[lit-ideas] Re: What's wrong with Campus Watch for all?
- From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 01:54:31 EST
Robert writes: I don't doubt that there are nuts out there who believe that
rational discourse should be replaced by indoctrination; but to believe that
they are a danger because _students_ are 'in no position' to evaluate what
they're told is, as insulting
to students (most of whom, by the way, are of voting age) as it is to the
college and university teachers, who are seen collectively as agents of
subversion.
_________
It's more insulting to assume that students are fully formed in their
critical faculties even as undergraduates. That would imply that professors
have no
purpose whatsoever, and cannot influence or encourage critical thinkingâ??this
task having been accomplished by the students themselves long before they
entered the classroom.
In fact, most students are impressionable, and should be. If they were not
impressionable, going to college would make no impression on them, and their
time at school would be wasted. Minds mature and the more views one can summon
in
comparison, the more fully one can evaluate a topic. For example, one
wouldn't perceive _Lolita_ on the fifteenth rereading as one did on the first.
At 40,
one doesn't listen to a Noam Chomsky lecture as one did at 18. The Duchamp
readymade that seemed so cool when one was 16 is not present to the viewer
mid-30s. The Mahler of one's twenties is not the Mahler of one's thirties. An
obvious notion.
Given the cost of higher education, students are also increasingly at the
mercy of the grading numbers game. Perhaps Reed has not been subject to the
steep
tuition hikes that have blindsided so many students out of the system? I
don't know.
It's hard to imagine that Robert has never suffered through an imbecilic or
intemperate instructor or that he is oblivious to the pressures on students,
many of whom, though of voting age, rely on grants, loans, or family money to
earn degrees in this best of all possible worlds.
Because I do not believe Robert is out of touch with what it is like to be a
student, but on the contrary believe he knows more about this subject than I
do, I can only assume that he has taken my broaching the subject as itself a
Fishy Trojan horse to some political agenda of my own. Not so. I wanted to read
what others thought, although granted, I had hoped for a less edgy response.
Eric
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