HARLEY-RIDING FORMER TEACHER RAILS AGAINST COLLEGE SYSTEM
By Fred Dickey12:01 a.m.May 5, 2014
I can hear him thundering down the
street from two blocks away. He’s riding an expensive, spiffed-up Harley, but I
just wish he had enough money left over to buy a muffler. I hope the neighbors
aren’t home.
He parks the bike and walks to the
door wearing the requisite black leather jacket with a small American flag.
He’s big, about 6-foot-4. He’s bouncy for a man of 62 and has a personality to
match the bike. He’s Lee Johnson, and you’d like him, especially if you’re
partial to thunderstorms.
Johnson is a real person talking
serious issues, something we get too little of in the media. As are many
people, he’s all over the map politically and culturally. The only party he’s
interested in has a keg. Johnson hunts for injustice the way lizards hunt
beetles.
After spending two decades teaching college, he knows what he
doesn’t like.
He says he learned that while
employed as a “freeway flier” at Grossmont
College. That’s an
arrangement in which an institution of higher learning treats highly educated,
part-time “adjunct” instructors as day laborers — no security, paltry wages and
few, if any, benefits. The name comes from part-timers “flying” from school to
school. That sort of servitude means the school teaches fair employment
practices for “thee, not me.” To be a flier, a teacher either dearly loves teaching
or needs to pay the rent. Whichever way you’re desperate, they’ll exploit,
Johnson says.
“After 21 years teaching there, I
earned half the pay per class of what full-time faculty earned, with no medical
coverage, no retirement benefits and no Social Security credits.”
Johnson’s sense of right and wrong
was honed by growing up in National City and Spring Valley, where money and privilege were something
the other fellow had. In years gone by, he crisscrossed the U.S. on a
motorcycle. (They heard him coming on Manhattan
Island, in Manhattan,
Kan., and Manhattan Beach). He also “rode the rails” by
sneaking long-distance rides in boxcars. He learned some things about life not
covered by a grad school syllabus.
He served three years in the Army
in the Vietnam War era but was lucky enough to be stationed in Berlin. “The most
dangerous thing I faced was probably a thrown beer bottle in a bar fight over a
blonde.”
He’s a bachelor living in Spring Valley. He hasn’t been married for 25 years but
has four adult kids.
He’s also a natural-born
contrarian. If the Chargers won the Super Bowl, he might say they dropped too
many passes. A lock-step, go-along person would think him crazy. Despite being
as out-front as a howler monkey, when the dust of his arrival settles, he comes
across as polite and friendly.
Johnson, in his long and varied
career, has worked on a drug program for the Australian government and has
taught college in that country and in New Zealand. He also worked for 10
years at UC San Diego on a federal
program to prepare youths for college.
Although schooled in psychology,
he taught about 100 math and statistics classes at Grossmont, ending in 2010.
He says he got sparkling reviews in student and faculty evaluations all those
years. If he hadn’t, one would think his career would have abruptly ended since
adjunct teachers are hired one class at a time, with no guarantees.
In the several times he applied
for a full-time position, he says he was given some smiles and nods, a
handshake, and shown the door.
He says that, finally, one
evaluator of his statistics class rated him as poor, and that led to a meeting
with administrators. Also in attendance was a union representative.
“It was apparent they wanted to
get rid of me, and they used an unfair evaluation as pressure. They actually
said the next class I taught would be monitored by another faculty member.
After two decades of strong evaluations, that’s insulting. The union rep just
sat there and said nothing.”
Johnson says he stood up, made an
indelicate suggestion of a sexual nature and walked out.
That undoubtedly put him on the
dean’s list, but not the good one.
Asked recently about the incident,
Jim Mahler, president of the teachers’ union at Grossmont, said: “That’s
totally false. Did he mention to you why he was let go? If he tells you the
truth, he wouldn’t want it published.”
(The merits of the matter aside,
that’s a strange thing for a union president to say about a member he was
representing.)
Johnson replies, “Mahler wasn’t in
the meeting. He knew nothing about this. He’s just trying to protect the union.
