October 31, 2014, posted by Mary Grabar: Irony Alert, Grit, True Grit, Academic Politboro Punishing Bill Maher. The release of the Department of Education report "Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century" in 2013 seems to have had a residual effect. The report claimed that strictly academic factors were not as important as certain personality traits, like "grit," for success in school--and life. At the risk of suffering the same opprobrium as British English professor Thomas Docherty for being too "ironic," and "sighing and using negative body language," Dissident Prof (former English professor, who like other English professors specializes in "irony") will be ironic about "grit."
"Grit" is now a part of Common Core and college entrance evaluation, replacing old-fashioned criteria, like knowledge.
Most people of a certain age will associate "grit" with the 1969 movie True Grit, about the Wild West and revenging a girl's father's killer, starring John Wayne. John Wayne would be surprised that the word is used in the context of education, including fashion education.
Fashion education was the focus of a recent White House event. First Ladies have always focused on fashion, of course. Think of Jackie O and Chanel and Dior, and Nancy Reagan and Oscar de la Renta.
But fashion has entered a new era in the current White House, with student-designers credited with "imagining" a dress. Washington Post writer and fashion critic Robin Givhan led her article earlier this month with the news about a fashion education event at the White House focusing on the newsworthy topic of .... ba da dum, drum roll...the First Lady's shoulders. Dissident Prof is being serious and not ironic. She is quoting the first paragraph in full:
For a Wednesday afternoon luncheon in the State Dining Room, first lady Michelle Obama wore a sleeveless navy dress with a full skirt and a fitted bodice. It had a racer-style back and a sensuous front that showed off her shoulders. The relatively simple frock didn’t carry the weight of an inaugural gown but it was particularly significant nonetheless, because it was the dress she chose to wear to the first White House fashion education workshop.
The event was educational in nature, intended to give "a leg up to aspiring fashion designers and stylists, writers and entrepreneurs from 14 East Coast high schools and colleges." Dissident Prof does not recognize the names of most of the designers--and also does not follow the logic of Givhan's sentence, "But Obama’s dress made it clear just whom she wanted to be the stars of the day: the students." She supposes, though, that that's because she is still used to the old-fashioned linear literacy and has not become used to "visual literacies," including clothes. Alas, Dissident Prof cannot read the "fashions" that WP's fashion critic can read.
New Verb Form: Or maybe Dissident Prof has trouble recognizing new verb forms, as in this sentence: "Her dress was imagined by Natalya Koval, a student from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, who was the winner of a design competition."
What does it mean that a dress is "imagined"? Is it sewn? Is it designed? Is it drawn? Does the student-designer imagine it and then somehow transfer the imagined image by osmosis? Is any skill even involved? (Although she excelled in English, Dissident Prof also had her sewing handiwork displayed in the Home Economics hall of Benjamin Franklin High School: Her 5/8-inch seams were always 5/8-inches!)
Are the fashion imaginers even expected to be able to draw or sew? Dissident Prof is perplexed. The First Lady, in prepared remarks, said that "the clothes you see in the the magazine covers are really just the finished product in what is a very long, very complicated and very difficult process."
Vogue editor Anna Wintour is quoted as crediting Obama with changing the perception of fashion as being "unserious." Said Wintour:
Fashion can be a powerful instrument for social change. . . . It allows us to think about who we are as individuals and as a society.
Wintour failed to explain how fashion can be a "powerful instrument for social change."
Dissident Prof declares right off the bat that there shall be no jokes, smirks, or comments, though, about irony. To wit, the concluding paragraph of this very important article about education:
Spanx and confidence: And as for the first lady, who named Cornejo as one of her favorite designers and declared her affection for Spanx: “Fashion plays an important role in my confidence.”
We turn now to new college entrance criteria and "grit" and similar hallmarks. At the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, as reported in USA Today recently, personality tests now are being administered for college entrance. Jeff Fuller, director of admissions at the University of Houston, says colleges are looking "for reasons to admit a student." No doubt.
It's not only happening at small technology institutes. Purdue University admissions director Pam Horne is quoted as saying,
I think that there are many of us who are very interested in the noncognitive factors that can help predict a student's success. And we know what some of those might be: perseverance, goal orientation, maturity in general, time management, self-determination — which are difficult to measure.
The courage of hunting down your father's killer in the Wild West pales in comparison.
Speaking of courage, remember when comedian Bill Maher called the 9/11 terrorists "courageous"? Well, Mr. Maher has now joined company with those like Condoleeza Rice and George Will. Yes, formerly favorite comedian of the college set has now found disfavor and been "disinvited." University of California/Berkeley chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks, in a rare administrative move, however, overruled the student group that blocked Maher's invitation as commencement speaker for December. Maher is known for his vicious attacks on conservatives and Catholics, but now finds himself exiled for deviating from the politically correct path of the university Politboro.
Will this end when one of the professors espousing ever more refined standards of political correctness in the classroom finds himself or herself as the object of disinvitation by students? The irony of all this is that one can never be politically correct enough. Perhaps, we need to start teaching about the history of communism and worry less about "grit." One of the fundamentals would be the government's obligation to enforce contracts, and not allow student "loan forgiveness" for "public service" workers.
