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Zizek on Teaching

No, you don't want to know:
Q&A: Slavoj Žižek, professor and writer | Life and style | The Guardian

What is the worst job you've done?

Teaching. I hate students, they are (as all people) mostly stupid and boring.

Isn't that everything that is wrong with our discipline? Public intellectuals have this way of starting out as 'original and interesting promoter of the discipline' and ending as 'embarrassing caricature hell-bent on destroying the discipline' but has anyone made that transition more quickly than Zizek?  Gandhi was more violent than Hitler. Students are stupid and boring.

Maybe it's time we stop calling him a 'philosopher' and start using title for which he's most qualified: 'psychoanalyst.' "The most dangerous psychoanalyst in the west" has a bit of a different ring to it doesn't it?

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Žižek on students

Žižek says that students are MOSTLY stupid and boring, just like all people. I wouldn't argue with that.

After a couple of decades in philosophy classrooms, I have come to expect that approximately 10% of students will understand what is going on; approximately 10% will be totally lost; and the remaining 80% will be drifting somewhere in between.

In a class of 50 students, I look to approximately 5 of them to motivate me to continue teaching. If those 5 fail to materialize (which, thankfully, is very rare) I find dealing with students absolutely intolerable.

Having to read through endless pages of badly written garbage at the end of each semester would be a worthy replacement for waterboarding!

  • By Eriugena (not verified) at 01/17/2010 - 1:27pm
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Zizek on teaching

Very unappealing all around, not just for the answer about teaching! BUT, is there good reason to take his responses seriously?

  • By philosoraptor (not verified) at 01/16/2010 - 8:52pm
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