There’s nothing about my years at Grossmont that I’d mind seeing on a freeway
billboard. I was not fired, but rather quit because of the conditions the
administration wanted to impose on my next class offering.”
Grossmont
College refuses to comment about personnel disputes.
I asked Johnson what it was the
school objected to about him, and that segued into another gripe.
“They objected to me, period. They
objected to my outspokenness, and they objected to my relationship with
students.”
What relationship was that?
“I would tell (students) the
truth. It was candor, it was honesty. It was get off your a— if you want to
succeed. It was quit making excuses. I had a black guy walk into my class one
day wearing a T-shirt that read, ‘The hardest job in America is being a black man.’
Right in front of the class I called him out. I said, ‘So what? Everybody knows
about the injustice that exists in the world. What are you going to do? You
going to let that stand between you and where you want to go? You going to let
that stop you from succeeding?’ ”
What was his reaction?
“He stepped up and did the work.”
It’s easy to understand the
communications gap between Johnson and administrators. Few of them would have
hopped a freight or gotten into a bar fight in Berlin. However, Johnson says it goes beyond
that.
He thinks there is a
communications gap between tenured faculty and students. In his opinion, while
there are many superior students in community college, many others are from
disadvantaged or minority backgrounds. And that is where he thinks the problem
lies.
“(Faculty) do not understand the
neighborhoods or the hard-nosed backgrounds of a lot of these kids. They didn’t
bare-knuckle their way up; they came from the middle class or above. They would
walk into a class of minority students, and they were afraid of them. They were
afraid to be frank, they were afraid to talk to them like they would talk to
their other students.”
And the minority students would
sense that?
“Of course. They know when you’re
blowing smoke up their skirt. That’s how they survive on the street, by having
a sense of that. They know when they’re being pandered to.
“Often times, when a minority
student was not making the grade, the (faculty) answer would be to dial back
the standards. They used to drive me nuts. That is patronizing, it is
insulting.”
He also thinks academic freedom
has taken a hit by ideologically driven faculty imposing a progressive agenda
that pervades the campus and is the opposite of traditional liberal education.
It has teachers looking over their shoulders and puts a damper on balanced
teaching.
“They are not overtly subversive
with their progressive ideas. It is more covert. If you are not part of the
flock, then you will be quietly held at arm’s length. You are suspect. You will
never be part of the inner circle, and you will never be seen as part of the
team.”
He has no affection for teachers’
unions. He believes in the time he was a member, they used adjunct teachers as
bargaining chips in negotiations — i.e., they would threaten to get a better
deal for adjuncts, and then trade that threat for increased benefits for
tenured faculty.
Johnson says adjunct teachers have
always been a transitory group and usually are not long-term members of the
union, and even though they pay dues, they have no influence with the power
structure. Also, if they were given substantially better pay and benefits, it
would diminish the benefits package split among tenured faculty.
There does seem to be a growing
dissatisfaction by part-time college teachers over the compensation gulf that
separates them from tenured teachers. If that leads to some form of redress,
then Johnson might become something of a prophet. If given a choice, he would
probably prefer to be Isaiah: “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness.”
University
of California at San Diego
Mario
J. Molina is a professor at the University
of California at San Diego, a director at the ClimateWorks Foundation, and a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Note: Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the ClimateWorks Foundation, the Brookings
Institution (think tank), the New America Foundation (think tank), Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think tank), and the Committee for Economic
Development.
George
Soros was the chairman for the Foundation
to Promote Open Society.
Joyce Foundation
was a funder for the ClimateWorks
Foundation, and the National Council
on Teacher Quality.
Valerie B. Jarrett
was a director at the Joyce Foundation,
is the senior adviser for the Barack
Obama administration, and a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Commercial Club of Chicago,
Members Directory A-Z (Past Research)
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Cyrus F. Freidheim
Jr. is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Richard
C. Blum is an honorary trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), married to Senator Dianne Feinstein, a board member at the Haas School of Business, and a regent at the University of California.
Haas
School of Business is a business school at the University of California,
Berkeley.
