From Arion: A Journal of the Humanities and the Classics:
“Young people today are flooded with disconnected images but lack a sympathetic instrument to analyze them as well as a historical frame of reference in which to situate them. I am reminded of an unnerving scene in Stanley Kubrick’s epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where an astronaut, his air hose cut by the master computer gone amok, spins helplessly off into space. The new generation, raised on tv and the personal computer but deprived of a solid primary education, has become unmoored from the mother ship of culture. Technology, like Kubrick’s rogue computer, HAL, is the companionable servant turned ruthless master. The ironically self-referential or overtly politicized and jargon-ridden paradigms of higher education, far from helping the young to cope or develop, have worsened their vertigo and free fall. Today’s students require not subversion of rationalist assumptions . . . but the most basic introduction to structure and chronology. Without that, they are riding the tail of a comet in a media starscape of explosive but evanescent images.”
Camille Paglia: The Magic of Images--Word and Picture in a Media Age
2 comments:
Paglia sets my teeth on edge with polemical generalizations and words like "young people today" and "reclaim" and "command."
I know of few good undergrad programs that don't teach "structure and chronology" as a framework for most of the core humanities courses. Almost all academics recognize this pedagogical method, and use it to incorporate criticism and dialectics (and to teach the history of criticism, dialectically). It seems Paglia's hidden targets are those academics who don't use these methods in their own writing and criticism, rather than it being lost in their teaching.
Thanks for the comment on Paglia... I didn't originally respond b/c I have no desire to defend her--she is purposely provoking and confrontational, but I did like the germinal of her quote and its claim (even if couched in generalizations). Even when I disagree with her I admire her honesty and conviction.
Students receiving a true liberal education is a shrinking sector in our society (which I believe is a negative factor), I have taught in a few major universities and frankly their general liberal arts requirements are very pitiful, except for the students who are already predisposed and pursue this course, otherwise...
Post a Comment