From John Ohliger.com
Too Many Camel Committees: Part Two Bibliography
Bibliography: Too Many Camel Committees: Part Two
Accompanying the article in Oct. 14, 1991 issue of Adult and Continuing Education Today
PEDAGOGICAL GOBBLEDEGOOK
I've been doing some research on just why it is that so much scholarly writing in adult education journals and elsewhere is so dull and hard to understand (Brennan, Sisco). The problem is not new, but the great and growing extent of it is (Jacoby). Back in 1881 a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta included: "If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me. Why, what a singularly deep young man this deep young man must be (Lutz)!"
By the early 1950s, Eduard Lindeman cried out that among adult educators "the language employed is too academic and too technical (Leonard, Lindeman)." At the same time the popular writer Stuart Chase cautioned authors for adult education publications: "Beware of P.G. -Pedagogical Gobbledegook (See Also: Fry, Peyre)!" By the 1990s it has become so bad that Bob Blakely, the former vice president of the Fund for Adult Education, now says, "Adult educators are all technique these days but their language tries to hide this fact (See Also: Boam-Smith)."
Though it's clear that the language of adult education academics and others is muddy, it's not so clear why. Various authorities believe it's because the universities are are attempting to counteract their declining importance (Caplan, Palmer), because of "economic stagnation and the power of the New Right (Palmer, Solotaroff)," or because of the current climate of fear ("Fear"). Others ascribe it to the male dominant culture (Lakoff), the belief that language itself is life (Anderson, Gibson, Palmer), or that academics believe power rests on the ability to cloak their language behind a veil of inflated and intimidating jargon (Armstrong, Noonan, Sykes). The most cogent view comes from Page Smith's powerful 1990 book, Killing the Spirit: Higher Education in America: "Boredom is the necessary condition of any education which teaches us to manipulate facts and suppress their meaning."
If you want to look further into these vexing issues and help figure out what to do about them (Bracey, Caplan), I'll be glad to send you an annotated four page bibliography of the 25 sources I've located. Just send one dollar in advance to Basic Choices/Camel, 730 W. Jefferson, Springfield, IL 62702 (Please, no requests for billing).
[Ed. note: the following IS the bibliography]
Anderson, Walter Truett. 1990. Reality Isn't What It Used To Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-To-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World. San Francisco: Harper & Row. "As a human being, I bob about in a sea of symbols, an ocean of words. ... We repeatedly create symbolic systems of meaning -- religions, political ideologies, scientific theories -- and then forget that they are our creations; we have a devilish habit of confusing them with the mysterious nonhuman reality they were meant to explain. We have constructed about ourselves (and within ourselves) an environment of symbols and cannot tell where symbol leaves off and nonhuman reality begins, cannot (as the general semanticists put it) tell the map from the territory (ix)."
Armstrong, Scott. 1982. Journal of Forecasting. [As paraphrased in Lutz (below) who refers to the author as "Professor Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. . . . Armstrong recommends that the aspiring scholar choose an unimportant topic, agree with existing beliefs, use convoluted methods, withhold some of the data, and write in stilted, obtuse prose. Armstrong reports that, in one study, academics reading articles in scientific journals rated the author's competence higher when the writing was less intelligible than when it was clear (54)."
Blakely, Robert J. 1990. Telephone conversation with author, October 20. "Adult educators are all technique these days but their language tries to hide this fact."
Beam-Smith, Carol. 1990. Letter to author, October 15. "Your four principles (Sisco, 1990): hope, serendipity, spontaneity, and intuitiveness, should be interwoven in all areas of human existence, but in truth they are systematically beaten out of us by the very education that should allow them to flourish. Examples of this are everywhere. We see it in boring people authoring boring subjects, printed in boring publications, juried by the same boring people. It's a vicious circle and the bright light of creativity and spontaneity seem to be forever banned from such scholarly missals. Ph.D.s are another wonderful example."
Bracey, Gerald W. 1987. "The Time Has Come To Abolish Research Journals: Too Many Are Writing Too Much About Too Little." The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 25, pp 44-45. "The time has come to consider abolishing research journals, at least in their present form. I have come to this conclusion after three years of writing a column titled 'Research' for the non-research journal Phi Beta Kappan... The prose is dreadful... Journals once served the same function my column serves today. They were digests of published writings, not sources of new knowledge. I think it would be a good idea if journals went back to serving that summarizing function... Bracey is director of research and evaluation for Cherry Creek Schools in Englewood, CO."