Christina D.
Romer is a professor at the University of California,
Berkeley,
married to David H. Romer, and was
the council of economic advisers chairman for the Barack Obama administration.
David
H. Romer is married to Christina D.
Romer, a professor at the University of California,
Berkeley, a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), and was an assistant professor at Princeton University.
Eric E. Schmidt was a trustee at Princeton University,
a funder for the New America Foundation (think tank), is
the chairman of the New America
Foundation (think tank), a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and a
2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).
Shirley Ann
Jackson is a member of the President's
Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and
was a trustee at the Committee for
Economic Development.
Michael S.
McPherson was a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), is an overseer at TIAA, and an overseer at CREF.
Elizabeth E.
Bailey is an honorary trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), a director at the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, and was a trustee at TIAA.
David
F. Swensen was a trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), a trustee at TIAA,
and is a senior trustee at the Carnegie
Institution for Science.
Jessica Tuchman Mathews was an honorary
trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), is the president of
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think tank), a director
at the American Friends of Bilderberg (think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg
conference participant (think tank).
Ed Griffin’s interview with
Norman Dodd in 1982
(The investigation into the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace uncovered the plans take over the
State Dept to control the content of American education, and population control
by involving the United
States in war)
NORMAN DODD: That
effect was to orient our educational system away from support of the principles
embodied in the Declaration of Independence and implemented in the Constitution;
and the task now was the orientation of education away from these briefly
stated principles and self-evident truths. That's what had been the effect of
the wealth, which constituted the endowments of those foundations that had been
in existence over the largest portion of this span of 50 years, and holding
them responsible for this change. What we were able to bring forward, what we
uncovered, was the determination of these large endowed foundations, through
their trustees, to actually get control over the content of American education.
Teresa Heinz
Kerry is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank),
married to U.S. Department of State secretary John F.
Kerry, a life trustee at the Carnegie
Mellon University, and a trustee at the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.
Andrew Carnegie
was the founder of the Carnegie
Institution for Science, the founder of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (think tank), the endowed predecessor schools for Carnegie Mellon
University, the
founder of the Carnegie Museums of
Pittsburgh, the founder of the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the founder of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Roger W. Ferguson
Jr. was a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(think tank), a director at the New
America Foundation, is an overseer & trustee for TIAA, the president & CEO for TIAA-CREF, and a co-chairman for the Committee for Economic Development.
Bertram L. Scott
was the EVP for TIAA-CREF, and a
trustee at the Committee for Economic
Development.
Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation was a funder for the Brookings
Institution (think tank), the New
America Foundation, the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Education Trust, the Committee
for Economic Development, the International
Rescue Committee, and the Aspen
Institute (think tank).
Kati
Haycock is a trustee at the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the president of the Education Trust, and the chair for the New Teacher Project.
Carnegie
Corporation of New York was a funder for the New Teacher Project.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Brookings Institution (think tank), the New America Foundation (think tank), Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think tank), the Committee for Economic
Development, the International
Rescue Committee, the Drum Major
Institute for Public Policy, the Economic
Policy Institute, the ClimateWorks
Foundation, and the Aspen Institute
(think tank).
George
Soros was the chairman for the Foundation
to Promote Open Society.
Rhonda Weingarten
is an overseer at the International
Rescue Committee, a director at the Drum
Major Institute for Public Policy, a director at the Economic Policy Institute, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and
was the president of the United
Federation of Teachers.
Mario
J. Molina is a director at the ClimateWorks
Foundation, a member of the President's
Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and a professor at the University of California at San Diego.
Clifton R.
Wharton Jr. was a lifetime trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), the deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of State, and the chairman
& CEO for TIAA-CREF.
James S.
Crown is a trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), and a member
of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Lester Crown
was a lifetime trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), and is a
member of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Valerie B. Jarrett
is a member of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, the senior adviser for the Barack
Obama administration, and was a director at the Joyce Foundation.
Joyce Foundation
was a funder for the ClimateWorks
Foundation, and the National Council
on Teacher Quality.
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