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The non-democratic state: Platonism, Fascism, Theocracy, Monarchy etc.
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#14487185
Good day.



I teach Critical Theory in an interdisciplinary Arts program, and am currently putting together a new class called "Political Ideas in the Arts and Humanities." This will be a sort of remedial class for lower level students who are having trouble with theory classes of various kinds, simply because they have no idea what basic political terms mean. (The situation is truly bleak; I'm sure you'd be horrified.)

Anyway, all of us are getting very sick of having to stop every five minutes to explain seemingly obvious terms like "Leftist," "Neoliberal," "Objectivist" and so on - hence this class. The hope is that upper level classes can cover more ground, and run more smoothly, if people have the basics under their belts.

Your ideological realm is definitely my weak point, so I'm hoping that you guys can recommend a few central, critically important texts outlining contemporary Third Positionism in a way that non-specialists can understand. At this point I'm completely baffled by all the warring factions, and could really use some help here!



Many thanks ahead of time,
RB
#14487191
Red Barn wrote:Anyway, all of us are getting very sick of having to stop every five minutes to explain seemingly obvious terms like "Leftist," "Neoliberal," "Objectivist" and so on - hence this class.

So, you're department is making a whole class to teach the basics of political terms and ideologies, when many students have access to internet (cell or desktop - libraries) to search for these terms? If I was in that group, I would suggest having the students referred to their favourite search engine. You could also give a handout (or online link) of general terms that you would be using. I'm opposed to spoon feeding students, who are there to learn and do some personal study as well.
#14487204
Eauz wrote:So, you're department is making a whole class to teach the basics of political terms and ideologies, when many students have access to internet (cell or desktop - libraries) to search for these terms? If I was in that group, I would suggest having the students referred to their favourite search engine. You could also give a handout (or online link) of general terms that you would be using. I'm opposed to spoon feeding students, who are there to learn and do some personal study as well.

Been a while since you've been in school, Comrade?

Harvard published a study a couple years back showing that 70% of students fail to read assigned texts. Seventy percent.



I'm no fan of spoon-feeding either, but at some point you just have to be realistic.
#14487215
In Red Barn's defence, anybody could learn what they do at a university with a library card, when you get down to it. You're always spoon feeding students, no matter what you do.

More to the point, students are often lied to by the mainstream media. I have to use a whole class sometimes in order to define, "right," and, "left," since FOX News and them have successfully married fascism and communism to both mean, "big government," by which they mean the Democrats. I have had students that will just refuse to believe that, "left," and, "right," mean anything other than, "Bad (left)," and, Good (right)."

Because they've been told this their whole life, I have to go through the French Revolution and explain where the term came from. Then it starts to make sense. I see a value for such a class to just define the terms.

As per Red Barn, the others might be able to provide better, but things I've used in class:

Doctrine of Fascism for more advanced students, and What is Fascism? For those that need the quick down and dirty.

The latter is nice for the above mentioned students that don't get that there's a difference between Marxism and Fascism since it simply states that, "Fascism is the complete opposite of Marxism." It blows minds.

Something I've thought of doing, but dismissed as I haven't had the time, is to put fascism in the context of the time and place—these poor wretches who lost the war and were looking for something to believe in. Which sounds cliche, but hear me out.

In Ireland (of course) there was something of a mixed victory in kicking Britain out. While nominally a republic, there was a big fascist movement in Ireland. Most famously the Blue Shirts, but in this case the Ailtirí na hAiséirghe. Which, in its own way, was not a completely illogical movement in Ireland (even if we don't like it).

De Valera himself confided to an American journalist in July 1940 that ‘the people were pro-German...

