Saturday, September 13

Why academia, well, sucks.

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It was a secret hidden well from me. My parents did it on purpose, the faculty of Thomas More saw it as something to be avoided at all costs. The secret I speak of is typical academia's attitude toward their students. Quite simply, they assume that you are rock stupid and unable to comprehend anything so well as they. Prodigies are acceptable only in grade school, perhaps high school. Beyond that, the professor knows all and you can only hope to achieve a measure of his greatness.
I was so blissfully ignorant going into my Master's program. I assumed that, along with being able to address your professors by first name came a certain amount of respect, if for no other reason than that you survived the undergraduate days and decided that pushing forward was a good idea. This idea was quickly knocked out of me after I left 504, "Librarian Boot Camp." I expected Drill Sergeants for profs and I got nice people. This, I was told, was the norm. I could expect earnest people who sought to impart wisdom. I should have known better than to expect the Boomer generation to think anyone could touch them, let alone learn.

Now before you say "But your profs at TMC were boomers!" they really aren't. Dr. Sampo is the "Greatest Generation," Drs. Fahey, Nelson, and Blum are too young to be in the Boomer generation. I think they fall between Gen X and Boomers, which I count as a good thing. I suppose that Dr. Mumbach qualifies, but she always stuck me as ageless, so I'll let it slide. So you see, I escaped there. Now I find myself faced with them, full on. There's something about the Boomer generation I just don't understand. Perhaps it's because they, in many ways, had it the best of all the generations we're dealing with now. They got the 50's ideal, they were the first generation that could really afford superfluous things like nice cars or vacations. And I think it went to their heads.

There are also a lot of them. They run just about everything, because the baby boom was so large. If I had even a dime for every time I endured a snide remark because of my youth (and thus, my perceived stupidity), I would be able to retire now a wealthy woman. This attitude of superiority is only worsened with the title "Professor." A PhD seems to confer a false sense of superiority that enables it's bearer to look down their nose at everyone younger than them, regardless of actual ability, intelligence, or qualities. As part of this, it is apparently necessary to assign readings that insult the basic intelligence of any person with the ability to use their brain. If you disagree with the article, clearly you are in the wrong because several of the author's colleagues reviewed the article and it was published! Have you been published? Therefore you are in no position to judge good research from bad!

The fact of the matter is that, despite my 22 years, I AM in a position to judge. I have read a large chunk of Western Canon. I have done an in depth study of a legal system which is nothing if not complex, and if you think that doesn't involve research you underestimate the project. I have performed analysis on political philosophies, literary interpretations, and plain old fashioned philosophy for four years. I have written, presented, and defended my study of common law and was complimented on my work by no less than a "Who's who" of Notre Dame Alumni, a man who holds two Master's degrees from Oxford, and an incredibly accomplished and published literary critic. And they were the least scary of the 100 person panel to whom I presented and defended my thesis. I did a semester long study of one man's political theory, a man who designed the American Executive and the Electoral College, as well as the man who took 20 resolutions and formed them into a document that would become the US Constitution. Hardly an easy study to do, and I did it, and did it well. Age is not a factor, accomplishment is. Even without a PhD, I can find an article insultingly simple and wrong.

A few highlights:
  • Making "Hegemony" equivalent with political myth, sociology, and "acceptance."
  • The 'pluralist paradigm'-- the idea that all groups within a given social science can have a paradigm, that each of these paradigms is in fact a paradigm, that each is equally valuable, and that this lack of consensus is in fact a STRENGTH
  • That having no dominant group within a society can constitute an hegemony
  • That the values of America are applicable to an international field as its base (btw? Fact chance that anyone else will agree with you on that)
  • That the world can be "falsely imagined as a realm of facts independent of the knower." Moreover, they think that this means the same thing as not taking research out of context. If you're going to follow Hume, follow Hume and say you don't know the sun is gonna rise tomorrow. Don't do this weird side step watoosie that doesn't actually say anything.
  • That the best way to understand research in library science is a Hegelian-Marxist-Neitzchan idea.
  • Non canonical theory-- if it's in a book, it's canon. If it's canon, it had a maker. If it had a maker, it is automatically ideological in the worst sense and should be ignored, repudiated, and destroyed.
  • Political economy and sociology? Totally the same thing.
I've still got 10 or so more pages, but I just can't make it. I cannot read through more of this. I cannot sit there and pretend that any of this is true or good or relevant. That's the kicker. This class is about RESEARCH, and apparently this means that we have to find what's wrong with everything according to our only socially constructed ideological bent. I guess I don't mind the ideology so much; it's the fact that the article claims it's uncovering it that bothers me. It's almost worse when you consider that they made a sort of shepherd's pie out of the major modern and and postmodern ideologies and called it fresh and new.

