farewell to academe

[Brad DeLong]

>Consider
>that I have a student in a seminar on Marx who wrote that the "Communist
>Manifesto" is a novel.  In my introductory class, a student wrote "The
>Unighted States."  Another wrote that a good that is not "inferior" (one
>for which, other things equal, as income rises, purchases fall) is
>"ferior." Still another asked seriously whether it was "demand and
>supply" or "supply and demand."  In the seminar, after I had explained
>Marx's concept of the value of labor power (its value equals the value
>of those consumption goods necessary for the worker to continue working
>and insure that the worker's children grow up to become workers), I
>asked the class what Marx says is the minimum value of labor power.  A
>student awoke from a dead sleep (this in a class of ten, all sitting
>around a seminar table) and blurted out "$5.15!!

At least he or she knew what the minimum wage was...

The facts that education happens when the moment is right for the 
students--not when it is convenient for professors--and that often 
school-time is not the right moment for students make teaching 
heartbreaking, yes. And students waste--from our perspective, at 
least--a lot of their college years. For someone who has done none of 
the reading, to claim that the Manifesto is a novel seems a not 
unreasonable guess. And I know that I still confuse there/their, 
principal/principle, and great/grate. So I can forgive a "Unighted 
States."

But don't exaggerate. Someone who hasn't spent a huge amount of time 
reading microeconomics wouldn't know that the opposite of "inferior 
good" is "normal good." They might think of incomplete, inopportune, 
inattentive, inapplicable, insane, and--naturally and 
intelligently--generalize and go from "inferior" to "ferior". And the 
reasons for the collapse of the left in the late 20th century--the 
"forward march of labour halted," as Hobsbawm put it--are deep and 
complex, and are reflected in rather than springing from the academe.

But Yosemite is absolutely glorious.