Thought control
So, I'm thinking of quitting school. Or rather, since I've already decided to quit school, I'm thinking of quitting now. I have an AA, which is all I really expected. However, if I take 2 more classes I'll be eligible for a second transfer AA, and while I don't intend to make use of that I guess it's still nice to have. Trouble is these classes are in my two least favorite subjects that I've been putting off since the beginning: math and essays. Math is the very incarnation of tedium, made worse by the fact that it also epitomizes the useless nature of education. As you're performing it, you can't shake the ever-present realization that once you leave you will never need to know how to solve nonlinear differential equations again and you're only doing it to prove to bureaucrats how obedient you are. And then there are the essays. Believe it or not, I really don't have strong opinions about most things, and I hate being forced to pretend that I do. It doesn't help that essay classes also require you to write "formally" (read: insufferably archaically), thereby sucking out every possible shred of joy and guaranteeing you will have no future in the post-1800s world of writing. But none of these issues are my main concern. No, the deal-breaker is that the professors for both of these classes are complete asshats, which seem to be a pandemic with this particular school, a product of Santa Barbara's laissez-faire atmosphere of - what's the word - insanity. My frustration for these types has been steadily accumulating each year, and I simply don't have patience for them anymore.
First, my statistics teacher. Let's call him… Math Czar. Math Czar take his subject very seriously, which I suppose you have to when your career is as lifeless and disposable as that of a statistics teacher, and naturally he expects you to take the subject as seriously as he does. He's one of those "show your work" high school flashbacks, so if you have the right answer but don't do things the way he told you to do them, it's wrong. His behavior isn't particularly special amongst math teachers, but he feels the unprovoked need to grimly inform you of the dire consequences of failure on a constant basis. Math Czar has assured us that he "never gives anyone the benefit of the doubt" and that if he doesn't "feel like" reading your test he won't grade it. I wish I had the luxury of declaring I just don't feel like doing my job, and then lording it over the people who pay for my time as if THEY owe ME something. To top things off, multiple choice questions on the assessments are frequently just plain wrong. That is, the "correct" answer is actually not the correct answer. I have called him on this, and he has fixed it, but god dammit this keeps happening every single time.
If it were just him, things would be tolerable (relatively speaking). But there's the essay professor. Holy god. Let's call him… Bill O'Reilly. Yesssss. I had my choice between English essays and critical thinking essays and I chose the later, ignoring my own advice to stay away from topics I'm actually interested in for the knowledge that school would make me hate them. And I really do like critical thinking. I heartily recommend it to everyone. I think the lack of it is the major source of the problems facing humanity. So when I say that he's making me loathe it, understand that this is no small feat.
As you might've guessed, Bill O'Reilly likes politics. Oh, how he likes politics. Personally I consider political parties to be little more than cults, each with their quasi-spiritual figureheads and followings zealously devoted to set of beliefs decided entirely by tradition, with a reflexive siege mentality towards "outsiders." In that vein, I consider people who feel the persistent need to proselytize at me out of nowhere to be the equivalent of Jehova's Witnesses. But as much as he would like to, Bill O'Reilly can't just openly preach his opinion; that would be unprofessional. So, with all the subtlety of an aircraft carrier, he tries to hide his ultra-conservative bile in the study material. Whenever he mentions logical fallacies he will usually use a political example, which is always some outrageous left-wing straw man. It is extremely distracting to be filling out an exam and having to pause at each question to mentally scream at his latest quip about Iraq or global warming. Sometimes he slips up and says things out in the open: "When a person dies, they are dead. Now it is fashionable to use the word ‘passed’ as in, “She passed in her sleep last night.” Thanks to the ‘political correctness’ hysteria griping mass media and academe during the last decade, people are no longer ‘short’ or ‘stupid’, now they are ‘height challenged’ or ‘special’." Yes, "fashionable," because people totally say that about death to sound hip and trendy. You know, I haven't really noticed anything fitting the definition of "hysteria," and for that matter I've yet to hear the phrase "height challenged" outside of comedy routines or conservative rants complaining about political correctness. But how dreadful it must be for you to be unable to call mentally handicapped people stupid. Perhaps the terms "stupid education" or "stupid Olympics" would help alleviate the terrible hardship with which society has so thoughtlessly burdened you. What about you? What about your needs? Of course, where I come from we don't use PC terms for your type like "critical thinkers," we usually just call you "fucking assholes."
