Nail. Hammer. Bang.

RacyT is right, but it’s even simpler than what he or she makes out. Class Warfare is warfare. In war, you treat the other side ruthlessly. You exploit them. You don’t give health care to poor people—and the middle class is included in poor people—for the same reason you don’t seend food shipments to enemy soldiers. If we win, they lose. Those are the rules they have set.

I think they are emotional cripples who can only relate to others within a context of chaos and alarm.  Should the social conditions that produce this chaotic emotional state be removed, the crippled nature of their character structures would be revealed for all to see.

It’s all about the hierarchy. For these people, the way for them to feel good about themselves is to have people beneath them.

I don’t know, Karmakin.  I feel pretty good with someone beneath me.  Hyuk hyuk

I’m reading 20th c. psychologist Carl Rogers right now for a seminar paper, and in his book “Freedom to Learn” (first published 1969) he writes “curious, autonomous students, pursuing their own goals, are nearly always disturbing to have around.”  This example made me think of that quote: if you, yourself, have never been challenged to think about your own goals, and encouraged to have faith in your abilities as an individual, then it’s terrifying to think of a world in which that faith/hope/trust is put in you by society—to be productive, socially responsible, etc., *without* the usual carrot-and-stick behavioral threats. 

I’m not even sure it’s so much about competition as it is about being asked to know yourself.  And being scared of what you might find if you had the creative freedom to look.

Well if you have money you must be special and basic healthcare for everyone lessens that feeling and as a bonus, a populace terrified of health and financial disaster around every corner is much easier to corral with superstition and promises from the sky fairy.

I’m reading 20th c. psychologist Carl Rogers right now for a seminar paper, and in his book “Freedom to Learn” (first published 1969) he writes “curious, autonomous students, pursuing their own goals, are nearly always disturbing to have around.”

That’s a key reason why so few profs make themselves available to supervise independent study credits.  Universities often talk a great game about such matters, but when it comes down to ensuring that there are enough profs to enable students to craft and conduct their own study within credit-worthy guidelines those same unis are generally AWOL.  Supervising one gifted / knowledgeable / independent student is damned hard for a prof and most of them aren’t interested in that level of commitment.  They love to bitch about lecture halls jammed full of deadheads who don’t know squat but give them a chance to spend a semester handling, say, a thirty-year old who knows their subject as well as they do and they pee themselves and stammer that their calendars are full.

(The other key reason, naturally, is money.  If you pull it out of your ass that the student needs another course or three [that (s)he already knows because they learned the stuff independently] then you get to collect tuition from them; you’ve already paid for the prof, so that extra (and very bored) mind is 100% profit.)

“Supervising one gifted / knowledgeable / independent student is damned hard for a prof and most of them aren’t interested in that level of commitment”

You know, I *never* had that experience. I probably took 5 or 6 independent studies during the course of my undergraduate career, and profs were always thrilled to be able to work with a student who wanted to learn. While I was TAing at a major university recently, I had the same experience; the smart and engaged students I worked with were able to get independent studies from faculty who were extremely pleased to have the treat to work with them.

Calendars *do* get full, unfortunately, and extremely easily, and with the way that universities have set up workloads, independent studies are often one of the first things an over-committed professor will have to give up. I have severe reservations about your attempt to cast the overworking of academics as their unwillingness to work with intelligent, engaged, and motivated students.

They just can’t tolerate the idea that anyone else might get something they don’t get, and particularly someone “less deserving”

Ummm, bad Jim, did you not mean:
* “they just can’t tolerate the idea that anyone else might get something they did get because it only has worth if only they get it”; or
* “they just can’t tolerate the idea that anyone else might get anything at all”?

Well, yeah, that’s why they hate affirmative action, too.  Having to compete with people previously held back by socially constructed obstacles is terrifying.  The concern is less that unqualified people will enter the field, but that qualified people will enter the field—-people who’ve overcome racism, homophobia, and sexism to get there—-and that they’ll kick the asses of the straight white guys who had life handed to them on a platter.

