Ivory Towers and Greyhound intellectuals
Jan. 26th, 2006 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cincinnatus_c
High temp today, here: -8. Dewpoint then: -13. High dewpoint: -13.
High temp today in TO: -4. Dewpoint then: -10. High dewpoint: -10.
Low temp today on the balcony: -13.5. High: -8.5. Currently: -9.2.
OK, I was cold today--freezing cold, in fact, but only because I didn't wear my winter coat with hood, because I'm an idiot, or rather an optimist, which may be much the same thing. I also tend to favour being a bit too cold over being a bit too hot, which is the great dilemma of going out into the world, and in and out of the world, in the Canadian winter. Being a bit too cold, at worst, hurts; being a bit too warm, generally, makes me feel ill. Pain beats illness.
The Pat Quinn deathwatch seems like it may have passed the point of no return. Reminds me of the last days of Pat Burns--except they were bad, then; now they're just mediocre. I don't know if any head coach or manager ever survives a deathwatch once it gets to this level of direness--the Buck Martinez, Lenny Wilkens level of direness. Probably, in part, because the team stops playing and waits for the guy to get fired. Which reminds me: I'd like to replay this election campaign without everyone writing off the Liberals for the last three weeks, and see what happens that way. Which reminds me of something else: Allan Gregg (who said, just before the election, that at the beginning of his polling career, he thought "the bandwagon effect" was a figment of academics' imaginations, until he saw it work in Quebec for the PCs in 1984) has some 'splainin' to do, again. (This is the guy whose polling career was destroyed in 1993 by polls predicting a PC win; this year, he rose from the ashes as The Strategic Council to produce polls that consistently had the Conservatives higher than all the other polls had them.)
I learned today that the great majority of my students have never heard of Wikipedia (and those who had heard of it were not clear on the concept--they didn't know that anyone could change anything at any time with no controls except random other people).
So here's the thing about academia, and the myth of the Ivory Tower: as a teacher in a university, I am exposed, on a regular basis, to a pretty decently wide cross-section of young adults, and I get to find out a lot about what they know and what they don't know and what they think about things and what's going on in the lives of more or less ordinary (if, on average though not exclusively, above averagely wealthy and above averagely (sub)urban) young adults. If I were, I dunno, most other kinds of (upper-)-middle-class professional--most kinds of lawyer or somesuch--I could manage to believe that, generally, the world is significantly widely populated by people who live more or less in the same world I do, because they read the Globe and watch the National (and maybe even Studio 2) and are plugged into electronic networks that let them know what everyone who knows stuff knows. Instead, I am confronted with the fact that, actually, most young adults--and, I think I can safely infer, most not-so-young adults--even the ones with the wherewithal and the desire to go to university (though I'm not convinced they're actually terribly unrepresentative of the general population)--live in a very different world from mine.
I was standing in line waiting to get on the bus this morning when a sixty-something-ish, maybe seventy-year-old woman appeared very near on my right and stood there blankly for a few seconds, during which time I was concerned that she was going to disrupt the always-fragile line protocol. Then she moved around behind me, reappeared very near on my left, and announced that she had had one of those moments where you have no idea what you did with your ticket--you know? And I said, yeah, it happens to me all the time, which it does. And she said something I didn't quite catch, maybe it's because of something, or maybe it's because there's too much going on in our lives and we can't keep track of everything, and I said, yeah, that's probably true, because it probably is, and she said it's nicer to think that than to think you're losing your marbles. She asked whether I worked in Toronto--one day a week, I said. She said it must be hard for people who work in Toronto, it's such a long time, when it snows, you never know how long it will take--you'd have to have flexible hours. I told her that some people do commute regularly, which I knew from last year--the same people every day at 5:55 in the morning, some of them getting back on every day at 5 at the corner of Front and University--to which she replied that they must have flexible hours, and I didn't bother to argue. Toronto is so much dirtier than it used to be, she said, and people say that, though I don't know if it's true. The subways are so much dirtier, she said--why is that?
