farewell to academe

[Michael Yates]

Well, the student who thought the Manifesto was a novel had already read
it when he wrote this.  And the students had already learned that normal
and inferior were opposites.  I'd have thought more of your argument if
one of your students had said jury was the opposite of injury or put the
opposite of input.

Of course, I agree that the collapse of the left was not caused by the
colleges.

Michael Yates

Brad DeLong wrote:
> 
> >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.