09 July 2007

The Asset-Minded Professor

Something says I should direct your attention to this.  Why?  Because, er, um, well.... *rolls eyes impishly and steps gingerly away* 

Key, unbearably putrid quote:  "Love is a flame, and the good teacher raises in students a burning desire for his or her approval and attention, his or her voice and presence, that is erotic in its urgency and intensity."   Someone clearly wants PILF added to your vocabularies.

6 comments:

Pious Labours said...

Interesting article.

Certainly, professors, and the perception of them, have changed dramatically in the past thirty or forty years. Until fairly recently, professors in general were venerated to an almost religious degree. Unfortunately, owing to various factors, professors are often the subject of ridicule, and, at the same time, there are too many that simply are not there for the right reasons.

Another change, as I'm sure you know, J, is with students. Although I am generalizing, the scholastic attitude has changed drastically. Where once most students would go to university for the right reasons, for most it is now simply where you go after high school because that's what you do in North America. A university education is not sought for its own sake, but merely to get a decent job that pays 60K a year. This is one dimension that the writer of the article only touched on but conveniently glossed over.

The causes of these are myriad and would require no less than a book chapter to explain them all; the truth is, this is how it is now.

Jenny said...

“And did you want to have sex with him?” I asked. “No,” she said, “I wanted to have brain sex with him.”

This is too much for me to stomach so early in the morning. >.<

Dr J said...

@ Jenny: Glad to see you back! Hope you're well. Be glad I didn't say anything about how many students I've Socratized over the years.

@ PL: Careful, you're starting to sounds like me. ;-)

Anonymous said...

let's just say, no one in my class wanted to even think about the profs in that light, those postgrad supervisors mebbe (particularly that yummy one who taught romanticism, but he was the exception)

as a good friend (hmm, even that requires reconsideration ) once said succinctly you can't f86k brains, might explaqin why most of the guys targetted gals not within the univ!

Anonymous said...

apologies for the spelling mistakes, forgot the shift keys!( and no q in explain)


come to think of it, that kind of intellectual eros manifested itself in a classmate at the age when most guys were partying so hard they couldn't think straight or were so juve you wondered why they were at univ- he wowwed with his brains, as a friend said, I was nuts. unfortunately he was a conservative which didn't quite gel with the brand of liberalism I subscribed to, that and the fact that most of the class was betting on whether I was on to the guy- adeadly combination that guarantees the disappearance of any eros.


how long before someone says abelard and heloise? looking at the state of things in this age , mebbe that's an insult to the 2

Anonymous said...

A university education is not sought for its own sake, but merely to get a decent job that pays 60K a year.

Wait, there are jobs that pay 60K a year?!? Jobs you can get right out of university? No wonder that PhD'd person I spoke to this morning didn't want to work for me for 30K (although, puzzlingly, another one did, was positively enthused about it).

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