Posted on 01/19/2010 10:27:28 AM PST by bs9021
Craig’s List
Malcolm A. Kline, January 19, 2010
In Boston, an English professor is trying to sell his class on society’s collective guilt when said students are already believers in personal responsibility. “We must encourage students to access the antagonist class positions of texts in order to demonstrate how the oppositional voices contained in them identify evidence of class struggle,” Christopher Craig writes in the December 2009 issue of Radical Teacher, “a socialist, feminist and anti-racist journal on the theory and practice of teaching.” “Through this critical process, we can show how the values and interests of the dominant class are not universal but repressive, intended to keep the power relations between the ruling and working class one-sided.”
“For most of us, learning to read texts this way helps us to see through the ruling class ideology that exists in everything from literature to the nightly news.” Craig teaches at Emmanuel College, a Catholic institution of higher learning.
“Hence, our ability to grasp and practice this kind of criticism provides us and our students with the tools necessary to understand literature from a class-based perspective and to acknowledge the ideological forces that attempt to shape our lives,” Craig argues.
Radical Teacher is published by the board of trustees of the University of Illinois.
“They had been encouraged to understand homelessness, unemployment, and crime, for example, as the result of various levels of personal responsibility or just bad luck,” Craig writes of his students. Craig teaches a course on the Political Novel.
“They are respectful, hard working and open-minded,” Craig writes of his students. “But their liberalism is rooted strongly in the idea of American individualism.”...
(Excerpt) Read more at academia.org ...
I’m not sure, but I think I’ve determined that a small portion of this post is in English.
Looks like 'teach' is telling the students to read "Atlas Shrugged" to me.
>>“We must encourage students to access the antagonist class positions of texts in order to demonstrate how the oppositional voices contained in them identify evidence of class struggle,”<<
First, I would want to know what he means by “antagonist class” and then, which texts? Further, I would ask what he means by “oppositional voices”. Does he simply mean the things the “antagonist class” is saying?
I’ve found that the more time and effort one spends forming a sentence, the more clear and concise it is.
What course is this man teaching?
Does it matter? I expect his yammer would be the same whether he is teaching Death to the Class Opponents of the Glorious Marxist Revolution 414 or Introduction to Chemistry 101.
Maybe it's just me, but what the heck is he trying to say, and has anyone noticed that academics in the liberal arts write like this most of the time. It's like a game to use the most words to say the most incomprehensible drivel.
Just a thought. Marxists always sound like that. Their thoughts are always dense and hard to follow. Just for giggles look at the communist manifesto sometime. Deciet is always complicated.
Contrast that with how the declaration of independence, the constitution, and the writings of the founders are clearly understandable.
My reading: "encourage students to access the antagonist class positions of texts" --
Encourage students to "look for" class antagonism in the texts in order to find evidence of class struggle.
It's like the way scientists who "look for" Anthropogenic Global Warming have an easy time "finding" it. It's bad "science" and it's bad "critical thinking".
It is always the same rigged game of Totalitarian, Communistic agendas of equality via initial indoctrination, then systematic government then ultimately, the sword.
Sounds like he should be considered by Obama to be the Deputy Comrade Minister Czar of Class Struggle.
Argh! You beat me to it. I thought precisely the same thing.
that is,,, deceit is always complicated.
I thought it was incomprehensible dribble because I skipped lunch.
CLASS STRUGGLE= Students in Craig’s class struggling because they can’t figure out what he’s saying.
Marxism for Dummies.
Standard of this type of course.
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