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Any experiences in the workplace with the new academic/postmodern left? 19

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beej67

beej67

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May 13, 2009
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A lot of talk on this topic in the podcast circles, vis a vis the Weinsteins, Jordan Peterson, etc. I ran across this gem today:


Rigor/Us: Building Boundaries and Disciplining Diversity with Standards of Merit

ABSTRACT

Rigor is the aspirational quality academics apply to disciplinary standards of quality. Rigor's particular role in engineering created conditions for its transfer and adaptation in the recently emergent discipline of engineering education research. ‘Rigorous engineering education research’ and the related ‘evidence-based’ research and practice movement in STEM education have resulted in a proliferation of boundary drawing exercises that mimic those in engineering disciplines, shaping the development of new knowledge and ‘improved’ practice in engineering education. Rigor accomplishes dirty deeds, however, serving three primary ends across engineering, engineering education, and engineering education research: disciplining, demarcating boundaries, and demonstrating white male heterosexual privilege. Understanding how rigor reproduces inequality, we cannot reinvent it but rather must relinquish it, looking to alternative conceptualizations for evaluating knowledge, welcoming diverse ways of knowing, doing, and being, and moving from compliance to engagement, from rigor to vigor.

KEYWORDS: Feminist theory, liberal education, engineering education
Click to expand...

Has anyone here seen this sort of nonsense leak into the workplace yet, or is it still basically confined to the education sector?

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -
 
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said:
KEYWORDS: Feminist theory, liberal education, engineering education
Click to expand...

one of these things is not like the others...

sounds like liberal educators with too much time on their hands.
 
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I... what?

I read through the abstract about 5 times and I still don't think I understand what they're trying to say.

Rigor: The quality of being extremely thorough, exhaustive, or accurate.
Vigor: Effort, energy, and enthusiasm.

Are they saying that simply by putting in effort one should be given credit for their work, regardless of the results? That's not how the real world works!

Ian Riley, PE, SE
Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries
 
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Are they saying that simply by putting in effort one should be given credit for their work, regardless of the results? That's not how the real world works!
Click to expand...

That's increasingly how it works in higher ed, though. The trends are twofold.

1) In engineering curricula, they're starting to move towards a model where you as a professor bend over backwards to keep people in school, so the school can keep farming them for tuition money. So that's a business model thing, and I've seen it first hand in STEM education / engineering programs, on the faculty side. This is exacerbated by the USNWR engineering program rankings, which give schools a boost who have high average GPA and high retention rates.

2) In liberal arts, there's this new "cultural postmodernism" thing that's erupted in the last twenty years, where there's no such thing as objective facts at all, and every actual fact is purely a sum of cultural experiences. So in many lib arts programs, you literally can't give someone a bad grade because their "cultural experiences" may "lead them to different conclusions" or whatever. It works a little bit like a cult, but it's extremely widespread in higher ed right now, and is tied in to both third wave feminism and the recreational outrage hobbyists.

I suspect the linked article is mostly rooted in the latter.

So my question is really this, though. Although I view stuff like the linked article as generally nonsense, it's also generally harmless nonsense unless it leaks into the professional sphere and companies start acting this way. Has anyone had any experience in engineering firms that had latched onto this epistemology, and allowed it to influence their business practices?

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -
 
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A professor from Purdue University. Hmm. Whilst I welcome a wide range of opinions, not every opinion is worth taking seriously. I saw a funny comment on one blog, "Don't forget the disparate impact of Newton's Second Law Of Motion on People of Mass. That law needs to be repealed!".


Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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beej67,

I am not sure how seriously to take this. Taylor & Francis is described as an "Academic Publisher" by some of the Google hits, and it appears to be a real publisher. I scrolled down below your link and I saw articles entitled "Doing vegetarianism to destabilize the meat-masculinity nexus in La Plata, Argentina", "The Perilous Whiteness of Pumpkins", and "Hydrocracies, Engineers and Power: Questioning Masculinities in Water".

Let's take it seriously. We have the discipline of engineering. We have the discipline of engineering education. We have the discipline of engineering education research. Author Donna Riley has "received a NSF CAREER award on implementing and assessing pedagogies of liberation in engineering classrooms." I see no evidence she has practiced engineering.

