An “exploded” Model T Ford.

Stupid disposable cameras! Every picture I took at the Henry Ford Museum came out so bad I can’t post it here (except for an 1880 Grand Rapids Refrigerator Company icebox for some reason, and that’s only going to interest me). And yes, I was using the flash.

Lucky for me, the image I wanted most also happened to be on Flickr:

To me, that’s the perfect illustration of industrialization. You can’t depict an entire assembly line but the principle is all here in simplified form. You’re just following the parts, rather than the labor.

Besides, it’s not as if raw materials went in on one side of Highland Park plant and the final product came out the other, which raises the question of how the more complicated parts were built. Then it was at the out buildings. Now it’s Mexico or China. Having been on the Rouge Tour as well on Saturday I can report that they still make cars essentially the same way, only the number of parts in an “exploded” Ford F-150 would be too many to all hang on strings.

Why not just go read a bunch of books and skip paying tuition?

I notice (thanks to the Washington Monthly College Guide blog) that the state of Indiana can’t tell the difference between graduating and learning:

The dimmer wits in the Indiana General Assembly want to compensate colleges and universities according to their graduation rates. This is another example of shallow reasoning by our elected representatives reflecting erroneous thought that has permeated our society.

As recently as March 2, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education issued a press release in which Commissioner Teresa Lubbers said, “There is nothing more important to Indiana’s higher education agenda than improving college completion rates. While Hoosiers have come to understand the increasing value of going to college, far too many of college”going students fail to earn a degree.”

Nothing more important than completion rates? What about the substance and significance of what is learned?

Good question. Unfortunately, there are too many people besides the Indiana General Assembly who aren’t bothering to ask that question either. Here’s the author of the book DIY U (that name alone just gives me hives), which was mentioned in this space before, writing in Inside Higher Education:

Open educational content is just the beginning. Want a personalized, adaptive computer tutor to teach you math or French? A class on your iPhone that’s structured like an immersive role-playing game? An accredited bachelor’s degree, in six months, for a few thousand dollars? A free, peer-to-peer Wikiuniversity? These all exist today, the beginnings of a complete educational remix. Do-It-Yourself University means the expansion of education beyond classroom walls: free, open-source, networked, experiential, and self-directed learning.

So why not just go read a bunch of books and skip reading tuition? The cynical answer would be that a peer-to-peer “Wikiuniversity” is not accredited, and any university that turns its classes over to role-playing games and iPhone apps risks losing the accreditation it has. There’s no proof that any of the new forms of high tech education that are mentioned above or just plain old self-directed reading actually teaches anybody anything.

Universities have been a resilient method of delivering education for a reason. An essential part of the educational process is the relationship between the student, the instructor and the text. Put simply: Anybody can read The Scarlet Letter, but only an English professor can help you get everything out of it that’s in there. And you’re going to get a lot more out of the book if there’s an English professor pacing at the front of the room, calling on students to read and discuss passages, rather than running a chat that you may or may not be following in the privacy of your den.

Apparently a DIY university is now possible because:

Technology upsets the traditional hierarchies and categories of education. It can put the learner at the center of the educational process. Increasingly this means students will decide what they want to learn, when, where, and with whom, and they will learn by doing.

Presumably, a college degree is worth something in the marketplace because it actually represents a set of skills that actually make people better workers. If the DIY university is the university of tomorrow then that brand is going to be seriously diluted. If choosing your education is going to be like choosing what cereal you want to eat every morning, I fear for the future because I have no faith that today’s students will actually make choices which will guarantee that they actually learn something, or at least something useful.

“We never change the Volkswagen to make it look different…”

Saw this one at the Henry Ford today:

I’ll write more about the museum after I get my pictures developed. [Yes, I had to buy a disposable camera because I wasn't thinking ahead. Sigh.]

Life is good.

I’m going to the Henry Ford tomorrow. They’ll bus you from the museum to River Rouge for a factory tour. I just bought a ticket to see Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” (which by some strange oversight on my part I haven’t seen yet)* at the Imax Theater there for about the time the museum closes.

* Did I ever mention that Alice in Wonderland was the theme at my wedding?

I feel bad for the librarians.

If I had to be constantly barraged with messages like this all day, I think I’d go crazy:

For a student who doesn’t want to swing by the reference desk, there are plenty of other ways to ask a librarian a question—instant messaging, e-mail, a phone call. And now, on a growing number of campuses, students can ask questions with text messages.

Oregon State University is among the institutions that have recently added “text a librarian” services. Though the university just implemented its service this month and has not advertised it much yet, librarians there say that they can already tell it will be well used.

Students text a question to an advertised number during library hours, and an alert appears on the computer screen of any librarian who is signed into the library’s instant-messaging service. The librarian uses the computer to send a text message back to the student’s cellphone.

Margaret Mellinger, an assistant professor and engineering librarian at Oregon State, said the library staff expected that students would ask only questions with quick, simple answers. But they were wrong; one of the very first questions was: “What is the function of interneurons?”

Aren’t questions like this the reason we have Wikipedia? [Just kidding.]

Seriously though, this is one of those stories that makes me depressed. That kind of question is basically the equivalent of texting a librarian to do your homework for you. It’s a sign that the student is too lazy to even get online to find the answer, let alone get the best answer by cracking a few books.

And while I’m in old and cranky mode, I particularly liked this comment at the bottom of that story:

They probably texted “Wut th funct ov intrneurns?”. How can we train students to use correct spelling and standard vocabulary in a text environment?

My campus has a “text the librarian” service too. Next time I see one of my friends there, I’ll have to ask how that’s going.

Wright Brothers photographs at Wright State University.

Boy, Dayton, Ohio is a lot bigger than I thought!

I’m here to use the Frigidaire Collection at Wright State University, but while looking for the finding aid tonight I ran into their huge Wright Brothers photo collection online. Spectacular stuff!

This isn’t going to help the professor come student evaluation time.

Via the Huffington Post:

I was totally with the professor in this video, and I guess I still am, but then the cops show up and act like the student had a gun or something. Haven’t they ever heard of escorting someone from the room?

The funny thing is that I was just reading that William Bennett thinks racism is dead.

The Second Bill of Rights (1944).

I was watching Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” during the health care vote last night, and was inspired to look for this:

Buildings of Detroit.

Photos, postcards and other information about the building of Detroit are available, logically enough, at BuildingsofDetroit.com. To say that the images are haunting in light of the current state of that city would be a vast understatement. Thanks to Scott Martelle (who posts more interesting stuff on Facebook than anyone I know) for the link.

Oddly enough, I’m actually going to Detroit for Spring Break. Well, Dearborn, actually so look for good stuff from the Henry Ford Museum coming soon to this space.

Eric Foner answers for his liberal crimes.

Eric Foner on Stephen Colbert. Yes, you read that right. The subject is the Texas School Board textbook standards, and it’s must-see TV.