July 2011 Archives

It is rarely a good idea to try to draw specific parallels between contemporary political trends and major events from the nation's political past, but the immediacy of the blogging format sometimes encourages such risks. Like many observers, I've been struck by Congress's stubbornly protracted wrangling over whether and how to raise the debt ceiling and avoid defaulting on the federal government's debt obligations. Bi-partisan talks of late have centered on the issues of taxes and a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Republicans have remained largely united in their refusal to close the federal budget deficit with new taxes and instead propose overhauling the entire federal fiscal system through spending cuts, eliminating some entitlement programs and proposing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution (though many political observers think that the Republican leadership is only offering token support to this amendment, favored by the Tea Party). Democrats initially countered that the current budget deficit cannot be closed by spending cuts alone and any plan to begin paying down the national debt and balancing annual federal budgets will have to include tax increases. Their latest plan to close the deficit, however, abandons taxes as one of the tools to accomplish that task in the coming years.

This is somewhat reminiscent of the fiscal crisis that hit New York and several other northern states following the Panic of 1837, when the speculative bubble in land burst and the resulting recession threatened to bankrupt several states that had overextended their finances by funding internal improvements schemes through debt.  In New York, this financial crisis created a factional divide in the Democratic Party between pro-development Hunkers and radical Barnburners (see a quick primer on the factions here) who believed in sharply circumscribing government intervention in the economy. These factions later would become associated with pro-slavery and antislavery politics within the party, but they first coalesced around these economic issues.

The seeds of factionalism had been sown in the New York Democratic Party by the startling accumulation of state debt in the 1830s and the Panic of 1837. Hunkers had joined with their Whig opponents in the 1830s to support state bond issues to fund the extension and widening of New York's nonpareil canal system. Both Hunker Democrats and Whigs were confident that increased canal traffic and rising toll revenues would easily pay the mounting canal debt. The Panic of 1837 dashed those hopes, however, and imperiled the state's ability to meet its obligations to canal contractors. Moreover, the looming debt had depressed the value of New York bonds as much as 25% below face value, seriously weakening the state's credit on the open market and putting it at further risk of defaulting on its debts.

John William Hill's The Erie Canal, 1831

Alarmed by this fiscal folly and the apparent apostasy of their Hunker colleagues, Barnburners took firm control of the party by 1842 and proposed a dramatic solution: the so-called Stop and Tax Law, which halted canal construction and levied a direct tax to pay down the state debt. Chastened Hunkers joined with their Barnburner colleagues to pass the law, which staved off bankruptcy and restored the state's credit, reflected in an immediate and sustained rise in state bond premiums. While antebellum political leaders tended to abhor direct taxes on citizens, most Democrats and many Whigs in New York agreed that a direct tax was not only necessary to solve this crisis, but also reflected New Yorkers' shared responsibility to maintain the state's credit. Since New Yorkers benefited from the state's good credit in the form of internal improvements and increased commercial opportunities, New York's political leaders did not question the appropriateness of taxpayers bearing some of the burden of restoring the state's good credit, nor their willingness to do so.

This relative political unity in meeting New York's fiscal crisis did not last, however. As the state's finances recovered by 1845, Hunkers sought to resume funding canal improvements through state bonds. Barnburners responded by joining with Whigs in 1846 to call a state constitutional convention focused on fiscal reform, not typically a favorite principle of Whigs. Through this alliance, however, Whigs got a more democratic constitution with more elective offices (and therefore, more opportunities to weaken Democratic control of the state), though they failed to secure another of their goals: black suffrage. Radical Democrats got a constitution with severe restrictions on incurring future state debt and requirements that state canal revenues pay off existing debts before applying any surplus revenue to new construction.

While radical Barnburners secured constitutional safeguards for the state credit, undaunted Hunkers continued to seek ways of employing that credit to promote wealth creation among its citizens. They argued that the state's refusal to improve access to markets and increase commercial opportunity amounted to a de facto tax on producers in remote communities who had to pay more to transport their goods to market. As the Hunker editor of the Rochester Republican put it, "we go for removing the absurd restrictions upon trade so as to allow the farmer free access to the markets of the world."

