Rain dances and Reality TV

Townhall.com ^ | 3/19/2006 | Mary Grabar

[cinives]

Each time the college instructor opens a new edition of an anthology of world literature or American literature, she discovers more pages from those like Milton and Dante cut. To take their place are such “texts” as Native American rain dances and scalp dances.

To teach such material from the now fashionable “oral tradition” presents a challenge to the professor, though. For as the instructor manuals state, such chants are performance-dependent. She faces the task of doing justice to a chant that celebrates ripping the scalp off an enemy.

Now, indeed, the enemy, Even one who thought himself a man, In a shower of arrows, In a shower of war clubs, With bloody head, The enemy, Reaching the end of his life, Added to the flesh of our earth mother.

If she teaches at a typical college, she is required to place the department’s policy objective of teaching about gender, cultural, and ethnic diversity on her syllabus. She feels the pressure to include something from the rather extensive Native American section. She knows at least one student will make a comment about lack of diversity in the reading list on her evaluation at the end of the semester.

So she includes a rain dance or a scalp dance and begs out of doing a performance. Some of her students carry the lecture during this awkward class period. They have already read this Zuni Scalp dance, and may even have learned some of the Native American languages.

The chatter before class is about the previous night’s Survivor episode. There is a correlation. It’s not only that students dress in similarly skimpy attire.

No, the buff contestants on Survivor, or any of the other reality programs like the mating rituals called dating shows, are not similar in terms of their connection to nature, er, Mother Earth, but in the fact that they are on a show whose popularity we owe to a culture that has reverted back to oral mode. We can thank our educational system. The continuing decline in literary reading, as reported in 2004 by the National Endowment for the Arts, has been bolstered by an educational establishment that has insisted on incorporating tools and forms that subvert the Western form of linear and logical thought—employed while reading a book.

And who would want to read a traditional book again after the experience in a college classroom where a “text,” has been “deconstructed” by a smug, literature-hating professor? To read the classics with any kind of enjoyment other than the mean-spirited ones of demonstrating the delusions and secret political sins of the author is considered to be hopelessly naïve and unsophisticated in the more prestigious universities of the Western world.

This attitude emerges from the project of the 60s radicals to do away with Western logic and philosophy, indeed writing itself. Abby Hoffman’s statement, “In Woodstock nation there are no writers—only poet warriors,” became de facto policy.

Feminists have aided their radical colleagues by introducing into the college classroom the “maternal presence” with group work and honoring ‘different ways of knowing.’ Pictures are used and increasingly job descriptions call for the ability to incorporate multi-media (i.e., with pictures and sounds) technology into one’s pedagogy.

Circular reasoning takes the place of logic. For example, when I was in graduate school, a professor allowed one of his feminist students to hand in a paper that was pasted together randomly on different colored sheets like a quilt. Feminist journals are devoted to “performance art,” including that of “sex workers.” And smearing chocolate over one’s naked body has been deemed superior to the dialogues of Socrates. The bikini-clad female contestants on Survivor may not have attended graduate school but their academic sisters have given their scholarly blessings to such endeavors implicitly by their published papers on Madonna and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

As a result, the atmosphere in the classroom mirrors that of a reality show. College students today intuitively know that the role of the educator—whether kindergarten teacher or college professor--is to be a “facilitator.” But what is facilitated is posturing by leaderless students who quite naturally revert to popularity contests. Who will be voted off the island? The student most likely to ‘stay’ or be affirmed by the nurturing teacher is the one who displays the most sensitivity to the emotional hot-button issues of the day—usually involving oppression, like the oppression of the Zunis.

Thanks to the efforts of Abby Hoffman and his philosophical descendents who now rule the classrooms, we deny our children and young adults the opportunity to engage in philosophical and imaginative thought. Rather than reading good literature or even following staged dramas we, in a savage, voyeuristic manner, watch staged Darwinian competitions for popularity, both in the classroom and at home.

[cinives]

University classrooms turned into popularity contests. I guess tenure is a good thing if the professor doesn't want to teach P.C. garbage.

[squarebarb]

In some ways, it's appeasement.

As student's attention-spans decrease with every decade, they become more uncontrollable. They can't think about one thing for a whole hour.

So the teachers appease them with son et lumiere.

Same thing with the 'mental mapping' business, which Rush explored (re: Bongo Bennish) -- this is sort of pawing sweetly over your student's prejudices to find out what they 'think' about an area before giving them the info.

It appeases them, flatters them.

I don't know when or how things are going to change given our limp, media-frightened Republicans but if we don't change it our enemies will change it for us.

[The Great RJ]

An upcoming Women and Gender Studies Conference at my university features the following topics:

Sexism in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

“Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: Religion's Hindrance on Gender and Sexuality”

Burger King and Dairy Queen: The Role of Meat in Ulysses

I might add this is at a small church affiliated liberal arts college in the Midwest

[cinives]

That's really pathetic. It makes you wonder why they think anyone should take them seriously as scholars.

There was an article a few days ago talking about students at Lehigh U demanding more "womyn and ethnic studies". So now we know Lehigh is not a school you should go to for serious study, either.

[cinives]

I was lamenting to my kid a few days ago about the difference between todays' hign schools and when I went to school.

When I went, the teachers didn't care what you thought, they just wanted you to behave, do the work, participate, and do your best. Now, they want to psychoanalyze any kid who appears to be different from the rest of the group think in the class (usually translated to agreeing with the teacher).

[little jeremiah]

More insanity in institutions of higher learning [sic].

If all fedgov monies were removed from all institutions of higher learning, it would be a new world! After the cold turkey shock, there would be vast improvements.