A real YMMV situation, Mandolin.  Some years back I ran exactly into that problem.  Returning to school in my late 30s I was told that few profs did independent studies [you could only even ask the ones who had agreed in advance to be available for such requests] and that none were available for that semester or the next (this at one of Canada’s wealthiest and biggest universities) and that I also had to take a slew of courses which the faculty members in question conceded that I was already qualified enough to teach because of my independent studies while following another career.  I’m very glad indeed that your experiences have been better than mine, but it is at odds with both my personal experience and from what I have heard remaining in contact with people who teach at and work within the administrative side universities.  (We will leave aside for the moment the fact that universities are putting way too much money into the fat of their admin rather than the muscle of learning, but I’ve ranted on that elsewhere.)

“[I]ndependent studies are often one of the first things an over-committed professor will have to give up”  is interesting.  It does rather raise the issues of what the professor is over-committed to: teaching?  research?  administration?  It also raises the issue of whether or not that professor is contract, sessional, full-time non-tenured, or tenured.  My own view (unshared by the universities and many profs that I have seen) is that the smaller the courseload that a prof carries then the higher his/her obligation to supervise independent studies.

it just never quite occurred to me that this is exactly what scares people like Erick Erickson.

Erick Erickson wouldn’t know fear if it pissed in his face and beat him with hammers.  He’s got absolutely nothing to be afraid of, living off wingnut welfare.  He just bitches for the attention.

Well, yeah, that’s why they hate affirmative action, too.  Having to compete with people previously held back by socially constructed obstacles is terrifying.

People hate affirmative action specifically because they feel like they aren’t competing with people who were simply held back.  When you’re in a competitive field and you’re trying to game the system for every advantage, its frustrating to discover a certain scholarship or credential is denied to you because of the color of your skin.  When its twenty guys going after two internships, no one gives a fuck about the social and economic plight of the African American from the 1960s to the 1990s or the stigma against first and second generation Latin American immigrants.  They all just want the spot and hate on any leg up afforded to one of their rivals.

yep

I think it may be why wingnuts hate Mormons, too.  The LDS has a giant welfare and safety net scheme going with the 10% tithe.  That money goes to the church for it’s church activities, but the church also supports struggling families, pays healthcare if somebody gets stuck, and even subsidises what many academics would say is a top quality college education at BYU ... IF you can get into BYU, that is.

On a level playing field, they would be astroturf.

Erick Erickson wouldn’t know fear if it pissed in his face and beat him with hammers.

That sounds testable.  I think I have fear’s home phone number…

(Riffles through his Rolodex - yes, he’s analog like that - and pulls a card out of “F”)

“Office of the Vice President.”  Huh.  Old card.

When its twenty guys going after two internships ... They all just want the spot and hate on any leg up afforded to one of their rivals.

Sure. But the first thing one should realize in those sorts of situations is that those two spots aren’t being given out based on merit in the first place. Yes, you might have lost out to affirmative action, but you might have lost out to the guy whose father plays golf with the internship supervisor or maybe the supervisor had his heart broken by someone who came from the same university you did.

That and people really do perceive the nation as having a fixed-size pie over which the pieces can be fought over. If someone else gets more opportunity, they believe that they will get less. Their problem is a lack of imagination—they can’t envision a world in which everyone is doing better. They only see people on the top and people on the bottom and want to make sure they’re not the people on the bottom.

seeker6079 -

As a college prof who occasionally does IS, let me respond from my perspective.  As you and Mandolin illustrate, faculty and institutions vary widely in their attitudes toward independent study.  Let me start with the obvious.  While independent study constitutes significant extra work (above and beyond what is normal or required by our employment contract), we do not get paid anything additional for doing IS.  Do you volunteer to do extra, uncompensated work at your job?  Second, is that a significant proportion of students (maybe even most) are not really willing or able to do an adequate independent study (many percieve it as an “easy” alternative to a “real” class).  Finally, teaching is far from the only thing that faculty do as a required part of their job.  We are expected to be involved in university service (serving on committees and involved in faculty governance), to engage in research publications (which is often the most important criteria for promotion and raises), and (at the university level) to supervise graduate student research and theses.  All of this takes a lot of time and energy and faculty routinely put in 60-80 hour weeks.  Just because they are not in the classroom or their office does not mean that they are not working.

