Truth be told, I'm not sure what the point of blogging is. It's still an ugly word, just aesthetically unpleasing. I've never been terribly good with journals, but I think this space is going to be used to find a voice and work out a philosophy.
Once upon a time (well, it was a few weeks ago), I knew for certain that the classroom was where I was meant to be. Thanks to the collapse of the economic system in California, that may or may not be a possibility. Certainly the next several months, maybe even several years, will be challenging. No one knows exactly what the shape of higher education will be when this shake-up has shook-up, and from the rubble will we find a better scholasticism with an emphasis on the pursuit of wisdom or will it be the for-profit model where the goal is to reach but not exceed minimum competency.
Cliche as this is, the world is changing quickly, and often not for the better. One of my favorite little stanzas in contemporary poetry is from "Strawberry Fields." It goes:
"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out.
It doesn't matter much to me."
And that's the thing. It really does matter quite a bit to me. That "eyes closed misunderstanding" thing is really the problem, and I am constantly fighting to undermine it. Finding and maintaining an identity in the face of an overwhelming drift towards conformity requires a kind of intransigence that borders on belligerence, which can be vexing at times (both for me and my associates). I don't know that there is a satisfactory answer, but I'm going to try to work towards a solution.
The plan, here, is to progress into various topics, ideas, and concepts that help to address the complexities of the relevant issues. Maybe someone will see it. Probably not. There are a lot of blogs out there with bigger popular venues than this one will probably have. I'm not entirely sure what the final form of this will take, but that's part of the project.
So, this is the plan: Educate, elucidate, emancipate.
Of course, it's how we do it that's the hard part.
AD
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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