its cold

I surrender to coats.

o hai

The insides of my mouth are sour in this photo.

creepy chan

dear anon:

Because you miss my writing, critique this piece of complete shit! Its really awful but possibly entertaining, a first draft for an essay for my english class. The essays I refer to are Dave Eggars' "Serve or Fail," Stanley Fish's "Why We Built the Ivory Tower," and Neil Postman's "Order in the Classroom."

Postman addresses a deteriorating educational process by criticizing not the system itself, but instead those who are supposedly utilizing it, “We have no inferior education in our schools. What we have been getting is an inferior type of student” (316). This bold accusation, however, misses the true source of corruption, which is the electronic media. The influence of such a powerful and revolutionary approach to information access has caused the degradation of the entire traditional academic system.

Postman praises the educational system as a champion of “sequence, social order, hierarchy, continuity, and deferred pleasure” (317). These values are the very foundation upon which society sits and functions by, the systems that give order to human interactions. These principles that impart civilization with logic, however, are directly opposed by the attitude imposed upon the public by the electronic media. Mediums of collecting instantaneous information promote inattention in those who utilize it – the internet, cell phones, ipods, and the combination of all three enable its users to hold the world at their fingertips, quite literally. The access to infinite information offered by such forms of media destroys the sense of respect and understanding towards Postman’s idea of sequence the university teaches; the media dulls tolerance in favor of intolerance, and patience in favor of impatience. Sequence is replaced by random occurrence – one often comes across information accidentally, by chance, without any respect towards order and logic. Social order and hierarchy are blurred due to the anonymity and equality offered by forms of media like the internet. In such a massive network, one’s voice is as strong as any other’s regardless of age or status. Continuity is altogether forgotten, all things seem transient and unstable in the ever-evolving world of technology. Deferred pleasure, too, seems obsolete in respect to the media due to its commitment to making all information available to all people at any time within seconds. In effect, this new system of learning directly negates the values so highly prized by Postman’s interpretation of the traditional organization of the university, and ultimately society.

Postman claims that the classroom is built around the principles of delayed gratification, which forces the student to adapt himself to inconvenience. Boredom, he suggests, is an essential ingredient to one’s study, and the ability to adequately manage that boredom is an essential skill. Today’s over-stimulated student, however, dismisses all that disinterests him and replaces it with television, conversations, music, etc. As a consequence, these young academics never learn how to compromise their needs and instead enter school with an air of entitlement, and await their amusement. This one error in the system of education nullifies the entire process because it is so intrinsic to it; the student’s role depends largely on one’s ability to attend to something one finds boring. The student is self-contained within a bubble of entertainment which destroys his need to react with others, and therefore accommodate himself to their needs as well as his own. In the bubble of electronic media, one possesses all of the outside stimulation necessary for life within one’s pocket.

Due to the student’s media-fueled incomprehension of the concept of delayed gratification the entire learning process is thrown off. “The problem is not unlike trying to find out how to spell a word by looking it up in the dictionary. If you do not know how a word is spelled, it is hard to look it up. In the same way, little can be taught in school unless these attitudes are present. And if they are not, to teach them is difficult” (317). As a consequence, the student’s lack of understanding of patience is uncorrectable and goes on to spark a number of further problems. The relationship between the student and teacher is dissolved because the student cannot form any type of respect towards that which disinterests him, like the curriculum set forth by his professor. This “inferior” student of not the nineteenth or even twentieth century, but of the twenty-first, is almost incapable of learning the patience so vital to his position. Intolerant students are nearly hopeless under this presumption, because they cannot reach an attitude of tolerance after having been so tainted by the immediacy of the electronic media.

It seems that twenty-first century students are faced with a seemingly unmanageable obstacle in regards to the media. The current generation has been brought up in the warm glow of the computer screen, has seen and heard what seems to be everything that has ever happened, and has stumbled back from this threshold of information disappointed and apathetic. Unlike the radio and television guinea pigs of the twentieth century, students today were raised on video games, mastered the internet by age five, and were administered cell phones as soon as they were old enough to remember to carry it with them. The entire culture and existence of the children of the nineties is based around the media; their “preschool education” was on a remote control rather than in Postman’s manners. It seems only natural and inevitable, then, that students are trapped within this world of instant and complete gratification.

In regards to correcting this dilemma, Fish might argue that those in the “ivory tower” have no right, or obligation, to interfere with the degrading relationship between the student and the media. From his view, the responsibility of those in higher education is only to present information – and nothing else. His position emphasizes the job of the professor as a paying profession with a specific, unbiased duty. To attempt to diminish the influence of the media is clearly a personal aim, which is no business of any college professional according to Fish. He would agree with Postman that the education of students is left mostly in their own hands, and that they ought to choose or not choose to take advantage of the information presented to them without interference from a higher authority.

Eggars, however, may take a far less concrete view on the subject. He supposes that college students waste much of their time throughout their academic careers, time spent devoted to the media included. Like he argues in his essay “Serve or Fail”, Eggars would suggest that the solution to student apathy lies in mandatory community service. This, however, creates no real solution to the problem. Eggars would not propose to outlaw the media as the whole, only to add additional work to the student’s course load in hopes of motivating them. The damage created by the media has already been done, and is unlikely to be corrected by charity work.

Eggars, Postman and Fish all approach the media incorrectly; they come at the problem from the side, but do not acknowledge the source. The consumer should not be attacked, but the producer. If any correction is to be made, it is in the media itself rather than in the students. Blame CNN and Apple, not those who purchase their products. Creation elicits responsibility – the parent is obliged to care for and monitor its child, just as the corporate media is compelled to but refuses. This entity, which plays deaf to its child’s cries, cannot continue to deftly divert fault onto those it profits from. Restrictions ought to be put in place on the companies that profit off of the media, rather than the sheep who feed them.