>That's the thing about journalism--it's often not much more
>than glorified anecdotes to support preconceptions. It's not
>that hard to actually study things like student behavior and
>attitudes using social science methods. It's always been
>strange to me how journalists have little or no background
>in social science research methods.
>
>Miles
both of you should actually read the article! he actually goes on to substantiate his claims by reference to a great deal of research AND he makes an enhrenreich-like analysis of why he focuses on princeton, as well as other ivies that he observed. as you know miles, ethnographers may actually interview a lot of people but a jouranl article can really only use vignettes. this article--though i don't agree with it all--was actually not bad wrt referencing research.
Justin Schwartz wrote:
>I have a suspicion it's who you talk to.
so does the author. he contrasted today's students with those of his (and your) era. :) he also pointed out that he's doing an ehrenreich-type analysis (not his phrase) in so far as he is examining the professional-managerial elite (the scribbling classes) who will go on to have an inordinate influence on how we define and understand 'ourselves'.
>I went to Tigertown between 1975 and 1979. There were students like the
>ones Brooks describes. They were not the majority. Certainly the
>prevailing attitude at the place is rule by divibe right. Outside of a
>small circle, few people were interested in intellectual discussion out of
>class. However, almost everybody was seriously into getting (a) drunk, (b)
>high, and (c) laid, in the time honored tradition of college students. The
>Woodiewoo (Woodrow Wilson School) crowd was alway super careerist. --jks
and later in the article he acknowledges this about the Woodrow Wilson crowd. he also says that he went to many more universities, in addition to Princeton. and, he has more to his discussion that Princetonites and draws on other research as well as cultural critique/analysis.
although not quite the same crowd, i'd say that the refusal to discuss ideas and politics outside of the classroom was pretty typical for crowd i taught (small, elite private liberal arts colleges in upstate NY; consider that the defining critereon as to what made one working class or poor was that you sent your kids to a public school). very ambitious, felt that their lives were cut out for them and that they'd take their rightful place in the natural order.
i had them keep journals and then analyze what they and others had written. an exercise i'd learned of and wanted to try. was pretty interesting.
as for sex, well, there was some discussion of LUGS which many in this paticular class (intro women's studies) decried as "fake lesbians". LUGS or Lesbian Undergraduates are women who, according to one journal writer, "have sex with other women during the week and then try to find a boyfriend on the weekend. they won't put out for the guys right away because guys won't date you if you do."
if you ask guys about their sex lives, they say they don't get enough! :)
a friend helped conduct an update of a campus sex survey at my alma mater. they basically found that there is no more sex than there was in 1975. the difference, among women, is that 25 yrs ago, women sometimes felt guilty for having casual sex. today's young women say, "i'm not going to settle down with any of these guys. so i might as well have fun. i'll meet someone after i establish my career."
I recall an interesting discussion of "pressure" wherein a number of them acknowledged that they felt a great deal of pressure to aspire to the right careers. as one woman said, "everyone brightens up when i tell them I'm majroing in biology. when they ask what medical specialty i want to pursue, they become noticeably disappointed when i tell them i want to be a zookeeper." some of them talked about how they'd like to take a year off and hitchhike around the country or another country. they all agreed that their parents would freak if they used their time so wastefully.
those who longed for intellectual, ethical, political conversation with their peers often confided that they were disappointed in college because of this. there was a serious norm that one must study hard, but never appear to be working too hard at it. a friend who taught at Dartmouth for a few years did ethnographic research there and found much the same as this Atlantic Monthly article found.
the students were devoted heavily to drinking. one school had a serious problem with it -- with students attending 8 a.m. classes on the day after hump night either still drunk or sweating it off. (peeeuuu!) there were some major problems with people being left to pass out in the hallways and on the main drag downtown, where they went drinking. a newspaper article described one dorm as using a passed out student as a doorstop and i guess the kid ended up ODing on all the booze and almost died as everyone just stepped over him and laughed. etc. nothing new, of course.
i'll wax carl here and recall an interview i did with a local paper:
While some sociologists refute the significance of Ritzer's theory, those who accept his evidence see an ugly, automated future, one similar to that envisioned by Max Weber, the 19th-century theorist on whose "principle of rationality" McDonaldization is based. "{Weber} feared that rationalization would create a society of rule-bound, apolitical individuals dominated by soulless corporate and government bureaucracies," Crouse says, "Rationalization, for him, was an 'iron cage' which would become impossible to escape. What once seemed rational and liberating would, perversely, become irrational and constraining as ordinary people lost control over the decision-making processes that shaped their lives."
While agreeing that McDonaldization does have many positive facets, Crouse feels members of society must work to keep their control over technology instead of letting technology control them. "We don't have as much control over our lives as we think we do," she says. But she maintains that people will eventually understand the irrationalities of McDonaldization, and that the adverse side effects will be resisted. If this does not happen, however, Crouse says we will have an even more controlled, monotonous, deindividualized and dehumanized society.
Indeed, continued ignorance could result in what Crouse says was Weber's major fear: a future world that is a "polar night of icy darkness and hardness."