Sounds bad, but - then, as I think about it... imagine of all the things I can cut out of my classes - and all the classes that can be removed from the curriculum - for fear that critically unpacking the history, content and trajectories of all kinds of social institutions would feed rightist criticism of the state and public employees... cuz there's surely no way that one could make critical points w/o feeding the right. _I_ have probably been completely fooling myself that I've had any success at all with these inherently flawed perspectives, time to whip myself mercilously until I pass out and, upon my recovery, being sure that I apologize to every teacher and state employee I meet for having fed the right wing recking operation so stupidly.
Maybe I can ask Temple University Press to recall the whole print run of the book colleagues and I wrote on the Berkeley-Novartis Agreement, it sure was critical of Berkeley - and, worse, the whole UC system - as a public institution... what was I thinking when I got frustrated that the University Distinguished Professor among us led us down what I thought was a less critical theoretical road than I wanted to take?! I guess he'd already developed Carrol's perspective on all this and why I, too, should prefer Latour to Marx - at least as part of the elements of my public persona and pedagogy that address public institutions and employees, individually and together.
Either that or Carrol's just wrong.
On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 3:23 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> I have come to feel that Eric wrote the only sensible post in the whole
> thrread (or threads) on education.
>
> For 10 or 15 years (1955-70) U.S. schools performed wonderfully (if you
> judge by realworld possiblity and not some fantasy of what schools
> should be). (Then and since there were the problems created by racism,
> but that is another issue.) Then the budget cuts begin, and have been
> continuous ever since, with attacks on teachers mounting and finally the
> No Child Left Unmolested Bush program and the Race to Perdition of the
> Obama Administration.
>
> AND EVERY NEGATIVE REMARK ABOUT THE SCHOOLS, NO MATTER HOW INTENDED OR
> HOW ACCURATE WILL FEED INTO THIS WRECKING OPERATION.
>
> SO LEFTISTS MUST LAY OFF THE SCHOOLS.
>
> Carrol
>
> Eric Beck wrote:
> >
> > Alan Rudywrote: [clip]
> >
> > I feel similarly uncomfortable with complaints about administrative
> > costs. Not because I love million-dollar presidents and their endless
> > expense accounts, but because if sacrifices are made to save on
> > administrative costs, in the end it will be $35,000 secretaries and
> > work-study students, not the Yudofs of the world.
> >
> > The problem with education -- at least in Texas -- is that states no
> > longer funds education at the level it used to and should now. The
> > neoliberal turn to robust administration is a symptom of that, not a
> > cause.
> >
> > Of course I'm all for a Vebenian euthanasia of administrators. But if
> > that's what we want, then let's really fucking go for it. The vague
> > populist attack on administrators and salaries will only be felt lower
> > down the food chain and won't essentially change the university; it
> > will just make it more austere.
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319