But there's more! See, Bill O'Reilly is one of those kinds of logicians. Emotion… art… humor… these are the three demons you must slay if you want to succeed as a critical thinker. I find that anyone who is keen on announcing themselves as objective and free from emotion is exactly the kind of person you can't trust in an argument, much in the same way that someone who describes themselves as "fair and balanced" can't be trusted to be either of those things. He tells us we must be "ever vigilant" to spot words which "try to smuggle some emotional meaning" (words like "smuggle," for instance) as they are "most ruinous to sound argumentation." By the way it is important to distinguish between the terms "sound" (factually true) and "valid" (logically correct). In his words: "It is to speak improperly, then, to say something like "She made a valid statement" or She has a true argument" [sic] Nonsense! Speaking this way only tells the listener that you are not a critical thinker or writer." Yes, because it can't possibly mean that they are simply unfamiliar with the terminology or made a minor mistake, it means they must be incapable of critical thought. I notice you made several punctuation mistakes in your sentences, so you must not be versed in the English language.
It is typical of him to speak with the presumption that we've never experienced logic at any other point in our lives and he's simply blowing our infantile minds with his awesome "de-mythologizations." Incidentally, this is how he explains why students "predictably" fail his tests: not because he makes his questions pointlessly frustrating or only accepts ancient Latin phrases which you must write out with exact spelling, but because our ignorant herd mentality is simply too "stupid" to conceive of these principles, a notion I sneer at having aced three previous argumentation/critical thinking courses. Speaking of Latin phrases, he has his own custom definitions for logical fallacies. He describes ad populum as an "appeal to emotion" which is "when careful reasoning is replaced with devices calculated to elicit enthusiasm and emotional support for the conclusion advanced." Which of course it is not. Some other interesting ones are ad misericordiam (appeal to pity) where asking someone for compassion is a fallacy, and ad baculum (appeal to force) where threatening someone is a fallacy. So the next time a homeless man begs you for food or robs you at knifepoint, you may proudly inform him that he is committing a logical fallacy, for all the fucking good it will do you. Wikipedia manages to explain these things in a way which actually makes some kind of sense, in contrast with Bill O'Reilly's unreflectively broad interpretations.
I'm going to fire off an email asking him to tone down the political manipulation. If I receive the response I expect, I will leave. I refuse to end this semester hating this subject. I've lost enough interests already.
Edit: Response received. As expected it was a veiledly condescending and long winded rationalization which mostly dodged the issue (and complained further about his definition of "political correctness," which I did not even bring up), but it wasn't the worst case scenario. I must resist the urge to reply.
First, my statistics teacher. Let's call him… Math Czar. Math Czar take his subject very seriously, which I suppose you have to when your career is as lifeless and disposable as that of a statistics teacher, and naturally he expects you to take the subject as seriously as he does. He's one of those "show your work" high school flashbacks, so if you have the right answer but don't do things the way he told you to do them, it's wrong. His behavior isn't particularly special amongst math teachers, but he feels the unprovoked need to grimly inform you of the dire consequences of failure on a constant basis. Math Czar has assured us that he "never gives anyone the benefit of the doubt" and that if he doesn't "feel like" reading your test he won't grade it. I wish I had the luxury of declaring I just don't feel like doing my job, and then lording it over the people who pay for my time as if THEY owe ME something. To top things off, multiple choice questions on the assessments are frequently just plain wrong. That is, the "correct" answer is actually not the correct answer. I have called him on this, and he has fixed it, but god dammit this keeps happening every single time.
If it were just him, things would be tolerable (relatively speaking). But there's the essay professor. Holy god. Let's call him… Bill O'Reilly. Yesssss. I had my choice between English essays and critical thinking essays and I chose the later, ignoring my own advice to stay away from topics I'm actually interested in for the knowledge that school would make me hate them. And I really do like critical thinking. I heartily recommend it to everyone. I think the lack of it is the major source of the problems facing humanity. So when I say that he's making me loathe it, understand that this is no small feat.
