The best (sic) ever

I just love Stanley Fish sometimes: he's someone you probably won't love at all until you see him in person, as you won't have an idea about the tone in which he writes, or just how ironic and silly and casual he says these straightforward, crotchety things that he says. That certainly was the case with me: I was lucky enough to see him for a few days at Princeton and, after having a blast, saw most of what he says in a completely new light. So I encourage you to find some lecture of his, some clip of him somewhere, and check it out. Many of his views you might still find problematic, of course, but you'll be able to see more where he is coming from; and it's usually, if not always, much, much better to read from a position of sympathy than opposition.

This is just the best, however. In an article on the importance of the humanties in higher education, Fish cites a disgusting and disturbing report (the Browne report) which says the value of higher education generally is in its ability to "deliver improved employability"--unfortunately I know too well what that horribly phrased statement means--and which ultimately seeks to justify students seeing the courses they take as monetary investments in their resume, as well as justify the irrelevance of the humanities in general over business schools and the like. But you see the most banal, rudimentary value of the humanities--the claim that it simply produces raw knowledge, just like the sciences--in the smarmy "(sic)" Fish is so smart to insert:

The result, anticipated and welcomed by the report’s authors, will be that courses of study that “deliver improved employability will prosper,” while those that don’t “will disappear.” This will hold also for universities, which will either prosper or wither on the vine depending on the agility they display in adapting themselves to student-consumer demands. “Institutions will have to persuade students that the charges they put on their courses represents [sic] value for money.

Obviously the fight over this will have to be on a larger scale, but I think it's good to show just how uncultivated, how unable to communicate, these people writing such a report and making such recommendations, ultimately are.