Post-Literacy

  
Can anyone at Puget Sound play this game read?
    

The faculty recently added to the graduation requirements:   

Learning Objectives  Courses in Knowledge, Identity and Power provide a distinct site for students to develop their understanding of the dynamics and consequences of power differentials, inequalities and divisions among social groups, and the relationship of these issues to knowledge representation and production.  In these courses, students also develop their capacity to communicate meaningfully about issues of power, disparity, and diversity of experiences and identities.
 
Guidelines   1.     These courses promote critical engagement with the causes, nature, and consequences of individual, institutional, cultural and/or structural dynamics of disparity, power, and privilege.
2.     These courses provide opportunities for students to:
a.     engage in dialogue about issues of knowledge, identity, and power, and
b.     consider linkages between their social positions and course themes related to these issues.
3.     Courses can also fulfill other program or graduation requirements.

   

A recent petition calls this the "diversity overlay."  Could the new requirement be diluted more and still serve as misleading evidence that the University of Puget Sound has said or done anything about diversity?  What is so scary about "diversity of experiences and identities?" 
       
         
Fear not, post-literate faculty, staff, and students!  The system of governance worked about as it has in my 28 years here:  An irresponsible, reckless, and extravagant proposal was shrunk to a responsible, feckless, and meager measure.  Zealots secured an empty symbol and ersatz status.  The status quo ante endures.  Unless the Curriculum Committee ignores the wording that the faculty endorsed, many popular, successful courses should be declared to fulfill the KIP/KNOW requirement.  This means that the worst excesses forecast by opponents of the KIP/KNOW requirement will likely never come to pass.  Faculty who long to evangelize captive audiences will continue to be "miserable merchants of unwanted ideas" [William O. Douglas, Dennis versus United States 1951] preaching to students who take the courses because they are already true believers. Meanwhile, competent instructors will try to coach students about what we all should know and how critical skeptics who nonetheless remain conversant with facts and evidence proceed.
                         
The PAP [Positionality / Affective Learning / Praxis] was drained from the proposal before it passed.  Read the new requirement, then stop whining.  Volunteer to offer terrific courses so that the dilettantes and ideologues do not offer substandard courses to many students.  Make the KIP/KNOW victory Pyrrhic.
        
Really, colleagues and students, this internal and external marketing game/scheme is not as challenging as many of you are making it seem. I realize that whining about supposed grave threats is itself an established game at Puget Sound as elsewhere in academia, but hysteria works least when it is most boring.
    
As I noted in "I'm Sorry," a posting published on this blog on 4 April, reading is fundamental.  Try reading instead of bleeding or bleating.