[WS:] I would qualify it a bit based on my own experience here and abroad. I've seen that quite a bit at San Jose State U - which is basically a yuppie trade school for those who already have jobs in the Silicon Valley, but it was quite different at Rutgers.
But the same can be said about schools in Europe - some of them are more social than other. Over there, I went to a small liberal arts Catholic university which was ueber-social, and the US exchange students whom I met were quite surprised about this. But then my friends who transferred to other schools or simply studied elsewhere often complained about absence of social life.
I also see a difference between my student years and those of my daughter in the same city in Poland - over time it became decidedly less social and intellectual and more hedonistic and money-oriented.
Wojtek
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 10:15 PM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
> At 12:00 PM 6/10/2011, // ravi wrote:
>>
>> If it is anything like the uppity private and/or boarding schools that I
>> know of from India, or the performance mills for the wealthy that churn out
>> preppy, self-assured and test-prepped adolescents, I want to have nothing to
>> do with it.
>
>
> *applause*
>
> My ex boss's daughter went to public school in Florida. She had a part-time
> job working for the company. When she sent me her work, we'd often get in
> conversations about philosophy she was studying. (This would be back in
> 2004). She would send me notes written in French and get a thrill that I
> would comprehend them and write back. IIRC, she ended up in Gainesville at
> Univ C Florida? Her experiences are jibing with this stuff about the testing
> grind. The stories she told of her school days, the home work and projects
> she told me about, weren't about drilling of bubble test, though there was
> some of that.
>
> My son hated school and reading by the time he was in fourth grade. *shrug*
> Sometimes, that's just the way it is and I left him alone to be the person
> he wanted to be and not turn him into mini-me. At any rate, he took his
> share of multiple choice exams, but that wasn't the whole of his work, nor
> was it that of the two girlfriends he had, both of whom spent a lot of time
> at our house and with whom I spent time helping with their homework -- essay
> questions, mostly, but also research papers and a lot of more "hands on"
> stuff since both were geared toward professions that would be more "hands
> on" - one was interested in forensics, the other in being a vet.
>
> In any case, as "long" ago as 2006, I didn't see this heavy emphasis on
> multi-choice exams.... at least not to indicate it was any worse than it
> used to be. I'm wondering if the kids they put on the "not gonna be so great
> at kollidge" track are actually getting hit less with the mc tests?
>
> on a related note, R is in college and brought home a book called _My
> Freshman Year: What a professor learned by becoming a student_ Rebekah
> Nathan (aka Cathy Small at North Arizona State U).
>
> While we're talking k-12, and this book is about college, I thought some of
> her points were instructive. She fairly well debunks the idea that things
> have gotten tragically worse in so far as kollidge in the u.s. has *never*
> been about the "life of the mind." What anthropologists and sociologists of
> higher ed have called "classic" American college culture emerged in the 18th
> c., around the experience elite males. For them, college wasn't primarily
> about the life of the mind, but about forming relationships with peers. The
> focus of the college experience was sports, fraternities, and "purveying
> values of exclusivity, hedonism, and adolescent rebillion". (This is
> astonishingly clear in histories of k-12 schooling and adolescence in the
> u.s. In fact, one big reason why age grading came about was it was a way to
> control the very unruly and rebellious 12+ year old males who felt it their
> duty to disrupt school constantly, harass their teachers, and sometimes
> physically assault them.)
>
> In Helen Horowitz's history of the u.s. university, she says that "the real
> measure of success was the judgement of peers." Intelligence was valued, not
> because a professor deemed someone so, but because peers did so. Student
> relationships with profs were openly contemptuous and often adversarial.
> Students who worked hard and sought approval from or fraternized with
> professors were ostracized and ridiculed.
>
> By the early 20th century, the student culture was much like the one we see
> today: "resistance to speaking in class; social distance from faculty; a
> 'code of honor' that included silence about cheating, drinking, and other
> infractions; a hedonistic emphasis on fun, sex, and alcohol as markers of
> the *real* college experience." (p 108)
>
> Interestingly enough, according to Horowitz, it was the non-elite and
> outsiders who crafted an alternative culture: people from poor backgrounds,
> Jewish men and women, men and women of color, and white women. The tended to
> work hard and/or felt themselves somehow outsiders to the elite who
> dominated colleges in the early 20th c. These are the people who would be
> ridiculed as grinds, who didn't get involved in sports culture, social
> clubs, drinking, and greek culture. These students tended to believe in the
> mythology that university was a way to break out of their social caste or
> class, so they were unaware that, for the elite, all of that was utter
> bullshit.
>
> I think it's important to keep this in mind whenever we get on about how
> everything's going to hell in a handbasket.
>
> Meanwhile, one of the more interesting features of the book was her
> discussion of the culture of the superficially "friendly" u.s.er as seen by
> international students.
>
> She was studying Arizona State, so these aren't elite kids. But when you
> guys were talking about carrot-up-the-ass aloofness and superficiality of
> elites, and claims that people from less elite backgrounds are more
> friendly, I couldn't help but think about Natha's discussion of how
> superficial that so-called friendliness is. She collects these observations
> from international students who are puzzled by the way that u.s.ers are all
> "hi, how are you! Let's hang out." but who don't really mean it. I.e., they
> tell an exchange student that they "really must get together" but then never
> do anything (like get a phone number) and follow up on it.
>
> As Nathan points out, this is nothing new in American life. You can find
> accounts of it in the Lynds' study of small town american life (Middletown
> studies) and in Vidich and Bensman's _Small Town in Mass Society_.
>
> Also, from reading this book and thinking about my years teaching college,
> I'd guess that it doesn't really fucking matter what happens to these kids
> in k-12. They are being prepared for what they are going to get in college
> which, as Nathan points out, is, for most of them, worthless, tedious,
> bullshit that most of them feel they must get through in order to get the
> degree in order to get the hell out and get a real job. (Or, it's seen as
> four years in which to be insulated from the real world on mom and dad's
> dime.)
>
> As Nathan points out, that attitude isn't new. The kernel of the university
> system in this country, cultivated by and for the elites, was about partying
> and having a good time, making social networks through which one carved out
> an adult life as businessman, whatever. Is it any surprise that, if that is
> what academe was all about in 1820, it's what it's all about as we approach
> 2020?
>
>
> --
> http://cleandraws.com
> Wear Clean Draws
> ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)
>
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