First day of Plato
Thursday, September 26th, 2002 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerMy first Political Literacy class went reasonably well, and I was spared the classroom and registration problems that have bedevilled some of my colleagues. Although I didn't get the computer-enabled classroom I was initially promised and ended up in a room more like a corridor, which we had to keep dark because the fluorescent lights emitted the sound of a thousand mosquitos in blood-frenzy, at least I was able to get some overhead transparencies out of my lovingly-prepared OpenOffice Impress (read Powerpoint). Actually, I hate overhead projectors. Like cars and electric typewriters, they are that kind of cruddy intermediate technology that is neither good old robust nineteenth-century machinery nor sophisticated twenty-first-century electronics. You have to print out your pages onto transparencies which will jam the printer or smudge horribly, then after waiting for them to dry, you carry them along with a ton of machinery to your class, plug the thing in, shut off the lights (no problem in this classroom because the lights, don't work anyway) and mess around trying to focus the bloody thing. Give me a blackboard or a computer projection system running Linux - I don't want anything in between. Ditto transport - I want a steam train or a maglev, but not some godawful contraption that runs by exploding fossilised algae and is likely to kill me.
Anyway, despite the hardware problems, the class went reasonably well. I did the usual "this course is really interesting and essential for your academic career" spiel, then went into why it's good to read old books, historical context, cognitive linguistics (categorisation and metaphor in Plato), a nice show and tell with David's (?) picture of Socrates drinking hemlock and a breeze through the begining of Book I. The students were either overawed, or glassy-eyed with boredom and/or information overload.
BTW, this is another almost all-male class. I reckon the economic crisis in Turkey (if you can really use the word "crisis" for something that has been going on for six months) has meant that families are reluctant to spend money on educating girls.
\begin{rant}
Feminists should stop whining about men's promiscuity and unwillingness to cook or clean the house (or indeed themselves) and push for a healthy social-democratic economy which will allow girls to get educated and acquire real economic power. As one Playboy columnist put it (more or less), boys don't learn to put down women by reading pornography, they learn it by watching Daddy call Mummy a stupid bitch, and Mummy not throwing him out on his ear because she hasn't got a decent job and knows she can't support herself and the children without him.
\end{rant}
Appropriately, Fried Green Tomatoes is on the TV. It's one of my all-time favourite films, so I'll go and watch it.
Anyway, despite the hardware problems, the class went reasonably well. I did the usual "this course is really interesting and essential for your academic career" spiel, then went into why it's good to read old books, historical context, cognitive linguistics (categorisation and metaphor in Plato), a nice show and tell with David's (?) picture of Socrates drinking hemlock and a breeze through the begining of Book I. The students were either overawed, or glassy-eyed with boredom and/or information overload.
BTW, this is another almost all-male class. I reckon the economic crisis in Turkey (if you can really use the word "crisis" for something that has been going on for six months) has meant that families are reluctant to spend money on educating girls.
\begin{rant}
Feminists should stop whining about men's promiscuity and unwillingness to cook or clean the house (or indeed themselves) and push for a healthy social-democratic economy which will allow girls to get educated and acquire real economic power. As one Playboy columnist put it (more or less), boys don't learn to put down women by reading pornography, they learn it by watching Daddy call Mummy a stupid bitch, and Mummy not throwing him out on his ear because she hasn't got a decent job and knows she can't support herself and the children without him.
\end{rant}
Appropriately, Fried Green Tomatoes is on the TV. It's one of my all-time favourite films, so I'll go and watch it.
