Friday, January 18, 2013

No Slack Need Apply



       Prerequisite to the Beginning 
                       Liberal Art

Elenchus to Aporia
 
My goal & aim in all classes is to under cut &
undermine &  confuse the issues , subvert &
tangle & twist what might otherwise be
measurable outcomes,  taunt & tweak, mock
& ridicule, spank  in manners of speaking so
that all my  students won’t know whether
they’re  coming or going,  selfish or unselfish
liberal or conservative, good or evil,  motivated
or lazy: & down and down we go, round &
round we go, loving  the din that we spin, the
spin that we’re   in under that old  black magic
called  language & liberal art.
Rigor & Innovation

Take risks, I say to my students, empowering them:
follow your gnosis, your bliss, be bold, think  outside
the box, question authority,  question everything, be
the change you want to see, don't postpone joy, be
here now for crying out loud --and make sure your
thesis-driven 3rd  draft is under my door by 4--or
else:  letter grade reduction, I'm not kidding.

Post-Literate, Neo-Oral Media is the Message

Not how much or what we know that counts so much
these bring-yr-own-mobile-media-device days but
whether we can put IT in play.   Need we argue?
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6 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 18, 2013 at 2:55 AM

    Breaking down instead of building; reinventing the wheel? knowledge blocks stacked up high, broken down to see whats under? Why?

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  2. SamJanuary 18, 2013 at 2:58 AM

    Breaking down precedes building up--demoralizaton precedes remoralization, die (so to speak) in order to be reborn. Otherwise it's just variation on the same old habits of mind. Well--that's the theory. No body love a demoralizer. Dirty work. Fundamental.

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 18, 2013 at 3:47 AM

    And moralization precedes demoralization and so on, into the wheel, round and round, or a spiral down and down. Merely reshuffling, or doing something different for the sake of difference?

    Learn to unlearn which creates more learning.

    ReplyDelete
  4. SamJanuary 18, 2013 at 3:52 AM

    Or a spiral up and up? Reshuffling is common sense sense of change. We call it sustainablity. Elenhus-to-Aporia is the death & rebirth notion of CHANGE: not mere reshuffling the old deck but maybe a new game altogether until, as you suggest it becomes old and needs to die. The kind of learning which I can learn to unlearn is probably not the kind of dermoralizaton to remoralization that is (say) evolutionary and meta-sustainable. ???

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  5. AnonymousJanuary 18, 2013 at 4:09 AM

    Causal learning? Breaking down without a clue, hope to gain something out of it? or at least explore the UN-trod path? Sustainable- not necessarily. Sustainable would be mainstream education- reliable, safe, a certain degree of future security?? New games-old tricks, old games- new tricks; same or different in a similar way??

    Learning that can be un-learnt - depends on the learner, rather than the learning, or??

    ReplyDelete
  6. SamJanuary 18, 2013 at 4:18 AM

    As opposed to holy shit and holy smokes, down and down I go, round and round I go, hating this spin I'm in & don't be talking sustainablity this is fucking demoralizing and I don't like it. (Elenchus to Aporia: the prerequisite to the beginnings of liberal art. Not to be confused with the liberal arts, those majors and minors that provide us with maybe life-long citizenship.) Something like that.

    ReplyDelete

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