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An Aging Luddite

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Ray Watkins

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I work online, and I think online writing classes work at least as well as face to face teaching. I love technology and gadgets too, even though they are too often tainted by consumerism. I am not certain of the source, but someone left this Douglas Adams quote as a comment on my site recently:

First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII – and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.

I went on short trip last weekend to Meramec Caverns– my GPS is the greatest thing since sliced bread on these trips–and I was struck, once again, by the image of people waving their cell phones around in the air, trying to get what we euphemistically call “service.”

I understand the impulse. The motel and the campground that surrounds the caverns is old-fashioned and doesn’t have internet connection. (Many modern campsites do.) I don’t use my cellphone much, and as long as there’s television of some sort, I’m fine. I felt that little twinge of anxiety, though, knowing that I couldn’t call anyone if I got lonely.

What’s making me feel more and more like a Luddite, though, is the sheer ubiquity of people– almost all of them under 40, and most under 30, who seem so helpless addicted to nothing. I enjoy Facebook, to cite this year’s model as an example, but there’s no there there; you look at a picture or two, or maybe follow a link someone shared, laugh at a video, and then you are done.

Why is the brochure is so compelling that it requires almost constant attention, almost as if it were a pet or a child? I don’t believe that this is generational. When I was young, say, a teenager, I loved rock and roll music, but I was also aware that some people went too far with it and became fanatics. It was embarrassing at best, at worst dysfunctional. This fanaticism about the latest trend has become the norm.

Categories: Autobiographical, Language, Miscellaneous

Whitewashed History

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Ray Watkins

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I have to agree with the letter writer who complained that the Chronicle of Higher Education ought to cover recent events in Arizona more thoroughly (“Controversial Arizona Law Deserves Scholars’ Attention“). A new law, HB 2281, represents the cutting edge in the long-expressed desire of the right-wing to eliminate ethic studies, as a part of their larger drive to end diversity programs in education. It’s another example of the irrationality of white supremacy, its profound fear that if it does not fully assimilate the other, its own unique identity will disappear.

In Arizona, the formula is very simple: either the people who are ethnically Mexican– most are not recent immigrants, of course–drop their own language and culture and adopt European American (“white”) cultural traditions and the English language or European American culture– and the English language–will be lost forever, at least on the American continent. White culture, this assumes, isn’t strong enough to co-exist with other cultures. Ethnic studies are designed to remedy this profound paranoia about the danger implicit in other cultures.

It’s not automatic or necessarily easy, but multiple cultures can and do co-exist peacefully.The “white” paranoia, too, is rooted in a profound misunderstanding of American history that downplays if not ignores the dynamics of multiple cultures that has shaped U.S. history, for good and ill, from the central role of slavery in the early U.S. economy to the Indian genocide to the Civil Rights movement to La Raza. H.B. 2281 is trying to create a dangerous institutionalized amnesia, the very opposite of what it means to be educated.

Categories: Economics, Language, Online Places, Professional, Writing

Nixon’s Revenge

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Ray Watkins

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When we were kids in Texas, and we went to Mexico and ate something that we should not have eaten, we called the resulting diarrhea Montezuma’s revenge (people still do, of course). It has that authentic American racist feel to it, and it’s more than a little unfair to complain so cavalierly about a problem like dysentery, which is one of the scourges of poverty everywhere. Yet is also has a pointed irony, as if we recognized a kind of karma in genocide and colonialism.

The ongoing budget battles in the U.S., summarized in “State Lawmakers Seek More Say Over Colleges,” aren’t genocide, of course, but they do represent a kind of unfortunate political karma. Let’s call it Nixon’s revenge. Somehow– that somehow suggests an as yet undecipherable history– a portion of the U.S. electorate has become convinced that the only way to balance budgets is to make cuts. Since we spend so much on education, that means we have to cut there.

Yet if by “we” we mean the American people as represented by polls, then “we” don’t want these cuts. Arguably, they are in fact unnecessary, even in the most practical sense. If the “we” is the “we” that voted for the far right, though, then that “we” has given our body politic a bad case of political dysentery. Literally, a long dialog about nothing; discursive excrement. It’s Nixon’s revenge against the now grown up college kids who hated him so much.

We are being sold a bill of goods about education, to use the cliche, and we are buying it, in the same way that we were sold a bill of goods in Nixon’s “moral majority.” Or, in fact, in the same way that we have been sold things like the “pet rock.” I also don’t think it is historically inaccurate to say that only the much too tenuous power of people organized in unions is going to prevent some sort of final right wing solution to the “problem” of education.

Categories: Economics, Language, Professional, Writing

Autocratic Rhetoric

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Ray Watkins

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I continue to be fascinated– fascinated in the way I am fascinated by a train wreck– at the ways that the political rhetoric of the now-revolutionary Arab North Africa echos or overlaps the political rhetoric of the political crisis in the American Midwest. Colonel Gaddafi says he will never step down or negotiate with protesters; Governor Walker says there can be no compromise over collective bargaining rights. The situations are vastly different, of course, which make the similarities all the more interesting.

