The Lowest of the Low

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Clarissa

January 29, 2014

At the faculty book club that I joined two colleagues started fighting.

“I’m in Education,” one said, “and we are the lowest of the low in academia.”

“Oh no,” the second one retorted. “I’m in Sociology, and we are lower that even you guys.”

“No, no, no,” the Education person said. “We are so low that we are downright pathetic. You guys are definitely higher than us.”

I didn’t want to be eclipsed, so I decided to participate.

“Well, we in Foreign Languages are also quite low,” I ventured.

The Sociologist and the Education person glared at me.

“No, Foreign Languages are totally high up there. It’s like you are on the Moon while we are groveling in the dirt.”

“Are we?” I asked, beginning to feel important.

“Oh yes. And, I mean, Spanish? That’s stardom. That’s even higher than English.”

I was beginning to glow with a newly acquired sense of self-importance where another colleague chimed in.

“Well, I’m in Dentistry,” he confessed.

And then we realized that, compared to Dentistry, we were all in the dirt and could rest easy.

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16 responses to “The Lowest of the Low”

FD

January 29, 2014

Relatedly: http://xkcd.com/435/ 😀

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lamestllama

January 29, 2014

That is has to be a paraphrased Ukrainian joke.

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David Bellamy

January 29, 2014

That’s funny. I have always thought of the professional programs, such as dentistry, medicine, law, etc., as being the lowest of the low academically. They function, from what I can see, by promoting a lot of memorization and as little thinking as possible.

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Evelina Anville

January 29, 2014

I’m with David. In terms of “academic snobbery,” denistry and education would be at the bottom; sociology would be in the middle, and Spanish would be at the top. This isn’t what I think–just the hierarchy of prestige as I understand it. 🙂 Now in terms of earning potenital, denistry is, of course, far and away more lucrative than any other degree you listed.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 29, 2014
  
  I’m so intimidated by dentists that I always see them as being at the top. 🙂
  
  But in your classification, who is higher up, English or Spanish? 🙂
  
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  1. Evelina Anville
    
    January 29, 2014
    
    I would say Spanish and English literature are about equal. But French is at the top–particularly if you study the French feminsts (Kristeva, Irrigiray etc) in the original language. 😉 😉
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      January 29, 2014
      
      Really?? It seems like we are referring to completely different things when we speak of what’s at the top. To me, French is at the absolute bottom because it is the very first program that will be slashed in case of money difficulties. And this is going on everywhere.
      
      What are we talking about? 🙂
      
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  2. David Bellamy
    
    January 29, 2014
    
    I think that fine distinctions like “…who is higher up, English or Spanish?” depend on the particular institution and how high profile the faculty is at that school. But, of course, mathematics edges both of them out, though only by a little.
    
    For my own rankings, I put mathematics and anthropology at the top, with music, literature, and philosophy at the second tier, so close as to be bumping into the top tier on a frequent basis. History is just below these. My suspicion is that anything done by a sociologist can be better done by a social psychologist or an anthropologist.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      January 29, 2014
      
      Why do you like anthropology? In my experience, all they do is police everybody who tries to use the word “culture” and impose themselves on small tribes all over the world.
      
      I have a passionate dislike of anthropology, to be honest.
      
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Z

January 29, 2014

The prestige languages in the West are French and German, traditionally. Spanish is not considered an intellectual language and quite recently, for instance, could not be used as a language for Comparative Literature at the University of Washington because it was not considered to have a valid literature (Cervantes, yes, I know). French and German, because of their status as languages of culture in 19th century and beyond (Goethe, you now).

And at Berkeley High, where my parents went in the 1940s, you only got to study Spanish if you were judged low IQ. Average IQs studied Latin, as it was “basic” and might improve them, and high IQs, French since they were clearly destined for great things and would need it.

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1. David Bellamy
  
  January 29, 2014
  
  Curious. Latin was definitely for the very high IQ students when I was in high school. French was the only other option at the school, and it was considered the really easy language for non-serious (for whatever reason, inclination or ability) students.
  
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2. David Bellamy
  
  January 29, 2014
  
  In fact, I remember my High school Latin teacher saying that a student headed for college should have a “basic foundation of threes” by which she meant three years of science, three years of Latin and three years of mathematics.
  
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  1. Z
    
    January 30, 2014
    
    That’s another version of traditional, yes.
    
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3. Clarissa
  
  January 30, 2014
  
  This is absolutely fascinating!!! Thank you for this comment because I didn’t know this. It is shocking how fast things change. There is a lot to analyze here.
  
  Maybe we should start a thread on the demise of French’s prestige.
  
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  1. Z
    
    January 30, 2014
    
    Did it really lose prestige, or did others just gain some?
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      January 30, 2014
      
      I think the cynicism about the “High Theory Eighties” and the disillusion with the French school of philosophy and criticism are big contributing factors.
      
      Of course, there was quite a bit of intense anti-French propaganda in early 2000s.
      
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