Textual Assault on Campus

Textual Assault: Victims & Survivors



“Ultimately, though, Hinde's most ambitious
project was to turn Jane Goodall into a person
who not only wrote like a scientist and acquired
data like a scientist but who thought like a scientist.

What constitutes thinking like a scientist?

On that question their deepest conflict of opinion
and their most serious and extended battles of wills
emerged.

****************

I had no undergraduate degree. I had not been in
college, and there were many things about animal
behavior that I did not know.

I had not been taught, for example , that it was wrong
to give names to my study subjects--it would have
been more scientific to give them numbers.

I was dumbfounded by this practice.

For one thing, I did not think of the chimps as
“study subjects” but as individuals, each with
his or her own personality. I was learning from
them, not only about them. On a more practical
level, I would never have been able to remember
who was who if they only had numbers.”

Dale Peterson: Jane Goodall, the Woman
WhoRedefined Man.(pg. 276)

What constitutes educating like a scientist?

Turning students across the curriculum into those
who not only write like a scientist and acquire
data like a scientist but who think like a
scientist. Even the ODL students,
come and go, talking like
environmentalists. Eco
logicians .

Environmentally: to nurture a frame of mind-set
& an attitude that prioritizes aims & objectives,
assessment & accountability & (in humanities
territories) the ubiquitous Thesis Driven Essaying
where one is urged: 1) to say what I am going to
say, 2) go ahead and say it, 3) now: say what I
said! See! No surprise.

(he sang his didn’t he danced his did)

Account ability. Transparency. Assess ability..
Did what I said I'd do. Clarity. Consistency.
Coherence: my 3 Sisters-in-Law, amused.
Hard balls & Mallets croquet.



Read the papers—term, semester—where I
hear science-going-on. Hills abound with
the sound of science whether ancient history
or Herman Melville, German migration in the
19^th century; I could be writing about
Mahatma Gandhi, the terror in Tibet,
Local Food phenomena, inner city
drug use, home schooling, Emily
Dickinson: it'll sound scientific.

Sponge worthy:
simulating a refereed publication
or Garden Cabin Faculty Presentation.
Airport Conference. Grad School preparatory:
sounds the same: no matter the discipline or subject matter.

Science.
Research.
Liberal arts:
majors & minors.
Industrial Revolution.

Not Fine Arts students. Mostly exempt.
Or Writing Majors: they get a by, too.
(Imagine urging them to think like a
scientist, sound like a scientist!)

But the rest of us, both sides of the desk:
number the monkeys. Don't name. Protocol.
SOP. Lingua Frankly my dear you can HEAR it.
The sound of COURSES (101-403). If you got
ears-to-hear.