please don't shoot the kids
This post is a work in progress, as I do not know all the facts and figures pertaining to the tasering of a student at UCLA during the week of November 13th 2006.
My first reaction is to think that we are living in a very different collegiate world than we did even a few years ago. Pre 09/11, and pre Patriot Act it was -- arguably -- still possible to think about the university as a counter-space, a utopian space. I have posted about this in the teachers with and without guns essay. I think it is clear with the tasering of Mr. Tabatabainejad that we can no longer lay claim -- even in theory -- to such a space. The university is in the process of becoming, if it hasn't become already, something like a shopping mall -- a seemingly public space where private and/or semi-public security forces do in fact have the legal right (I think) to demand identification and cooperation. and if you don't cooperate, god help you.
Notably, the student's response and that of many of the others there resembled the reactions of folks still operating in the utopian-post hippy mindset. How dare you and ooh those pigs and there goes your patriot act. the outrage is undoubtedly justified, but the responses feel to me -- oddly -- nostalgic, as though they were produced by a time-warp, and the students thought it was 1970 and not 2006. I think such outrage comes too late -- it's an anachronistic emotion -- this outrage, this defiance.
That being said, students, professors, and all staff who care, need to put pressure on their campuses not to shoot the students -- with bb guns, bows and arrows, tasers, or bullets. i think this needs to happen through allied student organizations, the union, and the faculty senate. You can't shoot the kids.
In the meantime, students, professors and staff need to remind themselves that we live in a time, when -- like it or not -- racial profiling exists and is not going away, and we are all suspect. Empty rebellions against authority are just that, and we need to put our energies to more productive, more sophisticated use.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Sunday, November 12, 2006
A teacher for president
As often happens, sf -- that sneered upon genre of boy astronauts, smart talking robots, renegade computers, and scary monsters in space -- poses some of the most pertinent and unspoken questions of our time. Slavoj Zizek argues that movies like Independence Day and the Matrix rehearsed 09/11 and subconsciously understood that the catastrophe was coming. His contention is that pop culture -- and my riff on this would be sf in particular -- unleashes the return of the repressed, and the issues that can't come into consciousness in the public sector(s) can come "up" literally and find expression here.
The new and improved Battlestar Galactica resonates strongly to me as such a subconscious-busting narrative, and watching Season 1, I am struck by the ruckus that is raised by the character of the minister of education who, through a quirk of fate, becomes president of the colonies. That she is a woman is compounded by the fact that, to quote one character, she's a "school teacher." The general view is that a school teacher cannot possibly be equipped to handle matters of state, that a school teacher cannot possibly be expected to make life or death decisions, or be "tough" enough to lead. The genius of the series (and it is brilliant on many levels) is that in the first several episodes it is made abundantly clear to us that the school teacher, to use the parlance our times, knows her shit, and is more than ready and able to do what is necessary. She can also keep a state secret, and she is adept at working with others.
What the show makes visible to us is this country's absolute scorn for teachers, a derision "informed" by the sense that teachers are weak, "feminine" (hysterical, overly emotional, illogical and so on whether physically female or not), unrealistic, and unable to take charge.
The problem/repressed knowledge offered here is that a teacher really SHOULD be president. She has all the requirements: sympathy/empathy with/for others, the ability to read the emotional needs/dynamics of the group, the ability to keep order, as well as convey information in an efficient and clear manner, and in a time-appropriate fashion. Just think how different our international relationship with the rest of the world would be if a teacher were president, or even, if more teachers ran for public office. Just think about the management of Iraq. Play fair, don't speak out of turn, Halliburton, or you'l be sent to the principal (what a GREAT idea THAT is).
I hereby nominate a teacher for the office of President of the United States. Not a business person, not a military person, not an attorney.
A teacher.
But the fact is we don't WANT teachers out and about and being civically and politically active. And in this prejudice, we, the professorate, are at least somewhat complicit. Because we don't believe -- really -- in what teachers do. We think, heck we KNOW, that we are better, smarter, more educated, more intellectual, more refined thinkers, more theoretically sophisticated, and so on and so on.
If we don't believe in what teachers do, we need to tell them that. They may not, actually believe in what WE do, and that confrontation might yield to an interesting discussion, of where both professional groups fail, where we connect, and what we might need to do as a consortium, rather than as fragile and oppositional "allies."
I still think I'd rather have a teacher as prez than a professor.
