[lit-ideas] Re: Our Superficial Scholars
- From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 10:58:18 +0900
Torgeir,
I do agree. I am just concerned that those who dislike discussion of
outcomes are increasingly finding themselves preaching to a like-minded
choir instead of persuading those who, at the end of the day, wind up paying
the piper.
John
On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 6:14 AM, Torgeir Fjeld <torgeir_fjeld@xxxxxxxx>wrote:
> Robert Paul wrote:
>
> John McCreery:
> > > Democratizing the humanities
> > and, in effect, adopting the
> > > McDonald's slogan, "We do it
> > all for you" has predictably
> > > destroyed the luxury cachet
> > the humanities once enjoyed. And
> > > claiming to teach critical
> > thinking in big lecture classes with
> > > shrinking reading and writing
> > assignments isn't going to rebuild
> > > the brand.
> > >
> > The recent, usually ideological, fascination with
> > 'outcomes,' in higher
> > education, has as a subtext, the question, 'What's the good
> > of it?'
> > where the good of it is parsed in terms of what graduates
> > of which
> > schools and departments can achieve as 'useful' members of
> > an
> > industrialized society. In this setting, the humanities
> > don't stand a
> > chance; and if someone were to argue that studying the
> > humanities
> > (any of them) could clearly be shown to have such a
> > purpose, the very
> > idea of studying them would be lost.
>
> As Bourdieu would have it, conceiving of education largely or solely in
> terms of outcomes is to confuse the opus operatum -- the finished product --
> with the modus operandi -- the way in which the production is organized.
> Outcomes based education is measurable and quantifiable while schooling that
> emphasizes process over product stands at a disadvantage in the current
> educational nexus. The (somewhat queer) idea that the product of education
> is or should be mass manufactured clones prepared to fulfill a set of tasks
> necessary to reproduce an increasingly crisis stricken economic system is
> wrong but sadly dominant -- i.e. ideological.
>
> -tor
> Longstreet Institute of Higher Learning
>
>
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--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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