Food for Thought

Here is a quotation from A Taste for Language: Literacy, Class, and English Studies by James Ray Watkins, Jr., cited in a review by Scott McLemee in today’s Inside Higher Education (http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee277): "On the one hand," Watkins writes, "we must accept our students' vocational goals as legitimate expressions of their desire to maintain or strengthen their economic position; on the other, we must seek out ways to persuade them that the contemplative, reflective traditions of the academy are important to their professional and social futures. Indeed, our goals ought to be even larger: to convince students that in spite of their apparent impracticality, the critical methodologies of the school have immediate professional application. Alertness to injustice isn't simply helpful in 'society in general'; it is necessary in the immediate, specific context of the work site."