History Ireland wrote:Considered in retrospect, though, this ought not to come as a surprise. Many people during the Emergency thought that Ireland owed Germany a debt for her support of the Easter Rising in 1916. Irish commentators often drew parallels between Germany’s ‘partition’ at Britain’s hands in the Treaty of Versailles and the division of their own country—Maud Gonne McBride was only one of a large number who regarded the Sudetenland as a Central European equivalent of the Six Counties. If the Axis won the war, many believed, Irish unity would soon follow. But over and above these considerations was a current of genuine enthusiasm for the achievements of the fascist states. In contrast to the depression-ridden, backward-looking democracies, Germany and Italy within a few years had revived their national cultures, recovered their ‘lost territories’ and put their millions of unemployed back to work. The lessons for Ireland seemed obvious. In a Europe in which, after the fall of France, democracy appeared fated to disappear, the Irish people needed to abandon their failed experiment with ‘nineteenth-century’ Westminster-style parliamentary government and look to the systems that seemed so successful on the Continent.


A primary document for it goes over this hope of modernizing into something better.

And tied to this, the two futurisms. Italian Futurism tending to be fascist, and Russian Futurism tending to be socialist. Their manifestos, somewhat reflect this.

The Italian Futurism Manifesto lists its points:

F. T. Marinetti wrote:1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.

2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.

3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.

4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.

6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.

7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.

8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.

9. We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.

10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.

11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.


9 and 10, specifically, provide the framework for what excited these people for something like fascism.

The Russians are quite different in tone:

David Burliuk, Alexander Kruchenykh, Vladmir Mayakovsky, Victor Khlebnikov wrote:We order that the poets’ rights be revered:

*To enlarge the scope of the poet’s vocabulary with arbitrary and derivative words (Word-novelty).

*To feel an insurmountable hatred for the language existing before their time.

*To push with horror off their proud brow the Wreath of cheap fame that You have made from bathhouse switches.

*To stand on the rock of the word “we” amidst the sea of boos and outrage.

And if for the time being the filthy stigmas of your “common sense” and “good taste” are still present in our lines, these same lines for the first time already glimmer with the Summer Lightning of the New Coming Beauty of the Self-sufficient (self-centered) Word.


But it does draw a line for both the Russian peasant and the Italian peasant wanting to move ahead, just in different directions. Then, if you wanted, you could move into art. The Russians went to Constructivism and Proletkult and became the avant garde in Red Berlin.

The fascists went all classical art.

Might be interesting, but a little sophisticated.
#14487221
Prof Goon! You're a god!

Thanks so much. I'll make another pot of coffee and slog right on through your list.

More to the point, students are often lied to by the mainstream media. I have to use a whole class sometimes in order to define, "right," and, "left," since FOX News and them have successfully married fascism and communism to both mean, "big government," by which they mean the Democrats. I have had students that will just refuse to believe that, "left," and, "right," mean anything other than, "Bad (left)," and, Good (right)."

Yes, this is huge. Huge.

And, contrary to popular belief, undergrads are terrible Google searchers. They absolutely suck at it. If asked to Google "Marxism" they're likely to end up with one of Glenn Beck's blackboards, and then go all over-achiever and copy the whole thing down with crayon.

I have much better luck printing out the relevant text, assigning specific questions, and then discussing each point the next day. This way I can root out Beckian misapprehensions and correct them one at a time.

That's why I came up with this class idea in the first place: it's all to save time for people like Prof G, who are now forced to do so much remedial work that the course's actual subject matter suffers.
#14487275
The papal encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno are in many ways the founding documents of corporatism (and, by extension, have exerted an influence over Third Positionism). They might be of some use to you.

Links (in English):

Rerum Novarum - http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_x ... um_en.html

QUadragesimo Anno - http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_ ... no_en.html
#14487310
Red Barn wrote:Been a while since you've been in school, Comrade?

Yeh, I think it's been 8 years and counting.

Red Barn wrote:Harvard published a study a couple years back showing that 70% of students fail to read assigned texts. Seventy percent.

I rarely bothered to read the full text supplied, in part due to the ability to perform the basic research of the topics via Google. This should actually tell the professors something in regards to the selection of texts. It's obviously either unnecessary and/or undesirable to the students goals of getting a passing mark.

Back when I attended university, I had a poli-sci course on international relations in the Americas. To my surprise, the last month of classes was spent looking at the teacher's vacation photos. Oh, yes, I really wanted to know that he laid on the beach in Cuba. All that money wasted to attend this required course.. And guess what? There was no final exam for the course, only to write a broad understanding essay.

