The Anxiety of Prep

Wondering what to do tomorrow – it’s tough when your class doesn’t happen. Then what? I come across this great polemical statement by Christoph Spehr, speaking for Tebor Scholz’s Institute for Distributed Creativity on new media education (conference upcoming CUNY Grad Center May 6). He’s talking about how education works in a post-socialist world where neo-liberal capitalism no longer has to be smart:

"Today, institutionalized education is nothing more than an occupational army standing in a country formerly called education, and its main order is to prevent that something happens. It does not create something, it does not even try to teach anything. It only >shows the instruments< of today¹s society, the crude and cruel rules of sheer competition, and exterminates any spaces and processes that could get out of control, that could create something dangerous. The Bush fundamentalism gets down to the simple formula that the U.S. is always right because they have the fattest ass in the world. You can¹t really call that an ideology. It¹s an act of humiliating its enemies by displaying unchallenged dumbness. And as such, it works."
(that’s at http://newmediaeducation.org/ click on sidebar 01.19 Christoph Spehr)

Ouch. Elsewhere in this text, Spehr talks about the shock of the classroom situation, about how he thinks education really works. I try some of this, speaking this week to Maureen Connor’s class at Queens College. I was booked to talk about the New Museum’s “East Village USA” show and began by asking, “Any questions?” The class laughed. But I wish now I’d had the guts to simply go straight into it that way, slowly, ruminatively considering and evoking questions. Because in any consideration of history, it’s what matters first – your questions now.
So what about tomorrow! Eeanhhh! It’s spozed to be post-’68 modes… So I’ll skew it that way, and go back over last week’s ground, and see what comes up. And videotape it. It’s odd when the class has yet to meet. Maybe it will take all 8 weeks for that to happen…