>(BTW, I note that in a subsequent post Carrol has anathematized this
>thread as "a stupid conversation, unworthy of anyone who has the remotest
>pretensions to left politics." So I think it wise to absent myself from
>further involvement in this topic and go stand in the corner for a while.)
>
>Carl
Didn't I read something about someone offering successful masturbation courses, too?
At 05:45 PM 9/28/2004, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> However, that fact eludes
>nativist populists on this list and elsewhere.
>
>Wojtek
can't think of ONE nativist populist on this list. Who do you mean? Doug's concern is that it's odd to say that the U.S. in unusually dumb. It's like Cosby trying to say poor blacks are unusually anti-education in this country.
As an aside to the rest of the conversation: I once stumbled over the sociology of sociology section and found a book by a disgruntled PhDer who analyzed his dept for his diss. !!! Some self-published thing. Then I sat on the floor and started reading all these anlyses of the state of sociology through the years. The one thing that stuck out was the perennial lament about how dumb incoming first year students were compared to the "olden daze". Later, in a book I used for sociology of family--can't recall now and it's packed away at the mo'--the author made the point (and illustrated with evidence) that quite a bit of Western literature is littered with the "olden daze" theme. Probably a bit of a grand theoretical stretch on his part, but it was fascinating to read excerpts from the pages of Western history (since the Greeks) written by a (usualy) old, nearly dead white guy bitching about the young'ns and how they lack manners, knowledge, concern for the community, you name it compared to the golden olden daze.
Don't get me wrong. When I first started teaching, I'd think the same. I'd go back and read my high school papers and see that, yes, I knew how to use colons, semi-colons, and commas. I had a decent vocabulary. Etc. I'd sit there and grade papers, often spending more time teaching them how to write than they spent writing the paper itself. I'd bemoan the state of schooling and wonder what it was about the 'olden daze' that made us supposedly better students. Then, of course, I'd talk with my mentors who informed me that the chatter among profs about _us_ was that we weren't as smart and as good as they were. And through books I'd read that my mentors' profs thought they, as a class, weren't so bright. And on and on back through the last century.
And then I sat on committees and learned that 90% of the time, everyone pretended to have read books they trashed or praised with a vengeance, even though they'd never read them. Whatever.
There are decided problems with the pedagogical strategies used by many of our grade school and high school teachers. Yes, they teach to the exam. But it is more than that. It's a lack of any willingness to _frame_ the things they're learning into a recognizable narrative.
And, while I often defend teachers, I must say that I'm saddened to see peole who, around here, are making 40-60k do things like show films the entire course. Students cheat like crazy and teachers seem to look the other way. They have the kids do a project and never collect it. I hear of instance upon instance where kids turn in work that is completely plagiarized and the teacher doesn't care. Hell, they don't even get a lesson _about_ plagiarism. By the time most of them landed in my classroom, if they were from middling to well-to-do backgrounds, the majority of them favored "it's who you know, not what you know" in the survey I handed out to, oh I'd guess about 1500 students over the years.
When I taught small classes at elite liberal arts colleges, I'd get into discussions bout this stuff. In one women's studies class of about 50 students, student after student talked about how they really didn't want to be in college at all. But, their parents made them be there and they felt a great deal of pressure to choose an approved career. One woman wanted to be a zoo keeper, much to her parents' horror. But she stuck to her guns. (Reminds me of Steven Glass)
Not suprisingly, you get people who just don't care about anything. If the message is that it just doesn't matter, that you can slide, well....
It's Buddy Freddy's Buffet High School. Chow down on a little of this and a little of that. There is nothing that ties it all together. It's just one big mass of fried chicken, potato salad, mini eggrolls, rice-a-roni, jello salad, boneless ribs in an artificially colored bright read sauce, rolls, (army) green beans drowning in margarine, and a smidge of dried up apple pie topped with a glob of whipped topping for dessert.
Kelley
"We're in a fucking stagmire."
--Little Carmine, 'The Sopranos'