/rant

Red Barn wrote:I'm no fan of spoon-feeding either, but at some point you just have to be realistic.

Fair enough. It's just that when I attended undergraduate uni programs, I was pretty much required to do any background work if I required additional understanding beyond the book and classroom. I found Google a life saver when it came to writing essays. Unfortunately, essays became mundane, as they were the same format each time and I found that with the use of a template essay and Google (for quotes), I could rattle off numerous essays and get the mark of A- to B as a grade. I just can't understand why in a world that is so connected to the internet, why these students can't pull up a general definition of the ideology.

The Immortal Goon wrote:More to the point, students are often lied to by the mainstream media. I have to use a whole class sometimes in order to define, "right," and, "left," since FOX News and them have successfully married fascism and communism to both mean, "big government," by which they mean the Democrats. I have had students that will just refuse to believe that, "left," and, "right," mean anything other than, "Bad (left)," and, Good (right)."

I understand you're trying to be realistic here, however, I think you've wasted your time by devoting a whole class to definitions in order to continue teaching your class. Posting something online with basic definitions or having a handout would save you the time. Express the need to read and understand these definitions as they are presented in the definition. Then point out that in order to succeed in this course, you're understanding of these definitions and how they relate to each other, along with performing research outside of class time is important. Then, when John writes an essay about the communist fascist Democrats who want to destroy 'Merica is placed on your desk, you'll simply point to the definition page, assign a D- and ask for it to be rewritten.
#14487323
- Classical liberalism is often associated with the belief that the state ought to be minimal, which means that practically everything except armed forces, law enforcement and other "non-excludable goods‟ ought to be left to the free dealings of its citizens, and the organisations they freely choose to establish and take part in. This kind of state is sometimes described as a "night-watchman state‟, as the sole purpose of the minimal state is to uphold the most fundamental aspects of public order.

- Modern liberalism is, on the other hand, characterised by a greater willingness to let the state become an active participant in the economy. This has often issued in a pronounced tendency to regulate the marketplace, and to have the state supply essential goods and services to everyone. Modern liberalism is therefore, for all intents and purposes, a profound revision of liberalism, especially of the economic policies traditionally associated with it. Whereas "classical‟ or "economic‟ liberals favour laissez-faire economic policies because it is thought that they lead to more freedom and real democracy, modern liberals tend to claim that this analysis is inadequate and misleading, and that the state must play a significant role in the economy, if the most basic liberal goals and purposes are to be made into reality.

- Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. The state has to guarantee, for example, the quality and integrity of money. It must also set up those military, defence, police and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets. Furthermore, if markets do not exist (in areas such as land,water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution) then they must be created, by state action if necessary. But beyond these tasks the state should not venture. State interventions in markets (once created) must be kept to a bare minimum because, according to the theory, the state cannot possibly possess enough information to second-guess market signals (prices) and because powerful interest groups will inevitably distort and bias state interventions (particularly in democracies) for their own benefit (Harvey 2005:2).

- Neoliberalism could also include a perspective on moral virtue: the good and virtuous person is one who is able to access the relevant markets and function as a competent actor in these markets. He or she is willing to accept the risks associated with participating in free markets, and to adapt to rapid changes arising from such participation (Friedman 1980). Individuals are also seen as being solely responsible for the consequences of the choices and decisions they freely make: instances of inequality and glaring social injustice are morally acceptable, at least to the degree in which they could be seen as the result of freely made decisions (Nozick 1974; Hayek 1976). If a person demands that the state should regulate the market or make reparations to the unfortunate who has been caught at the losing end of a freely initiated market transaction, this is viewed as an indication that the person in question is morally depraved and underdeveloped, and scarcely different from a proponent of a totalitarian state (Mises 1962).

Thorsen, Dag Einar, and Amund Lie. "What is neoliberalism." Oslo, University of Oslo, Department of Political Science, Manuscript (2006). http://folk.uio.no/daget/neoliberalism.pdf

What is the Third Position?

