{"id":7700,"date":"2014-09-12T10:56:08","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T10:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/09\/12\/twilight-time-for-the-universities\/"},"modified":"2014-09-12T10:56:08","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T10:56:08","slug":"twilight-time-for-the-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/09\/12\/twilight-time-for-the-universities\/","title":{"rendered":"Twilight Time for the Universities?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Morris Berman, The Twilight of American Culture<\/em> (Norton, 2000), p. 122: <\/span><\/p>\n

Latin mottoes adorn the crests of many of these schools, boasting of "light" and "truth." [BV interjects: Harvard's crest shows Veritas<\/em>] The reality, however, is something very different, as thousands of these institutions have literal or de facto<\/em> open admissions policies in the name of "democracy." The democratization of desire means that virtually anyone can go to college, the purpose being to get a job; and in an educational world now subsumed under business values, students show up — with administrative blessing — believing that they are consumers who are buying a product. Within this context, a faculty member who actually attempts to enforce the tradition of the humanities as an uplifting and transformative experience, who challenges his charges to think hard about complex issues, will provoke negative evaluations and soon be told by the dean that he had better look elsewhere for a job. Objecting to a purely utilitarian dimension for education is regarded as quaint, and quickly labelled as "elitist" (horror of horrors!); but the truth is that there an be no genuine liberal education without such an objection.<\/span><\/p>\n

I agree completely.<\/span><\/p>\n

You may recall Obama opining that everyone should go to college.*  A preposterous notion.  It is a bit like maintaining that everyone should receive Navy SEAL training.  To profit from such training one must be SEAL 'material.'  It is the same, mutatis mutandis<\/em>, with college: you must be 'college material.'  The very fact that that phrase is no longer heard speaks volumes.  I heard  my seventh grade teacher apply it to your humble correspondent, but that was in the early 'sixties.<\/span><\/p>\n

So perhaps we can add to Berman's 'democratization of desire,' 'democratization of potentiality' as if we are all equal in our powers and capacities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Student teaching evaluations contribute to the consumer mentality to which Berman refers.  Students ought to have a way to register legitimate complaints about faculty, but the use of teaching evaluations in tenure and promotion decisions and in the apportionment of merit pay leads to a further erosion of standards and to abdication of authority.<\/span><\/p>\n

A confession.  On the eve of tenure, the semester before the decision, I was conducting  a seminar in the library while we were all seated at a big beautiful table.  I observed one of my students carving into its surface.  I said not a word: I needed strong teaching evaluations for my final academic hurdle. Succeed or fail — for good.  It was a bad market.  Up or out.  I made it easily with a 9 to 3 vote.  But shame on me for not objecting to the defacement of common property.  A clear case of abdication of authority.<\/span><\/p>\n

The irony is that, for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the increasing political correctness of the university, I resigned my tenured position seven years later.  Psychologically, there is of course a huge difference between being given the boot and leaving of one's own free will.<\/span><\/p>\n

_________________<\/span><\/p>\n

*Dennis Monokroussos supplies documentation<\/a>.  Scroll down to the final three quotations from Obama.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>The Professor-Student 'Non-Aggression Pact'<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Morris Berman, The Twilight of American Culture (Norton, 2000), p. 122: Latin mottoes adorn the crests of many of these schools, boasting of "light" and "truth." [BV interjects: Harvard's crest shows Veritas] The reality, however, is something very different, as thousands of these institutions have literal or de facto open admissions policies in the name … Continue reading “Twilight Time for the Universities?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,498,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-authority-and-its-abdication","category-autobiographical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}