Teaching in-person classes at the university is a complete waste of time

 

Published by Luis Miguel Belda
in Éxito Educativo. Información educativa y gestión

1. In a YouTube video, you explain why college students, in general, no longer want to attend in-person classes. The response is an almost indisputable 'because they don't need to.' Can you help us better understand your perspective?

 

They don't attend in-person classes because they don't need to, and in fact, there are numerous reasons why they don't. It's unnecessary to physically attend a class when it can be taught and received remotely. Moreover, there's no need to go in person to gather notes that can be downloaded from an online repository, much like they were collected a few years ago at a photocopy machine. In my opinion, conducting in-person classes at the university is a complete waste of time in many aspects, for both professors and students. It would be sufficient to deliver a lecture once a week and address questions and doubts raised by students, either via email or video, depending on the nature and complexity of the issues discussed. Naturally, I speak about the subjects I teach, Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature. It should be clear that I have no reason to dictate how my colleagues in other disciplines, schools, or faculties should do their work or conduct their classes. I speak about my subjects, not others', over which I have neither, nor desire, any involvement. Regardless, I perfectly understand that students do not attend classes in person, as times and spaces can pose significant obstacles. Schedules don't always align for attending class, and distances are sometimes vast, with traffic and circulation problems. Constructing universities 20 kilometers away from urban centers is nonsensical. In my view, in-person classes should be reduced to the bare minimum. It might be argued that such an approach undermines the relationship between the professor and the student. I don't care, it's indifferent to me. In my opinion, the relationship between the professor and the student should be strictly and exclusively professional, academic, and distant. Outside the classroom and beyond working hours, that relationship makes no sense. One should not mix work with anything unrelated to work. This is what I think. Everyone can do as they please.

 

2. As an education analyst, particularly of higher education, what would you say is the current state of university education in Spain today?

 

The state of the issue, that is, the state in which education finds itself, can be interpreted in as many ways as there are people. In fact, each person interprets it as they wish, as they please, and as they like or dislike it the most. Since everyone says what they want, and everyone says whatever they feel like, things are done as politicians dictate. People talk, comment, interpret, publish books and articles, engage in debates, but in reality, nobody truly cares about scientific education. Today, concerning scientific education and the state of the issue—literally adhering to the question—three forms of behavior can be observed. First, there are those who, in the opinion of some, destroy education by saturating it with ideological, pedagogical, politically correct, etc., content. Second, there are those who, according to others, advocate for a classical, traditional, more conservative education based on past trends, memory, and the acquisition of knowledge, etc. In my view, both sides invest a lot of time, whether in publishing books and articles or organizing debates. They do business and advertise with one issue or another. However, in my understanding, there is a third way, which is the one I practice, and that is to deliver—at least that is my intention, whether I achieve it or not—quality classes with academic content and practical utility. I don't waste my time on debates. I don't debate with anyone because I have nothing to debate. Everyone can have whatever idea they want, as all ideas are equally indifferent to me. I do my job, and what others think is not my concern. The only thing that matters to me is delivering classes that I consider to have quality in relation to the Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature, which is my professional reason for being and for teaching and researching. People who talk to me every day about how bad education is are as suspicious to me as those who talk to me about how good education is. I'm not interested in their conversations. I don't need them to explain to me the reality of which I am a part. I am interested in the freedom and quality of scientific education. I don't read books by philosophers telling me how to teach. I'm not interested. I prefer to read Cervantes, Quevedo, or Homer, for example. I care about the content and quality of my classes. I leave debates to others.

 

3. Some skeptics claim that students arrive at university ill-prepared, and there is an unresolved issue due to various educational reforms. What's your take on this?

