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Why Have Professors Intentionally Destroyed the Prestige of Their Own Institutions?
Most kids are idiots. Always have been. I certainly was. There is a reason that those trying to start mass movements for crazy ideology always start in the schools. Kids are emotional, inexperienced, and impulsive. So schools have always been a bit different than the rest of the world. But recently schools have changed from “a little odd” to “dangerously insane.” Why is that? Again, kids are kids. Always have been. What’s different now?
@songwriter wrote a typically insightful comment on another thread recently:
What boggles the mind is the fact that university administrations allow their students to bully them so. When I was in college (a classic start to a Grumpy Old Man rant) – had the students gone to the administration and demanded anything the response would have been, “Go back to class.”
I think he’s right – schools are different now because the teachers and administrators are different, not the kids. So why is that? What has inspired the leadership of schools to change their previously prestigious institutions into insane asylums? It is unusual for those in positions of authority to voluntarily give up their power to someone else. At least, not without a very good reason. So what is that reason?
Published in Education
Recently, in my 50s I took an advanced music degree at a NE State college reknowned for sports. Faculty just older than me were uniformly Leftists who took advanced degrees to avoid Vietnam. Those younger, in their 40s, were more reasonable. The grad students in Music Theory, an exquisitely arcane field, were generally loons. The performance majors were all leftists and generally stupid overall. I have no hope.
I just finished “The Conceptual Penis.” Highly recommended reading and I can certainly see why it was accepted in a peer-reviewed humanities journal; a perfect illustration of the important scholarship needed to guide society to a deeper understanding of the human condition.
A quote:
“Nowhere are the consequences of hypermasculine machismo braggadocio isomorphic identification with the conceptual penis more problematic than concerning the issue of climate change. Climate change is driven by nothing more than it is by certain damaging themes in hypermasculinity that can be best understood via the dominant rapacious approach to climate ecology identifiable with the conceptual penis.”
(Thanks for the link, Kate; it certainly cheered me up!)
One of the major reasons we send our kids to college is to learn how to read, write, and speak more effectively – to become better communicators. Why is it that one thing that college professors all seem to have in common is that they can’t write? What is the point of advanced study on a topic if you can’t communicate?
Wait – is that a satire? With modern academics, it’s hard to say. In fact, much of their work appears to be beyond satire.
Yes, many professors can’t write very well (or at least write clearly). You’re right. But this IS satire. (Funny…it can be hard to tell the difference sometimes!) The authors of “The Conceptual Penis” were purposely writing in exaggerated academic-babble. As Kate mentioned, it was a hoax paper – submitted and accepted to a scholarly journal to expose much of the pretentiousness in academia . (Talk about embarrassing.) My guess is the authors are actually good writers; it usually takes a high degree of skill to write sharp satire.
Was the whole book like that? And you actually read it?
Lol. I should have read the rest of the comments before responding.
You may have no hope. But at least now I know who to message when I need to know the difference between a German 6th chord and a French 6th chord!
I’m searching my memory for a book written by a college professor who had some police officers in his class. They challenged him on his view of policing. He decided to become a police officer to see for himself what their world was like. He found out he didn’t know as much about policing, or the world on the streets as he thought he did.
As a philosophy major myself Kant and Hegel are a long slog, but the latest English philosophers, and Thomas Dewey are almost incomprehensible. There is a paradox about written works that attempt to prove that words have no meaning. It all boils down to denying reality, and there is objective truth. If you stand on the railroad tracks and spend too much time trying to decide whether the approaching train is real or not, it will not end well.
Unless you’re more powerful than a speeding locomotive.
I wonder about that all the time…
Many of the college professors I know can write well for whatever audience they are writing for. They get jargonish when writing for their peers, and write differently when writing an undergraduate textbook, and differently still when writing for a lay audience. One of my bosses had long ago turned from research to administration and could write in obtuse, bureaucratic jargon. But if I tried to write in that style he wouldn’t stand for it and his editing would quickly fix it. We were all merciless in editing each other’s work; if your ego couldn’t take it you weren’t going to get along well at that place.
One professor (now deceased) whose textbook is now in its 3rd edition and is the standard text in his field could write well enough; if under a short deadline his prose could be terrible, but he always met his deadlines.
I read a lot of history books by academics; many of them can write very well. The authors tend to be lefties and oblivious to the implications of their own work for their own place in society, but many can write well. There are also some who don’t.
Whether it’s a hostile question and answer session, a duel of wits, or an actual fistfight, I’ve never seen a case where underestimating your opponent was a successful strategy. What concerns me a little about this thread is the number of people who think the opposition is mostly made up of Pajama Boy, plus a bunch of basketweaving undergrads, and maybe a shivering, quivering professor of crackpotology. Yeah, they’re all morons, all right, and we’re geniuses. Sure. So what happens when actual intellectual combat is being played for high stakes? The unprepared get cut up into hamburger meat is what happens.
Meanwhile on the Jordan Peterson front…
http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/24/the-new-mccarthyism-dr-jordan-peterson-labeled-hitler-by-liberal-profs/
Dr. Peterson is lamely being referred to as a Nazi sympathizer/apologist and now referenced as “Hitler” because when the Left have nothing of substance they resort to blithering idiocy and name calling. Anyone who has spent any time at all listening to Peterson’s lectures will immediately become aware that his comprehensive and insightful understanding and resulting condemnation of fascism, the Nazis, Marxism, Neo-Marxism post-modernism, communism, and totalitarianism poses a clear threat to the Neo-Marxist Social Justice Warrior movement in academia and the wider culture. The Big Lie smear technique never dies even as it becomes more laughable.
On that note…
Lol. One of the better ones.
Context on the most recent controversy…article includes two videos that are incredibly insightful:
http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/malcolm-wilfrid-laurier-university-reveals-its-true-colours
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUTVvkiH3MI
Songwriter, those are Augmented Sixth chords, and there’s also an Italian. The Wikipedia explanation of augmented sixth chords is good, I printed it and kept it in a little cheat sheet section of my theory notebook for several years.
Intellectual combat? With who? I haven’t heard an attempt at rational argument from the left since before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
If the right wanted to have an intellectual debate with the left, who would we engage? Tom Sowell vs Tom Friedman? Mitt Romney vs Hillary Clinton? Tom Cotton vs…um… Elizabeth Warren, I guess? Can you even imagine how those intellectual debates would go? I’d buy a ticket to watch any of those match ups.
There are two obvious reasons that the left attempts to engage its audience via emotion rather that with logical reasoning. First, for whatever reason, many people are leftists for purely emotional reasons. Second, it has become so obvious that nothing on the left makes any sense, that they’ve given up trying. So now they just use personal attacks, straw man arguments, identity politics, and appeals to sympathy for the downtrodden.
Take Obamacare for an example. Those on the left said that it would offer higher quality care to more people for less money. Anyone capable of rational thought wondered how they thought they could do that while adding the inherent inefficiencies of government. The leftists never even tried to prove their point logically. They couldn’t, of course; and they didn’t have to. They just said you’re a racist hater if you opposed it, whatever it was.
I agree with your point. One should never underestimate his opposition, and I most certainly do not underestimate the left. In fact, not only do I think they are winning, but I think they have won already.
But they’re not winning via intellectual combat. They can’t, and again, they don’t need to. The right will always win the logical debates, because our arguments make logical sense.
But we’re losing everything else. And it’s not because of intellectual arrogance.
That’s
hystericalreally funny. And here I had thought the genre was a dry well.My favourite profs were all part-timers who had real jobs full-time.
It makes sense that a Public Relations prof should have a full-time job as a Director of Communications.