Dear Habermas Logo and Site Index Link A Jeanne Site

Dear Habermas

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: September 17, 2000
Faculty on the Site.

Quotes for Quiet Desperation and
Intense Excitement

"Had it not been for the race problem early thrust upon me and enveloping me, I should have probably been an unquestioning worshipper at the shrine of the established social order and of the economic development into which I was born."

--W.E.B. Du Bois, 1868-1963

Quote from Colin S. Cavel http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~cscpo

"Our everyday language has become encumbered, Germanic, artificial, bureaucratic, inorganic.  It may not be exaggerated to say that by now American writers face but two alternatives: write English, or write gobbledygook."
John Lukacs.
Sent to us by Bruce or Youn-ju. Link added January 12, 2000.

"In this dispatch you have used every cliche known to the English language, except 'God is love' and 'Please adjust your dress before leaving."
Winston Churchill, admonishing the Foreign Office
Sent to us by Bruce or Youn-ju. Link added January 12, 2000.

"It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought...should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words."
George Orwell, 1984
Sent to us by Bruce or Youn-ju. Link added January 12, 2000.

"When words lose their meaning, people lose their liberty."
Confucius
Sent to us by Bruce or Youn-ju. Link added January 12, 2000.

"The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity."
Quintilian
Sent to us by Bruce or Youn-ju. Link added January 12, 2000.

"Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light."
Dr. Johnson
Sent to us by Bruce or Youn-ju. Link added January 12, 2000.

"How many people  make themselves abstract to appear profound!  The greatest part of abstract terms are shadows that hide a vacuum."
Joubert
Sent to us by Bruce or Youn-ju. Link added January 12, 2000.

"No one can say what will become of our civilization when it has really met
different civilizations by means other than the shock of conquest and domination.
But we have to admit that this encounter has not yet taken place at the
level of an authentic dialogue. That is why we are in a kind of lull
or interregnum in which we can no longer practice the dogmatism
of a single truth and in which we are not yet capable of conquering
the skepticism into which we have stepped."
Paul Ricouer, "Universal Civilization and National Cultures" (1961)
History and Truth . . .Cited in Hal Foster's The Anti-Aesthetic, pp .21-22.
Link added August 18, 1999.

"Our whole educational problem suffers from a one-sided approach
to the child who is to be educated, and from an equally one-sided
lack of emphasis on the uneducatedness of the educator."
C.G. Jung, quoted in an article by Ruth M. Larson, Ph.D.,
Professor Emeritus at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
Link added July 21, 1999.

"[T]eaching is always a kind of wilderness survival training . . ."
John J. O'Donnell, New Tools for Teaching Speak to the tiger.
Link added June 22, 1999.

"..when half Gods go the Gods arrive!"
Goethe
Sent to us by Linda Fitzgerald. Link added May 28, 1999.

"Fair words never hurt the tongue."

Jonson, Chapman, Marston, Eastward Ho [1605], act IV, sc. i.

"Am I prepared? Absolutely not."
"Are these people stupid, or what?" (Referring to those who refuse to listen.)

Antonio Villaraigosa, Speaker of the California State Assembly

His identity is based on what he cannot be.
And that which he cannot be is us.

Jeanne

"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry." Albert Einstein,

NACADA Journal, 95, Vol 15, No. 2 , p.45-6.

"[M]erit pay in the public sector . . . resulting from the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, was judged a disaster even by the man who directed it."

Buddy Robert S. Silverman
Cited by Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards, at p. 125.

"ANGELS CAN FLY BECAUSE THEY TAKE THEMSELVES LIGHTLY"

Balzac

"To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum."

Alfie Kohn
Punished by Rewards, at p. 149.

"Je deteste ceux qui m'entendent trop vite."
(I detest those who understand me too quickly.)

Andre Gide, Journaux, 1930s.

In Dizick v.Umpqua Community College, the Oregon Court of Appeals held that "effective counseling depends upon free and open communication between the counselor and the counselee. Such communication would be chilled if the college counselor faced potential liability for every statement from which an adverse inference might be drawn."

NACADA Journal, 95, Vol.15, No. 2, Fall 1995, Pp.275-76.

"Das ist eine schwartze katze."
(That is a black cat.)