Brennan, Barrie. 1987. "Conversation with John Ohliger." Australian Journal of Adult Education, Vol. 27, No. 3, November, pp. 52-56, 65. "BRENNAN: From your point of view, where would you suggest people can explore interesting concepts of learning and adult education?... OHLIGER: Well, first I would suggest that they don't bother with most of the standard adult education literature. In my own experience, it's become in the last 15 years, more and more boring. 'Boring' has a specific meaning for me, since I read Paul Tillich's definition of boredom, as 'rage spread thin,' and I've come to the conclusion that rage is not always in the eye of the beholder. This standard adult education literature is filled with these cliches that are mines in themselves, but don't explode with lack of meaning because they're so immersed in gloom. The standard adult education literature represents the rage, in my view, of most adult educators who are spreading their rage thin by writing boring materials (56)."
Caplan, Jane. 1990. "The Point Is to Change It." The Nation, August 13/20, pp. 173-175. Review of Bryan D. Palmer's Descent Into Discourse; The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History (Temple University Press). "Palmer argues that poststructuralist thought reflects the marginalization of a professional, university-based intellectual class. Ensconced largely in departments of philosophy and literary studies, they reinforce their subsidized confinement by withdrawing into the production of ever more idealist and esoteric texts, ticketed by the 'designer labels' of the latest intellectual fashion, unread by any but their own narrow circles. This fluttering confraternity of mutual admirers would be negligible were it not for the inflated political claims they make, for the comfort they give to enemies on the political right and, not least, for their capacity to seduce working historians from their demanding but honest toil in the mines, fields, and factories of the real (173).... 'Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will,' has been a famous injunction to socialists. Perhaps these days we need more intellectual skepticism than pessimism, and a little less optimism about what can be accomplished (175)."
Chase, Stuart. Feb. 1952. Thoughts on Style for Adult Leadership. Feb. 19. 1 p. In Kellogg Center Archives at Syracuse University, Adult Education Association (USA) Collection, Box #31, Folder: MSS 70, AEA Memo). "Concentrate on clear communication with all redundant words out, and technical terms at a minimum. Beware of P.G. -- Pedagogical Gobbledegook!"
"Fear Permeates College Teaching." Adult & Continuing Education Today, Vol. 20, No. 34, Dec. 17, 1990, pp. 1-2. "A culture of fear permeates teaching on college campuses these days, says noted education consultant Parker Palmer. In a speech covered live by ACET, Palmer noted the 'culture of fear cripples good teaching.' Palmer, author of Spirituality in Education, said that the culture of fear has several causes: 1) fear of diversity in students and learners; 2) fear of conflict in the classroom; and 3) fear of change. . . . 'There's more pain on college campuses now,' said Palmer. He said that the level of pain stems from faculty realizing that teaching is important and feeling inadequate to promote good teaching. A fourth fear that Palmer noted was the 'fear of the middle aged of the judgment of the young.' He said this was one of the least discussed topics in higher education."
Fry, Christopher. 1953. The Lady's Not for Burning. Dramatists Play Service. " O tedium, tedium, tedium. The frenzied/ Ceremonial drumming of the humdrum!/ Where in this small-talking world can I find/ A longitude with no platitude?"
Gibson, Rex. 1986. Critical Theory and Education. London: Hodder & Stoughton. "[Theorists] are obsessed by language (15)."
Jacoby, Russell. 1989. The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe. Noonday Press. "As professional life thrives, public culture grows poorer and poorer (8). . . . Academic writing developed into unreadable communiques sweetened by thanks to colleagues and superiors. Of course, crabbed academic writing is not new; the extent, not the novelty, is the issue (16)."
Lakoff, Robin Tolmach. 1990. Talking Power: The Politics of Language in Our Lives. Basic Books, 143-144, 146-147, 149, 213. "The language of the academy displays some of the worst excesses of men's language. It is deliberately and excessively noninteractive: impersonal, non-emotional, objective. All of these make it hard to understand, thus increasing its users' hierarchical power at the expense of those struggling to interpret it: intentional unintelligibility has always been a potent weapon of those seeking to attain and maintain authoritarian power. The discourse style of academe, whether in writing, the classroom, or the meeting, is one of floor-holding, not collaborative reciprocity. That, too, is characteristically masculine (213)."
Leonard, Elizabeth Lindernan. 1991. Friendly Rebel; The Life of Eduard C. Lindeman. Forthcoming from Adamant Press, Box 7, Adamant, VT 05640. Write them for information on price and date of publication. In Chapter 15: "'Either philosophy is commonsense or it is nonsense.' Letter from Eduard Lindeman to Max Otto, August 30, 1943."
Lindeman, Eduard. 1951. Memorandum for Use by the Committee on Social Philosophy and Direction Finding of the AEA of the USA. Following the meeting of the Committee on December 19. 5 pages. Some of this is reprinted in: Pell, Orlie. 1952. "Social Philosophy at the Grass Roots: The Work of the AEA's Committee on Social Philosophy." Adult Education, April, pp. 123-134. "Some correspondents appear to believe that the language employed in our memorandum is too academic, too technical and too far influenced by pedagogical jargon to be readily understandable by laymen. The demand for simplicity of expression may not represent a basic issue but it is a question which deserves attention. . . . When . . . the critic can make out a sound case for ambiguity, lack of clarity, the use of a 'big' word when a 'little' one would serve the same purpose he [sic] has a legitimate claim (1-2)."