Look, the simple fact is that their shit does not stink as badly as other people’s shit.  It is only fair and reasonable, therefore, that other people be required to haul their shit by hand, whereas they may avail themselves of a flush toilet and sewage system, which they deserve due to their odoriferous faeces.  The idea of flush toilets and sewers for all is offensive, for it would reward the hoi polloi who, unlike them, have smelly shit.

“I think it may be why wingnuts hate Mormons, too.”

I don’t know that your average LDSophobe has any idea that they take care of their own better than your average large American religion.  Most of the Mormon-flavored haterade the wignuts enjoy sipping on tends to be rooted in the more tribal aspects of religion.  They, along with the Catholics, are not “real” Christians and are therefor eligible for the same rage-on that’s habitually waved at Muslims.  There tends to be a side helping of the fifth column paranoia Jews come in for, what with their disturbing tendency to be normal-looking white Anglophones *dun-dun-DUN*.

I think for some of the wingnuts, especially the ones in the lower economic brackets who work hard and really aren’t getting anywhere, it’s not just about thinking a decent set of social services will let some other get what should be theirs. It’s also about giving up their faith. In society as currently constituted.

If you believe that (some part of) the current society is a meritocracy (except for the liberals and their damn affirmative action), then imagining a new version with national health care and decent social services is profoundly unsettllng. It’s hard to ignore the fact that such a society would be much easier to live in and more of a meritocracy. Which implies that the current one sucks in those respects. Since that’s an unacceptable conclusion (“We spent our lives voting for those rich assholes for nothing?”) the wingnuts’ heads explode and they just chant “socialism” as loud as they can.

It is a sort of difficult problem for the rank and file wingnuts, because we’re essentially telling them to admit that they made a huge mistake and screwed up their lives.

DrDick:

Thanks, conceded, but you prove a point that I’ve made before about the unis themselves: the demands that they make of their faculty, and which faculty members of whom they make the demands.  Amongst other things sessionals/contract staff are carrying an increasing burden of the work while getting a decreasing cut of the salary pie.  My own admittedly anecdotal observation is that 2/5 of the staff, the sessionals, do 3/5 or more of the work, and do it for 1/5 or less of the salary/benefits pie.

The fact that a prof isn’t paid for IS is a disgrace, period.  It should be a compensated matter, geared to the circumstances.

One thing that I do note about many tenured profs, though.  Many of them do complain about the 60-80h work weeks, but don’t see it as a price that they pay for incomes in the six figures and a guaranteed, no-fire job doing the thing that they love most.  I’ve known lawyers who pull down prof money; their jobs are never guaranteed, even as a partner, and their work weeks start at 60-80 hours.  They see the time as the price they pay for the money and the prestige; they don’t think that they’re entitled to the big firm seat and the big bucks if they don’t work like crazy; many profs that I’ve seen do, and you seem to be making that same point (and I do sincerely apologize if you’re not). 

It’s interesting to note, though, that the tenured profs that I have come to know personally over the years don’t bitch like this; most of them are so in love with their craft that they are constantly amazed that people pay them for doing something that they might do for free.  They do have contempt for the large number of profs who like the offices, the tenure, the sabbaticals and the lucre but don’t think that they should have to work like hell for it.

“university service (serving on committees and involved in faculty governance)”
—Don’t get me started on the exponentially increasing administrative demands of the modern university.  It’s getting to the stage where all classes will be cut to make sure that the sub-sub-sub-committees run smoothly. 
(Funny tangent: An acquaintance of mine was a business prof at a college.  He went back to private industry (financial services) when they started demanding that he serve on a multitude of pointless committees for no compensation.  His riposte?  “How can I keep a straight face teaching kids that they can and should maximize their profit from their time and efforts while giving up more and more of my time for no money?  Why should they listen to somebody that stupid?”)

