Message-Id: <199705181959.PAA09216@sherlock.dac.uga.edu>
From: "Nicole Pallotta" <cmsnikki@uga.cc.uga.edu>
To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 16:09:41 -500
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Subject: Re: "Talk of the Nation" program on academic careers today 
Reply-to: cmsnikki@uga.cc.uga.edu
I don't know anything about this show, but did they mention Martin 
Anderson's (1996),  _Imposters in the Temple_? 

Although the exploitation aspect with which he deals is very real, 
he has an irritating chapter called "Children Teaching Children", in 
which he says, among other offensive generalizations, that 
"Students might even take more interest in their courses if they were
taught by real professors, not one of their beer-drinking buddies." (63)   

Much of the typification schema he uses to describe
graduate students is insulting and flat out wrong, not to mention his 
blatant age-ism, assuming all graduate students are "children", 
only 2 years older than the "children" they are teaching. 
As if all graduate students are these little wet- behind- the- 
ears- fresh- out- of- college- beer -drinking yahoos who can't teach, 
grade or resist the temptation to date their students and take them 
out for drinks!!!! 

Please. As if a person of twenty-three or four is a "child" 
anyway -- even if that were the average age of graduate students. 

His attitude is soooo condescending, which is really too bad because the 
issues he raises are important and need to be dealt with.
However, they need to be handled in a more responsible
and less sensationalistic way. He does well with the 
exploitation part, but when he gets around to painting a picture of 
the average graduate student teaching Mr. and Mrs. America's "wide 
eyed and hopeful" children , the effect is absolutely nauseating.

quite irritating.


Nicole R. Pallotta
Department of Sociology
University of Georgia
Athens, Ga. 30602-1611
(706) 542-3192