Winston's Diary

A poor choice of words, to be sure, but anyone who denies that the teachers' unions have held this nation's educational system hostage for the last few decades is either a fool or in the union's pocket.

And if we required every public official who spoke his or her mind to the offense of someone else to resign, we'd wind up with a John Kerry in every public office.

Of course, I find much of what Kerry says offensive, but no one's listening to me.

I found Lou Dobb's report on CNN today amusing--he followed up the Paige story with a report on the failings of the American education system. Connection, anyone?

I’ve been a bad blogger. I can only plead dissertation.

My bedtime reading--to clear all the scholarship out the brain so it will shut down for the night--for the last week or two has been a book called Death and Restoration, by Iain Pears, who many readers may be more familiar with from An Instance of the Fingerpost and The Dream of Scipio. He’s also written an interesting series of mysteries featuring an art dealer/professor named Jonathan Argyll and his girlfriend/fiancee, Flavia di Stefano, who works for the art theft division of the Rome police department. They’re well done, for what the are, which is enjoyable mysteries for those who know a bit about the arts and humanities and who are interested in learning more. Slightly less challenging than Arturo Perez-Reverte, but every bit as enjoyable.

I bring this up because one, they’re worth a read, particularly for bedtime and on the EFX machine. But I also came across a passage in Death and Restoration that perfectly captures the problems in higher education, both those brought on by the ridiculous business model we have had forced upon us by administration and those brought on by the empty, leftist pedagogical practices still in vogue in most of the institutions I’ve had the “pleasure” of teaching in. I’m going to quote the two pages in question in full.

Argyll’s lecture, a moronically simple canter through the more ostentatious church commissions of the seventeenth century, had gone tolerably well, so he thought. That is to say, there had been forty people in the room when he started, and still more than twenty when he’d ended. Such wastage would have alarmed him, but his head of department assured him that it was pretty good, considering. Considering what? he’d asked. Considering that it was a morning lecture, was the reply. Not early risers, these people. As they, or their parents, were paying a fortune, they generally imagined that lectures should be scheduled for their convenience. Just as they seemed to think that the level of grade should vary in direct proportion to the size of their fees.

“And, this wiseacre continued. “You didn’t show many pictures. Risky. They like looking at pictures. You don’t show pictures, they’ve not got anything to do. Except listen, and think. And lectures. Dear me. A bit authoritarian, you know? Don’t you think a group interaction module might be better?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s where you break down hierarchy. They teach themselves.”

“But they don’t know anything,” Argyll protested. “How can you teach yourself if you don’t know anything to start off with?”

“Ah. You’ve spotted the snag. However, that one is easily solved. You are confusing knowledge with creativity. You are meant to be encouraging their self-expression. Not stifling it by the imposition of factualities over which you deny them control.”

“Factualities?”

The other man sighed. “I’m afraid so. Don’t look at me like that. It’s not my fault.”

“I don’t have to do that, do I?” asked a newly anxious Argyll.

And from there the book moves back into the main story. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find this a succinct summation of two of the biggest problems facing academic reform today.

Of course, this may speak more to me than to you, because I find myself this term in the position of delivering old-fashioned lectures at the front of a “smart” classroom, competing for attention with the movie screen and the equipment that command the center of the room.

Oh, my God! ABC News admits it! Here's the link.

NEWS SUMMARY

The first version published of yesterday's Note included what was intended as a SATIRICAL report of a fictional ABC News/Washington Post poll. No such poll was conducted. The questions and results listed were not from a real poll.

But on this day when John Kerry has a chance for wins in Tennessee and/or Virginia that just might get the Southern monkey off of his back -- and take an opponent out of the race -- and after two full news cycles in which Kerry's transient upper hand over President Bush doesn't seem to have been removed by the "Meet" appearance -- on this day, let us tell you again what we tried to say yesterday.

Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.

They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are "conservative positions."

They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.

More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.

The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush's justifications for the Iraq war -- in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies.

It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.

It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.

