Formulations

The way it is a school points to the way in which it is not a school.

If I use the word continuity instead of sequence it’s because you need continuity of interaction to host sequence, whether it is a logical sequence or a nonsequitur sequence.

If I use the word dialogue it is because I’m trying to go to a word where I can host our interest in language, without assuming communication. It is mainly meant as a distinction from presentation/lecture etc. which are more likely to result in “message” or “drummage”.

You’ve got to pay attention to language. It is… necessary… for intellectual activity.
Our ways of speaking are different and thus our intellects are different. It is one of the better lessons of liberal arts college is that things appear in a context.

There can be a fruitful friction that comes from the opposing interests between administrator and teacher.
When it exists, it is fruitful for the organization, not necessarily for the individuals in conflict.

I’m skeptical of ranting in the classroom. (I am guilty of frequently ranting in the classroom.)

What I’m referring to is a time when we complain about something we can’t or won’t act upon. A rant starts off as a critique, then moves external to the thing being critiqued, leaving the classroom behind, inadvertently reinforcing the distinction between “school life” and “real life”. Examples include: attributing everything to external forces; anti-conversational gestures such as shouting or preaching at everyone; cursing out people who aren’t present…

My question is: when is ranting a step towards changing the thing ranted about?

Keynote syndrome.

This is probably stolen from somewhere:

1. The function of mass public-schooling in industrial society is to keep young people out of the labor market. Otherwise, in the presence of machines, adult labor becomes too cheap.
2. Training for actual jobs is still provided “on the job” not in schools.

My students are not determined by their upbringing. <--I don't say this because there isn't evidence supporting that they are, but rather because I want to generate evidence to the contrary.

My response to lifelong learning is lifelong kindergarten.

Suicide is the ultimate reverse psychology.

david.gif

Fatalism renders critique un-necessary.

Ignorant intellectualism.

Society produces people who have nothing.
People who have nothing, have nothing to lose.
Society must give people something to lose.

“Immortality” is a word. If you come up with something that you want to last longer than your life, WRITE IT DOWN. Words were never mortal in the first place, so that’s a reason to work with words, not immortality.

Reading the world in order to better observe the words.

Instead of dialog we have the appearance of participation.

That’s why so many commercials address “you” — so “you”re stuck reading something written to “you”. The language creates the appearance of dialog where there is none to be found.

Your notes on our conversation are not “transcriptions”. They are selections. I read notes in which I’ve been paraphrased, or my respondents have been paraphrased, in order to conform to the positions of the note-taker (who oftentimes declined to insert their positions in the dialogue itself!) And I’ve seen how these “transcriptions” are revised and idealized so that they become the final word on how the conversation leaves traces. But these revisions and idealizations are attributed to those who had the conversation, further hiding the role of the revising and idealizing note-taker.

There’s enough email coming at me to smother my smithereens of attention for reading and writing completely.

rat.gif