The loony gang in the control tower was steering heroic pilot Robert Hays in. All of a sudden here's the Stack line that could have been taken from a cowboys and Indians movie.
No, the idea wasn't to deceive the snakebit and love-smitten Hays character (Striker), it was to guide him in. Fortunately the script guaranteed he'd make it. Stack (as Rex Kramer) was just aping a cliched movie line.
In like fashion, the "Druids" of the college liberal arts, beginning in the 1970s, stirred the pot. I offered up the "Druids" term two weeks ago, actually taking it from a book by George H. Douglas. That post and this one might be considered inspired by the contrarian academic, author of "Education Without Impact." He's associated with the U of Illinois.
Douglas wrote about "the poisoning of the humanities." He talked about how the process developed with liberal arts being put on the defensive.
(I use "liberal arts" as roughly a synonym of the humanities. The problem with referring to humanists is that it conjures up "secular humanists" which is a very particular breed.)
On the defensive? How? It happened when society put the natural sciences and math on a special perch. Well, society has the right to do that.
Science and math would surely uplift us.
No way we can dispute that, but isn't there room to enjoy a good Charles Dickens novel? Well yes, but the "new Druids," according to Douglas, couldn't even teach Dickens the same way anymore.
We could read Dickens and find such fare to be an absolute treasure, minus any dissection. But "no, that's just what they'd be expecting us to do."
The humanities were determined to ape the sciences. They had to probe mysteries and find solutions. They had to develop a body of thought and language that only "the initiated" could understand.
New "isms" came into being.
I remember a faux intellectual teaching me when I was a senior in high school, when I should have been learning how to wash my clothes instead of writing about the Puritans. The teacher, who I considered an abomination, liked to correct "misconceptions." That's what these people do, identify the CW (conventional wisdom) and then try to portray it as myth.
Only the "Druids" have the true knowledge. What they're really trying to demonstrate is that they're like the scientists.
The real scientists, of course, know what they're doing - no feints necessary.
Many of the power brokers in the liberal arts wander aimlessly like the Stack character, spouting nonsense that might be from "Airplane." It's mumbo-jumbo from people who fancy themselves theorizers.
The theory and jargon take over, rendering as almost an afterthought the beauty of classics. The idea is to demonstrate specialized thinking.
The "stepchildren" of this movement, according to Douglas, were the deconstructionists. Members of this camp declared that theory is everything. The sheer conceptualizers would rule. The literary text itself could seem to evaporate into the ether.
The academic emerged as the one with the big ideas. Literary texts might inspire or at least justify such ideas. But the authors themselves weren't necessarily among the anointed ones.
I remember years ago - heck, this was probably the late 1960s - someone mentioned that our University of Minnesota-Morris was offering a course in the poetry of Robert Browning. This individual then sniffed: "Robert Browning probably couldn't get accepted at UMM."
Get the idea? The post I wrote a while back on college art courses from hell is in line with my theme today. (My education posts might be said to constitute a series, though not yet book length.)
As I reported about that art teacher who foisted all that horse hockey, he died living a subsistence life, having left (been forced from?) academia years earlier.
This was at St. Cloud State University. I wouldn't want to besmirch UMM by suggesting this fellow taught here. He was a Druid proudly claiming to have an exclusive lens with his insights.
They'd say: "Forget what you think you might know."
You had to be guided into a special circle, as if at a certain point you'd have your blindfold ripped off and see academicians surrounding you holding symbolic maces.
But of course it was all a charade.
Sometimes people who behave like Caesars in their palaces are just profoundly insecure. Don't be fooled by the airs projected by many in academia. Many of these souls are scared.
The offending strain of professors embraced (or were receptive to) Marxism in college. I doubt that's true anymore, because hasn't this school of thought been pretty well buried? From my viewpoint it has been, but heaven knows what continues to go on in ivory towers.
I suspect there's more accountability in higher ed. today - there darn well better be - but tenure can still provide a pretty strong shield.
Does anyone doubt that UMM has concerns about PZ Myers being an unnecessary lightning rod? I've seen it all, so nothing about him would cause my jaw to drop. I've heard about the eucharist.
Douglas reported in his book "Education Without Impact" that deconstruction has spread to - would you believe? - architecture. (I should note the book is copyrighted 1992.)
Is this how we got that oddball UMM science auditorium built? You know, with the aversion to right angles? Why not the straightforward and professional method?
To repeat the Robert Stack character: "No, that's just what they'd be expecting us to do."
Deconstructionist thinking seeped into architecture schools whereas the real workaday world of architecture wasn't fooled much, except to carry out the wishes of the oddballs when the oddballs came forward with the money, like at UMM.
Not that we were alone. Oh, the 1970s. What an aberration.
I studied mass communications at St. Cloud State. I tried respecting the oddball stuff because I had to.
Professors wield power. I was complimented once for writing an "indirect lead" in a feature article assignment. In other words, I had written some opening paragraphs that gave no clue what the article was going to be about. This was avant garde.
Such stuff won smiles in the classroom.
But the worst offender was probably my "photojournalism" teacher, initials L.C., from whom I took two classes. (I use quotes because, what really is "journalism?")
To this day I can feel haunted by the offbeat standards of this character who had a beard and dressed informally. We weren't to take pictures that made clear sense. There were these elusive "artsy" standards we had to try to adhere to. And if we could capture some of them like butterflies in a bottle, then we'd get a good grade.
My generation was starting to get wise to this stuff as I was completing college. I remember two sharp exchanges. First, we were getting some of our work critiqued when it was all assembled on a bulletin board. The professor looked at a perfectly cute photo of a little kid on Santa's lap, furrowed his brow and then turned to us saying "Don't take pictures like that."
The student who took it spoke up immediately, sharply, saying "why not?"
The professor sort of groped for words but ended up saying something to the effect this was a cliche photo. I guess we were always supposed to be looking around for the Pulitzer Prize. What a travesty.
On another occasion this professor, speaking outside of photography, said the evening news on TV represented "free advertising" for professional sports leagues. He saw pro sports as big bad greedy businesses. (Actually professors of his ilk used the word "bourgeois" a lot.)
This too drew a sharp retort from a student. I remember this classmate, a big, burly and personable guy who wasn't fazed for an instant by these airs. He spoke up sharply: "The reason those scores are reported on TV is that people want to know them."
The emperor has no clothes.
The photo professor would say "don't even publish a posed photo and whatever you do, don't use a photo where someone is looking at the camera and smiling."
He might have been Robert Stack as Rex Kramer, saying "No, that's just what they'd be expecting us to do."
I remember one classmate, initials J.M., who I think was hurt by a lot of this drivel. He worked at two community newspapers before basically being tossed from the profession. I know because he told me.
My career lasted a lot longer. But eventually I reached the end of the road too.
Today the corporatists are truly the kings. And buildings are built with right angles.
- Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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