Tuition, Intuition, Counter Tuition: and the Greatest of These Is? of

Never on Fridays  My Mid Term Examination.

“Those things for which the most money is demanded

are never the things which the student most wants.  

Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill,

while for the far more valuable education which he gets

by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries

no charge is made.”  Thoreau’s Walden

Ok—maybe “:most cultivated” offends your sense of liberal

democratic egalitarianism and plays into the guilt of

“privilege” and elitism.  

Our terms determine us affectively. It’s difficult to hear

words like “cultivated” and “hierarchy” and stupid and

idiocy—not to mention  politically correct taboo words

we must never mention in public—without  unconscious

automatic emotional puppetry knee-jerking an affective

“value” (moral, ethical) response as opposed to a descriptive

ah-I-see:  is-what-it-is aesthetic response

What I just wrote:   a mix of value-laden terms that never

the less attempt merely to describe and not judge.

Is Thoreau describing (aka: aesthetic ) or is he judging (ethic)

in his statement about what costs, what’s free?

Look: SEE           (aesthetics, describe mode)

Oh, my: Judge    (ethics: value mode)

Can you tell the difference in modes?

Can you tell the relationship?

                                                       Which mode dominates?

I often have to add the disclaimer: LOOK , I’m just describing,

not judging, because much of what I try to say sounds judgmental

(because of how Terms Determine Us Affectively) and so: it’s

a wrench to convince others whom  I may describe  as  idiotic or

stupid or  confused or ignorant as beings being just right for the
practice of liberal art.  

Or –the consider the  claim that what your tuition pays for

isn’t the value of your education.   Sounds like judgment, but
may be merely description.    Which?

Notions like these confuse the already confused (just describing

here) because to deconfuse the confused FEELS like a confusion,

know what I mean?  Know what I’m saying/

It’s why sustained argument (building up a “shared” shine)

is so important in converse action.  Takes time to re-shuffle

the deck so to speak—to shift around the terminological cards
we’ve been dealt and to see thru the conventions we swim in
(our alma matrix).  

Get it?  

The GET IT sounds patronizing (see: right there is how our

language makes meat puppets of us all and I’m just describing,

not  judging—why should the “devil” have all the best descriptions?)

I’m just asking. Get IT?   

IT, I said. Do I always have to spell  IT out?  The more general

we are with each other, the more agreement. It’s when we begin

to specify that IT hits the fan & the disagree-ability kicks in. 

Not that there’s anything wrong with THAT. It’s Good Thing to
disagree as long as our over all environmentalism is Agree able.
Need we argue?    Agreeing to disagree: don’t get much bettern
that—in school mode at  least. School and Be Schooled. Play and
Be Played.

Or what’s a college for?

Get it?

Best Sam.  

Enjoy the break.  Feel free to argue with this (punch RESPOND

TO  ALL and we can sustain schooling without borders right thru

the lapse, gap, discontinuity of your tuition and non-tuitional

education. )