financial decision as this is my 'ready-to-hand' income. Some years
back I tried to take and stick to a decision not to teach 'ideological
rot' - broadly the mainstream of business and economic subjects. This
might seem a fairly easy personal, moral decision; yet it isn't.
The interesting issues don't concern the easy morality of doing what's
right. One can find plenty of material, from Critical Theory through
to deconstructive approaches to behaviour and critical psychology -
and once, very critical management books like Peter Anthony's
'Foundation of Management' and sort programmes out on the basis of
these. Thus one could teach material one might feel credible and
stretching, broadly aimed at students learning critical reasoning. I
do offer modules based around writers like David Graeber, Steve Keen
and modern blogs at the moment.
What muddies the waters is a combination of streamlining costs in HE
and more or less the extirpation of syllabus control by academics,
along with a massive dilution of student brain-power and the
connection of student success with the numbers we pass. This
situation makes moral judgement very difficult and academe has
collapsed altogether as a moral place.
Economics has long been taught as a science - an utter farce - and
management theories are only fit for ridicule (excellence, kwality and
anything with 'strategic' in it). The world works around power and
rhetoric, and this is the only real content of such "theories".
The madness that underlies all this is that we never address what the
real issues might be. Accumulated wealth is clearly a problem for
democracy as it inevitably means some will benefit by doing nothing
while others work and that the wealth will be used to influence
politics and the very ground of commercial competition. Yet with no
consideration of this we leap into "theorising" in a system that
applauds the creation of excess wealth in few hands as a 'good'.
One can try to teach what one believes is true and in simple morality
this is what one ought to do. The actual situation is much more
complex. The jobs available in teaching (apart from a few little
eddies I have occupied) are nearly all to do with teaching the rot,
because this is the cheapest way universities can devise. The moral
choice of not teaching rot changes to a choice not to teach (and get
paid) - partly because your own students will be examined on the rot
because you are teaching as part of a 'team' and all students are set
the same questions as part of standardisation. If you don't teach the
muck you put your students at a disadvantage.
I see no answers to the moral conundrum - other than just to walk
away, putting distance between oneself and the madness.
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