You know who says "fuck" and various other forms of the word "fuck" all the fucking time? Ted Cohen. Man cusses like a sailor.
Of course, he's got tenure and has had it for longer than I've been alive.
OK, but I don't know Hume's answer. How about some edu-macation here in the Mineshaft?
I have an idea! How about a series of dialogues between the great philosophers, but with swearing? As a preview, I offer the following (not made-up) example:
God is dead - Nietzsche
Nietzsche was stupid and immoral - Tolstoy
Tolstoy was a bore - Hemingway
OK, they're not all philosophers, and there's no cursing, but at least it's salty.
WHAT THE FUCK?!? These are college kids, right???I think they can handle a little rough langugage.
One favorite my history professors' most common phrases was "That's bullshit! That's just horse-fucking bullshit!" It doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense, but I swear he must have said it at least two out of every three classes.
If this story checks out I'm through. I fucking quit. I'm tired of dealing with all this nonsense.
Tolstoy. Was. A. Bore.
Where is the adjective?
There simply has to be more to the story than that -- the allegation must be either that he was abusive to particular students, or that his language was bizarrely obscene. (I'm not saying that this is an accurate description of the guy's classes, but if this was put forth as a reason for firing him, the allegation must have been more extreme.)
Unless he was fired for some faculty-politics related reason, and the swearing is a minimal figleaf over an otherwise-motivated firing.
5 should have said "One of my favorite history professor's...", not whatever the hell it did say.
Here's the university's PR flack:
Speaking generally, Early said, "we feel that academic freedom is essential to a high quality environment, but the use of profanity when it is not directly connected to the subject matter is something that is not covered by academic freedom."The professor in question had been advised by his lawyer not to comment, which, I hope, means the issue of swearing in classrooms will be solved the American way: in court.
There simply has to be more to the story than that
Perhaps he used the word while introducing a video of a guy fucking a pig.
The professor in question had been advised by his lawyer not to comment, which, I hope, means the issue of swearing in classrooms will be solved the American way: in court.
If I were going to guess, I would say that the professor is not commenting because he's been told by the school "If you complain about the firing, we'll tell everyone that we're really firing you because you set kittens on fire." This is a case where there are worse allegations that aren't being made publicly. (I have absolutely no opinion about whether any such allegations would be true, of course, but the pattern of what both sides are saying fits "There are worse allegations out there".)
Whenever I introduce racy/heretical material in the classroom, I do give a nice little spiel on how I assume everyone in the room knows that this is not a religious school, and that they are adults who should know they can tell me when they find the material offensive. Then the happy students make fun of the idea that anyone could be so sensitive and close-minded. "Now, now," I say. "Not everyone was raised to be curious and interested." Then I can go on to teach Blakean Satanism, Renaissance genital theory, and books with hardcore sex scenes. No complaints.
My first semester teaching, I was not so careful, and during an after-class discussion, told a particularly cheeky student to fuck off. Not wise, but luckily, he laughed.
LB, that was more or less my reason for suspicion too. We'll see.
Also, RMP gives him raves, most dating from before this incident.
One of the responses to the article is amusing:
"I just can't fucking believe that some fuckers are so fucking upset at using the "f-word" that they would go and fuck over a fucking professor for saying fuck in class when every fucking student in that class has probably uttered the fucking word like five or six fucking times. What the fuck?"
[And now-------- cue the pig-video!]
LB, that makes sense, but I still don't see this as a good cover story. There must be a million better excuses for firing an untenured professor.
At a community college? I don't know anything about academia, but my guess is that the expectation that he's going to be doing high quality research is low -- you couldn't believably fire him on the basis of a subjective judgment about his academic productivity. If his students think he's great, and he does whatever he's supposed to in terms of service, what would be a good, believable excuse for the firing? (I don't know, of course, but it seems likely to me that it might be hard to scrape one up.)
If he's noticably profane, that gives the CC a hook to hang the firing on, to cover either a valid allegation of some sort of wrongdoing that the CC doesn't want to come out, or to cover a simple political firing.
