Last week's excursion to Canada has put me far behind in terms of this term's schoolwork. Thus I've no time to write fiction, no time to drink liberally with my estranged roommate, no time to have anything other than haven't-seen-you-all-day-wanna-fuck? sex with my grilfriend...and certainly no time for frivilious blog entries.
It seems that in this age of rampant technological malfeasance the Blog has become one of the few meaningful avenues of communication left to us. Where else are we, the dispossessed internet denizens, given the time and space to express honest to god ideas? To say nothing of discussing them (even if only in a time-delayed, reply-to-a-comment fashion)?
I’d hoped to find such a place in school, but the Lyceum is not what it once was. Aristotle (had he a body left, which at this point I seriously doubt) would spin a mighty hole through the dirt of his unmarked grave if, by some trick of the gods, he were granted sight of our modern scholastic experience.
An example, from Sociology 206. This Wednesday I came into class during the “Politics” portion of our course, having missed last week's entry thanks to the aformentioned Run for the Border. It felt like I’d fallen through a milignant time warp, landing right back in Junior High Civics class.
My instructor, whom I'll call Dr. Smith (she is a woman, and bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Brenda from Six Feet Under) wrote “Republicans” and “Democrats” up on the white board. Pointing to the former she asked us all the burning question: “On spending money, are Republicans liberal or conservative?”
There was a five second silence. I surveyed the room, remembering a moldy statistic from the Truman Administration: The average American spends an average of ten minutes a day thinking about politics. That number has, more than likely, plummeted in the sixty years since its discovery. If my Sociology class is any indication.
After seven seconds a brown-skinned, ex-Air Force girl two seats to my right tested the waters by saying, “Conservative…?” You could hear the questioning ellipse in her voice, the intellectual insecurity. I can hear it most of my classmate’s voices and it scares the all-mighty piss out of me. It seems that most of them spend their class time desperately waiting for someone, anyone, to tell them that they’re right about something.
Dr. Smith obliged...this time. “Right. Republicans are usually conservative when it comes to money.” Never mind the multi-trillion dollar national debt. Never mind the $320 billion dollar Crusade against the rag-heads of Afghanistan, Iraq and (just around the corner) Iran. Never mind the millions funneled to uncounted “faith based” organizations over the course of these last six years. Or the millions more in tax breaks and shelters handed over to big industry. Or the enormous system of legal bribery we so blithely refer to as “lobbying.”
And never mind the fact that “fiscal conservatism” is and always has been a gigantic lie. Even the most “conservative” of politicians will whip out the checkbook in a heartbeat if it means a big “defense” contractor will set up shop in his/her district.
While all of this ran riot through my head, Dr. Smith moved on. “On social matters, liberal or conservative?”
This brought up a whole nest of other questions. Like what “liberal” or “conservative” even mean. My field research (which I’ll admit consists reading news papers and C-SPAN—not the most scientific of methods) indicates that “conservative” means “the Christian Taliban in all their permutations,” and “liberals” are “those who oppose the Christian Taliban (the “Talibangelists”), even if only occasionally and ineffectually, i.e. those ‘liberal’ members of the United States Congress.”
“Indeed,” Dr. Smith said, “‘liberal’ has become sort of a bad word. You know how they’re all calling themselves ‘progressives’ now?”
A few heads nodded at this…ignorant, it seemed, of the fact that “liberal” only became a derogatory term once the self-styled “conservatives” made it so with their constant TV punditry. If not for Rush Limbaugh (who was arrested yesterday for prescription fraud, say halleluiah) the term “liberal” would still mean what it meant to your generation and the Junior Hippies that followed after you.
I said very little of this to the class, of course. I suppose that makes me a hypocrite for not speaking out when I had the chance, the kind of arm-chair revolutionary the Old Berkley kids (like Phillip K. Dick) would have shunned as “part of the problem.” In my defense I can only say (1) the class was already behind thanks to last-week’s movie running long (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices) and (2) I couldn’t help but think it wouldn’t have made a difference. It would’ve wound up being me talking directly to the instructor. At best I would’ve gotten a few giggles from my classmates, but I doubt any meaningful discussion would’ve followed. It never does. At best, whenever I speak up, I find myself facing the vaguely annoyed eyes of a professor who tells me, “Well, that’s your opinion and I don’t want to offend.”
Never in my life have I heard the phrase, “I (or “We”) don’t want to offend anyone,” repeated so many times. That’s four professors I’ve had now, in under a year, who fall back upon this phrase with nauseating consistency. I keep wondering how they would react if I were to stride up to them and say, “You know, Doctor, I’m offended by your unwillingness to offend me.” It would probably make their heads explode.
I don’t really care about being offended, per se. (I'm far to cynical for that.) I want to be challenged…engaged…and I want an instructor brave enough to call her students, her curriculum, and her institution on their bullshit, whatever form it might take.
Thankfully, I'm not holding my breath.My native cynicism wants to convince me that our polarized, litigious, me-first society has bred a generation of toothless, molly coddling instructors, more concerned about getting fired that educating America’s youth. “Is our children leaning?” Well…no, George, they really ain’t. They’re sitting in class like fungal growth, mouthing whatever platitudes their text books set in bold type, hoping against hope that they’ll be able to pay their bills next month, please oh, please oh, please God.
As long as students are forced to spend their days in wage slavery there will be prayer in school. You think text anxiety can hold a candle to the sinking, stomach-pit fear a Power Company Past Due notice? Or (just off the top of my head, here) how about a gas bill?
In Germany, college students rioted in the streets at the very idea of paying for their own education. (Check out Oxford’s tuition cost sometime.) Here, el presidente can slash Student Federal Aid right out of his budget…and then lie about doing it…to a packed auditorium at a major east cost university…and we, the students of America will do nothing.
We are too busy trying to make ends meet and survive.
