Re: <nettime> [iDC] A movement of unemployed teachers

[{ brad brace } <bbrace@eskimo.com>]

On Sun, 6 Jun 2010, Jaime Magiera wrote:

> I understand people are frustrated with academia right
> now. However, it's a cyclical thing. I don't think the
> mental purse-strings are being tightened forever more. If
> the system was an absolute failure, it would not have
> provided an avenue for Ricardo or anyone else with radical
> notions in the first place.

Right now?? I would describe academia ('tertiary education')
as a patently absurd, increasingly restrictive, exclusive,
downward, whorled societal pandemic...  (close-knit
collegial-colleagues perpetuate the professorial-ponzi:
maybe this is why lately,) I've continued to be denied
academic employment -- going on 25+ years! and have had to
scramble independently for knowledge, real-world connections
and practical/radical ideas that I was obviously mostly
missing while wasting time garnering worse than worthless
degrees.

> Giving up on academia is a bad idea -- particularly if we
> don't have systems to pick up the slack. Our future as a
> society, as a world, depends on literacy, the ability to
> reason and the ability to work with others. Academia
> provides that at various levels. Instead of dropping out
> of education, we should be dropping in. Building
> alternatives to social media and education are good -- but
> their usefulness is determined not necessarily by how many
> outside people utilize them, but how many "ordinary"
> citizens use them. If we abandon education and social
> media, we're left with alternatives that preach to the
> choir. We need the radical thought to be integrated into
> mainstream avenues. Otherwise, those who don't have a clue
> will never get one. The educational track, which middle to
> upper class citizens follow by default, will be devoid of
> any radical elements. No new people will get turned on to
> new ideas.

One of the many problems with academia (again, tertiary
education) is that it inevitably erects - exclusive, mostly
monetary - walls around its domain and then proclaims any
imported influence or even natural societal/cultural
undergraduate development as somehow a unique result of its
validated provenance. (You can now plaster those university
decals on your rear automobile window, and gain access to
nearly identical corporate ponzi schemes.) As if this
couldn't possible happen anywhere else. It surely does(!)
and more 'radically' and effusively than any
academia-prospectus could ever pretend to proffer.

As-to social-media: I tried that route and my 5000-friend FB
account was just disabled due to an anonymous complaint
about a depicted nipple in one of my photo-galleries! Of
course the corporation never responds to its friends or even
shareholders, but I suspect the objection was really over my
new "profile portrait museum." You can see the newly minted
project here:  http://cart.iabrace.com

> Brad, you and I had a conversation about the benefits of
> honey vs. vinegar, dropping in vs. dropping out over 10
> years ago on the Rumori list. I think that is still
> apropos.

Jaime, yes I remember our exchanges, but I'm (obviously) not
comfortable saying one thing in the hopes of actually,
eventually-maybe-or-probably-never, doing something else.

> Jaime Magiera

/:b


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/:b













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