does it mean to have to share an office with so many faculty members its impossible to have actual office hours? When a student wants to meet, I meet them informally and find an empty classroom. When I prep, I go to the library. What does it mean to never have any professional advancement, and to have interviewers look at your experience as a negative to hiring you for a tenure-line? What does it mean to see so many of your friends half way through their 6-year tenure track, while your engine is stuck in the mud? What does it mean to show up to teach, to do yearly compliances and trainings online, but to have no other connections to an institution? What does it mean to see that institution below your name on peer-reviewed articles, but to know that for most people that means a middle-class profession, but not for you? These questions and more are constantly floating through my mind, as I reflect on the placelessness, the uprootedness, the unsustainability of my profession. I suspect most adjuncts have left by now. I remain, no-place.

DJS

Link: http://act.maydaygroup.org/volume-15-issue-4/act-15-4-30-55/
Link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2007.00509.x

Post 22.

This morning I'm listening to a talk given by Wendell Berry, "The Thought of Limits in a Prodigal Age." He says, "industrialism and agrarianism are directly opposed." Industrialism involves competition and generalizing. He suggests that industrial farming aims to replace farmers with engineers, and later with robots. In contrast to industrialism, agrarianism involves living well in place, a specific place, however small. Agrarian crops and practices are indigenous to specific places. Taking care of the land and neighborliness are characteristics of agrarianism. Considering Berry's wisdom, I think curriculum is an industrial practice. An agrarian practice, then, would be a practice of specific people, specific places, taking care of specific land, and neighborliness.

Echoing Berry, I write this.

Today's reflection: If curriculum (that is a top-down framework that is the "right" way to teach every kid) is accomplished; then teachers will eventually be replaced by engineers, who will themselves be replaced by robots. But if teaching is a place-infused praxis, a practice of specifics responsive to people and community, and not generalizables, then the teacher's role might survive the 21st Century in a way the farmer's role, the lawyer's role, and the warehouse worker's role didn't survive the 20th.

If you've read my book, please leave a review on Amazon. This helps the book show up on searches, so that interested music teachers can be exposed to ideas of place and ecological sustainability. Thanks!

DJS

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0fLDa7a6Ag
Link: https://www.amazon.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy-Philosophy-Autoethnography/dp/0415792576/

Post 21.

We are the earth intruders
We are the earth intruders,
Muddy with twigs and branches
Forgive this tribe
-Bjök, Earth Intruders

Right now, the Katowice Talks are happening. Any hope for global unity from the Paris Accords has been shattered since by right-wing governments and corporate greed. Some hope that Katowice can mend the damage done since 2015. Two hundred nations have sent delegates to Katowice, which is a coal-mining city in Poland. Recent reports on rising temperatures from human-caused global warming set the context for these talks. The damage happening is obvious. Divisions are clear. Brazil began by removing its offer to host the 2019 talks. And the U.S. restated its aim to withdraw from the Paris agreement. Certainly an ecologically literate citizen is knowledgeable about these talks; but that's not enough. What can we expect from our students? What do we need from them?

Greata Thunberg is a 15-year-old Swedish activist who has gone on a school strike, refusing to attend school until her nation reduces its carbon emissions in-line with the Paris agreement promises it made. She made a statement before Katowice: "We cannot go down this road of madness any more. It's just not an option." What can this mean for music educators? Perhaps making room, in music classrooms, for students to enact protest is a way for us to model Thunberg's courage.

Reflecting on the 2015 Charleston Church Shooting, music educator Brent Talbot writes: "Awareness of  privilege, understanding how and where it operates, and recognition of one’s positionality and participation in it requires consistent attention. With this in mind, I dove further into the literature, analyzed news articles, watched documentaries, listened to many protest songs, and engaged in countless discussions with colleagues and friends who all challenged my thinking in different ways. Through a reflective process, I began to discover my voice—one that could be situated within a long history of many outraged voices who have spoken and are speaking on such matters."

Certainly music educators can begin with this type of process of self-education. Ecological yahoos are useless. Worse than useless in years defined by ecological disasters. By heatwaves, and hurricanes, and continent sized plastic gyres in the oceans. Damaging.

Similarly, music educators should open space for our students to cultivate an awareness of their positionality with regards to the ecological crises. It is through this recognition that students can recognize their power; and can be part of the solution. It requires attention, or as Paulo Freire called it, conscientization. They should be given opportunities to dive into the literature, including current news such as the Katowice Talks. Students can watch documentaries, such as DamNation, Chasing Ice, and Climate of Doubt. Teachers can have them analyze the film music, as well as understand and critique the arguments the documentaries pose. And students can sing songs from the long-list of environmental protest songs. They can challenge themselves, and us, and their communities to think differently; and they can find their voices, much like Greta Thunberg has found hers. When we allow space for our students to become change agents, however they see that, they will surprise us and act.

DJS

Link: https://genius.com/Bjork-earth-intruders-lyrics
Link:https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/katowice-poland-climate-talks-katowice-talks-2018-200-nations-start-2-week-talks-to-end-political-di-1956823
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg
Link: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-notebook/katowice-notebook-more-polish-coal-mines-are-not-an-option-idUSKBN1O30U8?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29&utm_content=Yahoo+Search+Results
Link: http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/Talbot14_2.pdf
Link: https://www.routledge.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy/Shevock/p/book/9780415792578
Link: http://damnationfilm.com/
Link: https://chasingice.com/
Link: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/climate-of-doubt/
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_about_the_environment
Link: https://youtu.be/1Cve4bLDrlM