4 ms·

The books I've read on the professional craft of writing (written by successful authors) have emphasized that you can't expect to learn anything from your Engli

The books I've read on the professional craft of writing (written by successful authors) have emphasized that you can't expect to learn anything from your English professor - and many of those books were from decades before the collapse described here. This area of academe is widely considered a fraud, not just by evil Republican governors, but by the only people with externally visible expertise in its supposed subject matter. I don't know if it's collapsing because of the fraud, if there's causality; but my understanding is that the conventional belief among people who can actually write is that the MLA can't read.

bilbo0s 7y ago
You're talking about something slightly different than the article. What you're talking about might more precisely be directed at something like a creative writing program. What the article's author is discussing is, in layman's terms, the profession of being an analyst-, or the profession of giving "critique"-, of creative writers.
- mcguire 7y ago
  No, I think it's exactly right. The "destruction" the author describes is the cause of the inwardness and nearsightedness that makes much of it useless.
- Eliezer 7y ago
  It's a bad sign if all the creative writers with external viability think the MLA obviously has no expertise on the underlying structure of books. I can imagine an art of critiquing proofs, but I'd expect it to be headed up by professional mathematicians or at least be in good standing with them.
jseliger 7y ago
This area of academe is widely considered a fraud I think the intellectual problems and economic problems are linked: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/10/02/what-happened-with-deconstruction/ https://jakeseliger.com/2014/10/02/what-happened-with-decons...
Fomite 7y ago
This is exactly like saying you don't learn how to code well from your CS professor. They're different skills that are in a related arena.

bilbo0s 7y ago

You're talking about something slightly different than the article. What you're talking about might more precisely be directed at something like a creative writing program. What the article's author is discussing is, in layman's terms, the profession of being an analyst-, or the profession of giving "critique"-, of creative writers.

mcguire 7y ago
No, I think it's exactly right. The "destruction" the author describes is the cause of the inwardness and nearsightedness that makes much of it useless.
Eliezer 7y ago
It's a bad sign if all the creative writers with external viability think the MLA obviously has no expertise on the underlying structure of books. I can imagine an art of critiquing proofs, but I'd expect it to be headed up by professional mathematicians or at least be in good standing with them.

jseliger 7y ago

This area of academe is widely considered a fraud I think the intellectual problems and economic problems are linked: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/10/02/what-happened-with-deconstruction/ https://jakeseliger.com/2014/10/02/what-happened-with-decons...

Fomite 7y ago

This is exactly like saying you don't learn how to code well from your CS professor. They're different skills that are in a related arena.