“to engage in research publications (which is often the most important criteria for promotion and raises)”
—That was covered in another thread, (at LGM iirc).  It is a stupid system which values CVs over how well a teacher teaches.

RacyT is right, but it’s even simpler than what he or she makes out. Class Warfare is warfare. In war, you treat the other side ruthlessly. You exploit them. You don’t give health care to poor people—and the middle class is included in poor people—for the same reason you don’t seend food shipments to enemy soldiers. If we win, they lose. Those are the rules they have set.

QFT

Hm. A lot of unique and precious snowflakes here for whom standard coursework plus the option of a thesis is just too limiting for their amazing intellectual goals. Cripes.

Professors would love to have a Master’s or PhD student who is “gifted / knowledgeable / independent.” If your “independent study” is so important, you should be able to get a publication out of it, which the professor will be more than happy to support, given that you’ll put his name as last author on it.

It is a stupid system which values CVs over how well a teacher teaches.

A professor is not a “teacher” in the sense that this is his essential role. His role is to be an expert in his field. And because he’s an expert who knows everything there is to know in his field, he should be at least decent at teaching it to others. His main function (at a research university) is to be that expert who is creating new knowledge who, as part of his expected duties, also teaches classes.

“Class Warfare is warfare. In war, you treat the other side ruthlessly. You exploit them. You don’t give health care to poor people—and the middle class is included in poor people—for the same reason you don’t seend food shipments to enemy soldiers. If we win, they lose. Those are the rules they have set.”

...and if they win, we lose.

They have to build up the idea that it’s a zero-sum game.

But somehow they can’t understand that buying a new pink Bentley every other year (instead of every year) is much less of a deprivation than not having food/shelter/healthcare.  So it really isn’t zero-sum at all.

What does Bill Gates get with having $40 billion that he wouldn’t also get having $10 billion?  Not much except bragging rights.

What does a person making $40/hour get that a person making $10/hour can’t get?  A huge list of things…even as basic as healthcare and a decent retirement.  Going from $10/hour to $40/hour can make a night and day difference in someone’s life…

seeker6079 “but don’t see it as a price that they pay for incomes in the six figures and a guaranteed, no-fire job doing the thing that they love most”

Ha!  I will never earn six figures, no matter how long I stay here at this fairly well-compensating liberal arts college. And getting to the guaranteed part is no picnic, plus no guarantee you will ever get there, after 10 + years investment in the profession (degree plus per-tenure period). I think you are thinking of the most elite professors at the top research universities. It is a rare person who makes 6 figures in higher ed, outside of administration.

If your “independent study” is so important, you should be able to get a publication out of it, which the professor will be more than happy to support, given that you’ll put his name as last author on it.

Fucking A! I had a good idea, pitched it to my advisor, then wrote my own goddamn grant!  A shiny new R03 from ATSDR for $100K plus indirect.

What does Bill Gates get with having $40 billion that he wouldn’t also get having $10 billion?  Not much except bragging rights.

More clean water projects for Africa.

“More clean water projects for Africa.”

...I’m guessing if the US gave it directly, instead of coming from our wallets and filtering it through Microsoft first, it would be more efficient and less expensive overall.  And lets face it, after the Wall Street Follies, a few billion here or there is chump change.

Noblesse oblige, is better than nothing, but it’s still not first choice if you take these problems seriously…

Bravo Ms. Kate!

(Looks at Tyro with a heart-rent, stricken, agonized face.)

Tyro…
You don’t think that I’m a precious little snowflake?

(Trys to manfully keep his composure.  Fails.  Bursts into tears.)

After a year of not having to ignore utilities bills to pay for non-elective health care, your citizens will never want to go back. When your government actually takes care of you, conservatism becomes a losing battle.

I agree.  Notice how few Americans want to ditch Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid, unemployment insurance, etc.  We grumble and bitch but if universal health care works then people will just laugh when the wingnuts suggest going back to private insurers deciding what treatments you do or do not get…

It is a rare person who makes 6 figures in higher ed, outside of administration.

