I don't get it

[maevele]

when educated people are pig ignorant about lives other than their own. Do they just not know anyone not just like them, or do they just not pay attention? Because I am a dropout. I should have an excuse to be ignorant. and sometimes I am. I don't have formal training in critical thinking, or other's cultures, or any of it. So if I can see how your educated, sophisticated intellectual ass is hanging out, what's your excuse?


I guess it must be either only knowing people like themselves, or not paying attention. If it is the first, how does that happen without *trying* to recuse yourself from the "others?" Are most people's surroundings much more homogenous? Is madison wisconsin some extreme example of melting pot diversity? I'd think just being at college would have given these people a chance to interact with people who are not just like them in all ways.

And if it is the second, how do you get by in life without noticing the lives of other people around you? Do you only ignore those different from you, or everyone? And how do you fit in to the world around you if you ignore so many people?

Is there some complexity here that explains why my alleged "betters" don't get other people?

Comments

[maevele.livejournal.com]

but you'd think just being at a college would mean you interact with people not just like you, right?

[kynn.livejournal.com]

lol no, honey

and interacting doesn't mean you learn or listen or care

[maevele.livejournal.com]

I still don't get it then.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Don't forget that the neocons have paid very large $alarie$ and many other perk$ including actual employment with large $alarie$ and health in$urance, and even publication of books underwritten by thinktanks and other in$titution$ funded by those they $erve. They have been providing college education and funding to the grave to these so-called intellectuals since Nixon.

This is why liberals, progressives, etc. are poor, most of all, don't own the media. Because the media is owned by those others. But liberals haven't funded themselve. Look at what a disaster Air America was -- the answer to rush limcheese. The Huffington Post? That's what there is. We are not funded by our own. We're often not even respected by our own. We're always told to do the work for the 'exposure,' as if intellectual and creative work works like the mumps.

Love, C.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

My experience at college was that _I_ interacted with people who weren't just like me, but that most of the kids there were white upper-middle class folks.

'Course, I went to a private college.

I think Naomi is right; college is supposed to help you develop critical thinking skills, but what it more often than not does is teaches you how to cover your ass and 'sound smart.'

I was very unusual in college and in grad school in that I was willing to ask questions that exposed my ignorance (and in that my dad was a mechanic, but perhaps that's a subject for another post). This gained me a very bad reputation amongst insecure people.

But if you can't expose your ignorance, you can't get RID of your ignorance, and if you expose your ignorance online and people point it out, if you're an insecure person you feel you have to try to defend yourself instead of treating the experience as a great way to rid yourself of a particular ignorance.

Sadly, insecure people are 99% of academia. I fucking hate academia.

Perhaps that should have been my subject line. I feel like it's set UP to prove that people in academia are superior to everyone else either morally, intellectually, ethically, and intellectually.

Which is, of course, a pile of rot and couldn't be further from the truth.

Also, most academics live in white, upper-middle class enclaves. My neighbor across the street is an exception, but he isn't white, either. Or Christian.

I am sorry; I am rambling. I think I am still very, very angry with Moon, and with academia in general.

[naomikritzer]

OK, this puts me in mind of a story from my years at college which I think illustrates part of the problem.

This happened at one of the workshops on the day of the town's Take Back the Night Rally. I can't remember how I wound up at this particular workshop, but it was about class, and it was more or less a consciousness-raising session, run by a grownup (i.e., not one of the students). What I remember was that there was one young woman among the students at this workshop who was a student at my college, and who was POOR. Really, really poor. And she started talking and couldn't stop because it was like, FINALLY she was somewhere that someone was going to understand her.

She said, "It's so isolating. My friends will ask me to meet them at the snack bar and I say no, I can't, I have no money. They say, oh, just get a cup of coffee or something! and they DON'T GET IT because when they say 'I'm so broke!' they mean they only have a hundred dollars left in their checking account and when I say I have no money I mean I have NOTHING. Not even 50 goddamn cents for a cup of coffee."

I remember this very clearly because I was absolutely one of the clueless people she was talking about. I couldn't spend money like water but I could certainly order pizza if I was hungry at 10 p.m. And absolutely I had friends who could not, but my privilege, and their lack of privilege, had been COMPLETELY invisible to me prior to this point.

In part, I was clueless because the college I went to makes some effort to minimize the class distinctions (in a good way) -- all on-campus activities are free. You can see plays, concerts, movies, athletic events, etc., without the need for spending money. They have a no-car policy that is not super well enforced but discourages the more show-offy sort of rich people from coming. But, also, acknowledging these class distinctions was (and still is) stigmatized.

So. Although my college did strive for diversity, the pressure to conform combined with the uniformity in experience created by a small-college environment meant that a lot of the time, there was this illusion that everyone (no matter how different their background) was basically just like you, for values of "you" that were white, middle class, etc.

There were opportunities to experience the full diversity of the campus but they were easy to avoid, if that's what you preferred to do. We did have a diversity requirement for our classwork, but I'm pretty sure you could fulfill it with classes that let you learn about diverse people who'd been dead for centuries. Also, in a classroom, discussion tended to be focused on the material. Occasionally it would tread into personal territory, but that wasn't something professors could orchestrate or demand.

[naomikritzer]

(And I hope I don't sound like a Sh*tt*rly sockpuppet for bringing up class -- this story is just a good illustration of how an area of privilege was rendered largely invisible to the students who had this privilege. Race, obviously, was visible, but the same set of dynamics helped to create the illusion that we were all exactly alike even if we looked different.)

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

I think this entire conversation is about class -- about how maevele is wondering why people who put on such middle-class academic airs about tolerance and largemindedness are intolerant and smallminded.

WS only uses class to prevent people talking about other stuff. You weren't doing that, not remotely.

Either way, let's not let WS own 'class,' okay? There's a lot to unbundle in class, especially as per this convo.

[sophy.livejournal.com]

THIS so much. Just because I roll my eyes whenever this one individual brings up class, doesn't mean I roll my eyes whenever issues around class are brought up otherwise. It's a legitimate issue, or as you say, bundle of issues.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

My experience of college and view of it at the time was that college was supposed to give you job training where applicable and a piece of paper to help you get said job.

High school is where you are supposed to learn critical thinking. College is where you learn to write like people actually write for publications (or you are supposed to anyhow, I think U.S. colleges fail in this regard) and where you study more advanced topics in your chosen field by it academia, medicine, teaching, linguistics, foreign service, math, etc. Oh yeah, and you learn time management.

The things I learned about other folks came mostly outside the classroom. The classroom itself did include some interesting learnings and readings I wouldn't have otherwise encountered and interesting, adult discussions that couldn't be had in high school, but that wasn't really part of my goal as such.

The workload I experienced as High School part II (now with more independence!), but that's because we did blue book essays and other things at my high school that most folks don't do until college.

I did not learn how scholarship and publishing worked until I studied abroad at Edinburgh Uni my junior year. U.S. college is a failure in that regard. You are expected to figure it out yourself.

Anyhow, college can have a point to it, but it depends on the subjects you take.

For many it's just a hoop to jump through to get to the next hoop.