[percy-l] College Essays

Beck, David A dabeck at iupui.edu
Mon Oct 13 21:35:45 EDT 2008


Bob,

Maybe it is because I have stack of freshman comp portfolios leering at 
me, I tend to agree with Pirsig. I know my "creative" writing has 
diminished to near nothing. I somewhat jokingly tell my students, 
"Those who can't make it as fulltime writers, teach writing." (I 
remember Jackson Browne's lyrics about the Pretender "who started out 
so young and strong/Only to surrender.")

In our defense, I do think, however, that freshman comp does teach more 
than writing: i.e. critical thinking and evaluation of sources. But, 
believe me, the reason I teach writing is because freshman comp is the 
only way to keep a job here. My favorite class to teach is Sin and 
Redemption in Fiction. In order to keep that gig, I teach writing. 
Freshman comp is the money-maker. ALL freshman have to take it. The 
second half (of freshman comp) is a little more rewarding (some of them 
can actually fog a mirror).

Well, back to the pile. Wish me well!

-David


Quoting "Eckert, Robert G SPC MIL USA FORSCOM" <robert.g.eckert at us.army.mil>:

> List
>
> This exchange has made me think of Pirsig in ZMM:
>
> "The school was what could euphemistically be called a "teaching
> college." At a teaching college you teach and you teach and you teach
> with no time for research, no time for contemplation, no time for
> participation in outside affairs. Just teach and teach and teach
> until your mind grows dull and your creativity vanishes and you
> become an automaton saying the same dull things over and over to
> endless waves of innocent students who cannot understand why you are
> so dull, lose respect and fan this disrespect out into the community.
> The reason you teach and you teach and you teach is that this is a
> very clever way of running a college on the cheap while giving a
> false appearance of genuine education." (Part II, Ch 13)
>
> Bob Eckert
>
>
> PS
>
> Cash, or gold?
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Wade Riddick <wriddick at usa.net>
> Date: Saturday, October 11, 2008 16:04
> Subject: Re: [percy-l] College Essays
> To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion"
> <percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org>
>
>
>> >Peter and Rhonda,
>> >
>> >I too sympathize. I normally stagger my assignments, but I messed up
>> >with my cut and past job on my syllabi. All four classes turned in
>> >their work this week!
>>
>> If I could chime in my two cents, the decline in reading and
>> writing that's
>> occurred in American society across the last fifty years has had a
>> verydeep and detrimental effect on our collective capacity for
>> independent,critical thought.  As life and our understanding of it
>> grows increasingly
>> complex, it's all-the-more crucial that we hone our analytical
>> skills; I
>> don't know how we do that if it's not writing and grading essays and
>> tossing around ideas in seminars.  Instead of investing in the
>> developmentof these faculties, a variety of political choices has
>> made teaching this
>> sort of reflection more expensive and out-of-reach for the average
>> citizen.
>> If you or your students doubt the benefits, then let me simply say
>> this.  I
>> doubt I would be alive today if I didn't have a degree in English and
>> graduate classes in microeconomics and statistics under my belt.  The
>> amount of bullshit that masquerades for scientific truth in
>> medicine today
>> is truly staggering - and deadly.  I didn't just encounter potentially
>> fatal misinformation from one doctor; I got it from almost every
>> corner.
>> For example, I brought in research published in scientific
>> journals linking
>> gut bacteria loss to autoimmunity and one gastroenterologist told
>> me he
>> didn't "believe" it - as if personal "belief" is supposed to be a
>> measureof scientific proof1 - and then he referred me to the local
>> doctor who had
>> first pointed me to the theory saying, "She has a good reputation with
>> problem cases like yours."
>>
>> I understood instantly from game theory that he was relying on a
>> reputational effect as a cognitive short-cut for his decision-
>> making.  But
>> he didn't need to.  All he had to do was stay current with the
>> literatureonce he got out of medical school - you know, do what
>> he's required to do
>> by law.  He believed Dr. Cave could help me because she had a
>> "reputation"for helping problem patients no one else could deal
>> with.  What was she
>> using?  Magic?  In his mind, what was her "reputation" supposed to
>> be based
>> on?
>>
>> In a competitive marketplace, economically useful information is
>> supposedto be disseminated.  If a doctor does something better
>> than you do and
>> you're in competition with him, you're supposed to study what he
>> does.  How
>> does that information travel?  The only source of new information
>> for the
>> average doctor these days seems to come from drug company reps who
>> haveeconomic incentives to skew their spiel.  And if it's not
>> covered by a
>> patent, they have no incentive to discuss it.
>>
>> If you haven't been trained to spot subtle lies, you can't get a
>> clear view
>> of reality and you can't help your patients.  It's like
>> deconstruction.How do you understand what's not being said?  How
>> do you understand the gap
>> between what is said and the underlying reality those symbols are
>> supposedto represent?  How many doctors get the kind of liberal
>> arts education we
>> did?  For that matter, take a look at the stock market slide and ask
>> yourself how many businessmen could benefit from a few history
>> classes.
>> Our economy brims with specialists who know very little about reality
>> outside their increasingly narrow field.  They cannot integrate
>> what they
>> know with information from even closely related fields - even when
>> livesdepend on it.  The result is a comedy (or tragedy) of
>> ironies.  You see
>> this when a rheumatologist tells patients to eat foods that make their
>> inflammation worse because he thinks of it as a "nutritional"
>> problem and
>> that's beneath him.2  You see this "semiotic bubble" when the
>> executivesrunning A.I.G. and listening to their investment
>> products division didn't
>> understand the basics of forensic accounting, fraud and Ponzi
>> schemes (or
>> worse; perhaps they did).
>>
>> It's easy for the sign to drift away from the signified.  Perhaps
>> we all
>> need a little shock every once in a while to prick the inflated
>> bubble and
>> shake loose the light - or, as Albert Gore, Sr., put it, "Defeat
>> may serve
>> as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out."
>>
>> Having said that, when I consider the current socioeconomic and
>> technological trends, I can't help but worry that our capacity for
>> independent thought and collective judgment is in decline.
>> Perhaps this
>> upcoming political realignment will prove me wrong or at least
>> reset the
>> clock.  I certainly hope so.
>>
>> If the medical examples don't stir your soul or bother your
>> students then
>> consider this: I've been in cash for several years now.  Like Warren
>> Buffet, Paul Krugman and a lot of other contemporary critics of our
>> capitalism, I knew our economy was tied together with bubblegum and
>> shoestring and Bush was running short on shoestring.
>>
>> Wade Riddick
>>
>> 1.  I think T.S. Kuhn would say it is and I would agree with him; but
>> that's entirely the problem.  We don't train people to understand that
>> their grasp on rationality is essentially a "belief" that we need to
>> constantly question in light of new evidence - particularly in the
>> sciences.  Yet as we need more of this as scientific knowledge
>> multiplies,we're getting less of this.
>>
>> 2.  It's not a bad choice economically since it does make the patient
>> sicker which then sends them running back to the rheumatologist
>> for more
>> medicine.  Of course, it's hard to construe this as good behavior
>> in the
>> context of the Hippocratic oath.  For another example of bad medicine,
>> consider how many rheumatologists think it's acceptable to
>> prescribe COX-2
>> inhibitors like celebrex to arthritis patients despite the fact
>> that it
>> makes autoimmunity worse and degrades the formation of new
>> collagen in
>> joints.
>>
>>
>> --
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>>
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> --
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>
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