In the Florentine Codex, the Mexica refer to the highest level of heaven as Ōmeyōcān, which I translate as “locus of duality.” (In case you’re wondering, this is residue from my sabbatical years ago, in which I studied the poetry and philosophy of the Mexica, whom we call the Aztecs. I get this translation from ōme = two + yō = a substantive-maker (sort of like the German -heit) and cān = location or place.) This highest heavenly level — the thirteenth, to be exact — was so far beyond our imagination that we cannot conceive of it, yet it is the source of the being of the cosmos.
That explains a lot about dual credit.
When we first rolled out dual credit, people stood up in public and said things like, “These are college credit courses at the college level — everything about them is college, except that they just happen to meet on high school campuses.” That’s a great example of how this “locus of duality” was so far “beyond” that we failed to conceive of what it’s actually like.
Now, of course, we know that this statement was shamefully naïve. Or if you prefer, BS.
And yes, some of us knew it was BS when people said it the first time. It may be emotionally satisfying for us to throw an “I told you so” party, but it won’t help our students progress.
So, it’s time, in my view, to rethink dual credit, and I offer this notion as a way forward.
The duality of dual credit
The duality of dual credit suggests that, like Ōmeyōcān, it is two things simultaneously. Not coincidentally simultaneous; but dual “in substance,” dual all the way down.
Let’s take one relatively straightforward example: textbooks. From the college perspective, the textbook is the professor’s home turf. We choose, we assign, we correct, critique, embrace. But we have control — or at least our departments. And any hardships (like cost or availability) is SEP — Somebody Else’s Problem.
But that same small entity, the physical object that is a textbook, in the eyes of the ISD, is an asset like a desk or a projector screen: An item to be purchased once and used repeatedly, a resource for generations. You get the idea.
Duality becomes visible when these perspectives collide. Like this: a professor slated to teach a dual credit section has a conflict and drops the section. Another prof picks it up, but orders a different textbook, the textbook. From the college side, business as usual. But to the ISD, it’s like finding out three days before classes start that all the desks have to be removed and replaced.
Duality also rears its head(s?) for students. For instance, to a dual credit student, your course is both college credit and a HS graduation token (usually). So, to students, all the rules of HS graduation token-collecting apply. They bring their concerns about collecting the token and related matters, like how that grade is weighted compared to AP, and whether you still get the token if you miss class for UIL forensics — all that rides straight into your college classroom on the backs of the students. To be blunt, it would be inhumane and irrational to tell them to check their HSness at the door.
Nevertheless, we could take the position that these concerns are SEP. If they want college courses and college credit, then let them deal with college culture, we could say, congratulating ourselves for our high standards. But consider what happens when — on their turf — we want things that we take for granted in our place, like unrestricted internet access, or a computer and projector that actually work. And what if their response is SEP, dished out with a scoop of sarcasm about the Ivory Tower?
The Path to ŌMEYŌCĀN
This path is for front-line professors and leaders involved with dual credit.
Trigger warning: The next several points may annoy, irritate, or even exasperate you. You have been warned.
First, let’s get oriented on the path: Dual credit is here to stay, at least in some form. You and I may embrace it, or we may reject it, we may see it as good, we may see the End — but the fact is, we are in for the long haul. So today I’m announcing that I’m no longer going to spend any more of my heartbeats talking with people about what a bad idea it is. That ship, as they say, has sailed, and like it or not, we’re deckhands.
On the contrary, I’m going to spend my heartbeats thinking about how we can do it better. So here’s the first step on the path to Ōmeyōcān: Embrace the duality of dual credit, and get over it.
Embracing the duality means that we should rethink every element of the dual credit course from perspective of duality, because, in fact, just about everything about it has a dual nature.
Second step: Unlike the thirteenth level of heaven, if we work at it, we can deepen our understanding of the dual credit student’s experience. Think about it: Most likely, the duality of dual credit isn’t the thirteenth heaven for the students, either. Once we come to understand what is driving their anxieties and concerns, we’ll be in a better position to work on calming them.
Why should we do that? you may reply. After all, I’m there to teach my discipline, not hold people’s hands.
Excellent — that’s just the right question to motivate the second step. Aside from basic human compassion (we are, after all, in the business of individual success), aside from trying to make the world better, aside from the Geneva Convention — a really good reason to deal with dual credit anxieties is that it is in your interest as a dual credit professor.
Think about it: The energy you free up by addressing student anxieties and concerns preemptively could be put to use deeply engaging your discipline. As in, the reason you are there to begin with, in the Place of Duality.
In short: You too must find the Place of Duality.
Next step down the path: Partner with the ISDs at every level to make the duality of dual credit work for all of us, especially our students. This is not, and can’t be, a one-sided operation. The Mexica saw that a one-sided highest heaven is, at the end of the day, monotonously impotent; Ōmeyōcān is the source of everything that is, precisely because it isn’t One.
Here’s a practical example of partnership: Let’s say a student’s latest essay gives you cause for concern, and you start wondering if we should intervene. That’s a difficult enough situation to cope with on an ACC campus, with all our policies and procedures, counselors and intervention teams, etc.. But what are you supposed to do with that student when it’s dual credit?
Well, guess what: ISDs have that problem, too, and the odds are very high that they have a support system already in place to deal with it for high school students. But the problem is that you, as a college professor, aren’t in those in-service training days when ISD teachers find out about support structures. But you need to be getting that information as well, because your students are HS students.
You won’t be making the journey alone, but we need leaders who get the duality of dual credit—both in the administration and in the classroom. I’ve packed my bags for the trip.
