Zepeda, Dylan: Paglia

In the article “Revalorizing the Trades”, Camille Paglia talks about how the middle class will be very badly affected by the plummeting unemployment rate. This is most likely true, and it is a very important fact, but what does it have to do with us, the students of Southern Arkansas University’s Honors College, and why are we being asked to read this?  It will affect us more than some people realize. If someone were to do a study on the family income of the students in the Honors program, they would probably see that many of those studied come from a middle class background. This means that if what Ms. Paglia says is true, this is our future.
            

Not everyone will fall under the same cloud of misery and misfortune that the author describes, but it is a possibility for all of us. But, we need to learn about what is happening to the world around us. I think that is one of the reasons why you have given us this article.  These are our lives and we need to be in control of them. Without being properly informed, we cannot have this control, but instead, will be used by others, who were more prepared.

            

Reading things of this nature now will afford students the opportunity to change majors to flow with the way that the economy is going. It can affect the decisions someone at our age makes. It is scary to think that the job we have our minds set on may not be there for us when we graduate. We don’t want to waste our time and someone’s money for a lost cause.

            

But, fear can be a strong motivator. It can be a driving force that moves us along. Fear can be what pushes someone to be better than their peers. The fear of being last, unsuccessful, poor, alone, or a nobody can make someone fight harder than they thought possible, to accomplish their goal, which is having a job waiting for us when we graduate, in this instance.

            

This is why I think we were shown this article; to inform us, to scare us, to help us, and to guide us. Or, maybe it was the big words. But, I know the article made me think about my future, and that seems like a very good thing.

Chelsie

Hi, my name is Chelsie Gordon, a new student editor.

Spring Registration: October 18 and 19

I will be setting up times for FIRST YEAR students to meet with me and register for Spring 2011 term on Monday, October 18 beginning at 2:24 to 5:00 p.m. and on Tuesday, October 19 beginning at 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. All appointments will be 12 minutes long. I will have your midterm grades available and will go over those with you. Meetings will take place in the Honors Office, Peace 129. 

YOU should come prepared with the courses you wish to add next semester. The MOST IMPORTANT piece of information I will need will be the ID number for the course. See the example below (from last year), the ID number is on the left. Find this information on the SAU Web site under Academics/Class Schedule (click to from main SAU page).

ID       Course    Sc Course Title         Start Date   
-------- --------- -- -------------------- ---------- 

3100092S CHEM-1123 01 Univ Chemistry II    01/13/2011  

Honors College Report October 5, 2010

Registration: Spring 2011
Director will meet with all first-year students on Monday, October 18 and Tuesday, October 19 to assess midterm progress and create schedules for the Spring 2011 semester. David Wingfield will circulate a sign up sheet via e-mail soon. Appointments will be for 12 minutes each and will be held in Honors Office, Peace 129.

Visitor:
Harold Fincher spoke to both Honors Seminar classes on Friday, October 1.

Talk:
Director Ed Kardas spoke by invitation at the Magnolia Rotary Club on September 16, 2010. He explained the nature of honors programs in general and SAU's in particular, covering admission requirements, the curriculum, course types, and future plans.

Events:
Honors students participated in several events recently. They held a fund raising carwash at the Magnolia Burger King on Sunday, September 26. They also participated in the annual Bed Race on Saturday, September 25, winning "Most Original" for their bed. On Tuesday, September 21 Honors North RA Sarah Grigg hosted a well-attended honors pizza party in the Honors Hall classroom.

Research:
Honors College senior biology student Nitish Narula's summer research project, conducted at MIT, was accepted for a poster presentation at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, to be held in Charlotte, NC on November 10 to 11, 2011. His project is entitled: Identification of ampliconic regions on the Zebra Finch Z chromosome. Financial support for his travel and registration came from the Honors College, the Biology Department, the Vice President for Academic Affairs, and the Office of Multicultural Services.

Director Kardas and psychology professor Deborah Wilson are making final preparations to present a poster at the National Collegiate Honors Council meeting in Kansas City later this month. Their poster is entitled: Optimizing admission decisions in Honors College by adding the Noncognitive Questionnaire (NCQ) to traditional academic measures.

Green, Tamara: Paglia

“The pressuring of middle-class young people into officebound, paper-pushing jobs is cruelly shortsighted. Concrete manual skills, once gained through the master-apprentice alliance in guilds, build a secure identity.” I agree with the aforementioned quote from Camille Paglia’s article, “Revalorizing the Trades”. We, as college students, are pressured into office jobs. Physical engagement is no longer seen as gratifying but is looked down upon.