As you might've guessed, Bill O'Reilly likes politics. Oh, how he likes politics. Personally I consider political parties to be little more than cults, each with their quasi-spiritual figureheads and followings zealously devoted to set of beliefs decided entirely by tradition, with a reflexive siege mentality towards "outsiders." In that vein, I consider people who feel the persistent need to proselytize at me out of nowhere to be the equivalent of Jehova's Witnesses. But as much as he would like to, Bill O'Reilly can't just openly preach his opinion; that would be unprofessional. So, with all the subtlety of an aircraft carrier, he tries to hide his ultra-conservative bile in the study material. Whenever he mentions logical fallacies he will usually use a political example, which is always some outrageous left-wing straw man. It is extremely distracting to be filling out an exam and having to pause at each question to mentally scream at his latest quip about Iraq or global warming. Sometimes he slips up and says things out in the open: "When a person dies, they are dead. Now it is fashionable to use the word ‘passed’ as in, “She passed in her sleep last night.” Thanks to the ‘political correctness’ hysteria griping mass media and academe during the last decade, people are no longer ‘short’ or ‘stupid’, now they are ‘height challenged’ or ‘special’." Yes, "fashionable," because people totally say that about death to sound hip and trendy. You know, I haven't really noticed anything fitting the definition of "hysteria," and for that matter I've yet to hear the phrase "height challenged" outside of comedy routines or conservative rants complaining about political correctness. But how dreadful it must be for you to be unable to call mentally handicapped people stupid. Perhaps the terms "stupid education" or "stupid Olympics" would help alleviate the terrible hardship with which society has so thoughtlessly burdened you. What about you? What about your needs? Of course, where I come from we don't use PC terms for your type like "critical thinkers," we usually just call you "fucking assholes."
But there's more! See, Bill O'Reilly is one of those kinds of logicians. Emotion… art… humor… these are the three demons you must slay if you want to succeed as a critical thinker. I find that anyone who is keen on announcing themselves as objective and free from emotion is exactly the kind of person you can't trust in an argument, much in the same way that someone who describes themselves as "fair and balanced" can't be trusted to be either of those things. He tells us we must be "ever vigilant" to spot words which "try to smuggle some emotional meaning" (words like "smuggle," for instance) as they are "most ruinous to sound argumentation." By the way it is important to distinguish between the terms "sound" (factually true) and "valid" (logically correct). In his words: "It is to speak improperly, then, to say something like "She made a valid statement" or She has a true argument" [sic] Nonsense! Speaking this way only tells the listener that you are not a critical thinker or writer." Yes, because it can't possibly mean that they are simply unfamiliar with the terminology or made a minor mistake, it means they must be incapable of critical thought. I notice you made several punctuation mistakes in your sentences, so you must not be versed in the English language.
It is typical of him to speak with the presumption that we've never experienced logic at any other point in our lives and he's simply blowing our infantile minds with his awesome "de-mythologizations." Incidentally, this is how he explains why students "predictably" fail his tests: not because he makes his questions pointlessly frustrating or only accepts ancient Latin phrases which you must write out with exact spelling, but because our ignorant herd mentality is simply too "stupid" to conceive of these principles, a notion I sneer at having aced three previous argumentation/critical thinking courses. Speaking of Latin phrases, he has his own custom definitions for logical fallacies. He describes ad populum as an "appeal to emotion" which is "when careful reasoning is replaced with devices calculated to elicit enthusiasm and emotional support for the conclusion advanced." Which of course it is not. Some other interesting ones are ad misericordiam (appeal to pity) where asking someone for compassion is a fallacy, and ad baculum (appeal to force) where threatening someone is a fallacy. So the next time a homeless man begs you for food or robs you at knifepoint, you may proudly inform him that he is committing a logical fallacy, for all the fucking good it will do you. Wikipedia manages to explain these things in a way which actually makes some kind of sense, in contrast with Bill O'Reilly's unreflectively broad interpretations.
I'm going to fire off an email asking him to tone down the political manipulation. If I receive the response I expect, I will leave. I refuse to end this semester hating this subject. I've lost enough interests already.
Edit: Response received. As expected it was a veiledly condescending and long winded rationalization which mostly dodged the issue (and complained further about his definition of "political correctness," which I did not even bring up), but it wasn't the worst case scenario. I must resist the urge to reply.