 

The success of education, all types of education, including university, is covert self-education. I had terrible university professors, lazy, poorly prepared, and also bad people. Nobody handed me anything, not me, nor almost anyone from my generation. I wasn't educated with indulgence. What's in vogue now—pretending concern for others—didn't exist in the 1980s. 'Are students arriving ill-prepared at university?' And when wasn't that the case? It's true that in the past, 20 or 30 years ago, students who arrived ill-prepared at university classrooms and didn't study would fail or drop out. Today, university failure is avoided; students are approved even if they don't know, so there are no failures or dropouts. Thus, the failure of the academic, social, and democratic system is kept from public view. Through so-called 'curricular evaluation,' a student can even be approved with two failed subjects to graduate, ensuring it never appears as a university failure. It's self-deception, a collective, institutional, and accepted self-deception. The same professors who, in some situations, lament the state of education, in other circumstances vote in favor of graduating a student with two failed subjects. And they are quite content. Why should I be surprised? Educational reforms solve the problem perfectly: there is no academic failure. Everyone passes. So, what's the problem? That students can't read or write? So what? How many people who can't read or write correctly manage the lives of supposedly intelligent, hardworking, and honest citizens? Or perhaps the current democracy is not designed to offer options to everyone, regardless of their merits, efforts, or merits? Human life has never been fair. Why, by some extraordinary and gratuitous grace, should it be in the 21st century? It might not appeal to some people, but its success cannot be doubted because it makes failure invisible in every way. Invisible failures don't count. But not being recorded in a register doesn't mean they don't exist. Postmodern democracy is organized to make failure invisible and make people feel happy, even if their personal and professional lives are irreversibly ruined, in abject poverty without money or work, or with a chronic and absolute inability to overcome the most basic limitations. Happiness is sought, not intelligence. Appearance is sought, not freedom. Living in self-deception, not in the secret of education: overcoming disillusionment to forge a path in life. But ignorance, like poverty, cannot be concealed. Intelligence cannot be feigned. The consequences of ignorance among young people today are the main cause of mental illnesses, a pandemic that exponentially multiplies in the 21st century. The solution is not in psychiatry but in prevention, which can only be achieved through education based on disillusionment with life's demands. Madness is the result of a personal life that cannot reconcile itself with reality.

 

4. In 2023, we learned the results of the First National Study on the Mood of Teachers, and the main result was that one in three had depression or symptoms of it. How can we protect teachers, in general, at any educational stage?

 

I cannot answer that question because I am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychologist. What I do know is that many people have to work under very adverse conditions, both in teaching and outside of it. There are jobs that require physical and psychological vigor, and if one doesn't possess it, they cannot be performed. I know that one does not mature without working. I know that work is essential to pave the way in life and is one of the most precise measures of a person's maturity. If someone is vulnerable to certain circumstances preventing them from doing their job, they essentially have two alternatives: overcome them or succumb. Work is what is done solely for money. Teaching is a much harder job than people think. One has to face many situations, all of them adverse. People romanticize teaching, talking about many nonsense things: student development, the dignity of work, cultivating the spirit, the value of Humanities, the importance of philosophy, and other similar rhetoric, very detached from the reality of teaching. I always remember an incident I directly experienced as a university student. One of our professors used to form a circle with students at the classroom door after class. The subject of the circle was always the same, the idealistic teacher's speech: 'You will one day be teachers, educating the souls of the youngest, purity awaits your words...'. And various absurdities like that. One day, a dissident-looking student was present in the circle, staring at that unfortunate speaker. The professor, in cleric-like manners and with a falsetto voice, asked her, focusing on her: 'Why do you doubt? Don't you want to be a teacher one day and educate young people in need of wisdom?'—'No,' she replied. To which he, more miserable than ever, asked: 'Then what do you want to be?'—'A whore,' she concluded. That day, the circle dispersed earlier than planned. I don't know if my classmate kept her word.

 

5. And how can we instill in our students that, if they don't make an effort, the degrees, no matter how easily obtained due to one law being more permissive or flexible than another, will be of little use when they face the job market?