In the words of lolcats? UR DOING IT WRONG

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm not a PhD. Rather, I'm one of those prodigies that slacked off tremendously in school; in middle school I was an A student and my parents were called to a meeting to complain I asked too many questions and other things.

I then because a C student, and still graduated a top school despite never showing up to class.

The reality is no one expects you to get educated, but to be fooled into thinking you're educated it seems. Thousands of people go through my college thinking they've learned, but they can't say what they've learned, only that they're nerds for studying and getting As, and forgetting what they've done. College is about the parties.

The professors were full of it, too. Honestly, you can learn more about most things working part time for someone who knows what they're doing, but unfortunately, academia has a monopoly these days on certifying competence; if I could take exams in college to show I was competent in a lot of material so I didn't have to take the prereqs and waste my time, I'd might have studied seriously.

So whenever I hear someone has a BS, I think Bullshit, and of course, you know what PhD really means.

Imagine when people and employers realize that all academia does is take tens of thousands of dollars (sometimes hundreds) away from people and drive them into debt with no real gain except a bullet point on the resume in 90% of all cases.

8:53 AM, December 17, 2009  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, you're quite a prodigy there, Anonymous. Nearly everyone I know who slacked in HS (as did I) passed (and these are "top schools" I'm speaking of). It's not some great achievement or a testament to your intelligence. It's what many people do. You really have to try to fail. High school math is easily passable without trying (you don't even need to understand what on earth you're doing, most people don't, even the high and mighty "A students) and humanities courses are passable through obscurantism and bullshit.

Academia is, of course, a kind of ghetto where people have learned to isolate themselves within a cocoon of delusions that lead to to form a false sense of superiority. Most of these people would utterly fail upon exposure to the elements of the "real world" outside the faux ivory walls of the university (faux because you don't want to hurt the elephants, after all). Academia certainly isn't the only refuge, but academia puts on the biggest airs. Being a hustler may be cool in the ghetto, but nowhere else, and you can't imagine a hustler getting any cred outside of his zip code or coterie. Academia also has a tendency to select for a particular class of people that are probably the worst fit for academia. How many PhDs are merely those who wish to prolong adolescence? How many are merely going with the inertia, used to being praised by professors for their conformity? Many if not most. It's pathological. The general populace is full of cretins, but none of them pretends to be or has the institutional backing to pretend to be intelligent and better. If it were true, that would be one thing, but it isn't. The cognoscenti are free to bullshit unchecked and with little consequence to their careers and there are strong incentives to bullshit. The lack of common sense as a starting point and a context is horrifying. The resentment petty. This is not what you could expect from an academic, but it is what you should expect from an academic. The cause is an insulated world free of pressures of cause and effect, an alternate universe, a ministry of truth. It is no accident academics tend to adore socialism. It is only in the cushioned adolescence of socialism that they could survive (mind you, capitalism is no guarantee of fitness or rationality: a free market is only ever as good as its participants and judging by the success of many asinine products and services, it is plainly obvious that stupidity will thrive in it if the market exists; socialism's primary flaw is its institutionalization of mediocrity which, in an attempt to paternalistically prevent the bad, end up stifling the good).

I say, let's open the windows to academia. Let the fresh Arctic air assault the sickly lungs of the academics. Let natural selection take its course because humility has failed (the humility of academics to know they're unfit). You'll always have mediocrity (again, the market doesn't solve that problem, it just exposes players to the elements so that they at least know the elements). Arrogance exists in the marketplace, but it isn't pampered and safeguarded and allowed to fester in a walled ghetto as easily.

5:12 PM, March 16, 2014  

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