> College used to be a playground for the sons of the elite, and
> then for a short moment it became a playground for some 'umbler
> folk like me, if they chose to treat it that way. But now it's a
> feedlot on the way to the corporate slaughterhouse.
>
> Under those circumstances, fuck it. If it could become
> a playground again, I'd support it to the hilt. Hell, I'd go
> back into teaching.
>
> Michael J. Smith
>
Excellent passive language there... particularly with respect to the passivity of the wider public relative to structurally determined elite action.
I guess I'll just have to keep preparing the lambs, cows, pigs and poultry for slaughter, then. Poor 'umble sods I teach at my third tier school..., they know not what I'm doing to them and there are so many better ways available to them en route to more fulfilling lives.
You have totally convinced me that most all of what I do - along with most all that the others I know and respect in colleges and universities across the country do - is worthy only of disrespect, contains no imminent potential, serves no reasonable purpose beyond furthering oppression and should be eliminated in favor of efforts within all the other institutions and groups you named - the ones specifically designed to solve and actively involved in solving the problems you so clearly laid out. I await their overthrow of the unequivocal oppressive evil that is me and us.
Somehow, post-secondary education might thusly return to being a playground or be replaced by more genuine institutions where youth around the world can let their free flags fly. Lord, how I hate my ever so deluded self (and all the others I know who have no sense whatsoever of the contradictions embedded in their worklives and therefore cannot help but hold it back from their students.)
A