File spoon-archives/marxism2.archive/marxism2_1996/96-04-08.195, message 5


From: glevy-AT-acnet.pratt.edu
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 23:34:20 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: PROBLEMATIZE THIS! VARIABLE CULTURAL CAPITAL


Ralph: welcome back! [I guess you managed to pay your telephone bill].

> Graduate students frighten me on G.P., but English Dept. people
> are the creepiest.  There are several reasons for this.  First,
> they all seem to be of one physical type, if you will permit me to
> essentialize.  They are all emaciated, cerebrotonic, will o' the
> wisps -- pale, skinny, non-material beings who appear to live
> their real lives in the ethereal world of abstractions, not in
> physical existence.

Hmm... do you think the above is a teensy bit of an over-generalization? 
What is the cause of their "emaciated" condition? Poor nutrition? Poverty? 

  I don't go for skinny people anyway, ... <snip>

Thanks for sharing that with us. BTW, am I skinny or fat? 

> Another thing bugs me about grad students: I can't imagine people
> getting into any cultural career devoid of real life experience
> outside of a rarefied artsy-fartsy existence.  Sure, they have had
> some taste of real life: maybe delivering pizzas, waiting on
> tables, flipping burgers, or other menial pursuits to bring in
> that needed cash, but their actual base of life experience is so
> limited, how can they possibly get outside the world of pure
> ideology long enough to have some real life to compare their
> ideological life with?

I don't have any statistics, but aren't a considerable percentage of grad 
students workers who attend classes at night?

It is, I agree, frightening to think that a large number of people 
graduate from high school and then spend the rest of their lives in the 
sometimes cloistered world of academia. Even where the students are 
predominantly working class, teaching can be a very indirect way of 
gaining experience with the "outside" world.

> Also, what happened to good English, being able to speak and 
> write in crisp, clear, sentences?  Why is the art of clear communication
> not inculcated, as we were taught back in grammar school?

So ... their English is becoming increasingly "problematic"? :-)

As an educator, I have to agree that average writing skills for high 
school graduates have deteriorated considerably in the last 20 years.
The issue, as you say, is "why." I think it has something to do with the 
deterioration of the public school system ... and what else? 

Perhaps the prevalence of the boob tube is a factor as well. How will 
computers affect average writings skills *and* the uneven distribution of 
writing skills by class, race, gender?

Jerry


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