Brian McAndrews wrote:
>
> Below you will find a recent essay by John McMurtry.
>
> Happy New Year,
> Brian McAndrews
>
> EDUCATION AND HUMAN CAPITAL
>
> The university students I teach are the first children of the global
> market regime. They all have been conditioned to understand their
> education as a means to more money for themselves. Cogito ergo sum has
> become, I am the money that can become more money by getting my
> degree.
>
> In this squalid market ethic, rising tuition fees are costs of
> investment in �human capital�, while money capital is the meaning of
> life. Thus we see corporate globalization increasingly constructing
> the minds of the next generation as consumer and sales functions on
> the demand end, and obedient labour and service mechanisms on the
> supply end
[snip]
I do not think this is the heart of the matter.
I went to a prestigous college in the 1960s (Yale). I was taught
mostly by tenured professors, not graduate assistants [in
my freshman year, I was in a special program for la creme de
la creme...].
And what did I learn? Well, of course I learned a lot of things, e.g.:
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/Suger.html
But the most important lesson I learned -- what Lawrence Kohlberg
called: "the hidden curriculum": was that I was an
object of an academic reign of terror, and that if I could
not produce a certain kind of symbol strings, I would
probably end up in a body bag in 'Nam, or at best
as a clerk [not the "treasonous" kind!!!] or assembly line worker.
My point is that the academic administrariat and professoriat
has, for generations, tor-mentored young persons instead of
unambivalently mentoring them. And what would true mentoring
be? The teacher and the student would get together under
conditions of mutual powerless to hurt each other (the teacher
could not grade the student and the student could not cut off
the teacher's salary, etc.), and, mutually wanting to be together,
they would explore cultural material which the teacher wanted
to share with the student and the student wanted to share
with the teacher.
--
At least the "I am the money that can become more money by getting my
degree" is, to borrow a phrase from [Karl] Marx: *demystified*.
Let us think of Alexander the Great's tuition, or Montaigne's.
Then let us think of even the best and the brightest in
the modern/post-modern world being made to go under the
yoke, like captured enemy soldiers --> to take the SAT exams,
etc.
It is fortunate that some young persons' experience of
schooling is less traumatic than mine was, but,
as Bertolt Brecht might have said, the exception is the
truth of the rule.
At age 55, I have reached a point in life ("Bildung",
not just metabolic process...) where I would never
again subject myself voluntarily to such degradation
which, even when it is "teaching" liberal arts, is
teaching-by-example the hierarchical subjection of some
to others. But I am not brave. Therefore, if they
show me the instruments of torture ("Either take this
course of be fired from your job!"), I will
probably say: "Yes, sir, honored professor!", but
under my breath, I will think to myself -- unless they
ECT me:
Eppur si move.
"Never again."
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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