There is an old saying, "the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence."
Your email pal,
Tom L.
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> I think that teaching at a community college (even as a tenured professor) is a lot different from the working conditions that you described. My good friend Michael Hoover says, if I remember correctly, that in Florida a state law mandates the *word count* of each community college student's coursework output. As to teaching as exercise of creativity, traces of it still remain, but Hoover says that he has to 'teach' a prepackaged TV course. In general, much more micromanagement of course content, office hours, minimum enrollment, etc. seems to be the norm in the community college land. (Maybe you'll discuss all that in the 'debasement' chapter you mentioned in your post?) I hope Hoover will expand on this.
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> I agree wholeheartedly with the following statement you wrote:
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> "As I came to see it, the problem was not that I was in a privileged position but that most other workers were in unprivileged ones."
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> The only reason I don't quite agree with you on everything is that workers who are not paid intellectuals, in my view, don't see us with 'envy and a lot of hostility.' I'd say that the prevailing working-class view may be affectionate condescension toward Professors (pronounced with ironic emphasis) both in the USA and Japan. (Then again, I never had to experience a conflict with my father over Vietnam.) The reason why I harp on this matter is that the Right has been putting forward their pseudo-populism (which has us believe in the existence of 'workers who don't like PC, Pomo, Multiculti, Literature, etc.' in conflict with the 'Cultural Elite'--except that the Right doesn't say 'workers'--they say 'taxpayers' or something like that). Our lefty angst over privilege usually doesn't help the working class _objectively_ and instead helps the Right by giving them ammunitions with which to destroy the past gains of the working class: wider access to higher education. Of course I'm not
> saying there is no objective difference between steelworkers or waitresses and college teachers with regard to time and control over work process. It's just that when we publish our thoughts on the matter in non-left fora, we ought to be really careful so as not to help the Right.
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> Yoshie
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> P.S. Our lefty angst kills comradely discussion among leftists too, as in the recent case of Lou, Mark Jones, and Doug.