‘See, Dean, we are almost all here.’ You could hear the mixture of relief and amazement in Rose’s voice. ‘What is it that you want to say to us?’
‘The first thing I want to say,’ the Dean went straight for the jugular… ‘is that I have in my hand the external report on your grading systems, and on the performance of your students within them
‘What does it say?’ Not that any of them really wanted to know.
‘It says lots of things actually; but one of the big ones it says is that your students are unusually ill-informed about the world, that they are really dumb.’
‘Well they are when they arrive. It’s not our fault that our feeder schools are so poor.’
‘No, no no!’ The Dean was having none of that. ‘You underestimate your genius. Perhaps you don’t know this, but right now this is the only department on this campus – the only one – whose students manage to return lower scores on the national tests on knowledge of current events AFTER being taught by you than they did BEFORE they had even met you! There is an almost perfect correlation. The more courses students take with you, the LOWER their scores. You are all geniuses – at misinforming students!’
‘That can’t be right!’
‘Oh, can’t it? Well then, listen to this’: and the Dean turned into the report, and read.
‘It is literally beyond us to comprehend the quality and content of the teaching that produced results of the following kind. Before being taught a single class in this department, 52% of the freshmen questioned – including 62% of those with A grades on High School courses in US Government – already knew that “bicameralism” was a form of government with 2 legislative chambers. But 73% of the graduating majors, when asked the same question four years later, thought “bicameralism” was the epidemic currently decimating half the population of sub-Saharan Africa, and 24% actually linked it, in their answers, to the current practice of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States of sending child-molesting priests into missionary work. And by the same token, 96% of all freshmen in this department knew that apartheid was the social and political structure of pre-democratic South Africa; but a staggering 68% of all the department’s Majors thought that it was a hardening of the muscles in the hand, particularly prevalent among the elderly.’
The Dean’s reading triggered mild hysteria in the room, with mutterings about missionary positions and fingers going numb. It was not the response he had either expected or would tolerate.
‘This is not a laughing matter. How in the name of God did more than 50% of this crop of Political Science Majors come to the view…:’ He turned back into the report.
‘“that Margaret Thatcher is a man; that the organizing principle of the New Deal was ‘buy one, get one free’; that the “avant garde” plays left-tackle for the New Orleans Saints; and that Iraq borders Spain and Thailand.” How the hell can a country simultaneously border Spain and Thailand?’
‘It would have to be rather large.’ John Mitchell had just arrived.
‘Rather large! It would have to be fucking enormous. If Iraq borders Spain and Thailand, then New Jersey must border Alaska and Venezuela!!’
‘Does it?’ Mitchell was not sure.
‘Of course it doesn’t!’ The Dean was close to losing it now. ‘Nor, I may say, is it true – as more than half your students clearly believe..,’ He was back into the detail of the report again, picking examples at random:
‘that NATO is a Swedish pop group… that NAFTA is a lobby group for gay rights… that China’s main export is cups and saucers, or…,’ the Dean looked at them in genuine bewilderment at this one ‘…or that the symbol in the middle of the Israeli flag is a picture of Miss Piggy.’
The Dean’s eyes swept the room. ‘Do you realize,’ he said, ‘that a mere 72% of those questioned thought that; and a further 46% thought in addition that Kermit the Frog was a puppet version of Yasser Arafat. A staggering forty-six per cent!’
‘I knew I shouldn’t have tried to illuminate the Arab-Israeli conflict by talking about The Muppets.’ Saddam Hussein now: ‘These students take everything you say so literally.’
‘You’re telling me they do,’ the Dean exploded. ‘So which one of you idiots told them that the main ontological propositions informing post -modernism are that all human beings are born with a bar code, and that all fruit is grown in plastic bags – with a sell-by date? What have sell-by dates got to do with post-modernism!’
‘Rather more than Miss Piggy has to do with the Israeli flag,’ Camilla Windsor was on the defensive now, ‘It was just a joke.’
‘It’s not post-modernism that’s passed it’s sell-by date. The whole bunch of you have!’ The Dean’s face had grown bright red with fury. All the other faces in the room had made the same move through the color spectrum, but less with anger than with embarrassment: all that is, except Rose’s.
‘No, we’ve not.’ ROTC was getting quite cross now, and even slightly defensive of her colleagues. This was another first for her. ‘We don’t pick our students. They pick us; and it’s not our fault if they think that Iraq is a European nation, or that they can’t find North Carolina on a map. It’s a miracle that most of them can find their way to college, and certainly most of them never find their way to class. Teaching them where they are, and where the United States is bombing this week, is the responsibility of the Geography Department. Go belly-ache at them, and leave us alone.’
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