Medicine Show Academics
When I was in college at St. Louis University, I had a very interesting American history professor; he was a natural storyteller and realist. He also liked to poke fun at academia, and he would regale his students with stories about the pseudo-intellectualism he had encountered. For instance, he had been the principle at a high school and had to take a continuing ed course to keep his certificate current. Now, anyone who has taken an education theory course knows it is a semester-long Bull Session. My teacher, who was very busy, had a presentation due, but hadn`t had time to prepare anything. It was show time!
He carted out an overhead projector (Educrats love overhead projectors) and proceeded to draw overlapping circles while narrating about a fictitious ``concentric circular theory of education``. He made up the entire presentation-and he received an A!
This article (which was posted by Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker) is a classic example of ``academics`` (read: medicine show barkers) needing to justify their endowments. Read it here at your own peril; you may suffer an aneurysm trying to figure out what is being discussed!
He carted out an overhead projector (Educrats love overhead projectors) and proceeded to draw overlapping circles while narrating about a fictitious ``concentric circular theory of education``. He made up the entire presentation-and he received an A!
This article (which was posted by Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker) is a classic example of ``academics`` (read: medicine show barkers) needing to justify their endowments. Read it here at your own peril; you may suffer an aneurysm trying to figure out what is being discussed!
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 5:31 AM
1 Comments:
Tim -- I love this - it reminds me of a little stunt I pulled in a freshman English class way back when. We were studying modern poetry, and there was a section on "concrete poetry" - which seemed to be kind of a kid's game of writing a sentence like: The frog jumped out of the pond -- and the word "frog" was placed higher than the other words -- (get it? get it?) The bearded and sandaled prof solemnly told us that the purpose of concrete poetry was to elicit a reaction from the audience and we were all instructed to come up with our own example. Well, I thought this was about the biggest bunch of bullhockey I'd ever heard, and I wasn't about to waste my time typing something like raindrops, dropping down the page, etc. So I simply took a sheet of blank paper and submitted it as my "poem". When the time came the poems were all laid out on a table at the front of the room and the class paraded around the poems to gauge reaction to the various efforts. Well, needless to say, mine got a lot of reaction -- that was the whole point right? The prof was really mad -- he demanded to know who did this? I told him it was my project and then proceeded to explain that I was making a statement about figure vs. ground -- and how we pay attention to the figure, but fail to appreciate the ground of something. (In reality of course, I was making my statement of protest at how stupid the whole idea was). Well -- to my chagrin, and a little embarrassment -- he immediately retreated and gazed at me with newfound respect and awe -- and seemed really impressed and taken aback. Thus -- my career as a modern artist was prematurely brought to an end, as I realized with horror how easy it was to fool someone. I've always felt vaguely guilty - but after his impressed reaction -- could I really admit to him that I was playing a joke on him? That would have been too cruel.
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