Maybe I'm just whining in favor of special treatment, since people in other professional contexts don't get to say these things.
Back to the post: of course we do. There are circumstances under which I wouldn't say 'fuck' at work -- a meeting with a new client (I wouldn't worry about it in a meeting with a client who I was more comfortable with); anything with opposing counsel present; actually in a courtroom... but for 95% of my workday, I wouldn't hesitate to use any language that sprang to mind. And my workplace is fairly prim -- I can think of other places I've worked where people swore constantly.
20: On the other hand, there's generally an expectation of professional speaker in front of an audience larger than a handful of people, that there won't be any profanity, and at most mild vulgarity. The only exceptions I can think of are where the speaker is intentionally trying to protray a persona of down-to-earthness or grittiness or something. And in venues where such a persona is inapappropriate, profanity would also be considered inappropriate.
Lectures don't seem to me to be such a venue, though.
18. If we assume that he's lived up to his service requirements, why wouldn't they just wait until he was up for tenure (and deny him) if it were a political firing? You're likely right about there being some kind of embarrassing wrong-doing. Now I'm just disturbed that some admin would think that swearing was even a plausible ground for dismissal.
places I've worked where people swore constantly
Yes: this looks like one of a species of professorial problems caused by the incomplete abandonment of in loco parentis. I’m not sure what the law provides these days, but as policy, students are to be treated like adults—except when they’re not. When are they not? Tricky question.
As a rule, I’d avoid using sweary words, if only because, of all the crosses you could possibly die on, that might be the least appealing.
Slol, you can't possibly mean that some college aged kids aren't adult enough to handle swear words, can you? I think high school kids should be able to handle the occassional "fuck."
There has to be more.
I want to die on a cross made of hairy lobsters.
I want to die on a jade cross hand-carved by Maori craftsmen.
Coming soon to theaters near you: The Passion of the Unfoggetariat
(This film has not yet been rated.)
Wouldn't a jade fish hook be more culturally appropriate, given the Maori thing and all? Or you could always be eaten by Fijians, possibly with the assistance of hairy blond lobsters cleaning up the scraps.
of all the crosses you could possibly die on, that might be the least appealing.
Ain't that the truth. Professorial Damnation:
Tweedy guy #1: what're you in for?
TG#2: Sorority party got out of hand. The cops came in as I was doing a kegstand supported by five barely-clad underage hotties. You?
TG#1: I said "fuck" in class.
Very Alice's Restaurant:
He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance."
31 gets it exactly right. No, Tim, I don't think they shouldn't be able to handle it--but I cringe each time I even quote someone being vulgar, because, you never know.
After all, as LB and other have indicated, people out to get you for X would be more than happy to hang you for Y.
31- As I was walking up Lexington Avenue yesterday I passed a young woman who was saying, "Oh, everyone at Wesleyan has seen my boobs."
And, LB, what is that? A war on Christmas?
And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.
I saw Arlo in concert once. Awesome hippie power to the max.
LB, you are increasingly rendering me unnecessary.
The Piranha didn't talk like a person
Noun, verb, adjective: fucker, fuck, fucking. No part of speech was spared. His world was filled with copulating inanimate objects and people getting their faces ripped off. We had never before heard of people getting their faces ripped off. And he said it so often, like a nervous tick, that each time he said it again, the back row giggled. The Human Piranha, a Harvard graduate, thought nothing of it.
you can't possibly mean that some college aged kids aren't adult enough to handle swear words, can you?
SCMT lives in a blue state. Though I had a friend who taught a course on monsters at the U. of Utah and showed the big scene from Basic Instinct; apparently she warned everyone from the outset, and was fine.
Anyway, it just takes one or two jerks. And some profs definitely go too far; I had one professor who went way overboard with the dirty jokes, in a way that probably made a lot of the students uncomfortable. That isn't to say that students shouldn't be able to handle the occasional curse word, just that it wouldn't surprise me too much if some couldn't, and if the dean didn't take the prof's side on it.
