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Wednesday, January 28, 2004
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YUMMY
I’ve written a lot in University Diaries about this country’s anti-intellectualism. Anti-intellectualism is a fine old American tradition, and probably accounts for most of our technological superiority to the rest of the world. All rich industrialized nations need an elite of restless competitive highly paid tinkerers, their minds cleared of all content beyond synapses and cartridges and microchips. Without a critical mass of people who couldn’t give a shit about what’s in books, you’d never be able to create and maintain the sort of wildly successful country this one is. I have no trouble with this form of anti-intellectualism in America, and indeed I recognize that quaint little bookish people like me only enjoy the leisure and relative affluence we do because day and night hebephrenic techies are scooting about their cages finding ways to make our Sears Kenmore appliances work more quietly. It’s the form of anti-intellectualism one finds in secondary schools and universities in this country that’s more of a problem. We know that the low-expectation, pandering, therapeutic mentality I’ve noted on this blog is profoundly anti-intellectual and accounts to an impressive degree for the in-the-toilet status of real thought in the humanities today. But it’s rare that you find so pure and thorough an expression of this suicidal form of anti-intellectualism - the hatred of thought within the academy itself - that you do in the letter from a high school principal that a failed job candidate in the Atlanta school system just received (via joannejacobs.com): “Recently, I interviewed with a school in one of the metro Atlanta counties, only to receive an e-mail from the principal stating, ‘Though your qualifications are quite impressive, I regret to inform you that we have selected another candidate. It was felt that your demeanor and therefore presence in the classroom would serve as an unrealistic expectation as to what high school students could strive to achieve or become. However, it is highly recommended that you seek employment at the collegiate level; there your intellectual comportment would be greatly appreciated. Good luck.’" Yummy. This one’s a real full-plate special. There’s the game try at teaparty diction (“demeanor,” “comportment”) and the regal passive voice (“It was felt...” “It is highly recommended”) which quickly degenerates into shabby befuddled blather (“...as to what high schools students could strive to achieve or become...”). There’s the cheap thrill of observing a high school principal rejecting a job candidate for having high expectations. But best of all there’s the particular use of the word “intellectual” in the altogether marvelous penultimate sentence - the sentence just before the principal’s moving and sincere expression of best wishes at the very end. That sentence merits its own paragraph. What was it again? Oh yes - However, it is highly recommended that you seek employment at the collegiate level; there your intellectual comportment would be greatly appreciated. Am I being over-sensitive or is there the teeniest bit of irony somewhere in there? ... somewhere starting around “your intellectual comportment”? Or maybe before - something smells funny in the use of the word “highly,” no? Or “seek”? Whatever. Let’s press our Google translator key and see what this looks like in English... Hm, it says here You pretentious little fuck. If you think you can walk in here and use trisyllabic words and subordinate clauses you can kiss my ass. There’s a university down the street where they speak Snob. |