[was: [PEN-L:29647] Plastic Tower Re: Noam Chomsky and Hyperbolic comparisons]
It's my impression that the metaphor "the ivory tower" has always referred to only the elite professors at elite research-oriented universities, who were most cut off from "reality." It's true that that kind of ivory tower is being eroded, in that more & more of the profs. are working for business. Perhaps being cut off from "reality" can be a good thing...
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Yoshie Furuhashi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 7:22 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:29647] Plastic Tower Re: Noam Chomsky and Hyperbolic
> comparisons
>
>
> At 11:02 AM -0400 8/16/02, Ben Day used the term:
> >the ivory tower
>
> For reasons that I have already mentioned (with Census Bureau stats
> to support them), I think that the phrase "the ivory tower" should be
> retired. The plastic tower or the plaster-of-paris tower, perhaps,
> but no ivory. Higher education in the USA, like suburbs and
> automobiles, is now a mass-produced and mass-consumed working-class
> reality.
>
> Education in general is a gigantic industry, even without counting
> such other employees as office workers, janitors, food preparation
> workers, etc. employed by schools at all levels:
