Soooo sorry. Rigs not Gabs. Yes I am back for a little while Gabs, new
job, but only a couple of weeks contract.
On Wednesday, 1 February 2012 18:39:09 UTC, archytas wrote:
>
> I hope to spend the next 5 years "not teaching" - a difficult
> financial decision as this is my 'ready-to-hand' income. Some years
> back I tried to take and stick to a decision not to teach 'ideological
> rot' - broadly the mainstream of business and economic subjects. This
> might seem a fairly easy personal, moral decision; yet it isn't.
>
> The interesting issues don't concern the easy morality of doing what's
> right. One can find plenty of material, from Critical Theory through
> to deconstructive approaches to behaviour and critical psychology -
> and once, very critical management books like Peter Anthony's
> 'Foundation of Management' and sort programmes out on the basis of
> these. Thus one could teach material one might feel credible and
> stretching, broadly aimed at students learning critical reasoning. I
> do offer modules based around writers like David Graeber, Steve Keen
> and modern blogs at the moment.
>
> What muddies the waters is a combination of streamlining costs in HE
> and more or less the extirpation of syllabus control by academics,
> along with a massive dilution of student brain-power and the
> connection of student success with the numbers we pass. This
> situation makes moral judgement very difficult and academe has
> collapsed altogether as a moral place.
>
> Economics has long been taught as a science - an utter farce - and
> management theories are only fit for ridicule (excellence, kwality and
> anything with 'strategic' in it). The world works around power and
> rhetoric, and this is the only real content of such "theories".
>
> The madness that underlies all this is that we never address what the
> real issues might be. Accumulated wealth is clearly a problem for
> democracy as it inevitably means some will benefit by doing nothing
> while others work and that the wealth will be used to influence
> politics and the very ground of commercial competition. Yet with no
> consideration of this we leap into "theorising" in a system that
> applauds the creation of excess wealth in few hands as a 'good'.
>
> One can try to teach what one believes is true and in simple morality
> this is what one ought to do. The actual situation is much more
> complex. The jobs available in teaching (apart from a few little
> eddies I have occupied) are nearly all to do with teaching the rot,
> because this is the cheapest way universities can devise. The moral
> choice of not teaching rot changes to a choice not to teach (and get
> paid) - partly because your own students will be examined on the rot
> because you are teaching as part of a 'team' and all students are set
> the same questions as part of standardisation. If you don't teach the
> muck you put your students at a disadvantage.
>
> I see no answers to the moral conundrum - other than just to walk
> away, putting distance between oneself and the madness.
>
>
>
>
