Once again I have to bow to your insight and intelligent expression. I do have a tendency to express myself rather strongly, and passionately (I’m one of those INEP types) Nevertheless, while the scholastic forum often does encourage “interpretation, critical thinking” and rhetoric (compelling presentation), I don’t think the economic and political forums do.

I’ve observed a number of highly educated people falling into the trap of their respective organization’s culture. This IMNSHO accounts for quite a number of disastrous decisions, flawed plans, and a dearth of whistle blowers in political, bureaucratic, and business circles.

Regarding thinking, I suspect ‘real’ thinking is a lot rarer than is commonly assumed. I know how difficult it is to break out of the automatic response mode, which many people confuse with thinking. It is even more difficult when one is working hard, and going as fast as possible.

But that is something for another discussion.

Take Care and Good Luck Job Hunting.

Rosei – Don’t let anyone at your university get you down or keep you from speaking. Remember that what counts are the three keys of research/writing, teaching, and service. Whatever the internal quarrels are, if you focus on what you produce in those areas, you will move along. What fun is literature without language play? Remember the students who honored you, and be confident in your worth and consequence.

Elaine – I can only imagine the expression on your high school teacher’s face. I hope that the school was reacting to the strident form of the delivery rather than the content (which seems accurate). While there are professors who prefer to hear validation that what they have tried to teach has been absorbed more than they prefer evidence of independent thinking, I haven’t run into too many of these (I can think of two). Most of my professors have put the emphasis on learning how to think, how to rally evidence to suport an argument, learning what counts as evidence, and so on.

That graduate student was dead wrong, and what a horrible thing to say to someone! However, the form of the essay does force you to compose the strongest possible argument, not just state an unsupported opinion. I’ve run into students who simply hadn’t had any significant training in thinking or argumentation. A professor would be remiss if they didn’t give any instruction that improves upon simply saying whether or not they liked a story or character, reducing a text to a kind of Aesop’s fable (and the moral is…), or simply narrating free-form associations that the fiction brought up for them personally (that reminds me of the episode of Friends where…). It is very rewarding from the perspective of a teacher when a student “gets it” and is empowered to create an interesting interpretation of a text and to argue for it in a persuasive way.

I think you are right that the tools of interpretation, critical thinking, and compelling presentation have been degraded, but they are not completely gone. I tend to think that our system divides people up in terms of who will be encouraged to think, interpret, and present – and who is meant to be a sort of unreflective worker bee. Still, it is up to each person to decide the extent to which she or he will choose to think independently, whether or not that is particularly rewarded.

A dumbed-down America is easier to control, but it is no advantage to us to be ignorant in the increasingly competitive world marketplace.

Oh, and don’t worry, I would never trade my intellectual nature for anything at all. Even “mommy-brain” didn’t derail it for long.

I did get into University as a mature student and did fairly well (B+ average) but quickly learned that the professors preferred it, if I sprouted their words back to them. A graduate student told me that one was not to express ones own thoughts or use the first person in an essay until one was in graduate school. Since I was older than 99% of the students (including graduate students) I ignored his advice.

It seems to me that part of the dumbing down of America, is tied to the sad fact that critical thinking, individual research, and self-expression is not encouraged in the school system. Its like the system (academic, corporate, and political) prefers conformity over creativity, and yes men over independent thinkers.

Please keep up your blogging, don’t trade your capacity to think for a job.

Once, someone said I felt pleasure on being ironic and I just made clear that there´s several ways of saying what we wish to say. The person replied ‘Of course. You are a linguist!’

I don´t fear to say what I need to say, but to get so tired of the profession I always loved in my life by the impossibility of expressing myself.

No one should have it held against them unless they are slandering some one in a post and in that case then they can be held accountable.