I Love the Smell of Politics in the Morning

As most folks know by now, I've started back at college right here in Worcester at Assumption College. Bring crazy like a fox as I am, I have arranged all of my classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays so that I can continue working for the Defenders of the Environment and All the Wonders Contained Therein on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Good times. Because I have taken all M/W/F classes, my school days start at 8:30.

My 8:30 class is called Peace and War and is a very cool class about IR theory, war and the current war itself, and it's taught by a nice youngish dude with a good sense of humor who reminds me of a low-key version of my high school government/history teacher, who was frakkin' awesome, so thus far I love the class, which is a pretty big deal for ANYTHING that requires me being up and mobilized at 8.

However, at 9:30, something awesome happens, and that something is my American Government class, which is taught by a CRAZY person who I enjoy very much. My first experience with this guy was when I logged on to BlackBoard and read his syllabus, which is basically a diatribe against THE MAN. To wit:

Stuff Required by BOBs [Basic Old Bureaucrats] who genuinely believe that this will make a difference between you passing or not passing my course. Of course, I am of the old-fashioned opinion that that depends on whether you study enough but in order to accommodate the BOBs I am including this stuff here. I wish you would let me know whether you think this serves any other purpose then allowing the BOBs to control what I put in my syllabi.

What you should remember, though, is that while BOBs claim to be serving you, in fact they are in the business of controlling you and, of course, me. An important fact about BOBs is expressed in the following sentence: “Bureaucracy replaces autonomous personality with organizational identity.” [Ralph Hummel, The Bureaucratic Experience, p. 11 of the 4th edition.] I would only add to this argument that BOBs try to replace autonomous personalities with organizational cogs. Because we are human beings and experience the world much differently than BOBs want us to experience the world and our own existence, we are constantly and repeatedly rebelling against the BOBs and, in fact, even many of the BOBs are constantly trying to resist the demands of bureaucracy.

You should also remember that BOBs are constantly trying to disguise their control mechanisms and one of my favorites is calling Assumption College a “family.” Assumption College is not a family and it is most certainly not my family. I have a job at Assumption College which is called
“teaching” [to disguise the fact that often teaching is really torture] for which I get paid and, if I don’t perform up to snuff I can get fired. You are nothing more than a student here at Assumption College, a privilege for which you are paying a lot of money. None of these variables are present in families, at least not in functional families. By calling this place a “family,” those in
charge, i.e., the BOBs for the most part, are trying to lay the foundation for putting demands on you that are, to say the least, onerous or at least burdensome. All I can say is “RESIST, RESIST, RESIST!” and try to preserve your autonomy. Anyway, here is the stuff these BOBs want me to put in my syllabi.

Awesome, no? So then, having read this, I attended my first class with him. I would now like to share a couple quotes from him, in what I feel will probably wind up being a weekly feature here in Josie Blog Land. N.B.: this professor is a middle-aged, white, balding guy.

{The topic of discussion is how government actually eradicates happiness. Along the way, Chelsea Clintone gets involved. This was a couple days ago, I can't remember how she got involved.}
"I wouldn't go out with her...all those guys with guns? Pfft. 'Get your hand off her breast!' Whoops, sorry guys, sexual harassment."

{Still discussing the government/happiness correllary, and now whether human beings can actually achieve happiness at ALL, government or no.}
"I always wind up doing this you guys on a Friday. This is why you guys drink. Remember, no binge drinking."

{I have no idea how this came up.}
"Whoa whoa whoa...I'm a bro, I don't have anything to do with you honkies."

{Talking about how we say Columbus "discovered" America}
"How would you feel if someone came to your house and said they had discovered it? 'What the fuck, I live here!'"

{Someone refereced Thos. Aquinas, and the prof drew a connection to Augustin}
"Hey, Augustin, shut the fuck up, I got it!"

Is it wrong that I think this is a far better way to educate young minds? Perhaps not the stuff about honkies, but between the attitude in the piece of the syllabus above and the stuff that followed in the full version, which all dealt with the aims of the class being about teaching everyone to sharply question the world around them. Isn't that what higher learning about? Learning to think for yourself and to actively seek out the truth? Love it.