The Comment Factory

As our economy falters with no end in sight, and we may soon be in the midst of a Depression worse than that in the 1920’s, public funding of education is in crisis. In my home state of Nevada, Governor Gibbons has proposed wide ranging cuts in education. There has been much public debate about the repercussions of such catastrophic cuts on education. Similar conversations are ongoing elsewhere in the nation.

As a frequent traveler, I read editorials, letters to the editor, opinion columns, listen to radio and watch television programs all over the country.  To me, it is obvious that one voice frequently missing in this debate about the future of education is the educators themselves  As an activist since 1992 on a variety of issues including education and science, I have learned much about how the “real” world works outside of academia and just how important activism is on a local, state, and national level to inform the public and thereby help steer the course of popular opinion.

In this spirit, I wish to appeal to fellow educators to similarly defend education. We need to train our future scholars to successfully innovate our way out of the current morass and to maintain our preeminence in science and technology. This might seem like a simple message that most Americans would understand. The problem, however, as I discovered when I was formerly Chair of the Mathematical Sciences Department at New Mexico Highlands University, is that in reality, few people beyond immediate colleagues fully understand the importance of one’s department within a University let alone possess the greater vision of why higher education is so vital to our society and economy. Scholars are often viewed as cloistered, ivory tower “pointy-headed academics” who only work the hours that they teach, people who are arrogant elitist snobs who disdain students, get graduate students to teach and grade for them, and are grossly overpaid. K-12 teachers are viewed as lazy, poorly-educated people who are incapable of securing a job outside of union-supported teaching and mainly babysit their pupils. I see these points of view expressed in the mainstream media almost daily. Educators need to get out amongst the public to explain what we do and challenge these grossly inaccurate perspectives.

To gain insight into what a modicum of activism can achieve, consider some of my experiences. I have delivered a number of public lectures here at UNLV which all mushroomed into further outreach. The first one (“The Great Contributions of Physics to Humanity”) was taped on our University cable television station (KUNV). That taping has been aired a number of times. I knew this because soon after every rebroadcast of my lecture, my students, next-door neighbors, and others would tell me that they saw me on TV and enjoyed my lecture. I wrote a related op-ed which was published in the Las Vegas Review Journal. For my second lecture, I spoke on global warming and wrote an op-ed on the subject which was published in the Washington Times. I was then invited to present a lecture to Mayor Oscar Goodman and the rest of the Las Vegas City Council. Right afterward, the Council voted to make Las Vegas a “green city.”  Most recently, I spoke on Nikola Tesla to a packed audience. I was then interviewed by our local NPR-affiliate radio station (KNPR) on Nikola Tesla and other topics and also spoke to the Illumination Engineering Society in Las Vegas.  The Las Vegas Sun published my appeal to have a street named after this great inventor.

Beyond my independent activism, I have participated in national efforts such as the American Physical Society (APS)-organized Congressional Visit in March of 2006 during the APS March Meeting in Baltimore.  I went with a number of my students to visit our Nevada delegation in Congress.  This made a great impact as one of our Congressmen signed a “Dear Colleague” letter supporting budgetary increase of the National Science Foundation that day.

I write this column therefore asking educators nationwide to increase the level of their activism. Calling, writing and visiting elected officials helps (especially if you and/or your students live in their district) immensely by opening channels of communication and advice should they need to seek it. Politicians are very sensitive to public opinion and actively follow all discussions in the media. Every Congressional office we visited had televisions blaring, newspapers strewn in every corner, and staffers perusing all forms of media to gauge public perceptions of pertinent issues. Thus, writing letters to the editor, opinion columns, calling in to radio shows, and even writing or calling radio and television station editors off-program can have tremendous impact. I have been invited to give a number of lectures and radio interviews (e.g. the Boston-NPR affiliate) by editors and others who read various published letters of mine. Once, I called a well-known radio program (“Democracy Now”) in New York just to thank them for airing an excellent broadcast that I heard when driving to work and was invited for an interview the next day!

When writing letters-to-the-editor, keep the letters brief (usually 200 words or less).  The saying “brevity is the source of wit” is very relevant here.  Passionate letters are OK but be diplomatic/civil in your writing. Focus on one or maximum two points to discuss. Succinct letters that are current (e.g. based on recent news/articles in the paper) and that immediately catch the reader’s attention are most likely to be published. If you feel strongly about your viewpoint, encourage your colleagues to write as well. If you don’t get your letter published, don’t be frustrated – send it elsewhere. Depending on the issue and newspaper, roughly one out of every three of my letters has been getting published lately though my success rate was much lower when I started writing letters in 1992.

When the media seek your perspective, make yourself instantly available. When invited in the late afternoon for an interview on the “O’Reilly Factor” in March 1999, a friend delivered a suit to my workplace in upper Manhattan only to be chauffeured later that evening to Fox studios in lower Manhattan where our one-on-one live interview was conducted.  On another occasion, I was interviewed by a local NYC television station on a street corner near my workplace during a 15 minute break.

We need to resurrect the concept of the “public intellectual” by expanding the role of the educator beyond the classroom and schools into the public realm. Administrators and colleagues should recognize and support those activists who speak out to defend academia in the public sphere. Our citizens and their leaders desperately need input from academics. We cannot assume that everyone will e.g. just magically “know” why physics education and physics research is so critical to our society. Public support for education just cannot be taken for granted anymore. It is our duty to explain our relevance.

And as a bonus, my life has been forever enriched by my contact and friendship with fellow activists and others from all over the world who are similarly concerned for our future and who, like me, believe that the essence and requirement of democracy is full, uncensored debate.