File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2002/lyotard.0212, message 36


From: "Lydia Perovich" <fauxprophete-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: EGS
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 09:32:26 -0400


The elite school question is exactly the right one, Eric.  Tuition fees are 
not negligible, and it is almost understood that the attendee will hold a 
passport that will allow easy border crossings.  Also, a look at the names 
of ex-students reveals an all-US list, even an all WASP list?  But I am 
hoping Diane will tell us more both about the attendees and the role that 
Lyotard’s ideas played in the EGS inception.

I’ve recently read Stanley Aronowitz’s book on US universities *The 
Knowledge Factory*, which is his own ‘report on knowledge, year 2000’.  He 
details how the coporatization of universities works, the incredible 
shrinking phenomenon of the ‘secure’ job in the academe, and blatant 
dependence of academic pursuits to economico/political winds of time. The 
most revealing thing to me, though, was the argument that even in the 
relatively safe ‘Golden Age’ for academic professionals in humanities, 
social sciences and theoretical science (what was it, late forties, and the 
fifties?) the funds that enabled a life-long and secure professional 
developments at those departments came from the industry of the Cold War – 
military contracts, research for the defence and ‘national security’, 
sources like that.  So not only was the usual suspect (science) fed by the 
“military-industrial complex” – we the fuzzies benefited from that 
dependence to a remarkable degree.

What will happen to non-profitable knowledge and its wandering preachers?  
Also, what will happen to the kind of knowledge that does not fit into any 
‘national security’ (or national anything, for that matter) scheme?  Is 
MacIntyre right, do we really need a new/old, teleological concept of human 
nature in order to be able to sustain an educational system that includes 
philosophical, religious, literary studies, political theory, and even 
theoretical physics?

How do I defend reading to my niece, why is it good to sit down and spend 
hours immobile, focused on printed lines?

Which reminds me: does anybody know of an educational system that fosters 
time-consuming reading?  I can’t think of any.  In each that I passed 
through, long and diverse readings figured as an inefficient, inexpedient 
activity.  After spending about 20 years in one type of school or other, I 
recently found myself shocked by the open-ended field of reading that I 
faced once (and temporarily) out of school.  I could not read anything for 
months.  The freedom to read whatever I wanted at any particular time 
stunned me.  It de-motivated me to read.  Such was the degree I’ve become 
one with structuring mechanisms of educational institutions.

I am not in favour of various Summerhills or home-schooling either.  Some 
alternative schools (such as EGS?) and good PhD programs offer hope.  But 
what’s your experience with the academic Star System?  How is it to work 
with the Olympians?

L


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