Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?
Terry Eagleton,
New Statesman,
Sept 16, 2004
Reading the review was probably enough for me, as it depicts what seems to be a pro-intellectualist rail against what it is today's intellectuals (including myself, if I may be so bold) are actually saying. The reviewer summarizes, "'Student-centred learning' assumes that the student's 'personal experience' is to be revered rather than challenged. People are to be comforted rather than confronted. In what one American sociologist has termed the McDonaldisation of the universities, students are redefined as consumers of services rather than junior partners in a public service. This phoney populism, as Furedi points out, is in fact a thinly veiled paternalism, assuming as it does that ordinary men and women aren't up to having their experience questioned." If this sort of caricature is what the author believes constitutes being an intellectual, then we are in a sorry state indeed.
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