Fishing for Stupid

I can’t help but cringe everytime I go to the NYT website and see the title of Fish’s articles. Start with the overall column title: “Think Again.” Thanks for that assumption that your readers aren’t thinking already. This three-part article and growing on “What Should Colleges Teach?” is symptomatic. Look at the history of his titles alone. Here’s an idea: maybe individual professors working at a local level have an idea and don’t need Stanley Fish’s banalities to get them through the day. This is why the best deans—and I swear I’m not a tool in saying that I think we have a good one—seek lots of input from faculty, and why democratic faculty governance is good. And why top-down administration is not always the most effective.

(Which is not to say that faculty meetings, where there is this “democratic input,” is the most wonderful, live sustaining experience in the world.)