I haven't read this article, but I do occasionally read him for
amusement.
He's a philosopher, which means that he doesn't feel any need to tie
his statements to reality, and has no appreciation for systematic
data collection.
Internal consistency is all!
Sounds like he's talking about himself.
On Jan 19, 2009, at 9:32 AM, Mike Palij wrote:
Greetings on this Martin Luther King Jr Birthday Obervance!
This morning while looking at the NY Times enews that I saw
a link to an blog entry by Stanley Fish Ph.D., currently at Florida
International University, entitled "The Last Professor" which
starts with the curious following paragraph:
|In previous columns and in a recent book I have argued
|that higher education, properly understood, is distinguished
|by the absence of a direct and designed relationship between
|its activities and measurable effects in the world.
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/the-last-professor/?th&emc=th
I have to admit that I don't really know much about Fish
and checked the usual sources on the net but don't really
have a handle on him. It seems as though he is saying that
the humanities have no "instrumental" value, that is, do not
translate into tangible products or influence on the marketplace.
I was wondering if anyone on TiPS had a better understanding
of what the hell Fish is talking about and, though he seems to
be focusing on the humanities, the implications for the social
sciences as well as the basic sciences which are not concerned
with providing an immediate profitable ($) outcome. Is Fish
really advocating/predicting that colleges and universities are
destined to become "for profit" institutions?
Fish does seem to have a realization of his own value:
|People sometimes believe that they were born too late or
|too early. After reading Donoghue's book, I feel that I have
|timed it just right, for it seems that I have had a career that
|would not have been available to me had I entered the world
|50 years later. Just lucky, I guess.
That is, if he had to find a job today given the skills he had
when he entered the academic job market 50 years ago,
he'd probably be a barista at a Starbucks (or not; I leave
it to the reader to locate the Slate article that savages Fish
for his apparent befuddlement about getting a coffee at
Starbucks).
Paul Brandon
Emeritus Professor of Psychology
Minnesota State University, Mankato
[email protected]
---
To make changes to your subscription contact:
Bill Southerly ([email protected])
