Copyright Hartford Courant
I taught at the college level for more than thirty years and retired during Covid time. I am glad that I did so. Everything about university life has changed. While the curse of cell phones had started well before I left teaching, I am told that the distraction (or perhaps the addiction?) has only worsened. Elementary schools through high schools have tried to establish rules; colleges have not done so. Add to the intrusive phones, artificial intelligence. I sure do favor natural intelligence. I met with a still-teaching colleague recently. I asked, how’s it going. She replied, terrible. AI, she told me, enables cheating and lessens individual thought. I told her, I’m retired. I know nothing about it but what I read in the newspapers. She said: I will show you. She asked for a title of a poem by me available on-line. She typed my poem title and one of hers into an A.I. service and asked for a comparison. Instantly, we had a brief essay. Amazing! What fun I thought—until I read the analysis. The comparison reminded me of a horoscope. It is true that next month I might receive sudden good fortune, but then again, it may not be true. The A.I. generated words were not false, but they were so shallow as to be meaningless. The machine generated essay brilliantly exemplified what we used to call BS (and that does not stand for Bachelor of Science). I could not understand why anyone would want to use this “tool.” The word history comes for the Greek istoria which means to find for self. It does not mean let a machine do it for you. In one old Star Trek episode Captain Kirk asks a man on a planet run by a vast computer network, who is Vaal? The native replies, Vaal is all! Vaal puts fruit on the trees and makes the rain fall from the sky. Kirk orders the Enterprise crew to use the ship’s phasers to blow computer Vaal away. Thus, forcing the people of this planet to once again find for self. Cell phones, A.I.—these are central parts of our society of the spectacle. So, too are college sports. University life seems under attack on every side, but no one ever mentions how athletics adds to the cost of higher education and detracts from the classroom. What does a chemistry major get from a football team? Do not tell me, school spirit. The transfer portal ended any glimmer that still existed of that old hope. The chemistry major’s tuition subsidizes the quarterback’s profits. As sports have ballooned so has the size of athletic departments and the compensation offered. Add to this the exponential growth in university administration and one must ponder what has become of an institution’s faculty. As college presidents have become more authoritarian (the explanation offered notes that a president must have more control to react to quickly changing market conditions) shared governance with faculty has eroded as has the system of tenure. Add to the above the prevalence of anti-intellectualism in America at present and one can easily see why I am glad to be retired. This seems like a marvelous moment to reread Henry David Thoreau, to turn off the machines and their promise of spectacle and short cut and to recommit to one’s own path in the world through one’s own mind, body, and spirit, free and independent. Dennis Barone, Professor Emeritus, English and American Studies, University of Saint Joseph, West Hartford.
