Academics don't write for the masses. They don't even write for students. They write for each other. Academic writing is densely dry for the rest of us, kind of sucking the joy out of learning.
I asked a Classics professor why he didn't share his knowledge and write books accessible for everyone. He replied that if he did, his colleagues would no longer take him seriously.
I understand the pressure to conform. Hired as assistant professors they have virtually no independent voice, because after 6 years they must submit themselves to a grueling and soul destroying review of their work. If they pass, they become Associate Professors, with full tenure. If they don't pass, they are fired. Then the successful ones have the choice to come up for another peer review in their career if they want to become full professors.
Don't kid yourself. If any of these tortured souls tried to do something radical before achieving full professor, their peers would become jealous and or judgmental and the younger academic would not be promoted. Silence is a game they must play for many years. But once these scholars have achieved "tenure" they cannot be fired. They have a job for life. When they become full professors, there are no further peer reviews.
Surely some could continue their serious academic writings and still find time to write a popular summary for those of us who don't want to inhale the moldering dust of academic tomes. Well, that was mean of me, wasn't it? Sorry. But books that go unread often make me sneeze.
And knowledge not shared is what my mother would have called a sin and a shame.
I live in a country where intellectuals are considered elitists, distrusted and reviled. In turn, intellectuals look down on the uneducated rabble. Gee, how did that happen? More to the point, how can we change that?
I am so tired of living among people so poorly educated that their only pastime is to drink themselves into oblivion while watching bad TV.
I think there's more to the argument though. Neither one of my parents were well educated but both were intelligent and kept up with things. I've met well educated people who are stupid and uneducated people who are very smart.
ReplyDeleteI think curiosity is involved, open mindedness, a willingness to fail and to look at oneself. There needs to be an understanding that there is always something to learn and that we can doo this our whole lives.
I think we also need to realize that things are not black and white, that most things are grey. Good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. Life, learning and people are all complicated things that need to be approached with curiosity first I think. Just my opinion which I am usually loathe to give, lest I be wrong:)
My appeal here is for the academy to share knowledge with regular people. I'm not sure how your comment relates to my post? I wouldn't disagree with anything you've said here.
DeleteYou make such a good point. I hadn't thought about it before, but it's true that academic papers suck the joy out of learning. It would be a wonderful thing if scholarly papers were offered in more readable versions. You remind me why I dropped out of grad school.
ReplyDeleteWhat were you studying as a grad student?
DeleteColette-- I had majored in Anthropology until my senior year and then switched to Literature. Went to grad school for Literature and decided I couldn't stand it anymore. All those words, and then more words about those words. LOL.
DeleteI feel that most of us fall somewhere between the beer-swilling lay-about and the high-brow academics. Academic papers usually leave me cold as does belching in front of the television.
ReplyDeleteThis post is for us. The in-betweens who would like to learn.
DeleteSeems as if you've just caught up with the late Gore Vidal's essays. I have 'em all and he too is hard on academics. Except he's denying them their only chance to make a little hard cash now and then - academics, says Vidal, can't write fiction (ie, books that don't have footnotes and fourteen pages of bibliography). I take it you had other - weightier - works in mind.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who left school at fifteen I'm not in a position to criticise academics. I would clearly be accused of sour grapes. However the first magazine I worked on in the USA was hyper-techno, quite large portions of the submitted articles consisted of mathematical statements, and many authors (who earned their crust at MIT, Berkeley and USC) had managed to saunter through the Groves of Academe without being seduced by the language I call English and you call American. They were, as Thurber says, my meat. I introduced them to a subject that many of them hadn't realised was a subject: the art of communicating through words (keeping the total to a minimum) while not ignoring the possibility of some felicity. (A sentence I would have cut had it appeared in a submitted MS.)
Some were aggrieved but they were fighting the wrong battle. To use a physiological metaphor, for an article to appear in print it had to pass first through my digestive tract; as one of the world's naturally born sub-editors I was notably dyspeptic. Some thanked me and that took gracefulness on their part. Some were already professors but I would like to think that others went on to gain tenure praticising an improved writing style.
From your fulminations it would seem I didn't spend long enough on the job. Sorry about that.
I'm sure you gave it your best.
DeleteHey, that last paragraph is ME! LOL
ReplyDeleteSeriously, academic writing isn't even really writing, in my book. It's more like preening on the page. Communication seems secondary, at least to my Bachelor's-Degree-educated mind.
My parents were both academics so I know the ins and outs. It seems like such a wonderful life, thinking and reading all the time, but it can be so cutthroat and no one's getting rich teaching at a university. Especially these days.
I actually adore academics, but their world is very strange and somewhat removed from reality. As a long term academic "babysitter," I have often wondered what it must be like to have academics as parents.
DeleteVery true that academics write mainly for each other. And what long-winded rambling tomes they write. I've lost count of the number of academic books I've started with enthusiasm, only to give up a short way in because they're so unreadable.
ReplyDeleteExactly!
DeleteI agree, it is both a Sin and a Shame... and dumbing down of America frustrates me no end... that is how despots and Cult of Personality Leaders come into Power because they recognize and love the 'Uneducated' {direct quote from the Orange Menace who is stupid but cunning and a consummate Conman with a Cult following now}. I believe that Academics do better because they know better, but if that knowledge is not Shared, not passed along in ways that all of us could understand, it is a complete Waste. My Grandson tested with Genius IQ but is also a person with Serious Mental Health Issues, Schools didn't want to bother with him, they preferred the Teaching of Students who didn't rock their boat, didn't challenge them or ask too many Questions! He had a very arrogant School Psychologist tell us at one of his IEP Meetings that he asked too many Questions and I couldn't help myself, I had to ask if that only bothered him because he didn't have the Answers! Touche' and shut the fuck up, he got the Message loud and clear but they told me that they couldn't Teach my Genius Grandchild, AS IF he couldn't Learn... when in fact they just didn't want to be bothered... and we went thru 5 different Schools and Alternatives to Schools before finally we ran out of Options and he just involuntarily had to drop out and not be given the Right to finish his Education. Now he's teaching himself, he's 19, and his Gifts will make room for him... but he's very Jaded about our Educational System, he said they only want people who will be Sheep and have a Herd Mentality to be manipulated easily and not think for themselves... I Fear he could be Right!?
ReplyDeleteI remember having to write for academics - my master's research got published but holy hell it's boring! Some of my favorite things to read are experts in their field who can convey it in a way that is accessible to non-experts. Atul Gawande about medicine, say.
ReplyDeleteFor the last 25 years I have made my living editing (medical science) papers for publication in academic journals or rather for peer review to be eventually published in these journals. It's a cut throat business and so much hinges on it, not just a career in the field of expertise or academic standing, but also funding and promotion and staff numbers and being called to conferences and as an expert and tv shows and so on.
ReplyDeleteI have worked for people who felt holier than thou and acted like film stars and people who just loved what they were doing, some to the point of losing their families in the process.
Here, academics are the hidden upper class, regardless of income. I was raised by academics and when people ask me what part of Germany I am from, I often say that I come from academia, which translates: my parents felt superior and acted it and made us believe we were superior kids. Most people immediately understand what I mean. It took me years to shake that off.