If we embrace the duality of dual credit, address the dual credit student experience as it is, and partner with ISDs to make the duality of dual credit work for all of us, I’m convinced we can make dual credit better. But above all, it’s going to take professors who are dedicated both to their disciplines and to the special habits of mind and action that allow us to see the duality of dual credit in every dual credit thing we do.
It’s not likely to be the thirteenth heaven, but the Place of Duality is good enough.
I have taught many dual credit classes and can therefore fervently applaud your observations. So long as students were high school seniors, with a few juniors mixed in occasionally, I could make it work and actually work pretty well. When my students are high school sophomores, no longer taught in a high school setting, but in a college setting, more often than not in classes with 20 and 25 year olds, things become much more difficult. I’m not ready to throw in the towel, but I feel that I’m being called upon to aid and abet a process that is pretty seriously unhealthy for all of the students involved. I can make it a little less so, but not, in my view, nearly enough to feel productive.
Good thoughts. I concur, for the most part. And as a strong supporter of dual credit let me way, “yes, we need to consider ISD. At the same time, ISD needs to play by the rules. Except for some extreme exceptions (child geniuses), high school sophomore should not be in a college-level class.” As those who follow the classes I teach and the grades which different sections get, even the high school juniors and seniors in my dual credit classes, on average, do not do as well as the older students. (And I do NOT know who the student may be when I am grading the tests.) In short, for dual credit to work the school districts need to be strict about who they admit into the dual credit program. If not, they are doing a potentially great damage to the students and to themselves.
Thanks for taking the time to comment. The central goal of my blog is to chart a course (primarily for my division), grounded in reasoned reflection and reality. The trick, of course, is being able to point to either reason or reality with some degree of confidence. Let’s take reality: It may well be the case that HS students are not developmentally ready for what we consider college-level work — but if we look further afield, students of that age range in other school systems are doing a lot of work that one might consider college-level in a different framework. Meanwhile, we have a practical problem: we have students to teach as best we can.
Our situation is analogous to the average psychotherapist: We might sincerely wish for a society and culture that fostered better mental health so that we could help our clients in a different, more productive way, and we can work for that culture. But what we can’t do is turn away people who need us and say, “If the institutional structures were healthy, I’d be able to help you.” The “therapist” who responds in this way may be saying something true — but it’s not useful. (And she or he may be a “therapist” but not a therapist.)
I doubt that any rational person would claim that we have done enough empirical study of dual credit students and outcomes to be on solid ground about when and how (and whether) to do it, but that’s not what I’m claiming. On the contrary, we have to do *something* with these students, today, and I’m trying to find the most rational, grounded path forward for them.
Some good thoughts here, Matthew – but the suggestion seems to be that we should accept “what is” – or, more specifically, what dual credit has become. Yet, to accept current practices as “reality” we are doing a disservice to our dual credit students. We’re not preparing them properly for life outside “the academy”.
In the “outside world”, there are rules, deadlines, and obligations. In the outside world, “reality” rarely changes to suit the person.
For example, in the workplace, a lawyer is expected to file a motion with the court by a certain deadline. When the lawyer does not meet the deadline, do you think that the court says “OK, we’ll just change the rules for you?”
When a person fails to comply with payment deadlines for rent, car payment, student loans, child support – do you think these authorities say “OK, we’ll just change our deadlines/rules for you?”
Closer to home: when the College requires tuition payment by a certain deadline – what happens when the student doesn’t meet the deadline? They’re dropped from the course. We don’t have “variable” deadlines – based on what the student prefers or what works best for the student. Likewise, each semester session has a “start date”. These are fixed, and not subject to what “works” for the student. ISDs and their students can’t change these requirements– so why would we allow them to change course requirements such as textbooks, instructors, disciplinary policies, or any other course requirement? If the problem is textbook cost, then rectify that problem.
In real life, most people cannot simply create and impose their own alternate reality – well, not if they want to thrive.
What dual credit is/has become, is the tail wagging the dog: the ISDs insisting on specific schedules, textbooks, faculty, disciplinary processes, and academic standards. When we legitimize these demands, we are allowing ISDs and by extension, students – to think that creating one’s own reality is possible and acceptable – in college and in life.
Thanks for taking time to comment, Terry!
You are absolutely right about the “real world.” Except for one thing: There are very few HS students who are lawyers.
I’m not being a smart-ass (well, not gratuitously, anyway). Like it or not, a part of the challenge of educating people is helping them transition from the world of childhood to the adult world. There’s nothing about facilitating that process that inherently requires us to lower standards or inflate grades. (In fact, my own view is that lowering standards is contrary to the development of ego resources and healthy autonomy — but self-esteem and how to grow it is another discussion.)
Although there are many challenges to doing it well, the central challenge of dual credit is in fact the duality of the student experience. HS people see it as an extension of HS; college people assert that it should be college. I’m calling for us — all of us — to stop reducing the student experience to one framework or the other and recognize that dual credit students are caught in *both* worlds.
If we (all of us) decide to shoulder the mission of helping young people make this transition, then we will have to partner across the Great Divide and find ways to make it work for the students — which means finding ways to maintain college rigor and the college experience while accepting the duality of these HS/college students’ experience.
While I totally get your line of thought about the substance of the experience — and I even endorse it as the aspiration we’re helping students work toward — I might ungenerously point out that this could be read as an argument against the duality of dual credit. In other words, “it’s just college.” One implication might be that we shouldn’t be doing it if we can’t do it like college — which takes us back to a conversation that I’ve decided not to have. The Dual Credit ship has sailed, and we’re all deckhands.
Actually, I’d like to be Captain.