Regardless of their divergent views of the purpose of the state's credit and the best means to preserve and augment it, these conflicting Democratic factions and their Whig opponents reveal a very different conception of the public credit than we see in the current congressional debt talks. Antebellum New Yorkers were both symbolically and literally invested in the state's good credit, at least according to their political leaders. And while these leaders sought to limit taxation (indeed, canal toll revenues provided the bulk of the state's income) and to shield citizens from the negative effects of increasing state debt, they also considered it a communal obligation of all citizens to sacrifice when necessary to preserve that good credit. The state's citizens apparently agreed, as they voted radical Democrats into office during the crisis, thereby sanctioning their plan to confront the state's debt crisis through retrenchment in spending and levying taxes. Though New Yorkers surely were angered by their government's apparent profligacy in accumulating that debt, they accepted a shared responsibility for solving the crisis. Moreover, once the crisis passed, voters did not hesitate to send Hunkers back to office to promote further internal improvements spending. Apparently, those voters believed the recent debt crisis was an aberration, or they were willing to risk still more sacrifice to solve any future debt problems. Thus, while Hunkers, Barnburners, Whigs, and their supporters clashed over the role of the state in furthering economic development, all parties appeared willing to undertake painful remedies to rescue the state's credit when it was threatened.

That is an element that is missing from the current congressional debate, which has been rooted in the rhetoric of individualism. Taxes have become anathema in this struggle to find solutions to the budget deficit, derided as a potential obstacle to economic recovery (though defaulting on the federal debt would be a much greater obstacle) and an unjust imposition on individual taxpayers. The refusal to consider increased taxes on the one side and the reluctant acquiescence to that demand on the other side suggest that our contemporary leaders believe Americans have little tolerance for self-sacrifice or lack a sense of unifying, communal responsibility to aid the country through a fiscal crisis that threatens to affect more Americans more directly than contemporary threats to our national security. Whether that says more about us or our political leaders remains to be seen.

This week the New York Times reported on the results of a comprehensive study of grade inflation by Christopher Healy and Stuart Rojstaczer, who have long studied the subject. On the one hand, the report confirms what many academics, especially those in the liberal arts, have long been aware of: grades have been creeping upward for decades now. Interestingly, the new research shows that this has been accomplished almost exclusively through a massive swell of 'A' grades. The percentage of B's "earned" by American college students has not changed significantly since the 1940s, but the percentage of 'D' and 'C grades have dropped precipitously as 'A's have taken their place. Personally this was surprising. As a teacher myself, I remain stingy with A's, but I do award far more B's than I did as a young teacher. I had assumed that it was B's, not A's, that were responsible for grade inflation. Instead, according to Healy and Rojstaczer's research, about 43% of all letter grades received by students are now 'A's.

Rojstaczer and Healy state that this trend really got going in the 1960s when, they argue, college professors did not want to flunk students out of the university and into the Vietnam War. In the present day, they note that institutional factors heavily affect this trend. Private institutions have fueled grade inflation to a much greater degree than public institutions, and liberal arts colleges similarly have outpaced science and engineering programs in this regard. The researchers attribute these developments to an increasingly consumerist model of education. The irony, at least to me, is that private liberal arts colleges, the worst grade-inflation offenders according to this research, ideally are supposed to be immune to this consumerist approach. Private endowments are supposed to ensure institutional independence and student access to top researchers, teachers, and materials. The liberal arts ethos is supposed to encourage learning for self-fulfillment and enlightenment, not merely as a springboard to post-collegiate success and wealth. These institutions are supposed to cultivate a culture in which students do not look at education as a mere commodity or capital to be invested in future employment. Yet, these are the institutions that have most coddled students with inflated grades and, if Rojstaczer and Healy are correct, most encouraged their students to view higher education unapologetically as a marketplace where they can get what they want simply through demanding, rather than earning it.

If we assume that this "consumerist approach" is a significant cause of grade inflation what can we expect for the future of higher education? As numerous states slash education expenditures in a desperate bid to balance budgets, public institutions are being forced onto an increasingly private footing. One would expect to see grade inflation accelerate at these institutions, too, as they try to recoup lost revenues by attracting more students, perhaps through creating popular new majors (edutainment), loosening general education requirements, and the like. Teachers will feel this pressure as well. As budgets get slashed, departments tend to fight to keep their slice of the pie by pointing to the number of students they serve. In order to continue to attract large numbers of students to a particular department or major, it is likely that teachers will feel pressure (not necessarily from the department itself) to lighten the rigors of their classes and grade more leniently.

