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Discussion Paper Index PageSOCIAL CONDITIONS, SERVICE DELIVERY, AND SO . . . .
Thomas Goodale; Human Service Programs, George Mason University
In attempting to determine "characteristics of contemporary society
that have implications for the delivery of recreation and park
services, and potential impacts on curricula" (my charge from Bill
Niepoth) we encounter numerous difficulties, arbitrarily organized
here into two categories: attention and complexity. Different authors
have suggested that both of these encompassing problems may be "fatal
flaws" in human nature. Time will tell.
Attention problems are of three types: lack of information, denial, and relevance. Lack of information is not so much the result of intellectual laziness as it is of specialization, veracity (or its lack) of sources and impossibility of confirmation, cynicism, and an extraordinary amount of noise (or junk) in our communication networks. An even greater problem is time, or at least priorities, those extrinsically as well as intrinsically driven. To overcome lack of information takes a great deal of time, most of it spent with printed words from carefully chosen sources. Scarce time, conflicted priorities, problems discriminating among sources and cynicism about information due to exposure to the constant hyping, and spinning in the mass media, means more ignorance in our society than most of us would care to acknowledge.
Ignorance and the other attention problems are exacerbated by many conditions in the society: the erosion of shared experience and common sensibility; the rapidity of change; privatization and isolation of individuals; the rejection of authority and the wisdom of the ancients. These are old tunes but the lyrics remain current. So does Orwell's understanding that words are the raw material of thought, and that when you destroy the meaning of words you destroy the ability to think. Hyperbole, spin, stonewalling, and obfuscation now have to compete with deliberate deception. Truth has come to mean anything you can get away with without being successfully sued. The absence of accurate information, when important choices must be made, renders you powerless. You cannot make an informed choice. You have lost your freedom. This, surely, has something to do with leisure. What does it mean for service delivery and curricula?
A more recent, subtle, but perhaps more significant characteristic of society is hegemony on the home front. So much has been said of America's cultural hegemony abroad. An exasperated Canada has recently moved to strictly limit U.S. content in TV programming. Reruns of "Dallas" top the TV program ratings in countries where most people are undernourished; Rambos and Terminators top the box office in nations torn by violence. The cultural hegemony of the U.S. is that of Hollywood and Madison Avenue. But that is also the dominant cultural influence in the U.S. With the mergers of major entertainment corporations with major media corporations, especially TV networks, the ability of a few individuals to shape most of the messages we receive is unprecedented, and the conquest of information by infomercials and entertainment is hastened. The media do not communicate, much less inform; they are merely products pushing products.
Denial begins with denying the lack of information followed by not wanting to believe some of the information we do have about our society; our infant mortality rate, our homicide rate, the number of people in the penal system, the number of children in below poverty level households, how much TV we watch and the consequences, Bill Gates's net worth, toxicity in the environment, global warming, concealed weapons, terrorism.
The third problem is relevance. What, in our calculations, does not affect us directly, now or in the near future, garners little of our attention. The prospect of losing part of a little finger troubles us more than the prospect of losing an acquaintance. The death of a friend is a tragedy: the death of 100,000 people we do not know is a statistic. The minimum wage will increase from $4.25 to $5.15 per hour over the next two years. The price of gasoline (in this area) has increased from $1.10 to $1.35 per gallon in recent weeks. And Juwan Howard will be paid $98,000,000 to play basketball for seven years (not counting endorsements, appearances, etc.). So I am paying more for gasoline, and will probably pay more for a burger and fries, a motel room and basketball tickets. Does that mean, in the aggregate, there is an impact on the travel, hospitality and entertainment industries? And therefore do we note that in a tourism course? Does not that observation seem painfully trivial? Is there no larger story here? If so, what is it, and what response, if any, should we make?
Among the first conditions of society to which we must attend, then, are the conditions related to attending itself; paucity of information (the "overload" is not information but noise), denial, and relevance. Until we have grasped these conditions and responded to them, other conditions do not really matter because we can only react -- or be swept along.
A few societal changes to which we have reacted or been swept along come readily to mind. Demographic changes including an aging and more culturally diverse population have clearly changed service delivery and often curricula. Impacts of demographic change on social security, health care and other foundations of decency concern us, reflected in increasing emphasis on fitness, and prevention of health problems. Immigration and language policies and programs have our attention now, in addition to interest in or concern about diversity, with which we continue to wrestle in courses and curricula. But other conditions escape us. We have yet to consider the implications of the pace of development in China and India. The combined population is 2.2 billion people. A very modest increase in food, say one loaf of bread per person per month, means over 26 billion loaves of bread per year (that would require the grain exports of about a dozen additional Australias each year). What do we make of a global labor force in which nearly one billion people are unemployed? Of what relevance to us are these conditions?
