i don't share your and others' disgust for schooling because i went to a weird hippy dippy college that tried to unschool people out of subservience to fonts of knowlege, aka professors, what friere calls the 'banking model' of education.
at any rate, the consumer model of learning is not a replacement for the older banking model. the idea is to produce a product, a thing (and for many unis, a brand) which you provide to consumers. it treats them as tuition bearing being who carry around knapsacks where their preferences are bundled. they reach in their backpack and whip out a preference and tuition and receive it.
you perceive people as being horrified that the great professors are being treated like clerks at safeway. that's not what anyone here means, i don't think. the problem is turning an education into commodity that exists only to be exchanged. i guess you can say that this is just part of the process of all that's solid melting into air, all that's holy is profaned.
and that's true but while we shouldn't valorize the past and mourn for something lost that we never had, i can't see why we should celebrate it in that punishing, on your knees before the truth, prostrate yourself, bare and wimpering, before the truth of capitalist reality suckers -- because that goes in the other extreme which is equally intolerable.
At 09:10 PM 7/22/2008, Joseph Catron wrote:
>We seem to be having multiple conversations in this thread
>simultaneously. I'll not dwell on the point, other than to say that I
>read nothing in your reply below conflicting with my post, to which it
>was apparently intended as a critical response.
>
>I will, however, note how some of the loaded language used here shapes
>the conversation. Is the idea of professors as "hired help,"
>obligated to help students prepare for their chosen careers, really so
>outrageous? However we cut the numbers, I hope we can agree that
>many, many students attend college with vocational goals foremost in
>their minds.
>
>And why is conflating tenured academics with residential housekeepers,
>or whatever else "hired help" means, so evocative? They're people who
>do jobs, some parts of which they like more than others, for money,
>right?
>
>On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 7:58 PM, John Thornton <jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> > For starters State University students and Community College students have
> > never made we wish for an explosive laden vest.
> >
> > My only elite college experience is at Harvard but I have heard from
> > reliable persons that my impressions were typical of other similar
> > institutions.
> >
> > The sense of entitlement at such schools is almost unbelievable unless
> > you've spent much time with these fucks.
> > Their attitude is, as someone pointed out, that the Professors and
> > instructors are mere servants.
> > People whose job it is is to validate the students preconceived ideas about
> > themselves as elites.
> > I've never experienced that from any of the students at any of the State
> > Universities I've had the pleasure of associating with.
> > You have to be taught such ideas from early childhood and State University
> > students seldom, if ever, receiving such developmental training.
>
>--
>"Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure
>mægen lytlað."
>
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