"Revenge of the Intellect"

         A Necessary Question:

  The Purpose, Goals, Aims and
Measurable Outcomes of Liberal Art?
 
Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense: the starkest madness.
 
 ’T is the majority
 In this, as all, prevails.
 
 Assent, and you are sane;
 Demur ,—you ’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
                                       (Emily D.)
 
I factor-in, invite & welcome much that’s
banished as misfortune in sanitary classrooms:

Indeterminacy,

Uncertainty,
Stochastic Process,
Muddle & Mess,

Constellational Confusion  &
Chaos as well as Random-to-Order Ratios
& Unpredictable Improvident Free Play & Loose Ends.
 
Daemons appropriately suppressed in normal course-

load-bearing  classrooms where Order  reigns &
nurtures Clarity Uber Alles so  as to  get r done,
cover ground, meet objectives, take the credit and run.

A student came in  to ask  "what’s the point of HONORS? 

I  like talking about  literature but not researching it—

looking stuff  up to see what other people say.  I may drop

Honors for a minor  in creative writing: what do you  think?"
 
Need  I make  my academics  stronger?  More or less
challenging? Engaging? How?  More readings? more quizzes
& papers?  Stringent rigor? Raise the bar?

Pedagogical questions.  Necessary.
   
Ratcheting up for excellence in  these  days of  economic

distress and  uncertainty. .
 
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.

Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the
world.  To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the
world - in order to set up a shadow world of  “meanings.”
 
Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.

By reducing the work  of art to its content and then

interpreting that, one tames the work of  art.
Interpretation  makes art manageable, comformable.
                                (Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation”)