I think high school kids should be able to handle the occassional "fuck."
SCMT: Me too! I keep telling everyone that, but people just look at me funny. Damn age of consent laws.
Hairy Lobsters?
I should have been a pair of blow-dried claws,
Sashaying down the runways of the seas.
6: You're right, I was thinking of predicate adjectives but of course bore is a noun. It still seems too descriptive based on the Hemingway short stories I remember reading. I was thinking something more like:
Two men entered the diner and sat down at the counter. One of them took out a novel and began reading. The other read the menu.
The cook yelled from the kitchen: "What can I get you?"
The man reading the novel said to the other man: "Hey Hemingway, what's on the menu?"
"Why don't you look for yourself instead of reading War and Peace. Tolstoy was a bore," said Hemingway.
Too many conjunctions! Let me try.
Two men entered the diner. They sat down at the counter. One had a novel. He started to read it. The other read the menu.
The cook was in the kitchen. "What can I get you!" he yelled.
The man with the novel said, "Bright boy wants to know what he can get us."
The other man said, "Why don't you tell him?"
The first man put the novel down. "I don't know what's on the menu, bright boy. What's on the menu, Hemingway?"
"Why don't you look for yourself instead of reading War and Peace," said Hemingway. "Tolstoy was a bore."
Bright boy closed the novel. He threw it at Heminway's head. Hemingway slumped down on the counter. Blood began to pool.
You're right, its been too long since I read Hemingway to be able to do this correctly.
I don't know what it is exactly. Obviously I just decided to rip off "The Killers." Conjunctions in themselves aren't bad, Hemingway was perfectly capable of stringing together lots of conjuctions, but there's something about the rhythm; when it's not pop. pop. pop. it's ratta-and-tatta-and-ratta-and-tatta. Or something like that.
I have to admit that I struggle with this.
Where I grew up *everyone* swears. Swears a lot. Swearing is used as punctuation and the 'c' word is used as a term of endearment.
The moment in the Trainspotting movie where Begbie says 'Ah kent that cunt was gonnae fuck some cunt' (describing a judge handing out a harsh verdict) is dialogue verité.
I've had to make a conscious effort to remove profanity from my 'professional' speech along with toning down the accent. I suspect I may overcompensate -- I try not to use even the mildest profanity in the classroom.
I was thinking "The Killers" too (previously discussed somewhere on Unfogged) but didn't look it up. Except from The Sun Also Rises, which I've deliberately forgotten, I haven't read his novels. I've heard they use more conjunctions.
If we can't swear in class, I am fucked.
What's the consensus on talking about sex in class? I find it pretty difficult to talk about 90% of literature without having to spell out the double-entendres. I can't remember what I was teaching, but I know I once explained some metaphor as being "you know, like when you're having sex and there's that feeling of 'I want to fuck right through you.' It's kind of about the intensity of feeling."
Um, wow. If you'd said that in a class when I was a freshman, I would've had pretty much no frame of reference for that metaphor. Also: given that I've had students react incredulously when I explained the sexual undertones in Whitman, for fuck's sake, it's probably best to assume students are more innocent and prudish than they pretend to be.
Nick looked out at the room full of students. Too many of them are sleeping, he thought.
"To hell with you," he said. "F**k a bunch of you." He picked his briefcase up and put his head down and walked to the back of the room and out the door.
That evening the dean telephoned. When Nick hung up he sat back in his chair and after a while he went to sleep. When he awoke in the night he heard the wind in the trees outside his window and the hum of the cars on the street and he went back to sleep. In the morning the sun was bright and the wind was running high and he was awake a long time before he remembered that he was fired.
I do assume that they're innocent and prudish, which is why I explain sexual subtext. I do it in kind of a graphic and jokeily frank way on purpose, so that they laugh and the anxiety around the issue relaxes a bit.