--
JHG
 
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I was surprised to see "The case for colonialism" by Bruce Gilley.

abstract said:
This Viewpoint essay has been withdrawn at the request of the academic journal editor, and in agreement with the author of the essay. Following a number of complaints, Taylor & Francis conducted a thorough investigation into the peer review process on this article. Whilst this clearly demonstrated the essay had undergone double-blind peer review, in line with the journal's editorial policy, the journal editor has subsequently received serious and credible threats of personal violence. These threats are linked to the publication of this essay. As the publisher, we must take this seriously. Taylor & Francis has a strong and supportive duty of care to all our academic editorial teams, and this is why we are withdrawing this essay.
Click to expand...

Oh well.

--
JHG
 
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The level of disconnect that I am seeing permeate academic circles lately is both disturbing in its own right and troubling from the perspective of what these students will expect to encounter once they begin their engineering careers.

I weep for our future...

 
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"I am not sure how seriously to take this. Taylor & Francis is described as an "Academic Publisher" by some of the Google hits, and it appears to be a real publisher. I scrolled down below your link and I saw articles entitled "Doing vegetarianism to destabilize the meat-masculinity nexus in La Plata, Argentina", "The Perilous Whiteness of Pumpkins", and "Hydrocracies, Engineers and Power: Questioning Masculinities in Water"."

I'm tempted to think we have been beautifully trolled. By whom or why, I'm not sure. The shear effort in writing this stuff beggars belief

Here's the text of the withdrawn Colonialism paper
Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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IRstuff,

I wonder how an organization can fill 2700 journals with intelligent, worthwhile copy? Perhaps we have figured it out.

--
JHG
 
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It's amazing to me that the implied insult in these arguments " that some cannot be rigorous" goes seemingly unnoticed.

I don't want to be in the group that is told high standards are put in place so YOU cannot participate.
 
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"professor bend over backwards to keep people in school, so the school can keep farming them for tuition money"

That's hardly necessary; most schools are not even remotely lacking for students clamoring to get in. Almost every one of our state's universities are chock full of applicants every fall; even the lowest ranked schools have barely 10% acceptance rate, simply because there's not enough room for them.

OK, I've finally read abstract enough times that I think I see where it's going, which is into the weeds. Arguing that rigor reinforces white male privilege is just crock, but irrelevant to engineering in any case. No customer is going to buy off the notion that we meet specifications because we vigorously believe so and that we eschewed rigorously analyzing and verifying requirements because that reinforces white male privilege.

However, I would dispute the notion that this is strictly a leftist movement; there's plenty of unrigorous thinking on the right as well.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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beej67,

I am not sure how seriously to take this. Taylor & Francis is described as an "Academic Publisher" by some of the Google hits, and it appears to be a real publisher. I scrolled down below your link and I saw articles entitled "Doing vegetarianism to destabilize the meat-masculinity nexus in La Plata, Argentina", "The Perilous Whiteness of Pumpkins", and "Hydrocracies, Engineers and Power: Questioning Masculinities in Water".

Let's take it seriously. We have the discipline of engineering. We have the discipline of engineering education. We have the discipline of engineering education research. Author Donna Riley has "received a NSF CAREER award on implementing and assessing pedagogies of liberation in engineering classrooms." I see no evidence she has practiced engineering.
Click to expand...

Oh I get that. Never once was I worried that she might lay her hands on an engineering design. I'm curious, though, whether her influence might undermine the rigor of other engineering designs, or whether the engineering profession is appropriately and properly ignoring her. I would speculate that if any of this sort of dogma were to leak into engineering, it would be at larger firms via HR / etc, and I was wondering if anyone here had any experiences with that. We can see it leaking into software via Damore/Google/etc, but even then it's still ideological and not necessarily dangerous to the public. If the postmodernist attack against rigor and fact leaked into hard engineering disciplines, people could get hurt or killed.



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -
 
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From drawoh's link - "Vast tracts of the social sciences have gone insane."

Agreed. Approaching criminally insane.


It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
 
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beej67,

I copied and pasted that piece directly off the website. I hope your Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation are not excessively masculine.

--
JHG
 
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