Jeanne (most useful German phrase I ever learned)

"THE JUSTIFICATION OF A UNIVERSITY IS TO SERVE AS A CONNECTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND THE ZEST FOR LIFE"

Alfred North Whitehead

"Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe."

Alfie Kohn
Punished by Rewards, at p. 138.

"Teaching is the interactive sharing of power."

Hans Mauksch, former Executive Director
American Sociology Association

"In an economy tending to rely on top-down systems of labor relations, such as were created in the Unived States after World War II, falling wages create strong pressures for an intensification of managerial supervision. Given a wage squeeze, the [supervision] becomes even more necessary than before."

David M. Gordon, at p. 70 in Fat and Mean.

"EDUCATION EITHER FUNCTIONS AS AN INSTRMENT WHICH IS USED TO FACILITATE INTEGRATION OF THE YOUNGER GENERATION INTO THE LOGIC OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM AND BRING ABOUT CONFORMITY OR IT BECOMES THE PRACTICE OF FREEDOM THE MEANS BY WHICH MEN AND WOMEN DEAL CRITICALLY AND CREATIVELY WITH REALITY AND DISCOVER HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF THEIR WORLD"

.Paulo Freire

Punishing employees is defended on grounds that it clarifies "management's expectations of performance and [promotion] of goal setting." (O'Reilly and Puffer) To them Alfie Kohn answers: "This is comparable to the claim that throwing employees out an office window helps to clarify what floor they work on."

Alfie Kohn
Punished by Rewards, at p. 135

"Harvard Business School has pointed out, 'the kind of people who make good leaders are not obsessed with money.'"

Alfie Kohn
Punished by Rewards, at p. 133

"IF A MAN GOES TO A BANK AND SHOOTS THE TELLER TO STEAL MONEY AND SO FREE HIMSELF FROM THE OPPRESSIONS OF POVERTY, THAT'S CALLED ARMED ROBBERY; BIT IF A MAN GOES HOME AND SHOOTS HIS WIFE TO KILL HER AND SO FREE HIMSELF FROM THE OPPRESSION OF MARRIAGE, THAT'S CALLED "TEMPORARY INSANITY"...

Thomas Szasz

"Our students must become our teachers in order for us to teach."

Hans Mauksch, former Executive Director of
the American Sociology Association,
as recalled by Susan Takata

"The legendary statistical consultant W. Edwards Deming, . . . has called the system by which merit is appraised and rewarded 'the most powerful inhibitor to quality and productivity in the Western world' . . . "it is simply unfair to the extent that employees are held responsible for what are, in reality, systemic factors that are beyond their control."

Alfie Kohn
Punished by Rewards, at p. 129

"The most corrosive message of legal history is the message of contingency. . . American legal thought reveals how quickly the Obvious Logic of one period becomes superseded by the equally obvious, though contradictory, logic of subsequent orthodoxy."

Elizabeth Mensch, at p. 23 of Politics of Law.

"It is better not to make merit a matter of reward
Lest people conspire and contend."

Lao-tzu
Cited by Alfie Kohn
Punished by Rewards, at p. 49

"Punishment and reward proceed from basically the same psychological model, one that conceives of motivation as nothing more than the manipulation of behavior."

Alfie Kohn
Punished by Rewards, at p. 51

The Legacy of Behaviorism: "Do this and you'll get that."

Alfie Kohn
Punished by Rewards, at p. 3

"Because students believe what they are told, explicitly and implicitly, about the world they are entering, they behave in ways that fulfill the prophecies the system makes about them and about that world." Duncan Kennedy, at p.54 of Politics of Law.

"Man tends to live for bread alone when there is little bread."

Alfie Kohn
quoting Douglas McGregor
in Punished by Rewards, at p. 76

"If faculty would relax their emphasis on grades, this might serve not to lower standards but to encourage an orientation toward learning."

Alfie Kohn
quoting Milton et al. Punished by Rewards, at p. 205

"Grades dilute the pleasure that a student experiences on successfully completing a task."

Alfie Kohn
Punished by Rewards, at p. 204

"Some people undoubtedly find it convenient to have students arrive having already been stamped PRIME, CHOICE, SELECT, or STANDARD."

Alfie Kohn
Punished by Rewards, at p. 202

Learning MUST not be confused with certification.
Learning is the goal for students, faculty, and community. Certification is the goal for emloyers who want graduates "stamped PRIME, CHOICE, SELECT, or STANDARD."

Jeanne