Let's hear it for mass destruction!
Joseph Dunphy
philosophical resignation in a response to this blog post
http://theteemingbrain.wordpress.com/2007/03/26/education-vs-student-anti-intellectualism/
which came in response to this article
http://web.archive.org/web/20060526102924/http://mtprof.msun.edu/Spr1997/TROUT-ST.html
among others.
http://www.howardwfrench.com/archives/2005/11/12/lack_of_curiosity_is_curious/
My response:
Joseph Dunphy said,
April 16, 2007 at 8:32 pm
A few thoughts after an initial skim:
While I feel more than a little sympathy for the instructor who finds
himself butting heads with students like the ones described, having
been in that position myself when teaching Mathematics, one might do
well to ask oneself if the attitudes described arose in a vacuum.
Look at the complaint about education being treated like a commodity
from the point of view of a student who has just paid an exhorbitant
tuition, one jacked up at many times the rate of inflation, this being
defended on the basis that the university is "letting the market set
the price", even in cases in which admissions of price fixing have
been made. Today, the poor (or even middle class) but talented student
is told to embrace the unfairness of life and accept that his
background will limit his opportunities, while a less qualified but
better funded student slides in to fill the vacancy he leaves. "Why
shouldn't I view a commodity as being a commodity?", the student might
well ask on being admitted, because in treating the collection of
tuition as an opportunity to engage in capitalism at its most cynical
extreme, the school has treated the seats in its classrooms as being
just that - a commodity. If pure, mercenary cynicism is responded to
with the same, where is the surprise?
The example offered of the University of Chicago puts another issue on
display - to an extent, one can see a present day lack of motivation
as the product of a backlash against the exaggerated expectations
regarding the level of student motivation in previous eras, followed
by a job crunch that has often rewarded years worth of brutal overwork
with a decade or two worth of inescapable poverty, with no end in
sight for those affected. The University of Chicago gained just
notoriety as a place where the students were frequently worked right
into nervous breakdowns, and where far too many administrators and
faculty members either didn't care about this or worse, took a
misplaced pride in the number of lives destroyed for no particularly
good reason. The push you see to get the kids out of the Reg is not a
push to get them to not study, but one to get them to take the very
healthy measure of getting a little more balance in their lives. A
sixty hour week should be plenty for anybody. An eighty hour week is
unhealthy on an unsustainable level.
What does it say about some of the good guys that they'd like to see
those weeks come back? Maybe that the good guys aren't always so good,
or that some of them were asleep in Philosophy class when they came
across that idea of "moderation in all things". Push with excessive
force and in time one will be greeted with excessive resistance, made
all the more understandable when one considers the lot of the student
working multiple jobs to raise a tuition which can only be explained
in terms of a corporate-like institutional greed, who asks himself a
realistic if forbidden question. "If I defer gratification in the form
of the fun I'll have at this party today, is this gratification that I
can make up for later, or is this something I'm going to be passing on
for the rest of my life". If these four years are the only years one
expects to have a chance to enjoy in this life before becoming an
impoverished wage slave living in fear of the next downsizing or
outsourcing, then for the student facing such an inhumane reality, an
overabundance of frivolousness is not only understandable, it is
probably sensible.
Perverse incentives lead to perverse results. Regrettably, we live in
a society in which as simple an idea as "life is to be enjoyed"
becomes positively revolutionary, a thing to be struggled against,
either by redefining "fun" in an act of oneupsmanship at the expense
of those declining to join one in workaholic self-destruction, or by
exaggerating any desire to enjoy any leisure at all into a desire to
engage in nothing but leisure. The student ready to work the 60 hour
week finds himself lumped in with the slacker with the bong who
skipped finals, and wondering why he even bothers, finds himself
bothering less and less, sometimes evolving into a slacker himself,
albeit probably one without a bong of his own. One hopes. The negative
consequences of such ingrained Puritanism perversely end up serving as
a validation of that very Puritanism.
Perhaps you might find some mild comfort in the long view. I believe
the argument was advanced that the values being seen in the students
were ones that would not do much for the health of this civilization
in the long run. I would agree that they would not, but would ask if,
in the long run, this is necessarily bad news. Can such an ingrained
bit of dysfunctionality as that Puritan ethic get removed from a
civilization as long as it exists? Or are dark ages a necessary part
of the process by which civilization is renewed, the only means by
which the reform of a society's core values may be achieved? Perhaps
the time for this one to fall fast approaches, and we should have the
wisdom to shrug, enjoy what moments we can, and accept what must be.
The students in their apathy are letting go of an American
civilization that is perhaps no longer worth saving, and maybe really
never was in the first place.
"Misery for misery's sake" was never much of a credo. Let us be
properly amazed that a nation built on it got as far as it did, for as
long as it did, but let's also ponder the fact that in delaying the
fall of this civilization, we delay the birth of the next. Look around
at the one we have, now. Do you see any Shakespeares, any Beethovens,
any Einsteins or Gausses coming out of it, any more? Do you see any
real joy in its celebrations or any real love in its families and
communities, or do you see a lot of play acting on the part of those
who know what they're expected to feel and say and put on a
performance that fools nobody who pays much attention to the show?
Sometimes civilizations outlive their usefulness, lose that hard to
define spark that lead to the accomplishments that once made them
worth remembering, and after that, one can only help to prolong the
misery they bring.
I expect you'll respond to this with scorn. When I was in my career
where you are now, I probably would have done the same, because the
thought of graciously accepting defeat is so at odds with what makes
an academic who and what he is. We like to think that we can fix
anything, but, sad to say, sometimes we are reminded that we can't
when we most greatly wish that we could. Take a look at a 21st century
in which allegedly progressive people can't understand why torturing
confessions out of prisoners is wrong (Burges, Chicago), in which
Forbes Magazine can wax rhapsodic about the use of hunger as a weapon
in the fight to make the workforce docile and the workforce itself
doesn't object - look upon this and so much else, and then try to
imagine reaching souls so empty as these through anything that anybody
could ever write on any topic, in any genre, and just imagine what
another hundred years might bring and then another hundred years after
that. The decline of a civilization is not always a cause for regret,
and maybe when its people so lose their sense of motivation, what one
sees at work is an instinct that tells them that the time has come for
them to let go and let the natural cycle of destruction and renewal do
its work.
In the long run, the human cost of keeping a bad society going beyond
its time is high, but of course, in the short run, one tends to see
only one's own thwarted efforts, on one's own small scale and that
always looks and feels bad, especially when one's passion has not yet
been used up. There are things worse than defeat, but it is not your
time in life to accept this, I suspect. When that time comes, though,
you may find yourself finding comfort in the strangest of things.
Until then, think maybe about these words: "All I can do is try and
since I did, what else should anybody ask of me - myself included?" If
the answer is "nothing", then take pleasure in a clear conscience and
accept that what follows will most likely be for the best.
The flaming may now begin.
---------------------------------------------------
Just not on my own group. :)
Joseph Dunphy
Comments linked to from this post
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on my "miniblog", "Joseph Dunphy's Blog to Come"
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-Ic4OZGcydKumZcPZUAfwPxBrDATXgr72KXYfNQ--?cq=1
Joseph Dunphy
Comments linked to from a post which can be reached through here:
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