I taught at the college level for more than thirty years and retired during the Corona period. I'm glad I did that. Everything about university life has changed.
While the curse of cell phones began long before I left teaching, I'm told that the distraction (or perhaps the addiction?) has only gotten worse. From primary school to secondary school, attempts were made to establish rules; Universities have not done this.
Added to the intrusive phones is artificial intelligence. I definitely prefer natural intelligence. I recently met with a colleague who still teaches. I asked how it's going. She replied: terrible. AI, she told me, enables fraud and weakens individual thinking.
I told her I'm retired. I don't know anything about it except what I've read in the newspapers. She said: I will show you. She asked for a title for a poem of mine that is available online. She typed the title of my poem and one of hers into an AI service and asked for a comparison.
We immediately had a short essay. Great! What fun, I thought – until I read the analysis.
The comparison reminded me of a horoscope. It's true that I might suddenly get lucky next month, but that might not be true. The AI-generated words weren't wrong, but they were so superficial as to be meaningless. The machine-generated essay brilliantly illustrated what we used to call BS (and that doesn't stand for Bachelor of Science).
I couldn't understand why anyone would want to use this “tool”. The word story comes from the Greek word “istoria,” which means “to find oneself.” That doesn't mean you want a machine to do it for you.
In an old Star Trek episode, Captain Kirk asks a man on a planet managed by a vast computer network: Who is Vaal? The native replies: Vaal is everything! Vaal puts fruit on the trees and causes the rain to fall from the sky. Kirk orders the Enterprise crew to use the ship's phasers to blow away Computer Vaal. This forces the people of this planet to find themselves again.
Mobile phones, AI – these are central components of our society of spectacle. This also applies to university sports. College life seems to be under attack from all sides, but no one ever mentions how athletics increases the cost of higher education and impacts instruction. What does a chemistry student get from a football team? Don't tell me, school spirit. The transfer portal ended any remaining hope. The chemistry student's tuition subsidizes the quarterback's profits.
As sports have grown, so have the size of athletic departments and the compensation offered. Add to this the exponential growth of university administration, and one has to consider what has become of an institution's faculty. As college presidents have become more authoritarian (the statement notes that a president must have more control to respond to rapidly changing market conditions), shared governance with faculty and the tenure system have eroded.
Add to the above that anti-intellectualism is rampant in America right now, and it's easy to see why I'm glad to be retired. This seems like a wonderful moment to re-read Henry David Thoreau, turn off the machines and their promise of spectacle and shortcuts, and get back to making your own way in the world, through your own mind, body and spirit, free and independent.
Dennis Barone, Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies, University of Saint Joseph, West Hartford.