It's not what you argue, it's how well you argue it (and why that's bs)

There's a phrase anyone pursuing a degree in the English will hear again and again:  "It's not what you argue, it's how well you argue it."  There are two very different interpretations of that statement, and in my experience far too many students and professors follow the poorer.  Ideally, it will be taken to mean that the position the student takes will be considered on its own merits, rather than what the professor personally feels is correct or what the received wisdom may be.  Too often, however, it's taken to mean that the student should provide the best argument for his/her position, regardless of what the position may be, or how strong the best argument is.  To demonstrate the difference, I want to share what was likely the single most frustrating moment of my undergraduate career.  It was the first day of American Literature 1865-1912.  The class was for junior and seniors in the English department, so it should be assumed that everyone there should know what they're doing.  The class had been split up into groups and given a packet of Emily Dickinson poems, and each group had to analyze an assigned poem from the packet.  One of the poems was "I taste a liquor never brewed":

I taste a liquor never brewed,

From tankards scooped in pearl;

Not all the vats upon the Rhine

Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,

And debauchee of dew,

Reeling, through endless summer days,

From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee

Out of the foxglove's door,

When butterflies renounce their drams,

I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,

And saints to windows run,

To see the little tippler

Leaning against the sun!

If I were to ask you what this poem is about, you'd probably answer, pretty quickly.  Nature.  In the most immediate, prevalent sense, this poem is about the great joys and beauty of nature.  So, when the spokesperson for the group assigned "I taste a liquor never brewed" answered that question with "the oppression of women," we were all a bit confused.  The professor asked for an explanation, which he got.  "Well, bees are feminine and landlords are masculine, and the landlords are forcing the bees out."  The professor then asked what it was about on  a surface level.  The answer:  "I don't know."

Simply put, the group, or at least one of its members, went into the poem convinced that it would be about the oppression of women.  So they came up with the best argument they could.  The problem is, sometimes the best argument for a position is still incredibly weak.  Unfortunately, this professor (and at least one other I had) encourages this type of thought and method.  Start with a conclusion, and find the best evidence for the conclusion.  There's a term for this: sophistry.  

The simple fact is, what you argue is important.  Because some positions are indefensible, or rely entirely on ignoring all contradicting information.  This falls into the broader trend of people believing that their opinions are as valid as any other, regardless of how well-informed or supported it is.  The problem is that, in my experience, these people seem to never, or very rarely, get challenged.  So instead of changing their ways or leaving the English department, we get bloated with people who can't actually think critically, and who's only skill is to cherry-pick information and string it into an persuasive essay (persuasive only if you haven't actually read the text yourself, because if you have, the problems with these essays become immediately apparent).

 

From K-12 to Trigger Warnings

Like anyone, I'm concerned about the growing trend on college campuses of demanding trigger warnings and the removal of books from the curriculum due to their perceived unpleasantness.  But most of the articles I see on the subject boil it down to a "these darned millennials!" argument.  After all, they point out, don't people go to college to be challenged?  The answer to this oft-posed rhetorical question is actually 'no.'  For decades, the number of high school graduates who attend college has increased, hitting 70% in 2009.  

A couple weeks ago, I heard a story on NPR about special ed in some Southern public schools.  The mother of a sixth grade special ed student was interviewed throughout the piece, and she expressed her concerns about the inadequacy of her child's education, including the claim that he wasn't being prepared for college like the other students.  This child is in sixth grade; he is closer to kindergarten than college.  The entire K-12 system is designed to feed students into the college system, and everything from the testing to the rhetoric has this goal.  College is portrayed as the only path to success, from the moment you enter to the moment you graduate.  But while the K-12 system may strive to prepare students for college academically, they are actively prohibited from encouraging the type of intellectually/socially challenging material we see being protested.  I did a quick google news search for teachers being fired, and, putting aside sexually inappropriate conduct, and I found a teacher who was fired for participating in a burlesque show (in a different state from where she taught), a teacher who was fired for appearing in a rap video that included some drug imagery, a teacher fired for drinking alcohol on an extended field trip to New Orleans (two and a half glasses over five days, hardly a bender).   On top of that there are the consistent challenges to books from all quarters, and this is not from the students.  This is from the parents, who don't want their precious children being exposed to things that challenge their (i.e., the parents') views.  This of course ignores dress codes, which often preclude anything with a message that others may deem offensive (e.g. political/(a)religious/etc t-shirts/symbols).

So what do we expect to happen?!  We have a system where teachers who are challenging or unorthodox risk their jobs by being so, where books that are seen as "offensive" (by conservative religious groups as much or more than any other group) are routinely pressured out of the schools, where any activity or dress that's seen as challenging the authority and uniformity of the school culture is condemned.  What do we think these kids are going to be like after twelve years of this?  As long as we have a K-12 system (and, perhaps more importantly, the community around that system) that makes innovation and controversial subject matter taboo, we're going to have this problem with college students.

2015 Commencement Speeches

I was fortunate enough to see Robert De Niro's commencement speech for NYU Tisch's graduating class, and it's worth a watch:

I also ran across John Waters' commencement speech at the Rhode Island School of Design:

Help Make a Movie!

My brother is a senior at NYU's film department, which means it's time for him to make a senior thesis.  The senior thesis, like an NYU film degree, is an expensive endeavor.  Hence, this humorous video requesting your support!

If this is the kind of film you'd like to see, or you just want to help out some aspiring filmmakers, click on the link below and send a few bucks their way.  (And leave a note saying you found out about it through me.  Intersibling politics are cutthroat.)

Some Kafka

A couple oool videos for you today.  The first is an illustrated reading of Kafka's parable "Before the Law," read by Orson Welles.

The second is a little stranger.  It's Christopher Plummer recreating one of Nabokov's lectures, in this case, his lecture on Kafka's The Metamorphosis.