The high price of education

Only a few people actually create things, but everyone's a critic.

Acknowledging that, allow me to complain, for a moment, about the really stupid things I read in my very expensive textbooks sometimes.

I discussed this first one while dining with classmates (who are also friends) this morning, because I thought it particularly vapid, especially in a textbook on research and evaluation methods in psychology:

"Why get all tangled up in theory, philosophy and politics? Why not just explain the methods? Why bring in the viewpoints of feminists, ethnic minotiries and persons with disabilities regarding research practice? Because doing so is very important." (The italics are the textbook author's, not mine.)

The subsequent paragraphs do not necessarily elaborate what's so "very important," but the author notes that "there are a variety of viewpoints" on the matter.

Just when I thought I was going to get something for my money.

Another one of my pet peeves in writing is the use of inane commentary by the authors, as illustrated in the following tip from my textbook on treatment planning for children:

"It is recommended that therapists subscribe to journals such as Development and Psychopathology, Child Development, Developmental Psychology and the Journal of Research on Adolescence. Interestingly, all these journals regularly publish papers that examine clinical issues within a developmental context."

It's shocking, I tell you, SHOCKING! Considering that most journals publish papers and most psychology journals examine clinical issues, just how is it "interesting" that all these effin' journals with the word "development" (or in the one, "adolescence") in the *title* of the journal should discuss ... (hold onto your hats, folks!) ... development?

In a class where we've been assigned a heavier reading load than those stone tablets Moses brought down the mountain with him, the last thing I'm really interested in is wasting my time reading stupid sentences like that one starting, "Interestingly...." Because you know what? That was *not* interesting.

Although it seems to have made my blog.

Which either elevates that sentence to a particular interest level it did not deserve or it makes my blog terribly uninteresting. (Well, I've written this much and you've read this far, so no telling what it says about us, either.)

However, I would like to point out one turn of phrase that delighted me so much that my feet got a little hot the way they do when I'm about to orgasm. (And no, it's not from that Anias Nin erotica.)

It comes from a reading on the development of psychopathology in children. I've got all sorts of wonderful stuff underlined in this article, some of it with unfortunate personal meaning for yours truly. But in a section on cognitive development in school-age children, I found the following sentence:

"Later, a child is able to think of possibilities that do not exist in reality, to manipulate things mentally that are not actually present and to see that reality is just a special case of what is possible." (emphasis: mine)

As a constructivist (and a post-modern one at that), I was delighted by this description of reality: "just a special case of what is possible." ("Just!") That is, at once, the most diminutizing (and for some people, disturbing) commentary on the world we observe around us and also a beautifully turned phrase laden with meaning.

I'm so goddamned mad *I* didn't write it. But I'll tell you what: Even though I want to be cremated and my ashes scattered, I still think of stuff to etch on my tombstone, and it's getting more colorful. In part: Reality is just a special case of what's possible. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

In the meantime, that shit is going on my business cards.