Oh no, I think, it's going to be the immigrants--and I suggest that maintenance budgets are lower than they used to be, and she says maybe the unions are better than they used to be, and I say um. You know, she says, how they have night shifts at factories? And sometimes they set up cots in the factories so they can sleep? Once there was a factory where they were sleeping on the night shift and they got fired and the union defended them. Can you believe that? What do you think about that? And I said, well, you know, there's often more to these things than meets the eye. Oh, come on, she says, it's sleeping on the job. You can't sleep on the job. It's like murder; you just can't murder. Well, I say, what if it's self-defence? And she says, yes, there's self-defence; sometimes killing isn't murder ... and maybe, I say, sometimes sleeping on the job isn't sleeping on the job. Oh no, she says, sleeping on the job is sleeping on the job. You're over my head with that. I don't buy your argument. Argument? I think. That wasn't an argument, it was a suggestion.... That wasn't what unions were for, originally, she says. I decide to try something different: well, I say, the way the system is set up, you know, unions are like lawyers--it's adversarial, like defence lawyers and prosecutors. Unions defend their people like defence lawyers defend their clients; it doesn't matter whether they're right or wrong or guilty or innocent; it's just the lawyer's job to defend people, no matter what. That's how the system is supposed to work. Yes, she says, she's heard that barristers (she has an English accent) don't care whether their clients are innocent or not, and she says it in a tone that maybe indicates this is a scandalous thing, that maybe she's one of those people who think that any lawyer who would work for Paul Bernardo or Saddam Hussein should go to jail too. Of course you can buy justice, she says, like Ted Kennedy. Imagine that, driving into a river and getting away with it. Did he ever even go to trial for that? Well, I say, that was a little bit before my time, which it was. And she says, Jesus was before your time, too, but you know something about him, don't you. And I freeze: is this it? Is this the moment where the pitch starts? Because the last time someone started talking to me on the Greyhound, the moment came and the pitch started: gotcha!
But that isn't it this time; she moves on, something to the effect of people using not being around as an excuse for not knowing things. I try to say something about how I knew of it, I just didn't know the details, but it's clear now that this is a game I'm not winning, and my fingers, holding my tea, are aching cold, and I really want to get on the bus. And then she says to me: I bet you didn't think you were going to have a conversation like this--I bet you thought you were just going to stand here quietly and drink your coffee and daydream. And there, that's the moment, that's the gotcha. Yeah, that's what usually happens, I say, and she says, what, people talk to you?, and I say, no ... you stand here and daydream, she says. Which do you think is better? she asks, and I say, "I think it's good to have a bit of each," and she says, "that's a very diplomatic answer," and I reply, because I suspect she means "that's a load of bullshit," "well, it's true," because it is. And she goes on: I find that people don't talk to each other anymore, they don't have conversations--and when they do talk to each other, they talk about themselves, not about other things, the big picture, you know?
And then the bus driver appeared, the door opened, and that was that. I went to the very back of the bus, where I always sit if I can because it's the least desirable spot on the bus and I'll only have someone beside me if the bus is completely full, and she, of course, didn't follow me, and I thought, a bit surprised, it's not just late-adolescents who do that sort of thing, who go around in the world firing tired ideas they think are fresh at people they think have no ideas at all, to get those people to realize that they ought to wake up and quit being such blanked-out drones. You can go through your whole life doing that ... or, who knows, maybe something happens when you're fifty-eight, and you think, life's too short--let's wake these people up!
High temp today in TO: -4. Dewpoint then: -10. High dewpoint: -10.
Low temp today on the balcony: -13.5. High: -8.5. Currently: -9.2.
OK, I was cold today--freezing cold, in fact, but only because I didn't wear my winter coat with hood, because I'm an idiot, or rather an optimist, which may be much the same thing. I also tend to favour being a bit too cold over being a bit too hot, which is the great dilemma of going out into the world, and in and out of the world, in the Canadian winter. Being a bit too cold, at worst, hurts; being a bit too warm, generally, makes me feel ill. Pain beats illness.
The Pat Quinn deathwatch seems like it may have passed the point of no return. Reminds me of the last days of Pat Burns--except they were bad, then; now they're just mediocre. I don't know if any head coach or manager ever survives a deathwatch once it gets to this level of direness--the Buck Martinez, Lenny Wilkens level of direness. Probably, in part, because the team stops playing and waits for the guy to get fired. Which reminds me: I'd like to replay this election campaign without everyone writing off the Liberals for the last three weeks, and see what happens that way. Which reminds me of something else: Allan Gregg (who said, just before the election, that at the beginning of his polling career, he thought "the bandwagon effect" was a figment of academics' imaginations, until he saw it work in Quebec for the PCs in 1984) has some 'splainin' to do, again. (This is the guy whose polling career was destroyed in 1993 by polls predicting a PC win; this year, he rose from the ashes as The Strategic Council to produce polls that consistently had the Conservatives higher than all the other polls had them.)
I learned today that the great majority of my students have never heard of Wikipedia (and those who had heard of it were not clear on the concept--they didn't know that anyone could change anything at any time with no controls except random other people).
So here's the thing about academia, and the myth of the Ivory Tower: as a teacher in a university, I am exposed, on a regular basis, to a pretty decently wide cross-section of young adults, and I get to find out a lot about what they know and what they don't know and what they think about things and what's going on in the lives of more or less ordinary (if, on average though not exclusively, above averagely wealthy and above averagely (sub)urban) young adults. If I were, I dunno, most other kinds of (upper-)-middle-class professional--most kinds of lawyer or somesuch--I could manage to believe that, generally, the world is significantly widely populated by people who live more or less in the same world I do, because they read the Globe and watch the National (and maybe even Studio 2) and are plugged into electronic networks that let them know what everyone who knows stuff knows. Instead, I am confronted with the fact that, actually, most young adults--and, I think I can safely infer, most not-so-young adults--even the ones with the wherewithal and the desire to go to university (though I'm not convinced they're actually terribly unrepresentative of the general population)--live in a very different world from mine.