Today there is a new form of fascism, a neofascism, called the Third Position, which seeks to overthrow existing governments and replace them with monocultural nation states built around the idea of supremacist racial nationalism and/or supremacist religious nationalism. Third Position neofascists have organized in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East, and they maintain some kind of loose network, at least for the purposes of discussing their shared ideas and agenda, but in some cases involving meetings and even funding.

For instance Libyan president of Mu'ammar Qadhafi has sponsored several international conferences in Libya promoting his special variation of racial nationalism and cultivating ideas congruent with Third Position ideology. Qadhafi has also offered funds to racial nationalist groups active in the U.S. and Canada.2 During the Gulf War, according to the Searchlight magazine, "Neo-nazis is several European countries have been queuing up to shoulder arms for Saddam Hussein's murderous Iraqi Regime."3 One organizer for this attempted neonazi brigade, claimed he had over 500 volunteers from "several countries, including Germany, the USA, the Netherlands, Austria and France."4 Revealing the Third Position motif, a racial nationalist journal, Nation und Europa, promoted the slogans "Arabia for the Arabs," and "the whole of Germany for the Germans."5 In Britain, some neofascists praised the regimes in Libya and Iran as allies in the fight against communism, capitalism, and Israel.6

The Third Position has a more intellectual aristocratic ally called the European New Right (Nouvelle Droit) which is different from the U.S. New Right.7 Intellectual leaders of the European New Right, such as Alain de Benoist, are hailed as profound thinkers in U.S. reactionary publications such as the Rockford Institute's Chronicles. The more overtly neo-Nazi segment of the Third Position has intellectual links to the Strasserite wing of German national socialism, and is critical of Hitler's brand of Nazism for having betrayed the working class. See magazines such as Scorpion or Third Way published in England. Third Position groups believe in a racially-homogeneous decentralized tribal form of nationalism, and claim to have evolved an ideology "beyond communism and capitalism."

While the Third Position is an obscure ideology, there have been published reports that have reported on it. An excellent discussion of the emergence of the Third Position and the revivial of a national socialist/Strasserite version of intrernational fascism can be found in Kevin Coogan's 1999 book, Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International and in Martin A. Lee's 1997 book, The Beast Reawakens. The convergence among racial nationalists in North America and Western and Eastern Europe is discussed at length in Jeffrey Kaplan and Tore Bjørgo, eds., Nation and Race, and Jeffrey Kaplan and Leonard Weinberg, The Emergence of a Euro-American Radical Right.9 There is a theoretical discussion of the European Third Position and racially separate nation-states by Robert Antonio in "After Postmodernism: Reactionary Tribalism.10 The anti-U.S. aspect of the Third Position is examined in "´Neither Left Nor Right´" in the Southern Poverty Law Center magazine, Intelligence Report.11

The Third Position-which rejects both capitalism and communism-traces its roots to the most "radical" anticapitalist wing of Hitler's Nazi Party. In the 1970s and 1980s, neonazis in several European countries advocated the Third Position.13 Its leading proponent in the United States was White Aryan Resistance, headed by former California Klan leader Tom Metzger. Metzger, who was a Democratic candidate for Congress in 1980, expounded his philosophy at the 1987 Aryan Nations Congress:

"WAR is dedicated to the White working people, the farmers, the White poor. . . . This is a working class movement. . . . Our problem is with monopoly capitalism. The Jews first went with Capitalism and then created their Marxist game. You go for the throat of the Capitalist. You must go for the throat of the corporates. You take the game away from the left. It's our game! We're not going to fight your whore wars no more! We've got one war, that is right here, the same war the SA fought in Germany, right here; in the streets of America."14

Metzger's organization vividly illustrated fascism's tendency to appropriate elements of leftist politics in distorted form. WAR supported "white working-class" militancy such as the lengthy "P-9" labor union strike against Hormel in Minnesota, stressed environmentalism, and opposed U.S. military intervention in Central America and the Persian Gulf. The Aryan Women's League, affiliated with WAR, claimed that Jews invented male supremacy and called for "Women's Power as well as White Power."15 Metzger's television program, "Race and Reason," was broadcast on cable TV in dozens of cities and aided cooperation among White supremacist groups. Through its Aryan Youth Movement wing, WAR was particularly successful in the 1980s in recruiting racist skinheads, who include thousands of young people clustered in scores of violent pro-Nazi formations. (Not all skinheads are racist and there are antiracist and antifascist skinhead groups.) Metzger and WAR's position in the neonazi movement was weakened in October 1990 when they were fined $12.5 million in a civil suit for inciting three Portland skinheads who murdered Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw.16

