much interested in the established curriculum either.
(Bill Morgan, The Typewriter is Holy:: the Complete,
Uncensored History of the BEAT Generation)
The SPHINX.
The form asks that we specify for each academic year:
(1) "Change or Decision Made,"
(2) "Rationale/Supporting Evidence,"
(3) "Summary of Impact."
And have you modified beating your wife? so to speak
assuming decisive changes and rationales and supporting
evidence of impact is unquestionably a Good Thing (as
Martha Steward would say) & variations on wife-beating
stands for my control tactics and strategy in my courses;
me: pedagogical wife-beater automatically assumed; how
else get it done? IT, I said. Done.
Impact.
My ongoing maybe immature probably boring to all you
good soldiers rebellion against SACS & SACS-ism is
simply to call attention to what it, in its attention efficiency,
ignores: the dark side of SACS--it's attention deficiency. .
The opposite of a profound truth, says Neils Bohr, is another
profound truth. I'll grant SACS Profound Truth Status
IMPROVEMENTALISM:
Who doesn't want to not get better, raise your hand.
But where's the antithesis? The dark side?
"Your job is to teach us how-to-think, a student member
of a task force told us all one afternoon. Next day I asked
my classes: who here doesn't know how and wants to
learn--raise you hand.
A manic, one-sided, un-tempered, un-checked IMPROVE-
MENTALISM is like planting my field in corn year after year
after year--no shabat, sabbatical, no lying fallow, no fallowship
of empty nothing-ness, no mere chaos and anarchy rearing
it's beautiful head so to speak.i
Got to be voluntary, yes? Like guitar or piano, how-to-think
practice. Improve-mentalism. If you force me to show-evidence
of improvement of what I learned, of what they learned, how
they got better and better, won't I show it? Of course..
Document it, too. Or else. Compliance.
Your goodness must have edge to it,
else it is none, says Emerson, and the
doctrine of hatred must be preached
as counter-action to the doctrine of
love when that pules and whines.
My Decision and Changes Made: I will stand for system-failure,
weakness, muddle and mess, what the? what the hey? The
antagonist to IMPROVE- MENTALITY, the don't-know-what-
I'm-doing but cultivating the ignorance one's growth requires.
I long ago gave up correcting and grading students,
relinquishing the grade-gun which I realized was the
chief wife-beater motivation (ex officious authority)
driving them into 8;00 classes, reading assignments,
harassing texts, writing papers, taking quizzes (to keep
gnosis to the grind stone)and exams to take the credit
and run,
A form of domestic violence so much a part of the
culture you might just as well force Joe Fish to define
wet as expect any of us to acknowledge the violence
we inflict in the name of industrialized education &
improve-mental studies and leadership programs.
Cliterectoral circumcision seems a violation to us but
them that do it, swimming inside their culture: it's custom,
and merely part of groaning-up and the only reason I can
see-thru our conventions ( the harm we call educating)
in case you wondered is because I'm enlightened.
Probably invaded by the whole-y spirit.
You got a problem with that?
Beg to differ, please.
We can argue.
Actually, most of you know what I'm talking about, but
how can you say it? Turn it up? Put it in play? It would
be demoralizing. Emperor's New Clothing. Lesser of
evils. We conspire to force the issue and call it voluntary:
the quest for knowledge and intellectual freedom. We call
it (gun-to-the-head) liberal art.
Where are the clothes lines? T-Shirt Testimony?
My rationale:
Once I dropped the quibble of correction and rate-grading I found I
could do some justice to encouraging the play of ideas, the mess &
guess, trial and erroring, the sense, non-sense, and no-sense-at-all
mothering invention & innovation, fooling around with images and
language which many of you in your rigorous disciplines feel the
need to keep regulated & under control & probably see no advantage
in laissez faire over lasso fair; but my territory heads toward boundaries
yet unknown & the immeasurable sponsoring of stalwart, robust
pioneering. Can't do this with grade-guns at the temples.
(Not to mention benefits from attenuating if not eliminating mutual and
reciprocal brown-nosing : an emergent phenomena naturally rising up
under ongoing duress to please both sides of the desk, or else. Viral.}
Summary of Impact:
The impact of my relinquishing impact as motivator, agenda-driver,
Get R Done, Cover Ground practical and instrumental instructional
non-smart phone class room informational old school non- educing,
non- innovational encouraging “educational” practice.
failure.
Might as well build an ice cream parlor in hell and attempt to o no
injustice to hot and cold. Hot wins , damnit. Always
The vacuum (gap, chasm, chaos) I provide in my courses is collapsed by
the surround-sound measurable aims & outcomes instrumental goals &
supporting demonstrable evidence expected to show cause whether it’s
there or not makes no never minding. I’ll take you there.
Mission Impossible.
My classes (if not courses) are a joke.
A few get it (eureka) but many are like
children left a behind despite the village
it takes to raze them.
How could it be other wise?
Got to love it.
xxxxooo, Sam
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