[New-Poetry] "The Crisis of the Humanities Officially Arrives"

[Anny Ballardini]

My reference goes to state teachers, high school teachers, employed for life
who literally 'read the newspaper' in class, undisturbed by the chaos. As
per professors, you are right, privileges abound in the hands of a numbered
few while other less important professors work for free or with a tiny
scholarship, or for very little money. I am anyhow for a liberal competitive
system, although those who judge are human beings and as you said, unluckily
driven by interest, which makes things more and more difficult.


On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 2:22 AM, Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>wrote:

>  Sorry, Mark, but I gotta bother you with the news that I wholly agree with
> what you've said below.
>
> --Bob
>
>  I think it's a question of the criteria. At American universities with a
> committment to research teaching is a secondary coinsideration, as David
> says. The most important scholars have the lightest course loads. It's even
> possible to teach no courses at all and still command both high salaries (by
> academic standards}: at Rockefeller University, where  no one teaches, and
> at Princeton Advanced Studies. Research outcomes, or at least the prestige
> accorded the work, count, teaching not so much.
>
> Aside from radically skewing the intellectual life of the nation, this also
> creates unrealistic expectations. If I remember correctly, each university
> department in Italy has one professor, usually a superstar in the field.
> Whoever succeeds him from among the underlings has to strive for the same
> level of achievement, but it's not expected that most will. Behind this is
> the understanding that great scholars are rare as hen's teeth (not unlike
> great poets). In the US each department has a slew of professors who in most
> places have to publish incessantly to get advancement, and predictably much
> of the work is drivel (to be kind--I've had to wade through a lot of it). To
> publish in a given field one has to have mastered all that drivel. And once
> published it's difficult for the work to keep from being drowned in it, no
> matter how good.
>
> The situation in the sciences is somewhat different--professors maintain
> laboratories staffed by those they train and paid for by
> outsiders--government or industry. If the product can't kill or sell or
> facilitate the creation of products that can the checks stop coming.
>
> When we think about a merit-based system, no matter what the criteria, in
> which there's no tenure, we should remember that we're in th4e US, where in
> many states, if there were no tenure, there'd be no biologists and nobody
> teaching anything politically incorrect.
>
> Best,
>
> Mark
>
> At 03:33 PM 10/18/2010, you wrote:
>
> I'd say that a liberal system that can employ and fire according to the
> outcomes and to the teaching quality, is to be valued. In Italy if you are a
> state teacher, nobody can fire you. This is one of the major problems here,
> and why the best minds (in all disciplines) fly to the States. There must be
> a reason. The same Rita Levi Montalcini
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Levi-Montalcini
> spent many years of research in the States. Her autobiography (if I am not
> wrong: *Elogio all'imperfezione* - Praise to imperfection) could be a good
> text book for teenagers these days.
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 9:07 PM, David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On Oct 18, 2010, at 1:26 PM, Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>          My point was about the absurdity of the job requirement.
>
>  When I was in college, at Columbia, no less, a lot of the older tenured
> faculty didn't have doctorates, merely long and distinguished careers. Those
> days are over.
>
>  ===============================
>
>  I would agree, though with the provision that long and distinguished
> careers are no more predictors of good teaching ability than acquisition of
> a doctorate. Some of the worst teachers I ever had were highly distinguished
> scholars or writers.  So an important question is whether teaching ability
> is what one wants in a faculty member.  At many universities, it's
> demonstrably not high on the priority list.  Those days are still with us.
>
>  My opinion is definitely the minority view among faculty and
> administrators I've dealt with down through the years, at any number of
> schools.  My own promotion through the ranks was considered a special
> exception to the requirement (I hold the M.F.A., not the PhD).  I don't know
> how distinguished my career has been, but it did win me the exception to
> this particular rule.
>
>
>
>
>  ========================================
>  David Graham
>  grahamd at ripon.edu
>
>  Home Page:
>  http://web.me.com/drjazz
>
>  Poetry Library:
>  http://web.me.com/drjazz/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
>  ==========================================
>
>
>
>
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>
> --
> Anny Ballardini
>  http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
>  http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
>  http://www.lulu.com/content/5806078
>  http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
> I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
> star!
> Friedrich Nietzsche
>
> « Stulta est clementia, cum tot ubique
> vatibus occurras, periturae parcere chartae »
> Giovenale
>
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> New from Chax Press: Mark Weiss, *As Landscape.
> *$16.  Order from http://www.chax.org/poets/weiss.htm
>
>
> "What a beautiful set of circumstances! What a lovely concatenation of
> particulars. Here is the poet alive in every sense of the word, and through
> every one of his senses. Instead of missing a beat or a part, Weiss’
> fragments are like Chekhov’s short stories­the more that gets left out, the
> more they seem to contain… One can hear echoes from all the various
> ancestors...[but] the voice, at its center, its core, is pure Mark Weiss.
> His use of the fragment is both elegant and bafflingly clear, a pure musical
> threnody…[it] opens a window, not only into a mind, but a person, a
> personality, this human figure at the emotional center of the poem."
>
> M.G. Stephens, in Jacket.
> http://jacketmagazine.com/40/r-weiss-rb-stephens.shtml
>
>
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-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.lulu.com/content/5806078
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
Friedrich Nietzsche

« Stulta est clementia, cum tot ubique
vatibus occurras, periturae parcere chartae »
Giovenale
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