How to make American Higher Education a laughingstock

Dear Satana:

You are correct.

The US will have to do a lot of things wrong to make their Higher Education worse than it is here.

Pifka wrote:

What must really prickle is the fact that most students, being young, think conservativism sucks.

Pifka --- this reminds me of the old saying: "If you're not a liberal when you're 20---you have no heart---and if you're not a conservative by the time you're 40, you have no brain".

Could this have had something to do with the birth of the "Neo-cons"? Perhaps they were mad as hell that they had been duped by the liberal dogma.

Umm, okay, show me where hobitbob made any reference to the irrelevancy of 'dead white men' and how you came to 'agree' with him? That was the quickest agenda pop-in I've seen in a while.

cavfancier- Sir. I hope you will not regard my answer as "silly".

You have to learn to read the "code"

When Hobibot says that conservatives want to "return to the common narrative" he is indeed speaking about the dead white males


and when Hobibot says that "most academics favor a complete mix of both the "Western Canon and alternative studies" he means, of course, that some of the old dead males, like Dante and Shakespeare just have to go or at least, be cut down radically so that there will be room for Alice Walker.

I do not agree with Hobibot or indeed most of the professors on the left.

I do agree with Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale, who, in his book, The Western Canon says:
P. l.

"The biblical three-score and ten no longer suffice to read more than a selection of the great writers in what can be called the Western tradition,let alone in all the world's traditions. WHO READS MUST CHOOSE, SINCE THERE IS LITERALLY NOT ENOUGH TIME TO READ EVERYTHING EVEN IF ONE DOES NOTHING BUT READ"

It is my opinion that the left would jettison Shakespeare's King Lear to make room for Alice Walker.

It is my opinion that one line of King Lear is worth more than all of the words written by Alice Walker.

It is also my opinion that the professors of the left enshrine frauds like Walker since they pander shamelessly to "political correctness" and since many of them, despite their sheepskins, do not have the ability to fully understand the meanings of great works like "King Lear".

cavfancier- If you do not think that my post agreeing with hobibot was absurd, I have failed.


However, if you wish, I can find some writing by people on the left which is far more absurd that what I wrote.

Do you want me to find writing like that?

I will if you wish me to do so.

Itty Kitty: The day you are able to read my mind will be a sad day indeed.
The common narrative refers to a triumphalist view of "History as Progress," examples of which include the tales of the "triumph" of western civilizations over "savages," etc... and the deliberate ignoring or short shrifting of the roles played by any but the powerful ruling elites. The common narative seeks to serve as a justification for one group's plunder of another. The most familiar example to most is how the western expansion in the US has been taught in public schools for most of this nation's history.
"New Scholarship" does not seek to evict Shakespeare or Dante from the canon. I'm a medievalist, and quite fond of Dante, expecially the way he places the commonly(and theologically accurate) held 13th century view of the otherworld in a much more enjoyable format than reading straight theology. New Scholarship also implies loking or Dante, or Boccacio, or Chaucer, or Kempe, and investigating what these texts can tell us about the position and role of the "others" in that society. Women, children, the poor, the ill, the place of gender and class, etc...
BTW, Bloom is one of the pioneers of the new scholarship.
Nice try.

The term "red herring" refers to a tactic of the 18th century opponents of fox-hunting. They would use a whole, smoked herring (a "red" herring) to lay a false scent trail, in that it covered the scent trail of the fox, and distracted the hounds, who followed the divergent trail of the herring as opposed to that the fox. The intent is to mislead, but specifically, by offering a false scent trail. This is a tactic which is being used in these arguments by the right on the subject of content. The strategy, of which this tactic is a doctrinal application, is to impose a "politically-correct" agenda on society-in this case, specifically upon higher education-by use of the red herring tactic to suggest that what conservatives are doing is protecting an embattled curriculum from the assaults of left-wing political rectitude. Therein lies one red herring: Italgato need not fret, there are hundreds, if not in fact thousands, of gnomish academics feeding gleefully and well at various public troughs, who devote their entire careers to the minute study of Marcel Proust. There is not, as things currently stand, the least danger of M. Proust, and his kindly and bemused hosts at the Swann household, being forgotten or neglected.

A further example of the red herring is embodied in the comparison of Proust to Walker, Morrison and Angelou. Angelou is a poet, and automatically drops from the list. Morrison and Walker are novelists, who write of their life's experiences. Morrison is, in that short list, the only one who might reasonable be compared to Proust-at a stretch. A better contrast in a comparative literature program would be Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice. As with Proust, it is a highly idiosyncratic look at the inside of the author's psyche, as formed by the circumstances of the author's life. Proust resides in comfort in the household of the Swann family, and ruminates on the excellence of being himself. Cleaver tells the tale of self-loathing and struggling through the miasma of doubts and guilt which come with being an intelligent black man in a racist and brutal society. An excellent comparison of differing world views, would in fact arise from such a study.

