Exciting archeological discoveries, breakthroughs in history, are happening all over the place. Discoveries are popping up all over the place. The history I learned in the 1950s is as out of date today as the UNIVAC computer.
But historians can’t USE it. Social science today is rooted in the 1940s. So is about everybody else.
Here are some very practical problems:
1) Putting together a curriculum in history involves a huge sunk cost. Textbooks constitute a massive industry. You can’t just change the history without simply tossing out a titanic investment.
2) History is a giant bureaucracy. It is exactly like the Federal Government.
When you make a decision in the Federal Government it involves a huge amount of paperwork. Every bit of past regulation must be heaped together in a huge pile and gone over. Exactly the same thing goes on in academia. This huge pile of past decisions is called “The Literature.”
A professor must keep up with “The Literature,” which means the journals which go step by step through different opinions and interpretations. A professor gets paid to “add to The Literature,” which means he must add an article to the pile already there. He must know exactly the point at which “The Literature” is right now and know how to fit in with it.
This, in turn, is exactly like the respectable conservative. The respectable conservative makes his living by knowing exactly where “both sides,” current political discussions, is TODAY, right now. He must know how to debate within those parameters without any deviation or heresy.
Meanwhile heresy is pouring in from all sides with each new discovery.
Academia is a giant, clunking bureaucracy. It is not a conspiracy of geniuses, it is a mass of inertia based on print media. What is happening to it is what happened to the Soviet Empire. Instead of an atomic war or a massive civil war,the Soviet Empire collapsed simply because, the minute it got its heel off the neck of its subjects, they took a look at it and laughed it out of existence.
The academic bureaucracy only survives because it keeps its foot on the people’s necks. Only that bureaucracy can give people a degree they LEGALLY have to have. If you took away its legal monopoly, it would collapse.
The academic bureaucracy is the same as the Post Office. Only one thing keeps the Post Office going, and that is its legal monopoly. If the law that gives the Post Office a monoply on mail were removed, that expensive, cumbersome dinosaur would collapse within a month.
Some years back, the Post Office said the only reason it was not efficient was because of all the “junk mail.” Instantly a group of companies announced that they would be GLAD to deliver that same junk mail at a lower rate, faster, and pay taxes on their profits. The Post Office instantly stopped using that excuse.
So you stand in line during strictly limited postal hours to get your mail through that clunking, outdated, overregulated dinosaur. The academic bureaucracy is the same thing, but far, far bigger.
The Preamble Party would get rid of the Post Office AND the academic bureaucracy. It would remove their monopolies and watch them both go down, overnight, just like the Soviet Empire.
#1 by Dave on 09/08/2006 - 1:07 pm
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The University of Washington proudly announced that it was supplying a “free” book to all incoming freshman to “encourage youth to turn away from their materialistic obsessions” to focus on “world poverty”; particularly the need for infant care for the hordes of impoverished black infants in Kenya and elsewhere in former British colonial Africa.
I’m always flummoxed that the missionary evangelicalism (financed at public expense) inevitably tossed at dumb white high school seniors never seems to absorb the fact that there is a French Africa also.
I remember that 35 years ago, this same institution tossed a “free” book at me titled “Diet For A Small Planet” to enlighten me about the evils of consuming meat.
The basic idea of the book was that white folks preference for meat protein was causing third-world poverty.
I am puking a lot these days because it has become fashionable in academia and the business press to toss pictures of smiling black infants at you.
What kinds of psychopaths actually perceive these little pickaninnies to be cute?
All I see is a ghastly abomination to dignity in a human-simian hybrid.
Never do I see one ounce of the light of intelligence shining in the eyes of these infants.
Since this blog is a public dataset I won’t mention what would happen to these infants if I were King.
#2 by joe rorke on 09/08/2006 - 2:58 pm
So, we have invested a fortune in falsehood and therefore the truth cannot be told.
Yes, “The Literature” was The Gospel for so long and so we will treat it as if it is still The Gospel. We will not accept truth. We will carry on as if the The Gospel is the truth. We will never let anyone know that this is what we are doing. We have invested a fortune is a lie and we must keep the lie alive. Pieces of paper are more important than the truth. “The Literature” is more important than the truth. Therefore, let the children immerse themselves in falsehood.
Oh, yes, if we are going to have political debate there must be parameters, there must be a box inside which we will hold this “debate.” No heresy. No deviation. No truth. Limbaugh’s “Marketplace of Ideas” is in that box for an army of worshippers to digest. But that’s all they’ll get from this Respectable Conservative.
The academic bureaucracy still has its foot on the collective necks of all those worshippers.
#3 by Kelly on 09/08/2006 - 3:51 pm
NOT SPAM NOT SPAM……Bob could it be possible to revamp some of the existing stucture with in the parameters of acedemic buracracy?…I didn’t know the postal service was a slugish giant either…But by know I should know that anything that these so could experts(?) have assembled is nothing more then narrow minded logic that they studied in the acedemic buracracy…Why would the Postal Service care about who deleivers junk mail.?..As long as that junk mail is Not coming thru A Respected Postal Service…That junk mail is rasing the prices of our postage stamps etc…Less to sort thru…less man hours etc…When did the Postal Service become a catalog for any company to try and use to advertise and sale their products…They are the ones who should be paying the Postal Service big bucks for dirt cheap advertising…better yet stop allowing an out side entity into the Postal Service so they can be a respected sevice for the people like they are suppose to be…(Its called being tacky)
#4 by Al Parker on 09/08/2006 - 6:36 pm
Please tear it down AFTER I graduate. I have only two more required courses to take: “Tolerance and Sensitivity” and “Political Correctness 3”
#5 by Shari on 09/08/2006 - 8:19 pm
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Yes, there is an awful lot invested in falsehood. I think of Christ’s parable of a house built on rock and one built on sand. But, I am not hopeless. Just the fact that it has happened this way, says something.
#6 by mderpelding on 09/08/2006 - 8:49 pm
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You hit a point…and then back off.
Every few years,
Public school districts need to change textbooks.
English grammar doesn’t change.
Algebra doesn’t change.
Analytical geometry?
How about chemistry?
Plancks constant?
The quadratic formula?
What is changed is history.
It isn’t even called that any more.
Me and my best friends will allways be close
because we have a shared history.
Experiences that over time we share as UNIFIED people.
It’s not “real history”.
“actual history”.
“The history”.
History is nothing more than shared experience.
Amongst friends.
Or tribes, families, races.
A century ago, or so, some real smart people realised
that the best way to destroy a people was to redefine history
as an objective truth; “History”.
Now, children study History.
Not history.
#7 by Mark on 09/08/2006 - 11:43 pm
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I like the way Dave writes. It’s too the point, interesting, and paints
interesting “word pictures.” Well done, Dave!
#8 by Pain on 09/10/2006 - 6:45 pm
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Mr. DP is right about history. But they have changed the textbooks in Jr High and High School for math. They’ve not only dumbed them down, they are worse than useless for a student to learn from or do practice problems. A conscientious and gifted teacher would have to write his own textbook on the spot to teach. Yes, even math is ruined now.