29 September 2010 Class and no class

I’m enjoying my history course sufficiently enough that I am already considering classes for spring 2011. Among the front runners are classes in “history of Rome,” “history of modern Middle East,” “the Russian moment (late 19th to late 20th century),” and “the history of the rise of the conservative movement up to and including Reagan.” Other options include “medical anthropology,” and “physical geology.”

I’ve several good options to mull over and others may enter the lists. I’m certain that I don’t want to study history with Dr. Fritz, who taught the “history of the Holocaust” class I took last spring. He wasted too much class time talking about his family, his garden/lawn, and athletics games on TV. Whichever classes I choose, I’ll have to wait for the paying students to fill up the rosters before begging for a seat in the classes. So far, I’ve been lucky in getting seats. I hope that continues.

I wonder about studying a foreign language. Spanish will likely be most useful in the future but I have no desire to travel to Mexico or much of Latin America. The places I would like to visit in Latin America are prohibitively expensive for us. I have some barely present residual French abilities that date back to high school and to VietNam. I wouldn’t mind refreshing that language. Greek &/or Russian might be interesting. I need to see what’s available and how much language lab might be required. Logistics also need to be considered in enrolling for classes. Right now, there are days when we both are in class late in the day and don’t get home until nearly 1800. Bad weather could complicate that as may the earlier sunsets. We try to maintain a fairly constant dinner routine in order to help Gloria maintain her glucose levels.

I’m not sure what I’ll opt for next semester but I’m looking forward to it. The right wing history might be fun. I stand a very good chance of being the only actual student in the class who saw parts of the subject material happen. The course will deal with anti-feminism, resistance to integration, anti-taxation, anti-education, the religious right, and a host of other things that crawled out from under GOP rocks in the 70’s through 80’s. A chance to be the only anti-Reagan, Jewish, pro-education, pro-taxation, anti-corporation student in the class is too good to pass up. So, too, is the course in “the modern Middle East” taught by a woman named “Al-Ilam.

Tonight we’ll eat tuna salad. Tomorrow night we’ll have Chili-Mac. I’ll make the Chili tonight.

Turning to “no-class,” in searching for academic and biographical information for the professor who teaches the African-American history class I try to sit in on, I stumbled across a disgusting bit of modern practice. MTV has a feature known as “Rate my professors.” I stumbled across this site and find it of no redeeming social or academic value. The complaint I read that referred to the professor I was interested in were petty and whiny in nature. The students complained of having to memorize dates precisely, of having to use proper grammar and to spell correctly. The website is essentially a site for corporate-sponsored libel. Having sat through the professor’s class sessions, it is clear that none of the complaints have any merit. They are excuses posted by students who failed to study, failed to complete assignments, who failed to participate in class-room discussion, and who were probably graded, quite fairly, in accordance with their poor scholarship. The anonymous nature of the complaints is absolutely unjustified. Were I a professor mentioned in such complaints, I’d initiate a class action lawsuit against the sponsor and the complainants. This is as “no class” a means of soliciting web site hits as I have seen short of GOP attack ads. The people who posted these complaints are, beyond any doubt, poorly educated enough to believe the GOP’s propaganda. Such anonymous attacks at individuals are prime examples of the type of children we have spawned under the loving guidance of Reagan revolutionaries. They’re perfectly pre-positioned to spew venom and lies about political candidates at the direction of the Tea Party mobsters. These are the kids I described last year who walked into classes late, opened their cell phones and began to carry on conversations verbally and electronically. These are the kids who expect to be handed the answers to every quiz. These are not students. They might have been once but the opportunity was ignored when they learned that being a student was labor intensive. These are only a pale prediction of what will be considered students if the GOP is allowed to destroy the Dept of Education and then create Texas-like local school boards such as they are already doing in most red states.