July, 2013

TV Presenter: Ok, ladies and gentleman, now we will begin our topic for today of
"Pedagogy and Neoliberalisation". Let us meet our roundtable of authors who will be
presenting a brief overview of each others academic publications so that the
audience can decide where we stand in the state of our education. In our audience
we have the honble SU president Nancy Cantor, teachers from Syracuse University,
students and their parents, and of course our esteemed guests in the front row, Mr.
Bill Gates and Mr. Warren Buffet.

Our list of Authors for tonight:

1) Miller, R. (1998). Art of Complicity: Pragmatism and the Culture of Schooling.

2) Giroux, H.A. (2011). The Crisis of Public Values in the Age of the New Media

3) Gill, R (2009) Breaking the silence: The hidden injuries of neo-liberal academia
from the book Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist Reflections.

4) Mortenson, P. (2006) Going Public.

5) Brown, W. (2003). "Tolerance As Civilizational Discourse

PRESENTER: First off, Peter Mortenson.

PM: Hi, everybody! First off, my article talks about Public Intellectuals. I think it was
important for me to bring this core group out into the open, let us say, out of the
closet because essentially they are not the same as the mainstream. In general, our
academic circles tend to be very close knit, and find the public to be a fickle crowd,
sort of like how the Roman's viewed 'the masses' in the old days of Empire. I think
Public Intellecuals as such are a core group when it comes to educating the public,
but they are quite timid and very small in number. I think the reason I wrote my
article is to define their nature, to carve out a niche for them, so more of them may
step out of the shadow.. erm!

[Giroux interjects]

Henry Giroux (HG): [heavy French accent] If I may? Absolutely.. I think you are right!
Talking about the divisive nature of the GOP in this administration Robert Alterman
highlights the role of the media,

Many of the myriad points of democratic dysfunction of the American political

system... are the result of the peculiar commercial and ideological structure of our
media, which not only frame our political debate but also determine which issues
will be addressed.1

I think Robert highlights an important point that the media are quite strained to find
news. Because of the nature of mass producing information they seem to be finding

1 Giroux (p. 5, 2011)

it difficult to report stories in depth (as journalism should) but instead are trying to
cater to certain interests. My article is about Public Values in the Media and I wrote
this because I think the media and Universities are the same, in that they shape
opiniions, and thus, shape the future. The current situation is that the media
produce ratings based popular news so the level of delivery is very low-brow,
catering to, or humoring the masses (as Peter calls them).

Rosalind Gill (RG): Well, in the UK, I am not sure about the situation here [New York
City] since I am only visiting but we have been seeing this pattern for the last thirty
years or so, of cutting down on budgets, and sometimes whole departments based
on ideology2. In my department in Sociology, the argument was that students did not
have interest in learning about economic sociology anymore and many of my
collegaues either had to change their syllabus, or leave because what they were
teaching was considered not commercially viable. It seems students more and
more see a major as a jump into a cushy NGO job leading to this new phenomena of
the Charitable-Industrial Complex which is worth $100 billion or more. To think we
could have cured Aids with a budget like that but wishful thinking?

Timothy Doyle (TD): Yes, Hammond and I wrote our article on research behavior on
the internet because of the concern of information overload I am speaking about
the average teenager in school who has to deal with so much, as well as being a
teenager, that they are prone to breaking down somewhere along the road, or just
tuning out completely, and taking education to be a dead-end situation.

PM: No, I thoroughly agree! This is why I advocate that more intellectuals sacrifice
some of their time to address these issues. I mean, issues that concern the public.
Usually stepping out of the closet means shame. Other intellectuals will shame you
for selling out but I think this is the most noble thing an intellectual could do!

Richard Miller (RM): Public intellectuals are, I guess, rarer because of where they
start off. Usually people able to draw big crowds are those from outside, perhaps
growing up talking in the vernacular of the street language. I think it is very
important to be connected to the dialogue at all levels. This is what is often
overlooked. At least, by those inside the neo-liberal academic complex!

PM: I disagree. I disagree.. with the point that it is university education. It is when
children are precocious that they are most susceptible to ideology. I find this word
troubling to use.. ideology, but I cannot find my way around it. I think if public
pedagogy was more well-rounded this problem would not surface as easily. We
cannot let them slip to the cracks. If we stop thinking about quality of individualized
education, if we think of society as one, the big picture as a whole, if we can create a
system where people have even basic survival skills then we would not see this
class divide that really creates the backlash towards intellectual thought. I am not
surprised to hear the other Presenters today depict normal people as the masses,
and despite this problem it is not one of intellectual vs non-intellectual, I think

2 See Oxford Handbook of Political Science: Chapter 3 (?) on Marxism.

rather, to the point that we should protect the weak, I would say it is an artificial
divide (as are all class structures) but more to the point I think nobody is opposed
to pedagogy and education but we have created an economic situation out of a
political problem,.. so maybe the solutions lie even outside the scope of this
discussion. I dont know.

RM: No I think you are steering us towards an important point. This is why rhetoric
should not be so snobbish and intellectual. I think rhetoric should be more
mainstream. The average students main failing is a public problem. Perhaps even a
problem of citizenship!

HG: [shouting incoherently] It is not that most students are not watching the news;
but they watch too much news! The problem with freedom is the free part. A free
media cuts losses by providing cheap news ad nauseum in a 24 hour repeated loop.
Students consider the news a lowly profession because their interest has been
dampened by the abundance of news bites that is both cheap and ubiquitous!