Lutz, William. 1989. Doublespeak: From "Revenue Enhancement" to "Terminal Living," How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language to Deceive You. Harper & Row, pp. 14-15, 51-63. "Education has more than its share of doublespeak (14).... It seems [educators] want to impress others with how hard their jobs are and how smart they have to be in order to do their jobs (53).... Education doublespeak, especially among academics who want to impress everyone with how intelligent they are, has been around for a long time. Even W.S. Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) commented on it, as you can see in these lyrics he wrote in 1881 for a song in the opera Patience: 'If you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line as a man of culture rare,/ You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant them everywhere./ You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind,/ The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind./ And everyone will say,/ As you walk your mystic way,/ "If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,/ Why, what a singularly deep young man this deep young man must be (53-54)!" ... In academia, as in most professions, doublespeak pays (54).
"Doublespeak permeates all areas of society, so there is no reason why education shouldn't be infected as well. However, education doublespeak is particularly depressing because more than anyone, teachers should be aware of doublespeak. They should be leading the fight against doublespeak by teaching students how to spot it, how to defend themselves against it, and how to eliminate it in their own writing and speaking. Unfortunately, too many in education have found that using doublespeak can advance their careers and their pay, so they have decided to give in to it (63)."
Noonan, Peggy. 1990. What I Saw at the Revolution; A Political Life in the Reagan Era. Random House. "It would be impossible to jump into that muddy stream of words and emerge with the fish of a thought between your teeth. ... I had a hunch McFarlane decided long ago, as young people sometimes do, that intelligent people speak in an incomprehensible manner (224)."
Palmer, Bryan D. 1990. Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. "Critical theory is no substitute for historical materialism; language is not life (xiv). . . . The self-indulgent unintelligibility of a postmodernist late-20th-century swirl of excess, waste, and disaccumulation depicted in some ostensibly theoretical texts [is part] of economic stagnation and the entrenchment in power of the New Right (xvii).... [The descent into discourse posits] language thus constructs being (3). . . . [But as Jean-Francois Lyotard declared in 1971,] 'one does not at all break with metaphysics by putting language everywhere (188).' . . . Much writing . . . is, quite bluntly, crap, a kind of academic wordplaying with no possible link to anything but the pseudo-intellectual ghettoes of the most self-promotionally avant-garde enclaves of that bastion of protectionism the University (199)."
Peyre, Henri. 1976. "Random Notes on a Misunderstanding." In The Thesis and the Book. Eleanor Harman & lan Montagnes, editors. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976. All previously appeared in Scholarly Publishing; A Journal for Authors and Publishers, published by the University of Toronto Press. "There is discontent in the staff of many [university] presses with the unreadability, turgidness, unwieldy length, and occasional poverty of substance of many of the manuscripts proposed by professors and their PH.D.s (8)."
Sisco, Burton, & Donna Whitson. 1990. "A Conversation with John Ohliger: Adult Education Radical, Humanist, or Both?" Journal of Adult Education: Mountain Plains Adult Education Association, Vol. 18, No. 2, Spring, pp. 1-9. "My reason for getting into fiction is that I have found it difficult if not almost impossible to read most of the standard literature in the field in the last 10 years. Either I've gotten tired of it going around in the same circles, or it's going around in circles that I don't understand (2). . . . I've been using the phrase from the theologian Paul Tillich who says that boredom is rage spread thin. . . . It raises the questions: [1] why so many of our colleagues repress their rage through what I feel is intentionally boring writing (we all do it, I do it sometimes, too); and [2] the relationship of our emotions and our souls and our bodies to our intellect in terms of where we are in society (3)."
Smith, Page. 1990. Killing the Spirit: Higher Education in America. Viking. "Boredom is the necessary condition of any education which teaches us to manipulate facts and suppress their meaning (158)."
Solotaroff, Ted. 1991. "The Paperbacking of Publishing." The Nation, October 7, 1991, pp. 399-404. "What used to be called selling out is today simply a strategy for surviving. But the risks and consequences of doing so haven't changed just because there is more company (403)." [BUT MY FRIEND JAMES ANDREW COX SAYS "I DON'T SELL OUT, I JUST RENT."]
Sykes, Charles J. 1988. Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education. Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway. "How is it that normally intelligent, occasionally articulate, sometimes even eloquent men and women become pompous, opaque, and incomprehensible the moment they enter academe? . . . Academics share the same motives that animate the soul of every bureaucracy and closed guild. . . . Every petty bureaucrat recognizes that power rests in large part on the ability to cloak his or her language behind a veil of inflated and intimidating jargon (109)."
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