Out of the stew of the Third Position, and the European New Right theories of intellectuals such as Alain de Benoist, came a new version of White Nationalism that championed racially separate nation-states.17 In the United States this filtered down to White supremacists, who began to call themselves White Separatists.18 Dobratz and Shanks-Meile believe that "most, if not all, whites in this movement feel they are superior to blacks."19 Instead of segregation, however, White Separatism called for "geographic separation of the world's races" and in the United States this prompted calls for an Aryan Homeland in the Pacific Northwest.20 [Excerpt: Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, Chapter 13, pp. 265-286.]

http://www.publiceye.org/fascist/third_position.html
Last edited by ThirdTerm on 15 Nov 2014 21:51, edited 1 time in total.
#14487437
You guys are very kind.

I'm fine on Liberalism, though. It'll be easy enough to flesh out the conflict between Classical Liberalism and Social Liberalism, because the kiddos will already be familiar with these basic ideas in the rhetoric of the Republican and Democratic Parties. Neoliberalism is easy too: I'll just sketch it in as the global reality both Classical and Social rhetoric try to conceal. I don't think they'll have any trouble with those ideas at all.

In fact, the problem is that they find it very difficult to get beyond the squabbles within Liberalism. They see these as the beginning and end of all political possibility, and translate everything into that extremely narrow universe.

So, lets say the Art History prof. assigns the Greenberg essay on Modernism in which he talks about the role of art under Socialism. The average undergrad will mentally recast this into mass media pablum, and assume that Greenberg is advocating some fuzzy version of Keynesianism. That's absolutely as far as they can go without a huge amount of prompting and explanation.

(Which, BTW, is another reason why Eauz's "Just Google It" idea doesn't work. Phrases like "means of production" and "surplus value" have no meaning for them, so the Wiki definition of "Socialism" simply goes in one eye and out the other, only to be immediately replaced by the usual crap about high taxes in Denmark.)



I'm good from the center Leftwards, and from Bakunin to Nozick.

Prof. Goon's historical suggestions are great, and I'd already planned to cast the Futurist Manifesto against the Breton/Trotsky Manifesto for a Revolutionary Art.

What I need right now is something moving fascist ideas into the present, couched in user friendly, not-too-complicated language, and preferably in some context relevant to the arts. A fascist version of China Mieville, if you will.

Does such a thing exist, even?
#14487482
Hi Red Barn, good to see you again. That's a pretty tall order there, I have some stuff on the intersections of the post-war Far-Right and art, but I don't know if those are basic and user-friendly enough for your audience, and if they really fit what you're looking for. Can't hurt to dump though.

On music:

A. Shekhovtsov, Apoliteic music: Neo-Folk, Martial Industrial and ‘metapolitical fascism’

S. François, The Euro-Pagan Scene: Between Paganism and Radical Right

A. Kurtagić, Black Metal: Conservative Revolution in Modern Popular Culture

R. Kirk, "Revolt Against the Modern World": Exploring the Post-Industrial Romance of Neo-Folk


The book The Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain (2004) contains a chapter by S. Woodbridge Purifying the Nation: Critiques of Cultural
Decadence and Decline in British Neo-Fascist Ideology
, dealing with how the the role of the arts (both "degenerate" and "healthy") was perceived by what was left of the BUF after 1945 (a lot of the book touches on the aesthetics of British fascism in general, but mainly from before WWII).


