Oh, the Humanities!
Always pleasurable to witness the demise of institutionalised leftism, so I'm gleeful to learn of 13 redundancies pending at Auckland Uni's arts faculty as enrolment figures plunge. Hoorah! With similar cuts proposed at Massey, Lincoln and Canterbury, could this augur a trend? Let's hope so!
Like the schools of Education and Social Sciences (which have long been strongholds of Marxism) the Humanities have been gutted by unlearned zealots preaching a tired tripartite of sexism, racism and homophobia. Arts faculties no longer teach 'the arts,' which are stripped of their emotional, spiritual, mystical dimensions and reduced to perverted identity politics whining about power and oppression. There's no room for grandeur, majesty, enchantment, wonder, awe and emotional largesse in the cold, sterile sphere of crimped, head-tripping activist ideologues. Today's 'tutors' with a keyhole view of history are divorced from reality, insulated from the larger world outside academia, and estranged from their own feeling natures. What can these emotional eunuchs possibly teach their underlings about art?
Art & literature as taught in the Humanities should inspire students: develop their sensoria and imaginations; cultivate a refined sensitivity to the flux, nuance, mystery, ambiguities and magic irrationalism of emotions; and equip scholars with a vocabulary to articulate the enduring universal psychological truths about human nature. Instead they breed resentful, callow, stunted, enfeebled neurotics who see 'social injustice' everywhere but are blind to the sublime beauty and monumental achievements of Western culture. So I fully applaud the continuing collapse of our Humanities faculties as presently constituted. Parroting progressive palaver is an undesirable educational end-product; whinging about capitalism is not a marketable skill. Perhaps wise future scholars see through the sham?
Like the schools of Education and Social Sciences (which have long been strongholds of Marxism) the Humanities have been gutted by unlearned zealots preaching a tired tripartite of sexism, racism and homophobia. Arts faculties no longer teach 'the arts,' which are stripped of their emotional, spiritual, mystical dimensions and reduced to perverted identity politics whining about power and oppression. There's no room for grandeur, majesty, enchantment, wonder, awe and emotional largesse in the cold, sterile sphere of crimped, head-tripping activist ideologues. Today's 'tutors' with a keyhole view of history are divorced from reality, insulated from the larger world outside academia, and estranged from their own feeling natures. What can these emotional eunuchs possibly teach their underlings about art?
Art & literature as taught in the Humanities should inspire students: develop their sensoria and imaginations; cultivate a refined sensitivity to the flux, nuance, mystery, ambiguities and magic irrationalism of emotions; and equip scholars with a vocabulary to articulate the enduring universal psychological truths about human nature. Instead they breed resentful, callow, stunted, enfeebled neurotics who see 'social injustice' everywhere but are blind to the sublime beauty and monumental achievements of Western culture. So I fully applaud the continuing collapse of our Humanities faculties as presently constituted. Parroting progressive palaver is an undesirable educational end-product; whinging about capitalism is not a marketable skill. Perhaps wise future scholars see through the sham?
Congratulations to Geoff Hayward who'll become the 2007 president of the Victoria University Students' Association, ousting incumbent, Nick Kelly. Geoff is also the blog author of The Thorndon Bubble, and although he's a Labour supporter, any lefty who blogrolls me can't be all that bad, imho :-)
Cheers, Geoff! Good luck to you and the VUWSA exec for next year!
Cheers, Geoff! Good luck to you and the VUWSA exec for next year!
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