            

“Working with your hands is one of the main things that teaches you to think and solve problems. Finding the resources to make and fix things puts you in touch with some of the industries, people, and skills on which everything else is built.” People should learn trades. We need and rely on the people that provide services for us, such as fixing our cars, building houses, protecting our country, or even painting the pictures on our walls. Hands-on activities are what provide so many jobs around the world. I’m not bashing corporate jobs; they employ people, but not everyone is made for office jobs. As a college student, I have felt the pressure of working for a boring, uptight office job without taking into consideration my love for hands-on learning and expressing my creativity.

            

In the job market, hardly anyone wants to be the electrician or the farmer anymore. These “small” jobs are the foundation of our society. We need food, hence a farmer; we need electricity, hence an electrician; we need water, hence a plumber. No one seems to understand what you get out of using your hands to work. I guarantee that almost every time you finish a laboring project, you feel a sense of accomplishment and gratification.  That sense of accomplishment and gratification is what Paglia was talking about when she said; “There is a calm, centered, Zen-like engagement with the physical world in their lives.”

            

Camille Paglia had a very valid point in her article, “Revalorizing the Trades”. We need to inspire people to learn a trade and get inspired to use their hands as well as their minds. If people would take time to express themselves and be creative, I believe that people would be a lot less stressed. “…every four-year college or university should forge a reciprocal relationship with regional trade schools.” This idea may better help college students figure out what they want to do in life and open their minds to new and different fields of work.

Pinson, Zachary: Paglia

The current college education concentrates too highly on the business aspects of today’s workforce. Paglia expresses her concerns over this issue in her article. She explains that a resolution for our economy’s recession is for modern education to focus on teaching students in an apprentice-master type setting again. In the old days when people chose their trade they went and learned from a master so that they would be fully prepared to do their job. Nowadays people sit in a classroom listening to a professor teach them everything they need to know to be a professor. They aren’t taught all the hands-on skills required to do the tasks that will be expected of them. They are taught the basics and the theory behind the job and sent into the world to be outdone by those who have learned by working alongside the men and women who have been doing these jobs all their lives, rather than learning from books and professors for four to seven years after high school. If the schools would not only teach their students the math, science, English, and critical thinking aspects of a job but also have them work with their hands to learn the physical aspect of the job, graduates would be more qualified and also more likely to get a job in our shrinking economy. 

Willis, Rob: Paglia

Camille Paglia published an article, “Revalorizing the Trades,” in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Paglia decries the state of higher education, stating, “The idea that college is a contemplative realm of humanistic inquiry, removed from vulgar material needs, is nonsense.”  Paglia contrasts humanistic teachings with her art students who are possessed of a “Zen-like engagement with the physical world....”  Paglia's observations could not be further from the truth.

Paglia argues that in order for students to escape the cubicle farm of corporate culture, universities should focus on tangible skills at the expense of more intellectual course offerings.  Paglia is correct in as much as our society places little value on what it cannot physically possess.  Knowledge is only valued as much as the monetary compensation it can provide.  Trade-skills are valued because they produce tangible items we can hold, admire, and, ultimately, sell.

Individual perspective may be all we have left in this increasingly globalized economy.  Paglia alludes to an earlier age when young men were apprenticed to guilds to learn the trades that would support them throughout their lives.  As idyllic a return as this may be, these days are gone; we now live in a world where hundreds, if not thousands, of other people possess the same skills as their peers.  We must now define ourselves in other ways:  how we look at the world; how we interact with others; where do we go from here?

These questions are the proverbial “big questions,” and the only way to provide meaningful answers is to utilize our own unique perspectives.  The most valuable tools I have been provided to tackle these questions in my own life came from a foundation in philosophy.  The first day I sat down in a college classroom, I was confronted by a challenge – how does one know that he exists?  This line of questioning was reinforced later in the day when I was confronted with a language puzzle – if one states that “nothing” is in a desk drawer, can one then remove “nothing” from the drawer?  This may seem frivolous, but these were defining moments in my life because they planted a seed which continues to grow questions daily.

To be more specific, I see that we have two choices – allow higher education to continue unchanged, or accept Paglia's proposal and “revalorize” the trades by disposing of all parts which do not provide a tangible benefit.  The first to go should be philosophy; it is polluted by “pretentious postmodernist theory,” anyway.  Next, let's be done with creative writing of any sort -  no one need think further along than the next strike of the hammer.  In fact, we can simplify the whole process.  We could institute a caste-based system where trade-skills (highly valued, of course) are assigned from birth. 

I value the material work as much as any other.  I could not live my life without a veritable army of plumbers, electricians, carpenters, welders, roughnecks, policemen, firemen, and soldiers providing products and services I need.  But there will always be a division – a choice made by young men and women as they become adults.  Will they work with their hands, or work with their minds?  I see neither as less important than the other, but they are separate sets of skills.  As such, they require separate places of learning.  Leave things as they are, lest we lose what little perspective we have left in an increasingly homogenous society.