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Contents contributed and discussions participated by nakins

nakins

The American Scholar: The Decline of the English Department - William M. Chace - 0 views

  • The number of young men and women majoring in English has dropped dramatically
  • hile the study of English has become less popular among undergraduates, the study of business has risen to become the most popular major in the nation’s colleges and universities.
  • Here is how the numbers have changed from 1970/71 to 2003/04 (the last academic year with available figures): English: from 7.6 percent of the majors to 3.9 percent Foreign languages and literatures: from 2.5 percent to 1.3 percent Philosophy and religious studies: from 0.9 percent to 0.7 percent History: from 18.5 percent to 10.7 percent Business: from 13.7 percent to 21.9 percent
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  • There are several, but at the root is the failure of departments of English across the country to champion, with passion, the books they teach and to make a strong case to undergraduates that the knowledge of those books and the tradition in which they exist is a human good in and of itself.
    • nakins
       
      This seems to sound like the author's opinion here. This appears to be one of his reasons for the decline of the number of students in the English major field.
  • Students in public schools tended toward majors in managerial, technical, and pre-professional fields while students in private schools pursued more traditional and less practical academic subjects.
  • Increasingly into public, not private, schools.
  • Studying English taught us how to write and think better, and to make articulate many of the inchoate impulses and confusions of our post-adolescent minds. We began to see, as we had not before,
  • Yet the “glory years” of English and American literature turn out to have been brief. Before we regret the decline of the literary humanities, then, we must acknowledge how fleeting their place in the sun was.
  • Finding pleasure in such reading, and indeed in majoring in English, was a declaration at the time that education was not at all about getting a job or securing one’s future.
  • By contrast, private schools have until now been the most secure home of the humanities. But today even some liberal arts colleges are offering fewer courses in the liberal arts and more courses that are “practical.”
  • however: it is responsible for teaching composition. While this duty is always advertised as an activity central to higher education, it is one devoid of dignity. Its instructors are among the lowest paid of any who hold forth in a classroom; most, though possessing doctoral degrees, are ineligible for tenure or promotion; their offices are often small and crowded; their scholarship is rarely considered worthy of comparison with “literary” scholarship. Their work, while crucial, is demeaned.
  • rise of public education; the relative youth and instability (despite its apparent mature solidity) of English as a discipline; the impact of money; and the pressures upon departments within the modern university to attract financial resources rather than simply use them up. On all these scores, English has suffered. But the deeper explanation resides not in something that has happened to it, but in what it has done to itself.
  • English has become less and less coherent as a discipline and, worse, has come near exhaustion as a scholarly pursuit. English departments have not responded energetically and resourcefully to the situation surrounding them. While aware of their increasing marginality, English professors do not, on the whole, accept it. Reluctant to take a clear view of their circumstances—some of which are not under their control—they react by asserting grandiose claims while pursuing self-centered ends.
nakins

T.M.I. - I Don't Want to Know - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • “I had to go on a vacation-photo diet,” admitted Laura Zigman, a novelist. “I had this bizarre, voyeuristic habit of scrolling through people’s travel photos online and then feeling like, ‘Why haven’t I walked the Great Wall of China?’ And guilt: ‘I should be taking my son to Spain.’ I don’t even like to travel!”
    • nakins
       
      Zigman, a naysayer, who doesn't even like travelling makes a concession, saying that she was roped into wanting to vacation like many of her online friends, because her friends had done it. 
  • Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and author of “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other,” spoke of the effects. “People pay a psychological price for seeing information about former friends and spouses and colleagues that they really shouldn’t be seeing,” she said. It’s not good for our emotional health and, she said, “it makes people feel bad because they know they shouldn’t look at this stuff — but they can’t help it!”
    • nakins
       
      Turkle is a naysayer, believing that people should not be lookning at other peoples information in the way that they do. She finds that people often have a negative emotional feedback from "creeping" on other's online life because they know that they shouldn't, but she also points out that people just can't help looking at it.
  • “People will post things on my Facebook walls — political statements that are just strange — religious rants that don’t reflect my values,” said Adam Werbach, chief sustainability officer at Saatchi & Saatchi. “I feel like I’ve got to scrub it off like a graffiti squeegee man.” But while other peoples’ unsolicited information can be amusing or annoying, it can also be hurtful.
    • nakins
       