The feminist critique of social institutions and leisure theory has also informed and changed service delivery and some courses and curricula. Increasing specialization has influenced us as well. To a base of community, therapeutic and outdoor recreation has been added a plethora of specializations; event management, fairs and festivals, winter cities, rural economic development along with travel and tourism, eco-tourism, hospitality management, resort and commercial recreation, etc. Some of these changes in service delivery and course offerings reflect other changes in society; changes in employment sectors and labor force composition; changes in political philosophy, both social and economic; changes in the distribution of wealth.
Often the responses have been reactive, and we are probably often looking at only the tip of an iceberg, as the loaves of bread and global labor force would suggest. To cite one example in our own backyard, we have all watched one iceberg, technology, crush a valiant effort by NRPA to get ahead of the curve with its Schole network. The cost was too high, the competition too powerful, the change too rapid, and the profession too far behind the curve to sustain the effort. This example only hints at the complexity of contemporary social conditions and characteristics, of which a long list could be compiled. But with everything related to everything else, the permutations are simply beyond the level of complexity that any of us could fathom, much less write out here. One can only touch a few topics, in this instance four, but that may be enough "to get people thinking and talking" (the rest of my charge from Bill Niepoth).
To start with a very small but very direct tip of the iceberg of technology, what are its implications for college and university teachers, campuses, courses and classes? Simply this. You can eliminate the campuses and classes and most of the teachers and courses. The electronic classroom can be put into cyberspace and that can be presented to a mass audience. Any number of people can take the same course, each at whatever pace, at whatever time, in whatever place he or she chooses. And not just courses but degrees. This is already old hat.
So many things become possible. A state may decide, especially for comparatively small programs, that it will assist only one, and that will not be place bound but rather housed in a consortium. The consortium can spread across many states: in fact 18 western states' governors have just committed themselves to multi-state, higher education consortia. We could have, for example, one T.R. program for the country, or one core program with multiple-specializations, each course taught by the best (I would audit them all). Some gesture toward writing would be required, and group projects and dynamics would be mediated by the technology. What is taught as well as how would be similarly mediated. Equitable arrangements around copyright, intellectual property and tolls for using cyberspace must be devised. And most of us would feel saddened for the loss of important components of education, a virtual collegium for example, being no more satisfying than a virtual meal. We might also feel betrayed by the alma mater we have served these many years. But if the question is, could all of the students currently enrolled in our programs get as good an education, on average, as they are getting now with our combined budgets slashed 75%, the answer is "not yet". But the answer "yes" draws nearer by the minute, and how the time goes by.
This is one condition for which relevance to us is all too clear, but hopefully not so preoccupying as to preclude attending to other conditions. Relevance is not as clear for the three conditions discussed briefly below: centrifugal forces and a dismembered society; growing disparities and de facto apartheid; dissolution of commitment to the commonwealth.
Presumably anyone reading this is familiar with Robert Putnam's arguments in "Bowling alone" and in "The strange disappearance of civic America". Participation in civic organizations has declined, he argues, and much of that decline can be attributed to television. The community, in a sense, has become dismembered. Even the family room, which was mostly the TV room has been depopulated, the children, if any, have their own TV sets in their bedrooms. TV may be unique in the extent of its influence but it is only one of many individualizing, privatizing, centrifugal forces increasing the distance between us.
The auto was and continues to be such a force; the concentric waves of suburbs, then exurbs model the centrifuge, as do roads configured as inner loops and outer loops and beltways. Speed, in autos or anything else, increases the distance too. And the auto is a near perfect model of a cocoon, a metal capsule -- or perhaps a suit of armor (Volvo prides itself on comparisons with tanks). With air conditioning, the volume turned up and more and more windows tinted to conceal the occupants, garage door openers and underground parking, isolation from environment and people becomes more complete.
To TVs and autos we must now add computers as individualizing, privitizing, centrifugal instruments. Faith Popcorn, who gave us the "cocooning" metaphor, now writes about "clinking." How many "remotes" (think of the original connotation of "remote") are there in the average suburban home, and how many computers with mouses? Click. There are so many possibilities beyond home entertainment; working at home, shopping at home, banking at home, attending university at home. And all these possibilities further the dismembering of society.
What is the relevance to us? Perhaps it is the dissolution of norms, trust, reciprocity and "civic capital" to borrow Putnam's phrase. Perhaps it is the dissolution of informed discussion on which citizenship and democracy are based. What about service delivery and curricula? Perhaps there is no problem; perhaps nothing should be done. If something should be done, it would have to begin by thinking of leisure in collective, social and political terms and not as individuals perceiving themselves to be free. Similarly, we must conceptualize leisure benefits as collective, perhaps only as collective. Out of conceptual shifts would evolve important changes in service delivery and curricula.
