a few years ago, a few years after graduation, our college clique got hot and bothered (as twentysomethings do) about working for The Man versus working for The Cause. it was quite dramatic; at the time i was with the SPCA and got terribly upset whenever one of my friends, say, got a nice piece of furniture or joined an entity with punctuation in its name. i remember arguing that we were like babies of different species - we had seemed similar enough in utero, but flippers and claws and such were going to get in the way as we grew up. the discussions were shamefully twee; thank god the whole thing blew over.
the late twentysomething version, i think, is a mutation of town v. gown. i don't want to twee out on it, but this amused the hell out of me when it popped up in my iTunes today:
Come down, come down from your ivory tower
Let love come into your heart
Don't lock yourself in an ivory tower
Don't keep us so far apart
I love you, I love you
Are you too far above me to hear?
Come down, come down from your ivory tower
You'll find true love has its charms
It's cold, so cold, in your ivory tower
And warm, so warm in my arms
I love you, I love you
Are you too far above me to hear?
Come down, come down from your ivory tower
You'll find true love has its charms
It's cold, so cold, in your ivory tower
And warm, so warm in my arms
i'd like to comment on this in a roundabout way.
ReplyDeleteas someone in a "practical" field - education - there is an emphasis on working towards improving educational practice, i.e., what teachers do in the classroom. ivory tower folks (like me) - professors and policymakers - often have very strong ideas about improving practice, and put together nice, long proposals together on how this should be done. we present these to teachers, expecting murmurs of approval. in many cases, however, teachers either a) don't read these proposals for reform (because they have a million other things to do), or b) feel that they're being condescended to, since they're the ones actually in the trenches doing very difficult work - cognitively, emotionally, and physically - for shit pay.
in a somewhat analogous way, those of us in the ivory tower would do well to ask ourselves whether our words or actions towards the non-ivory tower among us might be construed as condescending. their work isn't "cute," and it isn't less serious than what we do, no matter how prestigious the fellowship or letters after our names. i think a little bit of humility would go a long way.
Having neither a prestigious fellowship nor any letters after my name, I'm just grateful there still exist niches for me to study the things I love. At least I try to keep up the gratitude, even when the ivory tower gets full of dirty dishes. As it often does. Who does the twee song?
ReplyDeleteah, that comment was really more self-directed than it came out. it derived from having my teeth set on edge from acting like i knew what i was talking about when talking to classroom teachers. in education, modesty and humility above all else.
ReplyDeletei too am grateful for being able to study what interests me, and even more that an institution would support me in that endeavor. well, support me three out of four years.
J: i think it came out just fine. interestingly (as we've discussed elsewhere), if a bit of humility would go a long way in education, a bit of self-esteem would go even farther, i think, for those of us orbiting lit and the arts. high culture / low culture snark (not exactly what i identified in my post, but closer to what i meant) is all about self-defense.
ReplyDeleteP: the version of "ivory tower" i know is by cathy carr. i think jack fulton wrote it.