I find it unbelievable that this even needs to be said, but here goes:

The point of education is not to fill your head with facts, dates, numbers, names, words, and grammar constructions that you will never forget and will be able to reproduce, like a perky little parrot, 30 years later. Educators are not in the business of training parrots or creating competition for the Google search engine. Surprise!

The actual purpose of education is to develop your capacity to think, read critically, form logical connections, construct arguments, reason, and experience the need to grow intellectually for as long as possible. Educators are not always successful in this project but that’s the goal.

Everything else can be done by Google. Or trained parrots.

This is why asking “But what was the point of taking that class on math / history / politics of medieval Spain / Japanese grammar, etc if today I remember nothing from the material?” is a very stupid thing to do.

And to finish up the post with something less self-evident: today is Friday.

I’m tired of all the negative news about Israel and believe that it makes sense to promote the positive developments. Yes, a lot of bad shit is happening there but there is good stuff, too. See this news item, for instance:

Jewish pupils in Israel will be required to learn Arabic from the age of six, under a proposed bill aimed at improving relations between the two communities. Hebrew and Arabic are both official languages in Israel. The vast majority of Israeli Arabs, who make up a fifth of the country’s 8.3 million people, speak Hebrew but only a small fraction of Israeli Jews can speak Arabic.

Bilingualism is always a wonderful thing. Did you know, for instance, that bilingual kids show better results in all disciplines, including math and physics?

Also, speaking a language makes one more integrated into the culture associated with it. Of course, this measure will not bring miraculous results of any kind but it’s a step in a good direction.

I just finished Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, the third book in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series.

Here is what I find hilarious. The novels are a primer in feminist theory, and more specifically, the radical wing of feminism. If I needed to teach a course on feminist theory, I’d ditch all the readings and just use these novels because all the theory is right there and in a very accessible form, too.

The really funny part is that the novels are international bestsellers. I constantly see very conservative male bloggers who worship Ron Paul and even Reagan praise the novels to the skies. It was actually because of one such blogger that I started reading Ferrante. It’s clear to me that such people are not aware where the ideology that informs Ferrante’s work originates.

This is priceless, people. Half a planet devours these novels without even realizing that everything they are enjoying so much has already been said many times over by the vilified and “scary” radical feminists. And hey, it’s not like the writer tries to sneak these ideas by the readers. The first-person narrator states very clearly that she reads rad fem literature and is inspired by it to write her own rad fem analysis. There is even a very 21-century discussion of transgenderism placed in 1970s (obviously, without the word “transgenderism”) and conducted in terms that could appear verbatim on any of today’s rad fem sites.

There are two conclusions that can be drawn here:

1. Art has the power to make people swallow anything.

2. People are a lot more receptive to rad fem ideas than they are aware of. The bad rap the rad fem movement has is owed to the clumsiness of its founders and the defeatism of today’s followers.

P.S. Read the novels! They are great. You will thank me and yourself for the decision to read them.

When I was hired as Assistant Professor 6 years ago, I was given a huge stack of professional visiting cards. I only used about 6 of them before they had to be tossed and substituted with the new ones that feature the title of Associate Professor.

I feel like the very existence of the cards is a hint that I don’t socialize enough. The old cards and the new cards are sitting there, as a mute reproach of my incapacity to network.

It turns out I’m not too old to discover what the famous impostor syndrome is like. I thought I’d die without ever experiencing it, but now I’m in the grip of precisely this weird ailment.

A while ago, I saw an announcement soliciting proposals of chapters to be included in a collected volume. I wrote a proposal and it was accepted. I wrote the chapter, and the editors returned it with really fantastic suggestions as to how the chapter should be changed. I started working on the changes but the day before yesterday the editors sent out an email with information for all contributors to the volume.

And then the responses from the contributors started to come in, and I freaked out. These are all very famous people. I had no idea who the other contributors would be when I first submitted the proposal. And now that I know, I’m afraid of all the famous people showing up in my Inbox. I’ve actually been hiding from my Inbox because I’m scared of seeing any more famous people appear there. 

And now I can’t work on the changes to the chapter because I’m afraid of writing stupid things and making myself look ridiculous to all the famous people. So I’m sitting here, scared, blocked, and freaking out.

The whole thing is aggravated by the fact that although I work (a lot!), I don’t go to work. And that makes me weepy, uncertain, anxious, scared, insecure, and intellectually timid.

A woman came up with an inventive plan to troll the anti-abortion protesters congregated next to a Planned Parenthood location. The protesters had to bugger off.

The woman is not employed by PP. She’s simply a concerned citizen who found this funny way to highlight the protesters’ hypocrisy in about 30 seconds of thinking about it. The story is a response to those who have been asking what poor Cecile Richards could have possibly done to actually earn her enormous salary.

And by the way, have you been feeling disgusted by Marco Rubio’s refusal to do any work in exchange for his $174,000 salary? How very consistent of you.

According to Margaret Atwood (I heard her on NPR, so no link), sex robots are the next big thing.

I think it will be just great. Between my marriages, I dated a lot, and let me tell you: there are many freaks out there. If all of them get a sex robot (or two, or eleven), they will leave all us, normal people in peace.

Jokes aside, whatever gets people off inoffensively – Fifty shades, sex robots, etc – makes the world a better place.

Eleven people stood on stage yelping, “Daddy issues! Daddy issues! Daddy’s penis is too big, I want it to be so small that I won’t even be able to see it! Daddy can’t get anything right! I defy him!”

“And Mommy issues, too!” Marco Rubio would interject every once in a while.

And that was it.

And, of course, the Democrats were going all, “Mommy issues!  Mommy issues! Mommy went away and I’m cold and scared! Mommy needs to come back and bring the booby!” in their debate.

Do we really need another Republican debate? Are things still not clear for somebody?

I can’t promise I’ll watch very faithfully but I’ll have the TV on, and I’ll post interesting observations if I have them. Feel free to comment or vent about the insanity of such a long electoral cycle.

8:09 – the debate was on mute but then I turned on the sound and. . . heard Rubio roll his darned boring line about his mother, the maid AGAIN. It’s like he’s got nothing else at all to say, ever.

8:14 – Cruz talks about “the plight of working women.” Where do these antideluvian reptilians come from?

8:23 – Rubio believes that H1B immigrants can be substituted with Americans who get vocational training in high schools. What an irredeemable idiot.

8:26 – even Trump is more informed on H1B than Rubio.

8:27 – Rubio is now pouting over the media’s love of Hillary. What a whiny little Momma’s boy.

8:46 – why does Rubio keep yakking so much in this debate? Is he the next great hope of the GOP? Because if so, then oh, Lordy.

8:48 – Trump wants his employees to bring guns to work because ISIS. Reason has left the building. Go home, folks, you’ve lost this round already.

8:52 – Fiorina is a very stupid woman. Did she get any education at all?

What a disappointing cast of characters. Nobody seems to inhabit reality.

One phrase never to say to a person on sabbatical is, “Well, since you are not working right now. . .”

It’s especially cute to hear this from a fellow academic.