Between discussions of cocooning and clicking Popcorn talked and wrote about "bunkering." Bunkering is a useful metaphor for the two remaining topics; disparity and de facto apartheid, and dissolution of commitment to the commonweal. The bunkers are all too real: apartment buildings with 24 hour security, closed circuit television, etc.; communities surrounded by walls and accessed only via gates; private police and security personnel; firearms; doing what we can to not only separate but also secure ourselves and our material "goods" from others. Outside these bunkers lies what?
Much has been written and there is no longer any debate about growing disparities of income and opportunity. And popular myth, as implied in the claim that a rising tide lifts all boats, is collapsing under the weight of the evidence that wealth per se, either individual or national, does not lead to bunkering or de facto apartheid. Disparity does, and thus to numerous economic, social and political problems. One of those problems is having so many children and youth at risk. Service delivery is increasingly responsive to this, and park and recreation educators are catching up.
The disparity in opportunity for recreation based on economic class, not race, and apartheid like conditions come about in many ways. The most obvious is private facilities and services available only to members and guests. Second is prohibitive costs for recreation available through private and commercial enterprises. Travel, tourism, resort, hospitality, entertainment, tour, cruise; attend, participate, drive, ride, use, wear, watch, etc. -- all these things cost money, and even the middle-class finds it harder to justify, for example, tickets to see Juwan Howard "earning" $98 million. Publicly provided or sponsored opportunities bearing a fee or charge are also out-of-reach in many cases for many people, because they cannot afford them. Tax laws exacerbate disparity of opportunity and income as in the telling book title, Charity Begins at Home. Charitable contributions by wealthy people cost less, due to the tax bracket, than contributions by the less wealthy. And the wealthy contribute more to "charities" like the symphony orchestra and choral society of which they, not the poor, are patrons.
This reaches to the level of local community centers, libraries and schools, for example, provided by public agencies. The tax structure contributes to these disparities too, in this case property taxes particularly. So de facto apartheid emerges in the public sector too. And these effects produce others. Poor children, in urban areas especially, have few if any places outside the home where they can play, much less play safely. And the family can afford little in the way of equipment, outings, or expenditures of any kind. Television is about all poor people can afford. And so, as study after study reveals, poor children watch more television than rich ones, African-American children more than white children. That means more exposure to life as portrayed by television, and all the problems to which heavy viewing is clearly a contributor.
How is that relevant to us? What does this mean to service delivery and thus to the content of our curricula? If anything, it means, as before, re-examining some central concepts: leisure, freedom, individual, collective/communal, public, private, etc. It also means re-examining the business we are in, or whether "business" is even an appropriate word for what we do. That means we have to re-examine where we belong in the university, assuming we belong there at all, and reexamine why.
The last condition is bound up in the conditions just discussed. If we agree that the public has a stake in recreation opportunity for everyone, therefore a public responsibility and a role, then we have to be concerned about the base of support. In some ways, that base is eroding. One aspect of that is the limits of what can be done with volunteers and partners, with down sizing, and out sourcing, with revenue generation and third-party payments. And there are disturbing signs, including emerging practices which we have been applauding.
One such practice is park improvement districts. Those in neighborhoods and districts that can afford and thus provide their own amenities will have them. As with private police and security, part of the public will provide for itself what all of the public cannot provide for everyone, private police, business improvement districts, and now parks. Among those "home schooling" their children or sending them to private schools there is not a great deal of enthusiasm about supporting public schools. Those who can support, often elegantly, their own recreational pleasures are not overly enthusiastic about supporting those of others (See Galbraith's latest book, The Culture of Contentment and Lasch's last book, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy). Is the constituency for public parks, recreation and leisure services dividing along class lines? If so this problem is seriously exacerbated by these facts: the majority of the electorate live in the suburbs; poor people tend to not participate in politics and do not even vote in national elections, much less local ones; children, disproportionally poor by huge margins, cannot vote, and no one can vote for them. What about the children, one-fourth of whom live in below poverty line households?
A related condition, a concern of lesser magnitude at the moment but an emerging one, is the increasing reliance on gambling to support government operations and services. Count on it -- when a euphemism is necessary to describe an activity, caution is advised. The "gaming industry," increasingly encouraged for direct government revenue (lotteries) or taxes (casinos, pari-mutuals, etc.) is one such euphemism. This is not simply extremely regressive, in fact it is a tax on dreams that are always irrational -- and a fatalism that too often is not. There are now proposals to place Keno games almost everywhere. By some reports, Keno is one of the most addictive gambling games, the gaming industry equivalent of adding nicotine to tobacco products.
What does the erosion of support in both dollars and constituents mean to service delivery and to curricular content? Perhaps that we had better hone our political skills, learn hardball, develop one ally for every partner, and pay attention to the absence of information, denial, and finding no relevance in such conditions as eroding support, disparity of opportunity and de facto apartheid, and centrifugal, individualizing and privatizing forces. Perhaps not.
But that is what our electronic conversation is about. See you in Kansas City.