As often happens, sf -- that sneered upon genre of boy astronauts, smart talking robots, renegade computers, and scary monsters in space -- poses some of the most pertinent and unspoken questions of our time. Slavoj Zizek argues that movies like Independence Day and the Matrix rehearsed 09/11 and subconsciously understood that the catastrophe was coming. His contention is that pop culture -- and my riff on this would be sf in particular -- unleashes the return of the repressed, and the issues that can't come into consciousness in the public sector(s) can come "up" literally and find expression here.
The new and improved Battlestar Galactica resonates strongly to me as such a subconscious-busting narrative, and watching Season 1, I am struck by the ruckus that is raised by the character of the minister of education who, through a quirk of fate, becomes president of the colonies. That she is a woman is compounded by the fact that, to quote one character, she's a "school teacher." The general view is that a school teacher cannot possibly be equipped to handle matters of state, that a school teacher cannot possibly be expected to make life or death decisions, or be "tough" enough to lead. The genius of the series (and it is brilliant on many levels) is that in the first several episodes it is made abundantly clear to us that the school teacher, to use the parlance our times, knows her shit, and is more than ready and able to do what is necessary. She can also keep a state secret, and she is adept at working with others.
What the show makes visible to us is this country's absolute scorn for teachers, a derision "informed" by the sense that teachers are weak, "feminine" (hysterical, overly emotional, illogical and so on whether physically female or not), unrealistic, and unable to take charge.
The problem/repressed knowledge offered here is that a teacher really SHOULD be president. She has all the requirements: sympathy/empathy with/for others, the ability to read the emotional needs/dynamics of the group, the ability to keep order, as well as convey information in an efficient and clear manner, and in a time-appropriate fashion. Just think how different our international relationship with the rest of the world would be if a teacher were president, or even, if more teachers ran for public office. Just think about the management of Iraq. Play fair, don't speak out of turn, Halliburton, or you'l be sent to the principal (what a GREAT idea THAT is).
I hereby nominate a teacher for the office of President of the United States. Not a business person, not a military person, not an attorney.
A teacher.
But the fact is we don't WANT teachers out and about and being civically and politically active. And in this prejudice, we, the professorate, are at least somewhat complicit. Because we don't believe -- really -- in what teachers do. We think, heck we KNOW, that we are better, smarter, more educated, more intellectual, more refined thinkers, more theoretically sophisticated, and so on and so on.
If we don't believe in what teachers do, we need to tell them that. They may not, actually believe in what WE do, and that confrontation might yield to an interesting discussion, of where both professional groups fail, where we connect, and what we might need to do as a consortium, rather than as fragile and oppositional "allies."
I still think I'd rather have a teacher as prez than a professor.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
A letter from Robert Gross, November 2nd, 2006
Dear Stephanie,
Have I ever told you my strange thought about teaching, which recurs more and more often to me, as a sort of broody fantasy, though perhaps really not a fantasy at all?
I think education in our society is cursed, much like the Nibelungen horde.
I think it is cursed because we sell something that shouldn’t be sold, but should be freely shared.
And all the insanity and greed, the power trips and rivalries and backstabbing come from that basic distortion of human values.
I’m supposed to go up to …. University tomorrow, and visit …. about the journal. The journal isn’t going well, and …. isn’t in good shape either.
Another good teacher on the pyre, I’m afraid, completely consumed by the insanity and dishonesty of it all. One who, I think, will persevere and sacrifice herself to the end, never quite admitting that she, like so many of us, have made the service greater than the god.
From Starbucks College, this is Robert Gross
Dear Stephanie,
Have I ever told you my strange thought about teaching, which recurs more and more often to me, as a sort of broody fantasy, though perhaps really not a fantasy at all?
I think education in our society is cursed, much like the Nibelungen horde.
I think it is cursed because we sell something that shouldn’t be sold, but should be freely shared.
And all the insanity and greed, the power trips and rivalries and backstabbing come from that basic distortion of human values.
I’m supposed to go up to …. University tomorrow, and visit …. about the journal. The journal isn’t going well, and …. isn’t in good shape either.
Another good teacher on the pyre, I’m afraid, completely consumed by the insanity and dishonesty of it all. One who, I think, will persevere and sacrifice herself to the end, never quite admitting that she, like so many of us, have made the service greater than the god.
From Starbucks College, this is Robert Gross
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