I was finally able to go Fully Booked Greenhills and went through two books and eventually bought one. The two books were related and I’m amazed at how much people are talking about the same general theme.
The first book I saw was Social Intelligence Daniel Goleman who was responsible for the entire concept of Emotional Intelligence. I picked it up because I wanted to see if his concept of Social Intelligence was similar to Bourdieu’s habitus. I never got to read it thoroughly partly because I was distracted by the amount of space he devoted to a lot of brain theory stuff. If I understand it correctly, brain theory looks at brain physiology as it relates to behavior and practices and a lot of this is made possible because of MRIs (run emotional and thought experiments while people are hooked up and watch the lights go on). Needless to say, I was disappointed with the book because it was so physiological but maybe (budget permitting) I’ll pick it up and read it anyway.
The second book I bought and it is entitled Think which is meant to be a counterpoint to Howard Gardner’s Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. Gladwell is more popularly known for his book The Tipping Point. Think is a direct attack on Blink and his main thesis is that America is losing its ability to think critically precisely because of people like Gardner who place a premium on intuition rather than critical thought.
I picked up the book (even if it didn’t look well-written) because I’ve been wondering about this over the past few days as part of my sociologizing but also from experiences with colleagues and students. I sense that there are two problems on opposite poles. The first is the anti-intellectual problem championed by those who are not intellectuals and even within the University, by those not directly involved with teaching (and most unfortunately, including some people who run the show). In a recent study, it was shown that a lot of students thought that what they learned could not be applied after they graduated.
On the other hand are the brand of intellectuals we have whose voice hardly matters in the world out there because they do not communicate their ideas. Publication is made for publication’s sake and not to move thought. In a sense, I do not blame the anti-intellectuals for being anti-intellectual if being an intellectual means living in a world that does not exist (or where only intellectuals exist).
My mental project now is the recovery of the value of good thought in a society like ours today.
Reading Think reinforced my belief that we need to demand good thought (manifested in good essays, good reading of articles, good book reports, good theses) from students and not to pander to them. Enable them to understand, but elevate them to a higher level of discourse (challenge them with that higher rlevel) rather than letting the discourse remain "at their level".
On another note, I saw Jeff Shaara’s Gone for Soldiers which is a novel about the Mexican-American war. Didn’t buy it because I thought I had a copy. The (Michael and Jeff) Shaara novels are pretty good novels on American (war) history. Right up there with Band of Brothers and A Bridge Too Far.