The New Rightist Counter-Currents has also published some contemporary cultural critique (disclaimer - haven't read those myself):

J. Bowden, Pulp Fascism: Right-Wing Themes in Comics, Graphic Novels, and Popular Literature (2013)

T. Lynch, Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies (2012)

(here and here you can find samples of Lynch's style)


-----------------------------------------

As introductory texts to historical fascism I would recommend :

K. Passmore, Fascism: A Very Short Introduction

J. Mellón, The core ideas and axioms of Classical Fascism (1919-1945)

They cover a lot of ground without going too deep, and I used to assign them when I was doing a class on the Far-Right last year.



Good luck and may God give you strength.
#14487498
Oh, perfection!

I think I'll go with the thing on Black Metal - they'll love that - and maybe excerpts from "Pulp Fascism," which sounds absolutely fascinating.

Thank you so much, Orestes! I'm really grateful.



ETA: I'm reading Passmore right now, and quite like it. If I don't end up using the whole thing, I'll at least put it on the "Recommended" list.

Again: thanks.
#14487516
euaz wrote:Then, when John writes an essay about the communist fascist Democrats who want to destroy 'Merica is placed on your desk, you'll simply point to the definition page, assign a D- and ask for it to be rewritten.


There are two issues with this.

Most fundamentally, you failed as a teacher when this happens-and it will a lot. The goal is to get them to know this stuff.

Second, the administration will never back you up. My department always will, but if the student bitches enough, it will go to the administration and they'll put a mark on you for having fucked up and you'll have to change the student's grade anyway. If you're an adjunct like me, that means you risk them finding someone that's less of a hassle next time.

Red Barn:

Have you tried looking at Vice's stuff for the Golden Dawn in Greece? It's poppy, but it has some good content...
#14487541
The Immortal Goon wrote:Most fundamentally, you failed as a teacher when this happens-and it will a lot. The goal is to get them to know this stuff.
I'll leave it to you two to make the right decision, since you're in that field. All I'm stating is my experiences and suggestions. I don't think I've suggested not allowing them to know their stuff, as I've presented alternatives. Learning is a two-way street and if the student is unwilling to read through definitions (as opposed to presenting a full course), then the student has failed themselves to start. I know everything about getting that D- and a comment about rewriting, because it happened to me as well. I took a class and wrote an essay in my first year and got the mark back telling me I didn't understand the course content and I would need to rewrite the essay. Did I go crying to the head of the department? No, that would have been a disaster. Did I go get help available at the university (tutors, essay preps, etc.)? Yes, because that's responsibility on the student's side. Did I end up getting a B- as the final mark on the essay? Yes.

Sure, I've had horrible teachers, as I pointed out earlier, but if the purpose of that course is to succeed to the next level of the program, you've got to put some effort into it. I've ended up going directly to the teacher to clarify information about an assignment or even a lecture. Email is quite useful too.

The Immortal Goon wrote:If you're an adjunct like me, that means you risk them finding someone that's less of a hassle next time.
Probably because I'm not in the field, however, that is a really messed up way of evaluating employees and tailors to the pampering of students. Quite unfortunate.
#14487550
Eauz wrote:Did I go get help available at the university (tutors, essay preps, etc.)? Yes, because that's responsibility on the student's side.

I admire this attitude, of course, but it's becoming less and less common. Students now see themselves primarily as consumers, while administrators see them primarily as walking dollar signs the university can ill afford to lose.

Sad but true.

TIG wrote:Most fundamentally, you failed as a teacher when this happens-and it will a lot. The goal is to get them to know this stuff.

Yes. Beyond everything else, there's this.

Momentarily gratifying as it might be to hand that whiny little pissant his steaming pile of F, it really doesn't do anyone any good to leave one more cretin wandering around thinking Glenn Beck is a scholar and Obama is a Communist. You can't make it personal. The goal really is to get them to know this stuff, even if you occasionally feel like throttling them - or yourself - in the process.
#14487551
I think this class is a really good idea, here in Florida we combined our multi-semester remedial math program into a single semester. The state also told us we are no longer allowed to use placement tests for incoming high school students. They can go straight into college math.

Thank god I only tutor math and science though, I can't imagine having to argue with students on the definition of a plus sign.

The sad truth is that students just need these remedial classes. They learn nothing in public school, nothing at home, and the culture pushes them far from any type of intellectual pursuit.
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