Day: November 19, 2013

This week, in the Journal of Political Research, researchers from right here at UBC published their findings that token activism leads to less commitment down the road.Of course, to make the study topical, the Ubyssey joined the study to the popular activist event ‘Movember, and published the results as “UBC study says ‘staches lead to slacktivism.” The study suggests that small forms of activism, such as wearing a bracelet, or liking a post on facebook, make individuals less willing to donate time or money to a cause later on.

I earlier wrote about how the speed of slacktivism can cause real harm, as slacktivists are notorious for failing to adequately research the positions they are espousing. However, I don’t think this is necessarily the case with Movember. Rather Movember is pretty much a case study in what what Evgeny Morozov claims about slacktivism: that it distracts and detracts from genuine activism.

I was going to give the article a satisfied nod and move on when I noticed a comment by user “herc”:

This article is 50% off the mark on what Movember is set to achieve. While yes, the financial contributions go to a good, charitable cause, half the purpose is to create awareness and discussion about mens’ health issues, which are normally not discussed by society at large. Men generally don’t talk about the wider health issues men face, including mental health issues as well. Movember helps to stimulate the discussion and create awareness, especially in young people.

Herc appears to raise a good point. What about an awareness campaign detracts it from “real” activism? Particularly regarding something such as prostate cancer, where early detection is important, is men becoming more aware of health issues not valuable in and of itself?

Yes, I would agree that it is. If the true point of Movember is to make men aware of prostate cancer, however, it has failed dramatically.

First, and most importantly, if your activism is literally indistinguishable from doing nothing, you’re doing it wrong. The flaw of Movember is that it involves a group of men doing for one month what many other men do year ’round, for completely different reasons. It is not apparent to anyone whether an individual has mustache to raise awareness, because they have always had a mustache, or because they have simply run out of razors. The only way someone CAN know if a mustache is a Movember mustache or just a regular mustache is if they ask, or the mustache wearer informs them.

Everyone is too polite, and frankly not interested enough, to mention your mustache.

The only mustache advocates who I have witnessed informing anyone that they are growing specifically for Movember are those soliciting for money, which removes them from the category of “awareness in and of itself”

Additionally, perhaps I have just been surrounded by substandard Movember advocates, but after four years of Movembers, I don’t find myself any more informed about prostate cancer or men’s health than I was before. Are men talking about prostate cancer in private with other men? I suspect not. Herc isn’t very well informed either, as he seems to think that young people particularly need to be aware of prostate cancer. In fact, according to the American Cancer Society prostate cancer is extremely rare among men below aged 40, and the average age of diagnosis is 67.

Writing this blog post has done more for my awareness of prostate cancer than Movember.

the Silk Road II post that was too short is now updated to an acceptable length!

“Would the Premier of Newfoundland please post the motion on facebook so that everyone can read it?”

This is a real sentence I heard last weekend. Granted, it was a mock first minister’s conference, not a real meeting between Canada’s leaders, but it startled me all the same. A few days later I came across this article from Wired magazine titled “Why Online Learning is More Valuable Than Traditional College”

Simon Dudley argues that given the enormously high cost of in-person Universities, and the growing quality of online learning, online learning should displace in-person University.

“On the Internet, where everything is available, you have access to the best, most unique material from the world’s top scholars. That’s not true in a typical college — and that’s where an online education becomes more valuable than a typical college degree. If I’m going to spend the kind of money that colleges require for tuition, I want to make sure that I have the best possible lecturers.

At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I would like to disagree with Dudley, and protest against the encroachment of technology into education as a whole.

First, if Dudley thinks online courses such as Khan Academy or Itunes University offer an equivalent experience as an in-person University course, he is vastly mistaken. Ironically, online courses are a return to an outdated model of learning. Watching and listening to a lecturer speak is still the basis of university courses today, but it is rarely the entirety of them. The best courses involve discussion and interaction between students, TAs and professors. Occasionally they involve simulations, presentations arguments, tests and essays to cement knowledge. While Dudley correctly points out that videos in online courses can be paused and replayed, he mistakes this as being an improvement over real life lecturers. Real life lecturers usually can be paused and rewound, not with a button but by raising the hand. Rather than replaying  the exact words that the student was struggling with, Professors can reword, and offer further clarifications and examples.

Dudley rightfully points out that after a year in a job, no one really cares where your degree originated, so long as you have the knowledge. What he fails to recognize is that many jobs need skills much more than they need technical  knowledge. Regardless of the quality of the lecturer, in-person University is skill building and iTunes University is not. Social and professional skills, writing skills, and time management skills  are all necessary to survive in an academic setting today. Watching the Khan Academy in bed is a solitary activity with minimal obligation or commitment. The two are incomparable.

Dudley is not alone in heralding the digitization of education. In-person universities are increasingly bringing computers into the classroom. Sometimes, such as in the facebook quote above, it is purely a matter of convenience. Sometimes professors find innovative ways to integrate digital mediums into their courses. Other times it seems that professors and university administrators see a course without at least one online quiz, video or textbook as behind in the times. The mandatory statistics course for political science students cuts class time in half in favour of online modules. Some Poli 101 courses require blog posts on politics. Even when course material is not based on the web, students take notes on laptops often while surfing the internet.

A 2010 study found that “the majority of young Americans now practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device.” The same study found the highest device users were most likely to report feeling bored or sad. We have used technology as a fast fix for everything, and yet our quality of life does not appear to have improved. If school goes online, will we ever unplug?

Digitizing cooking, exercise, communication, information, and transportation can be undeniably useful and convenient. But as Morozov points out daily, it is not a solution to every problem. Student debt and the high cost of post-secondary education are complex problems that require attention, effort and innovative solutions. But innovation should not be synonymous with technology, and throwing out in-person academic institutions as a whole is a cheap and lazy way out.