Since this trend has become entrenched over the last 40-50 years, it would appear that there is no quick fix for it. Aside from simply trying to roll back grades, I'm not sure what would be a feasible solution to this continuing escalation. Have we broken the letter grade model? Should we try to pioneer a new grading system? Will institutions want to begin requiring standardized testing of graduates to assess what they've truly learned?

Amherst College students, presumably earning their grades after the Civil War

All of this speculation presumes, however, that there is a consensus that grade inflation itself is detrimental, not just to individual students and professors, but to the entire system of higher education. While I think most students, educators and administrators would agree that grade inflation is harmful in the abstract, it might well be much more difficult to get them to agree that it has had a deleterious, practical impact. Indeed, if the consumerist model of higher education is as predominant as the researchers suggest, then the continuing flow of "customers" would suggest that there is no problem. According to the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, the rate of enrollment in higher education has been accelerating of late. While enrollments increased by about 14% from 1987-1997, they increased by 26% from 1997-2007. This continues a trend in the rate of increase in higher education enrollment since the 1970s. Continued projections of increasing enrollment raises the question of whether or not most students, educators, and administrators will even agree that there is a real problem here requiring a real solution. If contemporary higher education is a purchase and not a process then we might well expect grade inflation to continue until students, employers, graduate schools, and others realize that the item purchased is defective. Personally, I am not so pessimistic as to believe that our education system has been wholly undermined by a marketplace ethos. It remains to be seen, however, how colleges and universities can reverse this trend of pampering students.

The water is a bit murky in this picture but this vista is very calming and peaceful. It also fits in really well with a quotation I give from Pennsylvania's own Colonel John Geary, who fought at Harper's ferry in 1861. By the end of the war he was a Brigadier General. I read Professor Blair's book on Geary, A Politician Goes to War: The Civil War Letters of John White Geary.  It's a great compilation of his letters. Geary is just a fantastic personality of the War, and he's from right here in Pennsylvania. He actually handled himself and his command pretty well during the Civil War, although he had a penchant for some exaggeration when speaking with war correspondents, which he did frequently. He remains one of Pennsylvania's more celebrated officers.

Speaking of celebrations, for the Fourth of July I was able to attend the fireworks and cannon display at Antietam National Battlefield. No, the cannon weren't manned by period gun crews. They weren't even period cannon! They were 105mm Howitzers. I was so disappointed, and then they missed their entrance during the the 1812 Overture, my favorite classical piece, and they blew it! O well. At least the fireworks were very impressive. They were quite long as well.  I must say though, seeing the smoke from the fireworks settle over the battlefield, especially Bloody Lane and the Sunken Road, was quite eerie. It made me think about the approximately 30,000 people involved and that if we subtracted the casualties of the battle from that total only about 1 out of every 4 people would have left the field unharmed. That gave me chills. Antietam might be one of the best examples of how the technology to kill outpaced the development of tactics in the Civil War. I shouldn't make the fireworks display sound like such a downer, though. They were great, and even though we walked right past our car along the road afterward and kept walking for probably half a mile before we realized our mistake, we had a great time.

"Of all the days on all the fields where American soldiers have fought, the most terrible by almost any measure was September 17, 1862. The battle waged on that date, close by Antietam Creek at Sharpsburg in western Maryland, took a human toll never exceeded on any other single day in the nation's history. So intense and sustained was the violence, a man recalled, that for a moment in his mind's eye the very landscape around him turned red."

Stephen W. Sears - Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam

We've been away from the blog for awhile, absorbed with finishing up an NEH grant proposal to support a digital archiving project we are gradually building. Luckily, our undergraduate interns have been busy writing about their experiences working for the National Park Service this summer. Nathan Hess checks in with another post emphasizing our shared responsibility for preserving the parks that mark our past.

In my past couple of posts, I've discussed what interpretation is all about, and a few effective interpretive strategies. For this post, I'd like to discuss one of the most important roles of the National Park Service, namely the protection of our resource (the battlefield, its monuments, etc.). This is a timely topic, since these parks are, not surprisingly, at their busiest in the summertime. The responsibility for protecting park resources lay mainly with the National Park's Law Enforcement, or LE. Even so, the protection of park resources is the responsibility of not only law enforcement, but everyone that wishes to enjoy our nation's heritage. Preserving our resource could be as simple as being sure to stick to walking on paved walkways, picking up trash that you see on the ground, not climbing on the monuments that dot the battlefields, or, perhaps more important, not bringing home "souvenirs" you might find on the battlefield.