Walker is a third-rate author, viewed on the scale of the greatest writers. She definitely has her personal, political axe to grind. A good contrast would be with Ayn Rand-another hack novelist with a political axe to grind. Perhaps Jane Austen would be the best foil with whom to compare Toni Morrison.

Some of these things ought to be obvious: everyone who read Thomas Paine should also read Chairman Mao. Those who read John Stuart Mill should also read Karl Marx. The wailing misery of right-wing demagogues about the attack on the western canon is not simply nonsense, it is hypocritical hand-wringing. When the "values" of the right seemed unassailable, the conservative rabble rousers would not have been dismayed to hear that all the local institutions of higher education had burned to the ground, or had to close their doors for lack of funding. However, these same institutions, reconsidered provide a fertile ground for the right to shed crocodile tears about the imposition of a politcal agenda. The joker Bloom, introduced by Italogato, is using a crypto-racist code as well, pointedly comparing three black female authors to Marcel Proust. As I've already noted, the comparison is itself a red herring, as it is an "apples-to-oranges" comparison. This is the same crypto-racist tactic Pat Buchanan uses when he rails against "immigrants." The reactionary right understands the code.

I am no lover of the "ivory tower" academic, who feeds at the public trough. I spent more than six years as an employee of the State Universities Civil Service System in Illinois, quite apart from having attended university at Illinois State University and the University of Illinois. And those experiences taught me that there are parasites of every political stripe living the good life on the public rolls at such institutions. In the antic days of my university youth, the YAF ("Young Americans for Freedom," for which read, Young American Conservatives for Nixon) was as large, vocal and loud as the SDS. And that, after all, is what such an experience is about. It is about exposure to many points of view-whether in the dry, dusty and abstruse environment of the study carrel, or busting heads in a riot on the quadrangle.

Tempest in a teapot; storm courtesy of conservative rabble-rousers.

Italian cat, no problemo, just looking for clarification as I indeed just skimmed the topic. I clued in with the Spike Lee reference on a second reading Also, I love herring...but only in moderation. Aggravates the acid reflux. Incidentally, my Gothic Literature professor at McGill had a fling with Harold Bloom. She was a very pretty grad student at the time...

Dear professor Hobitbob:

I am delighted that you list Professor Bloom as one of the pioneers of the new scholarship since I have read Bloom carefully and find that I agree with almost all he says;

I do hope that I will not be boring you if I quote some of his best lines and paragraphs.

All of the material below is from Bloom's "The Western Canon".

quote

"When our English and other literature departments shrink to the dimensions of our current Classics departments, ceding their grosser functions to the legions of Cultural Studies, we will perhaps be able to return to the study of the inescapable, to Shakespeare and his few peers, who, after all, invented all of us."

P. 17

and with regard to Dante( caps mine)

"The new historicists and allied resenters have been attempting to reduce and scatter Shakespeare, aiming to undo the Canon by dissolving its center. Curiously, Dante, the second second center as it were, is not under similar onslaught, either here or in Italy. DOUBTEDLESS THE ASSAULT WILL COME, SINCE THE ASSORTED MULTICULTURALISTS WOULD HAVE DIFFICULTY FINDING A MORE OBJECTIONAL GREAT POET THAN DANTE, WHOSE SAVAGE AND POWERFUL SPIRIT IS
'
POLITICALLY

INCORRECT

TO

THE

HIGHEST

DEGREE."


How refeshing to find that you agree with Harold Bloom, Professor Hobibot. He does write well, does he not?

Now dear Professor Hobibot, I find that I simply must quote another of my favorite writers- Thomas Sowell.

Doctor Sowell, in his book-"Race and Culture: writes:

Again, Capitalizations are mine.

quote Sowell

P. 4

"Much of the advancement of the human race has taken the form of cross-cultural borrowings and influences. However, even to say that mankind has advanced, if only in particular spheres, is to say THAT SOME WAYS OF DOING THINGS- SOME CULTURES--ARE BETTER IN SOME RESPECTS THAN OTHERS, THAT THEY ARE MORE EFFECTIVE FOR PARTICULAR PURPOSES.