      The author seems to be kind of disagreeing with Werbach by making the argument that while in some cases you are able to just remove little things from your online profile, the kind of things you find amusing at the time, there are some pieces of your information that aren't so easily removed online. Therefore, those pieces of information can really hurt someone in some way.
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  • “For most of my life, I’d encounter people and then they’d be gone,” said Caitlin Flanagan, the cultural critic. “You’d have to go to a major library and pore through phone books or hire a private detective to track them down.” Now it’s way too easy. “You can get this instant download and find out their whole life story and download all their pictures,” she said. “But then you’re like, ‘That’s enough of that person.’ ”
    • nakins
       
      Flanagan is a naysayer here. She begins by making the point that before online profiles you would have had to literally search for a person, but now you're able to find them online and instantly get tired of that person. She feels that is "too easy" to find them now and get so much of their life so fast.
nakins

T.M.I. - I Don't Want to Know - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • But many people see no escape. “Even if you hide a person’s news feed, you know it’s there,” Ms. Crosley lamented. “And then you might find yourself going to their page to get a direct hit, which can only be worse.”
    • nakins
       
      Ms. Crosley is a naysayer. She disagrees that there is an online escape for many, because they choose to find what they are trying to avoid. Even though you can ignore someones updates, you can still get to a point that you crave the information and desire to search it out on their pages. 
  • “There’s one person who keeps coming around in the People You May Know box on Facebook where just the suggestion of this person changes my whole day,” said Pam Houston, a novelist. “It’s essential to my well-being to create the illusion that this person doesn’t exist.
    • nakins
       
      Houston is a naysayer, she disagrees that a suggest online friend could become an online friend. The anticipated online persona and the person alone would only have a negative impact on her mood for the day.
  • The faceless Web, seriously? More like the Web of too many faces.
    • nakins
       
      The author here is a naysayer, disagreeing with the information relayed by the Google spokesman. Instead of seeing the information of the Google plus members being well integrated into the Web in a productive manner, Paul finds that it would just be a negative addition adding more unnecessary "faces" to the "faceless Web."
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  • “My high school friends from Kansas are dear, sweet people,” said Colby Hall, the founding editor of Mediaite.com. “But nothing says depressed like people asking you to feed the cows on Farmville.”
    • nakins
       
      Colby Hall is a naysayer here, that agrees with the opening paragraphs of the author, that there is just too much unnecessary things going on online being relayed by friends. In Hall's case, it the "dear" old friends asking you to help out in a ridiculous online game you don't care about.
nakins

T.M.I. - I Don't Want to Know - NYTimes.com - 3 views

  • “My high school friends from Kansas are dear, sweet people,” said Colby Hall, the founding editor of Mediaite.com. “But nothing says depressed like people asking you to feed the cows on Farmville.”
    • nakins
       
      Colby Hall, as the naysayer, is objecting to the overload of too much information that comes from old friends in Kansas. This naysaying points agrees with the overall argument that Paul is making about there just being too much unnecessary information shared.
  • The faceless Web, seriously? More like the Web of too many faces.
    • nakins
       
      The author, Paul, is the naysayer. Here she makes an informal objection to the idea the Google spokesman presented, believing the Web already has enough "faces" in "the faceless Web," and not much of what Google Plus members can add will attribute to the Web productively. 
  • But many people see no escape. “Even if you hide a person’s news feed, you know it’s there,” Ms. Crosley lamented. “And then you might find yourself going to their page to get a direct hit, which can only be worse.”
    • nakins
       
      Ms. Crosley is a naysayer here, disagreeing with the idea that you can hide out online from the people that you are trying to ignore. Instead of just ignoring them, she argues that you can end up searching to find the information that you try so hard to avoid. Because you know that it is still there online.
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  • “There’s one person who keeps coming around in the People You May Know box on Facebook where just the suggestion of this person changes my whole day,” said Pam Houston, a novelist. “It’s essential to my well-being to create the illusion that this person doesn’t exist.” Even if we like a person, we don’t necessarily like — or even “like” — what we find out about them online.
    • nakins
       
      Here, the author and Pam Houston are both naysayers. Houston disagrees in needing to friend the suggest person she could know, because she knows how that person messes with her mood. While the author feels that even when you might actually like a person in reality, the person they are online may not be a person you like, because of what you find out online.
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