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Seems each day someone wants to coin a new word to "enhance" our understanding of some process, methodology, effect or learning experience. Bull! Now that says it all about commodification! Maude Barlow, national chairman of Canada's dominant social and environmental activist organization, the Council of Canadians, uses this term to describe what is happening with the viewpoint toward water, of all things. Maude believes that water's interconnectedness with all of life justifies the use of commodification. Ouch, surely this woman can get a life and discover what living is all about! And, in the process she can stop using words like "interconnectedness".

In our educational morass we are undergoing a transition. One where instead of "on campus" learning we have course material prepared by a highly respected professor in the select field and "interconnected" with those who have paid a substantial dollar amount to be entreated to canned lectures and hopefully some one-on-one interaction with a docent who is able to answer questions, lead discussions, build enthusiasm and serve as a link between the computer key board and the mind. This is the commodification of education. Really can't quarrel with the application of the terms to describe what is taking place. But surely, there's a better way of saying it.

Is it education? Offering a commodity, i.e., English 101 to a group of students who desperately need the involvement of a teacher just seems wrong! Now this is not to say that what the needy student has been getting in a "University" environment is without wont. But at least fellow students, struggling with the discordant sounds of English to which they have never been exposed can share the experience and hopefully all will survive together. And perhaps will actually come away with a better understanding of what Noah Webster intended. He, you might remember, was if not a good recorder of words in current use, and able to distinguish between those gaining in acceptance and those that were departing, was to be remembered as one who could define a word so that others could use it with assurance and accuracy. Such was the stature of Noah Webster.

To really understand something you have to make it your own. You've got to use it. How do you intend for a person sitting at a keyboard to put into practice what is being offered. In the classroom, at least, the continuous writing of essays leads to an implementation of the art and finally an acceptance as the best possible means to communicate. How do the "virtual" universities solve this problem? Ignore it!

An even greater problem lurking in the background is that of ethics. In creative writing, one is taught to involve the imagination, provide descriptions beyond that which are visually apparent and develop word pictures that can espouse one's own personal opinions as though they were based on fact while they are only mind candy. This is not a problem if the written word is to be published as fiction or political opinion but when it carries the imprint of newspaper, magazine or television news it no longer is reporting. Beware, when the originator is entitled "staff writer", "xyz critic" or the like, be prepared for a dose of journalistic over use of the "I" word and a twist from reality to opinion.

Where are the Noah Websters, Henry L. Menckens and William Cowper Branns to hold these fictional writers at bay? Don't look to your editorial page editors. They are a part of the pack, like wolves pursuing an injured deer and ready to tear it limb from limb to feed their cause.

Until they solve these problems, those universities that operate in the "ether" will find that their ability to turn out "graduates" of their programs will be marked by failure in the sense of having produced an empty vassal incapable of getting it right yet capable of writing it wrong.

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