It believes President Bush is "walking a fine line" with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between "tolerance" and his "right-wing base."

It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush's base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him -- and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.

Of course, the swirling Joe Wilson and National Guard stories play right to the press's scandal bias -- not to mention the bias towards process stories (grand juries produce ENDLESS process!).

The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race.

That means the President's communications advisers have a choice:

Try to change the storyline and the press' attitude, or try to win this election without changing them.

So we ask again: What's it going to be, Ken, Karen, Mary, Terry, Nicole, and Dan?

University Diaries surprised me this morning. I’ve been reading that blog for about a month now, often enjoying it, sometimes not really caring that much about the subject matter, but never disagreeing with it as strongly as I do with this morning’s blog.

This morning’s University Diaries talks about the recent FIRE case regarding Dr. James Tuttle, a professor of moral philosophy (notice the emboldened word moral—there, I’ve done it again) who is in the process of being shown the door by his dean and his department chair for mentioning his Catholic beliefs, both verbally (which garnered student criticism) and then on his syllabus, as a “warning” regarding the belief system he was bringing with him into the field of (again with the bold) moral philosophy.

After a brief introduction to the problem (with no link to the actual article on the FIRE website), Professor Soltan concludes:

Well, of course the college should stop bothering this fellow (it’s been messing with his course selection and that sort of thing). But those of us who care about the intellectual integrity of the humanities classroom should find him bothersome.

Huh? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Last time I checked, there was a long and strong intellectual tradition within the Catholic Church, and a hell of a lot of moral philosophy being written. But let’s move on.

The particular course in question, again, is Introduction to Philosophy. American undergraduates coming to a course of this type early in their career are liable to know next to nothing about the topic. Do you think it’s a good idea for their first reading in the subject to be an affirmation on their syllabus of “Catholic Christian” (somewhat confusing, that) faith on the part of the instructor? Why should my initiation into the thought of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Plotinus, Descartes, Leibnitz, Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein be a rather baffling profession of faith from the person who is supposed to be leading me dispassionately through this history of thought? What is the point of this personal profession at this place and time?

Why is “Catholic Christian” in scare quotes? And why is that confusing? Christianity is composed a number of different sects, each interpreting Christian doctrine in a different manner. Professor Tuttle is simply clarifying what kind of Christian he is. There is a great deal of difference between the Catholics and the Baptists, and don’t even get me started on the Mormons, who also consider themselves Christian. The scare quotes are simply disingenuous.

As for that list of people covered in an Introduction to Philosophy course, let me add a couple of names. How about Augustine and Aquinas? Boethius? William of Ockham? At least three of those philosophers were “Catholic Christians,” and the fourth may have been, though the Consolatio gives us no indication one way or the other.

Professor Tuttle, presumably, agrees with at least some of the moral positions taken by these philosophers, and as a student, I think that would be nice to know up front, because it’s going to color his reading of the other texts being studied and, given the fact that I see no indication that he is unfair in his teaching or grading practices, that coloring is itself a valid topic for discussion in a philosophy course. His reading of Plato, particularly if they look at the Timeaus, might be affected by the fact that he espouses these later philosophers and their desire to see in the Timeaus a prefiguring of the creation story from Genesis. Certainly his reading of Plotinus runs a good chance of being affected by Augustine, and his reading of Aristotle might be affected by Aquinas’s reading. (It was Aquinas, after all, who was primarily responsible for reintroducing Aristotle into Western thought.) One philosopher’s reading of another philosopher is, after all, part of the philosophical discourse.

The professor’s confession expresses the following to me: “Please be aware that I’m incapable of any degree of objectivity in regard to the subject matter at hand. Please also be aware that my moral superiority to the secular thinkers on our reading list needs to be established at the outset.” Does the professor intend for me to read his confession in this way? Who knows. But all I see in these sentences is a narcissistic need to display one’s piety to an audience.

