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Found another graduate student sobbing at my office door today. Said her parents had disowned her for wanting to get a PhD in English. They told her it's just not "practical," and even asked The Question—the one that every humanities major dreads most: "What are you going to do with that?" I told her that her education is an end in itself. Made her feel better.
Paolo Freire
I'm going to try to stay cool-headed here. But Stanley, you're going in the wrong direction. If you knew anything about my "critical pedagogy movement," you'd know that education is the designated apparatus for raising up the repressed, not for helping them understand that Lolita is the great novel of kitsch Americana motels.
I thought we had already agreed to disagree, Paolo. I think humanities are about the human condition, not to take students to the streets on contemporary issues of Marxism and post-colonialism. It's such a comedown!
Paolo Freire
That's because you are the oppressor in the oppressor-oppressed binary.
'Fraid I'm going to weigh in here, too, Stan—if I may. People gain a lot more power by knowing the horrors of racism and colonialism than from finding out that Coleridge smoked opium before he wrote "Kubla Khan"—cool as that is.
Feeling a little ganged up on, guys. If we don't concern ourselves (deeply) with the craft of prose, syntax, subject-verb agreement usage, composition, and the whole writing process/product thing, who will?
Sharon O'Dair
If we're lucky, no one.
E.D. Hirsch
Education just reveals the all of society's inherent inequalities, Stanley. We need students to get some cultural literacy, too. Everything has political consequences. You white male of privilege. I hear you drive a Jaguar…
I'm going to try to stay cool-headed here. But Stanley, you're going in the wrong direction. If you knew anything about my "critical pedagogy movement," you'd know that education is the designated apparatus for raising up the repressed, not for helping them understand that Lolita is the great novel of kitsch Americana motels.