affixing labels

The other night I was talking with my old old friend Shawnda (by "old old" I mean that we used to play with shaving cream and eat fish sticks and practice writing our names in Mrs. Mary's kindergarten Sunday School -- and that after we'd already been friends for a couple years) and describing some of my frustration with the communication "education" I'm receiving at CSUF.

I got as far as "I'm in an Intercultural Communication class . . ." when she said that she took one of those in college, and that her [now-]husband used to say that it seemed like all she learned in that class was complicated labels for common-sense things.

You said it, Casey.

I think this label madness is a symptom of something, and that it has to do with a rejection of absolute truth. E.g., instead of seeking to learn something outside ourselves -- say, a standard to aspire to -- we are studying what we normally do, and just so that there's still something to "teach" at universities, we're making up labels for that stuff.

So, while in a previous generation a young woman who offers as a communication theory in class the proposition that "men are [expletive deleted]" might have been encouraged to (1) explain herself, (2) wash her mouth out with soap, and (3) hang out with better guys, now we have to (1) give this idea the honor of legitimacy by labeling it, (2) study it, and (3) accept it as valid as her opinion, regardless of whether she's able to provide any comprehensible defense for it.***

Anyway, I'm not sure where I'm going with this.

Someday I'm going to write a book. But my book in its latest manifestation is a children's picture book. And it doesn't have anything to do with frustrating university experiences.

***Here's how this works:
Student 1: [some statement that is completely ignorant, irrelevant, or unjustified]
Professor: Thank you, Student 1, for your opinion.
Student 2: But what Student 1 just said is completely ignorant and/or irrelevant and/or unjustified.
Professor: But that's Student 1's opinion, Student 2. She can certainly choose to have any opinion she likes.