Kids playing on one of the natural features of Gettysburg

How does interpretation fit into protecting our resource?  It's quite simple really. The goal of interpretation is to create a visceral, emotional bond between our visitor and our resource, correct? Hence, if interpretation is successful, the visitor will have developed a bond with the resource. Once that bond is established, the visitor will want to care about and protect the resource. Interpretation therefore, could be seen as a way of working hand in hand with LE in the name of protecting our resource. If we do our job effectively, it makes LE's job easier. If you'll be visiting one of our national parks this summer, I hope you will think of yourself not just as a visitor, but a steward of these great resources. After all, if we don't take care of these many, many parks, our country will lose vital aspects of its heritage. I hope we all will feel a pride in our collective ownership of these resources and a desire to ensure their preservation for our own benefit and for future generations.

Please park along the road and not the grass when

visiting the PA monument...

But if you come across the Irish Brigade monument,

please don't pet the wolfhound....

And this gentleman might look strong, but I don't

recommend climbing on him....

And please don't rub Colonel O'Rorke's nose for good luck. So many

visitors have done that over the years, that it's started to wear away.

But by all means, enjoy the battlefield and the monuments.

You never know what you might learn from them.

Two weekends ago was Artillery weekend here at Harpers Ferry.  Our Living History people did firing demonstrations of the Federal 3-Inch Ordinance Rifle you see above.  Let me say, it was really cool.  First of all, it was loud.  So that right there gets a good grade in my book.  Second, they demonstrated the responsibilities and actions of each member of the 8-man crew, which was interesting to learn.  Each man on the crew is trained to execute every position in case casualties during fighting forced crew members to perform one another's tasks.  Our rangers fired the cannon twice for the demonstration, and it was thrilling both times.  Hopefully I will be able to see more cannon demonstrations in the future.  This past Saturday, Antietam synchronized cannon fire to the 1812 Overture.  Not all military parks have living history gun crews, though. I know at Long's Park in Lancaster they set the cannons off electronically.  I don't know what they do at other battlefields, but I guess I'll find out. 

Artillery demonstration at Harpers Ferry

Anyway, I had my first two on Saturday and Monday of Artillery Weekend.  They went pretty well for being my first tours.  I missed a few things I wanted to talk about on each tour, but as I get more comfortable I think I'll be more able to cover the tour topics as fully as I wish.  There were about 21 people on my first tour, and none of them walked out during it or were blatantly not paying attention so I guess I couldn't have been too boring.  I also drove our mini-shuttle bus for the first time on Saturday for my first tour.  That was a fun trial by fire. At least, it's a short drive, pretty much on park roads, to the tour location at the Murphy Farm just southwest of our Visitor Center.  For my second tour I drove the other mini-shuttle the park owns.  I pulled up to the visitor center to meet my group..... and I couldn't figure out how to get the passenger door open.  I sat there hitting the button to open the door, but nothing was happening.  The visitors, ready for their tour, were giving me this weird look, as if to say "What's he doing in there?  Why doesn't he just open the door already?"  Needless to say I was a bit embarrassed to have to explain to them that I could not open the door and that I needed get someone to help me.

I went in to the visitor center and my friend Tyler, a ranger here and a Penn State grad (Penn State people are everywhere, it's amazing) came out to assist me....but he couldn't figure it out either. We had to call our bus mechanic.  Apparently there's a separate switch that the driver must turn on before he or she turns on the engine, in order to operate the passenger's door from the driver's seat.  This seemed to be an extreme safety measure, and I still don't understand it.  The mechanic, a little amused by our confusion, told us where the switch was, and I finally got my tour started. 

This episode was the most embarrassing or difficult so far. My time in the Information Center and Visitor Center has been pretty standard and uneventful.  There haven't been too many colorful questions from the visitors, other than one guy who was apparently told that our education branch will set up Cricket games for school groups that come in.  First off, why cricket?  Not football, or baseball, or even soccer, but cricket... because it's sooo popular here in the US? Secondly, do you really think we are going to set up a game involving hitting a ball through the air, in a national historic town?  And who knows how to play cricket, anyway? I don't know who would have told him that, but I'm thinking they had a good joke at his expense.  Anyway, that's life here at Harpers Ferry in the last few weeks.  Tune in for more in a week or two.