Twitter Fascists

\ Leave a Comment \ by

Critical thinking is at the center of education, and critical thinking is a complicated, often uncomfortable process. It’s often very emotional, for one thing, but it can’t just be emotional, it also has to involve careful reasoning. And you have to get used to the idea that it’s open-ended. You can be certain you understand one thing today and then tomorrow a bit of new information, or an event that you can’t help but respond to emotionally, changes your ideas.

The recent surge of reactionary thinking- reflected in the O’Donnell primary win in Delaware–has roots in social networking and in anti-intellectualism. Karl Rove may not like what’s happening in his party, but it’s clearly a descendant of his long campaign to remove all critical thinking from the political process. He and his ilk have successfully convinced a certain segment of the population that anything that contradicts the party line is by definition wrong.

Rove’s the establishment now and as resented as the rest of the bums. If everything that contradicts your feelings is wrong, as he taught so well, the only thing you can rely on to help you make decisions is other people who feel the same way. That’s the reactionary echo chamber of fascist thinking. Twitter and Ning and other social networking software allow these random resentments and angers to find a whole new resonance and amplification.

Posted in: Language, Miscellaneous, Writing

Gender Knowledge

\ Leave a Comment \ by

According to a reported just issued by the Council of Graduate Schools, as of last year women got more Ph.D.’s than men for the first time since these numbers have been recorded. (That’s no longer than about a 100 years, I’d guess.) What more significant, I think, is that women are now poised to play a dominant role in several fields, including “health sciences (70 percent), in public administration (61.5 percent), social and behavioral sciences (60 percent), arts and humanities (53 percent) and biological and agricultural sciences (51 percent).”

Men dominate “mathematics and computer sciences, in which 73 percent of doctorates awarded in the United States went to men; physical and earth sciences (66 percent male PhDs) and business (61 percent).” This is an important landmark, but its meaning will not be clear any time soon and its impossible to predict how this might change research or education agendas. A patriarchal bias underlies much current research, of course. No one studied women’s heart attacks, for example, for much too long becuase it was assumed that men were an adequate model.

The historical and sociological question is whether women will simply correct the historical patriarchal bias or if they will begin to create what amounts to a matriarchy. Feminist history, I think, provides theoretical and practical models for either, and for a wide-range of reasons. That sort of impact is generations away, though. Meanwhile, as long as men dominate business, match, and engineering the partiarchy reigns. I wonder, if, in the long run, the ongoing rise of women will create a society in which these fields, no matter which gender is dominant, no longer matters nearly as much as it once did…

Posted in: Economics, Professional

Class Dismissed

\ Leave a Comment \ by

I was happy to see a new survey/study of student writing practices released this week, called “Revisualizing Composition: Mapping the Writing Lives of First Year College Students.” It’s always good to have new information, and it’s especially refreshing to see such a wide range of institutions included, ranging from research and Ph.D. granting schools to community colleges. I have to say, though, that I found the initial findings disappointing.

First, there seems to be nothing new here: blogs and web writing are less popular than they were; texting on phones is up; students see academic writing as important, etc. There are a few ideas that might be worth exploring. Why has social networking, for example, had so little impact on students’ appreciation of collaboration? Why do institutions that grant Master’s degrees have more students that write often in so many genres?

Second, the study’s methodology section reproduces the U.S. blindness to class; it mentions gender and ethnicity but not familial income, parental education levels, or other indicators of socio-economic status. They did little to correlate technology use or writing habits with, say, the relative costs of an education at these differing institutions. Given the economic ranger of institutions, and the growing evidence of class divisions in the U.S., it’s a striking omission.

Posted in: Composition, Professional, Writing