Plain and obvious as cultural differences in effectiveness in different fields should be, there has developed in recent times a SQUEAMISHNESS OR A RELUCTANCE about discussing it, and some use the concept of "cultural relativism" to deny it.

After archaelogy and anthropology have revealed the cultural achievements of some groups once dismissed as "primitive" and especially after the ravages of racism shocked the world when the Nazi death camps were exposed at the end of World War II, THERE HAS BEEN AN UNDERSTANDABLE REVULSION AT LABELING ANY PEOPLES OR CULTURES SUPERIOR OR INFERIOR.

BUT ARABIC NUMERALS ARE NOT MERELY DIFFERENT FROM ROMAN NUMERALS.

THEY ARE

SUPERIOR

TO ROMAN NUMERALS.

THIER SUPERIORITY IS EVIDENCED BY THIER WORLD WIDE ACCEPTANCE, EVEN

IN CIVILIZATIONS

THAT DERIVE FROM ROME.

Perhaps the clearest and strongest indications of cultural advantages in particular fields have been the willingness of other cultures to abandon thier own products or practices in favor of cultural imports.
Bearers of foreign cultures have been imported, temporarily or permanently, to impart new skills, and native youths have been sent abroad to acquire those skills in the lands of their origins.

BOTH PROCESS WERE USED TO CREATE MODERN INDUSTRIES."


Sowell goes on to enlarge on this concept in great detail in this book.


I hope that this has been of interest to you, Professor Hobitbob. Bloom and Sowell have always enthralled me.

If you have not read "Race and Culture"by Sowell, may I be so impudent to encourage you to read it.

Itty Kitty, you were picked upon as a child, were you not?

Dear Professor Hobibot:

I was never a child. I sprang full blown from the brow of Zeus.

But what has that to do with Bloom's warning that the multiculturalists will soon attempt to denigrate Dante or Sowell's exposition of the idea that some cultures are "better" in some respects than others.

There are some people that would tab your last post as "ad hominem".

I do not do so since I never met a teacher of Medieval History who would be so insecure as to do so.

Ad Hominem is the last vestige of savages.

Setanta, this is simply too good to pass up. I'm going to use this analogy, and, as a testament to the high value I place upon it, I will claim that I came up with it first :wink:

Italgato, Thomas Sowell is also a favorite author of mine, because he delves into cultures and economics. It was interesting to learn about the immigrants from Europe to the US, and how they brought with them their culture, skills and hard labor to seek their dreams in this new land. However, it's been over ten years since I've read his book. I hope to see more of your contributions on A2K, because I find it educational and entertaining.

Dear Mr. Joe from Chicago:

If you liked Santana's comment, there is a chance you might enjoy what the eudite Harold Bloom says in his "The Western Canon"( If not, others may)

quote P. 30


"I am not prepared to dispute admirers of Alice Walker's Meridianm a novel I have compelled myself to read twice, but the second reading was one of my most remarkable literary experiences. I produced an epiphany in which I clearly saw the new principle implicit in the slogans of those who proclaim the opening up of the Canon. The correct test for the new Canonicity is simple, clear and wonderfully conducive to social change. It must not and cannot be reread because its contribution to societal progress is its generosity in offering itself up for rapid ingesting and discarding."
END OF QUOTE

So much for Alice Walker, Bloom delivered a stunning "coup de grace"

And as for Ann Rand, I have never gotten up the courage to finish the entire book although I find myself looking favorably on her work if only because of that fact that the inimitable Alan Greenspan was a great fan of hers and her message in his youth.

He was, I am given to understand, one of Rand's friends and met with her frequently.

Thanks, Joe, you're free to steal any of my material any time.

Ital, when i was a wee, callow youth, not only were Che and Chairman Mao very popular on college campuses, but so were Rand and Buckley's Up from Liberalism. In those days, young students protested the right-wing bias in higher ed.

Plus ça change . . .

That comment is usually attributed to Winston Churchill.

I think Churchill was dead wrong on lots of things -- and this is one of them.

The comment reminds me of something atheist Madelyn Murray O'Hare use to say about agnostics:

"Agnostics are atheists with no guts."

Both the Churchill quote and the O'Hare quote are absurd -- based not in the reality of the situtation, but in the value of meaningless witicisms.

As far as I am concerned, if you are a conservative -- whether at 20, 40, or 60 -- you probobably are not especially endowed with compassion or empathy for your fellow human.

And if some of the "conservatives" I know personally are the standard, not having much in the way of brains is probably part of the mix also.

My college wasn't Catholic, but St. Ambroise was quite popular.

And Alan Greenspan's credibility is so great these days.