deep thoughts on educational philosophy
Tony Michael Roberts (roberts who-is-at mail.msen.com)
Fri, 3 Apr 1998 11:29:31 -0500 (EST)
Is this supposed to be LIFE? How do they dare to serve me such wretched
fare? Shit, piss and stink until you get to like it. Life, my dear, is fit
only for the comsumption of an underpriviledged vulture. What am I
supposed to DO here? Teach perhaps? Maybe. But even I'm not cruelly
cynical enough to infect an education intended as preparation for life on
some poor unsuspecting soul come from NOTHING streaming clouds of blissful
ignorance. I think education at its' finest is realy more about learning
the most effective strategies of denial and evasion than about preparing
for anything. A well educated person living under conditions of priviledge
can deny life and evade awareness of personal complicity right up to the
point of death. The most precious thing priviledge can afford is plenty of
denial. Never offer to teach anyone so wretched as to require preparation
for life what they need to know. There is no forgivness after knowing and
no peace, and the teaching is a description of plague so powerful as to
conjure the thing described into viralent life.
Sincerely,
T. Michael Roberts
ps. I'm working on a screenplay based on "Miss Lonlyhearts" by Nathaniel
West. I've changed the setting. Our hero is now adjunct faculty at a
community college. Anyone with funny stories from their own experience
should write me. I see it as a light comedy with Dudley Moore doing
another of those charming alcoholic roles with maybe the Widow Cobain
instead of Julie Roberts as his personal fringe benefit just to add a
touch of realism.
"The ego is structured exactly like a symptom. At the heart of the
subject, it is only a privileged symptom, the human symptom par
excellence, the mental illiness of man." Jacques Lacan