Here in the U.S., and I suspect in North Africa, this is at least in part due to our use of what I call a sports or game rhetoric that makes no truth claims. The goal isn’t veracity, it’s the demoralization of your opponent. On the other hand, this rhetoric does reflect reality, however mediated, in that it seems to help shape actual policy. Gaddafi says this and then resorts to a massive violent repression; Walker has shown no signs of a willingness to negotiate with either the unions or his democratic opponents.

A sports rhetoric is always tinged with autocratic implications. If you want to win the World Series, you don’t offer to negotiate. A sports rhetoric is a rhetoric about vanquishing your foe, utterly and once and for all. Again, it makes no claims to veracity. You devastate your opponent completely and then you go home and have a beer. Next season the cycle starts anew. It’s easy to see the loigc of this sort of rhetoric for Gaddafi. He’s maintained power by violent means and he’s not changing. The sports rhetoric is a Trojan horse.

It’s more difficult to understand Governor Walker. Even more perplexing, many conservatives seem to believe that his game rhetoric, despite all indications to the contrary, actually does make truth claims. He claims, for example, that he– and his allies in the municipal and county governments– need to end collective bargaining in order to maximize flexibility. In effect, he is making the autocratic claim that the democratic process is too cumbersome. Government officials, in other words, when faced with budget problems, cannot negotiate a solution.

We need to respond to whatever problem that arises so quickly that we cannot waste time by seeking the input and advice of the people directly affected. Democracy, in other words, is a deliberative process, one requiring time and reflection and careful thought; we don’t have time for all that and if we indulge in it disaster looms. It’s a wildly unlikely claim. In fact, what he is saying is that if he– or local officials– participate in the democratic process, they cannot ensure that their own ideas will prevail. I think Gaddafi would agree.

Categories: Language, Union

The Rhetoric of the Big Lie

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Ray Watkins

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I have an Uncle who, to be polite, I consider an accurate barometer of ‘Big Lie’ conservative politics. If the right wing radio demagogues start a ‘Big Lie’ strategy, you can be sure my Uncle will soon repeat it. At one level, I want to believe that this is less a reflection of his honesty and more a reflection of the less than serious nature of his political thinking. It’s not really political rhetoric at all.

He’s not really trying to lie, in other words, he’s just treating politics as a kind of professional sport, and he’s talking trash about the opposition. It’s “sports rhetoric.” I have to say, though, that if it is true that he treats political rhetoric as a species of sports rhetoric, I find that just as disturbing as the idea that he might be concisely spreading lies. Lives and livelihoods are at stake.

As a teacher, too, I am disturbed by the way that this sports rhetoric seems to preclude any research, much less simple veracity. If one of the radio demagogues says something, my Uncle simply repeats it; fact checking seems beside the point. In the last few weeks, for example, the right has claimed, without any evidence, that the protesters in Madison are “outsiders.”

The logic of this idea is very thin. What organization, of any sort, could compel tens of thousands of people to go to Madison Wisconsin? You can get people to march on Washington in great numbers, at least sometimes, and you might get a few thousand to travel to help with a primary election, but could you get tens of thousands to travel to Wisconsin to protect workers’ rights?

It seems unlikely at best. What’s so bizarre about this sports rhetoric– trash talk that makes no claims to literal truth– is that it is the same obviously absurd claims made by authoritarian regimes in recent weeks. First the Egyptian government, and now the Iranian government, blamed protests on “outsiders.” Clearly, in this rhetoric truth is beside the point. Is it “soccer rhetoric”?

Categories: Autobiographical, Language, Writing

Reading Over Writing

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Ray Watkins

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Sometimes when I listen to NPR’s Morning Edition in the mornings I get very frustrated. It’s a neo-commercial format, for one thing, rather than a true public service. (Another gift of Reaganomics.) The “sponsorships” (aka commercials) bug me most days; other days, its the weirdly self-congratulatory begging called “fund raising.” We are great! We are running out of money! You have to help!

In my case, it’s particularly galling that the University of Illinois, an organization with a budget in the hundreds of millions, has historically refused to fund its own public radio station. I find it galling when such an organization asks me, as a “member of the community” to give them money. This too is part of the routine irritations and ironies of our conservative age. Failure is success.

The real problem, though, is that they are a Jack of all Trades, Master of None sort of show. That means that when you hear a story about something you know about you often feel they missed the point entirely. This morning’s piece on recent research into college education, “A Lack Of Rigor Leaves Students ‘Adrift’ In College,” was a very welcome exception.

It’s an exception becuase it emphasized two of the dirty little secrets of college: students are not being challenged to learn to think critically, mostly becuase they are not asked to write much, and their educations are undermined by the use of consumer surveys (usually called student evaluations) in teacher assessment. Students do not have to do much work because you can’t upset your customers.

A more informed reporter would have also asked about the exploitation of teachers, which has done profound damage. I also think that these problems are rooted in the perennial focus on ‘the basics’ which is inevitably framed in terms of reading rather than writing. That’s easy to explain: writing and critical thinking can’t be taught on the cheap or graded with multiple choice tests.

Categories: Autobiographical, Language, Professional, Union

writinginthewild.com

An Aging Luddite

Whitewashed History

Nixon’s Revenge

Autocratic Rhetoric

The Rhetoric of the Big Lie

Reading Over Writing

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