The first sentence, were Tuttle to have actually included it on his syllabus, I have no problem with. None of us is capable of real objectivity, though we should of course strive to be as objective as possible when presenting material in classroom. Since we have no evidence regarding how the materials in Professor Tuttle’s class are presented—save for a whiny complaint by a student, which, given my experiences with the trendy atheism currently in vogue on college campuses, I am given to dismiss—coming to such a conclusion is premature. The idea of judging a professor on the basis of a single student’s word is indicative of the ridiculous amount of power the modern university has invested in the student. My advice to this student would be to sit down, shut up and try to learn something, even if it’s coming from someone who religious beliefs differ from your own. Christianity is as legitimate a part of the philosophical tradition as Wittgenstein (who, along with Derrida, owes a hell of a lot to the early Augustine’s writings on the nature of language).

The second sentence serves only to reveal Professor Soltan's biases. I have no problem with Tuttle believing himself to be morally superior than the philosophers he is reading. I consider myself morally superior to most of my colleagues, because I don’t use my classroom as an ideological indoctrination camp. But that’s another rant altogether. Tuttle is teaching a philosophy course, and it seems to me that what his disclaimer is actually saying is “My belief that the moral systems developed by Christianity are superior to those developed by secular philosophy needs to be established at the outset,” I’m not sure why it would be an issue. He prefers one system over the others; show me a philosophy professor who doesn’t. But it’s nice to know this up front. You know that he’s going to go easy on his analysis of the Christian philosophers, and you know he’s going to stick it to the rest. If anything, this is an opportunity for the student in question—and all of Tuttle’s students—to challenge him on any number of things, making both student and teacher engage with the material in a much deeper way than the lecture & take notes format.

It would be nice if the pomos were to make this sort of admission. Every single pomo professor I’ve had felt himself/herself to be morally superior to the writers we were reading—or at least the white, male writers—and their courses were an exercise in moral critique. Of course, it was never put this way, but in essence, this is what was done in the classroom. If any of these professors had provided an honest disclaimer, perhaps the tenor of the classroom would have been different, and I would have learned something more than the “fact” that all were racist, sexist, classist pigs who cared nothing for the environment.

And finally -- “please be aware of where I am coming from”? Why the hell do I, your student, need to be aware of anything about you? (And please be aware that ‘sixties cliches make me barf.) If I cared about your origins I would have looked for a course titled “Professor Tuttle’s Origins.” As it is, I’m given to believe that the thought of Martin Heidegger has a stronger claim on my attention than the religious history of James Tuttle.

This last paragraph is just a bit silly. Why should a student need to know anything about a professor? I think what Professor Soltan has to say in the rest of her blog about Professor Tuttle has made that perfectly clear. Because our opinions on the subject matter entrusted to us matter. This is particularly true in philosophy, given that we continue to work within the philosophical paradigm provided by Plato, in which the philosopher lives his or her philosophy.

As for Heidegger, it’s pretty important to know about his Nazism. If you’re planning to turn to Heidegger as a source of moral philosophy, you might want to think twice once you’re aware of what he condoned.

Finally, there is no indication that Tuttle’s Catholicism has seriously affected his presentation of the course materials (the complaints of a single student for whom the very mention of Catholicism is threatening notwithstanding), and there is no indication that his personal beliefs are affecting his ability to fairly assess his students’ work and progress.

Quite frankly, the idea that we should treat this any differently than a philosophy professor who professes a preference for Aristotle over Plato is beyond me.

I've been receiving a couple of emails on this topic a week, usually with one or two titles apiece. Often times, one respondant winds up repeating the same titles recommended by another respondant. I think I have something like ten titles now, in addition to the ones I posted last month.

I know there's more stuff out there.

What I'm going to do is open the call for suggestions to criticism that is author or era specific. I'll start a new section of the bibliography that lists criticism by author or by era--meaning the traditional eras a student would have encountered in survey courses a few decades ago.

If you can provide it, complete bibliographic information (as well as telling me where to categorize it, if the title doesn't make it clear) would speed up the process.

For my own current work, I'm looking in particular for sensible criticism on narrative and narratology.