I was standing in line waiting to get on the bus this morning when a sixty-something-ish, maybe seventy-year-old woman appeared very near on my right and stood there blankly for a few seconds, during which time I was concerned that she was going to disrupt the always-fragile line protocol. Then she moved around behind me, reappeared very near on my left, and announced that she had had one of those moments where you have no idea what you did with your ticket--you know? And I said, yeah, it happens to me all the time, which it does. And she said something I didn't quite catch, maybe it's because of something, or maybe it's because there's too much going on in our lives and we can't keep track of everything, and I said, yeah, that's probably true, because it probably is, and she said it's nicer to think that than to think you're losing your marbles. She asked whether I worked in Toronto--one day a week, I said. She said it must be hard for people who work in Toronto, it's such a long time, when it snows, you never know how long it will take--you'd have to have flexible hours. I told her that some people do commute regularly, which I knew from last year--the same people every day at 5:55 in the morning, some of them getting back on every day at 5 at the corner of Front and University--to which she replied that they must have flexible hours, and I didn't bother to argue. Toronto is so much dirtier than it used to be, she said, and people say that, though I don't know if it's true. The subways are so much dirtier, she said--why is that?
Oh no, I think, it's going to be the immigrants--and I suggest that maintenance budgets are lower than they used to be, and she says maybe the unions are better than they used to be, and I say um. You know, she says, how they have night shifts at factories? And sometimes they set up cots in the factories so they can sleep? Once there was a factory where they were sleeping on the night shift and they got fired and the union defended them. Can you believe that? What do you think about that? And I said, well, you know, there's often more to these things than meets the eye. Oh, come on, she says, it's sleeping on the job. You can't sleep on the job. It's like murder; you just can't murder. Well, I say, what if it's self-defence? And she says, yes, there's self-defence; sometimes killing isn't murder ... and maybe, I say, sometimes sleeping on the job isn't sleeping on the job. Oh no, she says, sleeping on the job is sleeping on the job. You're over my head with that. I don't buy your argument. Argument? I think. That wasn't an argument, it was a suggestion.... That wasn't what unions were for, originally, she says. I decide to try something different: well, I say, the way the system is set up, you know, unions are like lawyers--it's adversarial, like defence lawyers and prosecutors. Unions defend their people like defence lawyers defend their clients; it doesn't matter whether they're right or wrong or guilty or innocent; it's just the lawyer's job to defend people, no matter what. That's how the system is supposed to work. Yes, she says, she's heard that barristers (she has an English accent) don't care whether their clients are innocent or not, and she says it in a tone that maybe indicates this is a scandalous thing, that maybe she's one of those people who think that any lawyer who would work for Paul Bernardo or Saddam Hussein should go to jail too. Of course you can buy justice, she says, like Ted Kennedy. Imagine that, driving into a river and getting away with it. Did he ever even go to trial for that? Well, I say, that was a little bit before my time, which it was. And she says, Jesus was before your time, too, but you know something about him, don't you. And I freeze: is this it? Is this the moment where the pitch starts? Because the last time someone started talking to me on the Greyhound, the moment came and the pitch started: gotcha!
But that isn't it this time; she moves on, something to the effect of people using not being around as an excuse for not knowing things. I try to say something about how I knew of it, I just didn't know the details, but it's clear now that this is a game I'm not winning, and my fingers, holding my tea, are aching cold, and I really want to get on the bus. And then she says to me: I bet you didn't think you were going to have a conversation like this--I bet you thought you were just going to stand here quietly and drink your coffee and daydream. And there, that's the moment, that's the gotcha. Yeah, that's what usually happens, I say, and she says, what, people talk to you?, and I say, no ... you stand here and daydream, she says. Which do you think is better? she asks, and I say, "I think it's good to have a bit of each," and she says, "that's a very diplomatic answer," and I reply, because I suspect she means "that's a load of bullshit," "well, it's true," because it is. And she goes on: I find that people don't talk to each other anymore, they don't have conversations--and when they do talk to each other, they talk about themselves, not about other things, the big picture, you know?
And then the bus driver appeared, the door opened, and that was that. I went to the very back of the bus, where I always sit if I can because it's the least desirable spot on the bus and I'll only have someone beside me if the bus is completely full, and she, of course, didn't follow me, and I thought, a bit surprised, it's not just late-adolescents who do that sort of thing, who go around in the world firing tired ideas they think are fresh at people they think have no ideas at all, to get those people to realize that they ought to wake up and quit being such blanked-out drones. You can go through your whole life doing that ... or, who knows, maybe something happens when you're fifty-eight, and you think, life's too short--let's wake these people up!
