Third Tier Reality And The Terms Of Debate

One of the more controversial blogs I've encountered is "Nando's" Third Tier Reality.  When I say "controversial," I don't mean it in any perjorative or otherwise negative way.  Rather, I am using the word quite literally:  TTR really does stir up varied opinions and ideas.


Some of the controversy has to do with the content of his blog.  Or, to be more precise, it has to do with the fact that Nando doesn't  "spin" employment and starting salary statistics as law school administrators do.  What he shows is that there is a close parallel between the way law schools compile their placement rates and the US Department of Labor computes the unemployment rate.  In the former case, anyone who has a job, whether or not it requires a law degree (or, in fact, has anything to do with law), is counted as employed.  The unemployment rate is a kind of inverse mirror of that: those whose unemployment insurance benefits have been exhausted, or who are working part-time but need full-time jobs, or have stopped looking for work, are not counted.  


Plus, graduates who respond to their alma mater's surveys tend to have higher salaries and are more likely to be doing work that squares with the goals they had while they were in school than those who don't respond.  So, as Nando points out, that skews average salaries upward.  And a few extra-high salaries can skew the average even further up, as most law schools' graduating classes have 100 to 200 students.


But what stirs up the most controversy about Nando's blog is his style.  Some are repulsed by the photos of overflowing toilets and toxic dumps as well as the language he uses.  While his style is not my style, I am happy that he has made his blog what it is.  For one thing, he and I are still living in a country that--the last time I checked--enumerates freedom of expression among the rights its citizens have.  And, for another, there are some things that simply can't be described in polite language.  Or, at any rate, the emotional impact of those things cannot be expressed through the language of sensitivity workshops.


The style and tone of Third Tier Reality have, ironically enough, helped me to clarify, for myself, something that is terribly wrong with American education and what passes for intellectual life in this country.  I notice it any time I get into a discussion about almost anything (at least, almost anything about which I'm knowledgeable) with just about anybody connected with the academic world.  


It seems that one can make a poorly-structured and poorly-supported argument as long as one doesn't say anything that hurts somebody's feelings.  Now, I don't think that anyone should set out to hurt someone's feelings, at least not with good reason.  I also don't believe that it's absolutely necessary to be abrasive or caustic when making one's point, and I am definitely not in favor of gratuitous ad hominem attacks.  However, I sometimes get the feeling that not offending people has taken precedence over educating them, or becoming more educated.


That is because the academic world (in the humanities and social sciences, anyway), and education generally, has become the province of grumblers and mumblers.  You can write all you want about being victimized--or, more precisely, how members of whatever group you belong to have been victimized.  But you can't pinpoint who or what, exactly, victimized you:  It's acceptable only to talk about "society," "conditions" or other abstractions.  It's even worse to let your audience hear the actual cry you or your brothers and sisters let out when you were attacked; it's unseemly to raise your voice, let alone scream for your life, in the ivory tower.


In fact, the whole academic enterprise, at least as it's structured today, is about extinguishing passion.  Keep your idea inside one box or another--one of the "isms"--and you might have a chance of being accepted, if not heard.  Express any visceral connection with your ideas or values and you will be labelled as "abrasive," "immature" or "-phobic" of one thing or another.  


So all of those contentious debates that developed between writers and thinkers and critics of one stripe or another have been consigned, as Marx wrote, to the dustbin of history. That, I believe, is the reason why we spend more time in, and more money on, education than any other society on this planet or in any time in history, yet Americans are distrustful of, and even hostile toward, ideas.  Not any specific idea--just ideas generally.


And no wonder.  After all, ideas--real ideas, not those mental gestures academics make to get their grants and tenure--are fierce, not neat and convenient.  Ideas that are worthy of the name have changed the world in all sorts of ways, sometimes for the better, but always with a lot of anxiety, anger and uncertainty.  To me, there's no way to have a real debate without upsetting somebody.  It isn't always pretty.


And it's exactly what a person needs in order to mature intellectually, spiritually and emotionally.  Yet engaging in a real debate, and calling things what they are, is more likely to get a person labelled as an "adolescent" or worse.  For an actual adolescent to express an actual idea, the consequences can be even worse:  Such a kid is called a "problem" child and is consigned to "special" education or, if he or she is truly unlucky, capricious discipline and medication, or even confinement.  Any of those consequences can haunt a young person for the rest of his or her life, as those who mumble and grumble won't let those kids into their colleges or hire them for jobs that can actually make use of their skills and talents.


And they're going to denigrate Nando for those pictures of cruddy commodes.  I think those folks suffer from intellectual constipation along with their verbal diarrhea.