POMO MO and Curly

[Derek C. Maus]

On Fri, 8 Oct 1999, Terrance F. Flaherty wrote:

> When I studied philosophy and poetry the politics of the authors did not
> prevent us from loving them for what they had written. It simply
> astounds me, angers me, to here a "teacher" stand up and tell young
> students that Freud's great works or Plato's or Pound's can be reduced
> to some biographical or political scrap of nonsense and tossed away.

I think you'll find that this, in practice, is a lot less common than you
might think. For example, the runaway notion that "Marxism" and
"postmodernism" are running amok on college campuses these days is such a
fallacious sentitment that I don't even know where to begin to counter the
argument. Perhaps at Duke or U. of Chicago (although students at the
latter actually protested last spring, complaining that the administration
was "dumbing down" their education by trying to lessen the number of
required courses--like classical Greek--that the undergraduate degree
there demanded, a position that strikes me as very akin to that of
oldaforementioned Ezra's railing against "kulchur") but the vast run of
colleges across this country--expecially those away from the "elite"--have
neither the time nor the faculty to engage in a great deal of critical
hair-splitting. 

In nine years of higher education at schools as diverse in their
conception of what makes a literary education (Boston U., U. or Arkansas
and Univ. of North Carolina), I have *never* had a reading of a text
forced down my throat in the way that you describe above. I hardly believe
my experience to be unique. It's one thing to provide context for
understanding a text (and Plato and Pound and Freud were all very
importantly political text in some ways, in addition to a number of other
things...) and its another to proclaim something as *the* reading of a
text. My experience shows that contemporary literature education actually
offers a much greater variety of interpretation than the kind of
dismissive scornful snobbery that characterized the generation of literay
critics raised up ona steady diet of F. O. Mathiessen and T. S. Eliot's
proclmations of what they looked at and saw to be good.

> Balance is very important, and the acadamy is not providing it. I know I
> sound like a cranky younger version of Frank Kermode here, but I am
> really suggesting balance. 

Without meaning to sound catty, you sound less like Kermode and more like
William Bennett here. Again, I don't see where this lack of balance is
actually occurring. To wit, during a recent mid-term examination in an
Intro to American Lit class here at UNC, the students were given the
option to write either on the religious views of the transcendentalists as
expressed in their writings or the narrative technique of HUCK FINN.
Thirty out of thirty-five chose the former, a topic which according to the
popular misconception of postmodernism and modern academics is so taboo as
to be practically anathema. Again, I make no claim to universality, but my
experience here shows that UNC is hardly pushing the envelope either in
reaction or in revolution, a condition that actually makes it a rather
nice place to be.

> In the US students can challange the pulpit, and "progressive"
> pedagogical practice should be augmenting such inputs, but what is most
> often heard in the classroom today, is statements and questions that are
> not indicative of "critical minds"  free to explore the richness of the
> tradition, but popular political agenda reflecting a blind leading the
> blind fury that niether listens to reason nor knows how to use it, but
> bows to passions, is swayed by sense alone, and lives in the present,
> heedless of the past. 

Can you give a practical example of this from your experience? What I hear
more than anything is actually silence, wich is of course also not
particularly indicative of a critical mind. I think the predominant
passion on this campus for a better part of the year is basketball. I have
seen maybe one or two teachers in over seventy courses that I've taken
over the years try to inject their personal politics overtly into their
classes and both failed miserably because of the general apathy of the
students. Now feminism and multiculturalism can be called "passions" by
some, but then I would argue that this is only a dismissive gesture at
those who don't want to admit that Eurocentrism and traditional
masculinist critical evaluation of the form exemplified by the New Critics
is just as markedly limited in its assumptions and viewpoint. I don't
really see when this golden age of education that seems to underly your
critique of modern education existed.

> The distinctive faculty of young men and women is his/her eager desire
> to investigate the truth.

Been a while since you've been in a classroom full of freshmen, hasn't it?
There's some truth to this, even though it is a wild idealization of
modern collegiate education. The fact of the matter is, that the majority
of kids coming to school today are not even remotely interested in
investigating the "truth" (believe me, I've tried to make them do it...).
Now that college education is practically mandatory for most jobs that
provide more than a sustenance wage, the distinctive faculty of more
students than not is his/her eager desire to make good grades, regardless
of the "truth".

> To stand up to a professor and say, wait just a minute, here. To do so,
> students must be free of pressing duties and cares, but they are busy
> earning the cash to pay for the insane bills of being a student

Can't agree enough with this statement, especially since it is exactly the
students who are willing to put themselves through the rigors of
simultanoeus work and school that are the very ones with enough
perspective to be good critical thinkers.

> and it is no wonder they feel their happiness incomplete as students,
> for they given the opportunity to studies the mysteries and marvels that
> excite young people when they open a book and discover a new world. 

Again, I think you'd be amazed at how few students really are unhappy with
their education for the reason that you've indicated. I can't even
count the number of students who have responded to my requests to work
through a potentially ambiguous question with responses like "I don't want
to work through it, I want to be told the right answer so I can *know*
what it is when somebody asks me." 

> "What is most appealing about young folks, after all, is the
> changes, not the still photograph of the finished character
> but the movie, the soul in flux...and education too, as
> Henry Adams always sez, keeps going on forever." SL.23

Again, a nice model for education before there were 8,000 two- and
four-year colleges acting as giant trade-schools in the American higher
educational system. I certainly sympathize with the sentiment and wish
more people shared it as you obviously do. Still, it's not as bad as you
think. There are still a number of students who consistently amaze and
astound me with their willingness to challenge something besides their
grade.

Not really disagreeing so much as trying to temper the rhetoric a little,

	Derek

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Derek C. Maus               | "What am I opposed to tell my customers?"
dmaus at email.unc.edu         | Swearingen said. "'Sorry, Washington says
UNC-CH, Dept. of English    | no more fanny packs for you; time to spend
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                            | It doesn't work that way."   --THE ONION
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