Here at my 3rd tier flagship state university, I do not think any faculty outside of the B-School and Law school make 6 figures though there may be a few in the sciences or forestry who do.  Many tenured faculty in the humanities or social sciences (my area) here barely make more than half that.  Yes faculty kvetch about how much they work (as do all of the lawyers and other long hour professionals I have ever known), in part because in most fields faculty are paid far less than comparably qualified people elsewhere.  Most of us (speaking for all the people I know) also willingly make that sacrifice to do what we love, but we would still like to be as well compensated as a college football coach (not even the head coach).

Tax the shit out of the rich. They get on my nerves. I used to work in a bussiness were names like Hobby, Bissonet, Jamael, Sarofim, and DeGuerin were quitidian. These old rich were cool. New rich I now deal with are alll ashats.

Tax tem.

What does Bill Gates get with having $40 billion that he wouldn’t also get having $10 billion?  Not much except bragging rights.
What does a person making $40/hour get that a person making $10/hour can’t get?  A huge list of things…even as basic as healthcare and a decent retirement.  Going from $10/hour to $40/hour can make a night and day difference in someone’s life…
MikeEss  on  03/25  at  10:59 AM

But sir, bragging rights are EVERYTHING. There are two sides to this:

a) As posters above have pointed out, poor rightwingers have bought into the system that punishes them. Once a human invests, many would rather suffer than admit foolishness.

b) The rich rightwingers are just fighting the old class struggle. And the rich don’t fight to survive, but out of sheer pride. They really are the worst of us. (Sure, most poor people would be this nasty if given half a chance, but they’re not given the chance, so the point is moot.)

And if you let other people up to the highest levels of wealth with you, you’ve just undermined the scarcity that made your wealth so unique. It really is that petty.

Social safety nets protect the wealthy and the well-off too.

I just caught up with the mom of a kid on my soccer team - a woman who has been a very successful realtor for over 20 years.  She had a medical emergency during the summer and didn’t work for eight months.  Being self-employed, this sucked - but it didn’t suck so bad because she had MassHealth to fall back on.  She is a realtor and has been living off her reserve, just like she did in the last recession, paying herself a salary out of her business account.  Had she not had health insurance, she would not have been able to keep that reserve to see her through the rest of the recession.  What is also good is that she will still have affordable health care now that she is “high risk”.

This is a woman who has very carefully managed her assets.  One small intervention means she will continue to pay goodly amounts of taxes to the state for many years to come.

I’m still throwing up in my mouth a little bit from reading the editorial by Charles Murray (yes, that Charles Murray, of the American Enterprise Institute and a certain infamous book) in which he trotted out the right-wign clichés about Europeans being unmanned by socialism. Swedes don’t enjoy their jobs, they aren’t motivated to have families, or to maintain the superiority of the Nordic race (Murray didn’t actually say this, but in dogwhistle terms), they live for leisure rather than work.

You could ask any group of young (20ish) people in a major American city and they’d tell you the same thing. It boggles the mind that a self-proclaimed expert on intelligence should fall into the Fundamental Attribution Error.

There is also the possibility that the Swedes knew who Murray is and were fooling with him a little bit, like high-school kids deliberately screwing up their geography test, which is taken by educators as fundamental proof of the ignorance of U.S. students vs. the world’s.

Swedes aren’t motivated to have families ... right.  That must be why they have some of the highest birthrates in Europe - helped along by generous socialist family benefits.

Last I heard, they were averaging 3+ kids per couple!

Okay, so I looked it up - the problem with the birth rate per woman figures is that it is not age adjusted - elderly populations won’t have a lot of babies!

Even so, Sweden has one of the higher fertility rankings in Europe, as do the other scandanavian countries.  The US has an artificially high birth rate since recent immigrants are typically of the right age and inclination to have a couple of kids, and the baby boomlet is pushing out kids now in greater numbers.

Of course we really want to have each woman bear a lot of kids so we can be as prosperous as ... Mali?

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=sw&v=31