Current affairs are invalid without the illumination of the past. So we have to train
students. Instead, we try to create intellectuals. But we should be training them to
speak publicly. I think intellectuals come from the general public. Not from
academia. An intellectual is able to connect the dots. So as long as we have rich white
intellectuals and poor minority anti-intellectuals the feedback we will get is the
rhetoric of anti-intellectualism, a silent but mass revolt against all our efforts. You
cannot create islands of intellectuals, amidst the pristine arbors of the private ivy-
leagues and expect them to become public intellectuals. Public intellectuals are
afraid to come out of the grape-vines, and to afraid to reveal themselves for fear of
shame. The problem without our public intellectuals is that they are too reclusive,
too effete, but mostly too intellectual -bah!

RG: Now, let us not veer off-topic this is not a call for socialism or radicalism, or
any ideology. No... As I have said before we too often fall into false hope of: the
teacher-hero gets down to the business of "liberating right, left, and center" (in RM).
Critiquing the master narrative was easy enough; the challenge lay in figuring out
how to work within and against its con-straints simultaneously, acknowledging but
not overstating the influence of past teachers and one's own work in the classroom 3
- But we need to fix our public institutions, fix the class divide, fix civil society, and
intellectuals will come out directly from the public mass.

It is important to take small steps, to identify our goals, and to compromise.

Instead of teaching them to think we should be teaching them to be better citizens.

Instead of political science we should be teaching them in the language of civil
society and rhetoric. We should tell all students to be better citizens. The
intellectuals will come from the public instead of society manufacturing
intellectuals. Only if we compromise and come together can we fix the education
gap.

3 Miller (1998, p. 26).

I had earlier highlighted: By providing a forum for teachers to discuss what actually
occurs in their class-rooms, composition studies has helped to show that there are
other roles for the teacher to occupy besides unquestioned master and final arbiter
of meaning (1998, p. 25).

PM: But what do you mean by Rhetoric? Is it coursework?

RM: I am not advocating rhetorics as rhetorical studies, per se, but our philosophy of
pedagogy seems to rely on giving students skills, and knowledge. Instead we should
think smaller, we should teach them how to use what they already know.

HG: [gruff broken french] Knowledge is not property!

PM: No, there is more knowledge in people than we can ever learn alone. We should
teach students how to sync or as one public intellectual (ahem!) said "Turn on,
tune in, drop out" why are these words so appealing to students? I think this is
really important. To understand. And if we begin to understand each other then we
can grow intellectual harvests, not just distant philosophers, but a cultural shift.
Intellectuals think, but society acts! We need to create an intellectual society. But in
order to do so we have to disavow ourselves from false intellectuals who run our
society. We have to disassociate ourselves from hierarchial models of knowledge and
force students into the cultural current of the mainstream.

HG: So what is the solution?

RG: In the current neoliberal climate? I think, the stakeholders are not only students
but the adminstration within the university. The financial engines need to shift away
from the skill based tutorials that we have towards more community resources.

There needs to be a shift outside as well. The external stakeholders are parents, and
the government. We need a policy shift that supports us, but also protects us! Protect
us from financial pressures of neo-liberalisation.

RM: This is not a paradigm shift: We have to work from within existing structure - I
cannot stress this enough. But we have to focus on students. We have to teach them
the art of complicity. This means turning resources inwards, instead of teaching
them to compete.

And at the same time we have to teach them to survive. Here and now we teach
students to work or as I wrote: deadening effects of formal compliance-a lesson that
leaves no room for thinking about the range of permissible forms of action. We
teach work: work in manufacturing, work in politics, or to work in banks.

RG: The neoliberal model has failed. It has failed the students.

RM: The Solution is the simple, yet subtle Art of Complicity.

PM: Students nowadays are bleating sheep. Intellectuals and Teachers are the
shepherd. But the university hierarchy is just a microcosm of outside society, as
Peter Mortenson posits the problem of intellectuals vs non-intellectuals. Set in a
class dimension, this binary posits: Professionals vs White collar workers.
But I think all binaries are false. Class divides are social constructs. Why are we
divided - maybe God alone has that answer. But we should look for solutions on the
ground..

RM: If we teach students the art of complicity we will not live divided. Our Bleating
Sheeps go into the working world and live in the Neverland of dead-end jobs, join
the army4 or work at fast-food outlets their whole lives. This is the rebel element in
the rebellious youth. The non- and anti-intellectual school of thinking. This is the
problem, but we should not let the problem distract us from the solution.

[Warren Buffet stands up and shouts from the audience]

WB: Curious that.. The only solution for poverty is to ignore it? Charity only feeds
the disease! 5

Bill Gates: I say, what?

RM: Yes.. (thank you), as I was saying teaching Complicity is not easy. Students like to
believe they are all intellectuals. We are too easy to sacrifice our innocence. Naivety
is deemed unworthy in the neoliberalised atmosphere of the educational field. But
competitive students only lead to the cancer of rebelliousness that is eating away
from our society (intellectuals vs non-intellectuals as Peter Mortenson
highlighted). Instead there is a reflexivity of not knowing, of trust that has been
taken away. In its place is the false hope of utopia: our teachers peddle an escapist
philosophy that promises hope to those who excel. Instead we should compromise.
We should turn inwards. Curl up like a child in slumber. Instead of hope we
should learn how to dream.

[Audience erupts in a loud cheering, thunderous applause and a standing ovation.]

[End segment]

4 http://cnc.sagepub.com/content/27/1/17.short
5 Warren Buffets heir-to-be weighs in on altruism in modern society in NYTimes
op-ed this week: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/opinion/the-charitable-
industrial-complex.html?smid=tw-
share&_r=2&utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=bufferbf07d
&utm_medium=twitter&