And then, when we're talking about writing issues, we discuss discursive communities and the distinction between when you say "fuck" among your peers, when you say it in front of your parents, when you say it in the classroom, and when you say it in writing.
Oh, and also, I'm well aware that the way I look makes it *very* different for me to say something like that than it would if, say, a middle-aged tweedy guy does it. There's no way I'd say the things I say if I were a middle-aged tweedy guy.
52 wins the Hemingway division, but where's the Tolstoy?
Whence 52?
The post, 42-46, 48, plus the end of "Ten Indians".
That said, this--To those offended, he said his message would be: "Get used to it — that's the way life is."--is stupid, and increases my suspicion that this particular "popular teacher" is a little too invested in his own coolness and ability to hang with the homies. When students complain about a particular pedagogical decision, you apologize for making them uncomfortable, explain why you use it, and take into account that in this class, with these particular students, you might want to balance it with other methods or tone it down a little.
52 wins the Hemingway division, but where's the Tolstoy?
I do Eliot and Hemingway in one thread, and you want Tolstoy too?
The whole thing started with trying to find a Hemingway-story-style way of saying "Tolstoy is a bore."
So now we're snarking on slol for going off topic? What have we come to?
(Minor edit: "Fuck a bunch of you" is anachronistic. I suspect Hemingway would say "---- you," but I'll recheck the end of "Ten Indians.")
59--B, I think that was the student interviewed by Inside Higher Ed, not the teacher in question.
#59
I read the "get used to it" as coming from an older student who liked the teacher's style. Apropos what "tweedy" can't say, the article states that this is part of Williams' (the teacher's) "blue-collar style." Sort of an American equivalent to McGrattan's self-presentation. Once again, however, that's one student supporter talking, not the instructor himself.
It was, but the student reported it as if the guy had actually said that (or given that attitude). Of course, it could just be the student rather than the prof who's the bozo in that case, hard to tell. I just meant, "if."
I wasn't complaining about the parody but, knowing whence 52, I wondered wither Tolstoy.
No, I know "f**k a bunch of you" is anachronistic. And that part isn't from the end of "Ten Indians". Geez, don't you people think I can write anything myself?
The part that's from the end of "Ten Indians" is the idea of falling asleep and waking up and forgetting. "Ten Indians" actually ends like this:
He lay for a long time with his face in the pillow, and after a while he fogot to think about Prudence and finally he went to sleep. When he awoke in the night he heard the wind in the hemlock trees outside the cottage and the waves of the lake coming in on the shore, and he went back to sleep. In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.
don't you people think I can write anything myself?
I do! I do! And I went and reread "Ten Indians" myself. So, nothing wrong with anachronism. If Hemingway actually uses "---- you" somewhere it would be nicely Hemingwayistic, but I'm not sure he does. (I remember the part from A Farewell to Arms where the narrator asks the person who has accused him of deliberately contracting jaundice in order to malinger if s/he knows what it feels like to be kicked in the scrotum.
re:64
Contra this guy's 'blue-collar style' --- I emphatically *don't* swear in class.
To the extent that there's any blue-collar style in my case that would come from my accent which is itself slightly toned down -- i.e. less scottish and more middle class -- when compared to my normal everyday speech.
Hemingway on swearing:
Take the matter of dirty words. I doubt if a day has passed in my life in which I have not heard what Mr. Pegler calls dirty words used. Therefore how could a writer truly record any entire day and not use dirty words?
I seem to recall hearing that Cole Porter's lyric about "good authors too who once knew better words / now only use four-letter words / writing prose" referred to Hemingway, but I've no source for that except my insufficiently memorious inner fugue of reference.
I was just thinking about swearing a couple of days ago. Here in NYC, if I stubbed my toe on the sidewalk or something, I wouldn't think twice about crying out "Ow, fuck!" And if anyone around me noticed, they'd probably just smile and go "I'll bet that fuckin' hurts." Other areas in the country aren't like that, eh?
What was that you said before? It's annoying that a Gentile like me has so much better stories about Temple Plaza?