 

I don't know. But I do know that it is not my job. My job is not to instill what they should or should not do with their lives, effort, or will. That is a personal matter, the responsibility of each individual, not mine. My job is to deliver quality classes—emphasizing that whether I achieve it is another matter—on the Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature and to carry out research that serves those who will succeed me in advancing knowledge. Confrontations with reality are unavoidable. Among them, there are three appointments impossible to elude: health, work, and money. In a single word: necessity. This is the most potent and raw form of teaching. Idealism, Rousseauian pedagogy, self-help philosophies, and the spider-like narcissism—there is no web without a spider—of social networks are useless against necessity. When work is unproductive, money is lacking, and health fails, what remains of a human being? That's what most people will encounter throughout the 21st century: a personal and professional failure that will be impossible to survive. Idealism does not solve real problems; it intensifies them by ignoring them. Education cannot be based on idealism but on the opposite: a harsh confrontation with reality.

 

6. Playing with the title of that Golpes Bajos song, are these bad times for classics, their specialists, for History, for philosophy...?

I have never known good times for anything or anyone. I have known times when it was possible to do certain things and times when it was not. What I do know is that since I entered the university, first as a student and then as a professor, all the changes I have witnessed have always been for the worse in every aspect. Every change meant the introduction of a new obstacle, superior to any of the previous ones. I have been teaching at the university for 30 years now, in Spain and abroad. Things are not better abroad. When people narcissistically and spitefully say they are leaving Spain to work abroad, I think... 'you'll come back, and then you'll see.' I have not seen that anything introduced, legislatively or otherwise, has improved anything. Neither in Spain nor outside of Spain. In the United States, academic freedom is an absolute fiction at the university. The university is now, there, in the Anglo-Saxon world, in the country where freedom is, above all, a statue, as Pablo Neruda would say, a dangerous and insecure place. Things have changed, but not for the better. Even things change mid-game: the rules of the game change in the middle of the match. We are given instructions to develop our academic curriculum, and when we spend years training according to these criteria, new rules emerge, which no professor has ever voted on or agreed upon, under the name of which the previously valid criteria change radically. Democracy works like this. Some change the rules that affect everyone, and the majority can do nothing to prevent it. I did not vote for the Bologna Plan. Neither did I nor anyone else. It was imposed on us, period. Nobody asked if we agreed or not. Aneca changes its rules whenever it wants. Nobody asks if we agree or not. They are imposed, and that's it. Democracy is a majority of voters choosing a minority of rulers who manage democracy as they please. Once the vote is cast, the voters become mere pawns without freedom or power. If you like it, fine, and if not, also, because there is no alternative. Nor will there be. For now... On the other hand, you talk about philosophy. Look: philosophy is a myth. It is mythified. Philosophy is, in reality, an eccentric way of practicing sophistry. Plato is as deceptive as Gorgias, and Socrates is as much a scoundrel as Protagoras. Philosophy is a nest where only those who talk about religion, politics, or ideology and self-help or self-deception lay their eggs. In the ancient world, philosophy was religion, as in the Contemporary Age, philosophy is politics and ideology, and as in the 21st century, philosophy is self-help phrases. There is nothing more. In reality, philosophy is a way of relating and organizing the ideas we have and with which we act. Nothing more. Nothing less. There are many people who have never studied philosophy and organize their lives and ideas much better than Plato, Nietzsche, Heidegger, or Fukuyama. Philosophy is a tale without a sense of humor. And in reality, it is a quite sinister tale. The dreams of philosophers cause insomnia.

 

7. What do you say to a student who confesses to you that, halfway through the degree, or even after graduating, although it was among the subjects, they have not really read Don Quixote?

 

I don't talk to students outside of my professional environment. And certainly, I don't listen to any of their confessions, neither inside nor outside the classroom. Students are part of my job, not my life. I am a teacher, not a confessor. I am not a priest, nor a psychiatrist, nor anyone's 'big brother.' In my work, I explain Don Quixote, among many other literary works. I examine students in accordance with the current law and the teaching guide for the subject, and what happens outside my working hours and calendar is not my concern and should not be my concern. I dedicate my personal and professional life to explaining literature. I have recorded over twelve hundred videos on the interpretation of authors and literary works, and I have made available to everyone on the internet critical and academic content suitable for university-level study, openly, freely, and for free, as well as all my work, the Critique of Literary Reason. I am responsible for what I have written, and they will owe me the favor—which I will not collect—of having given it away. What people do with it is something I cannot care about. Every year, hundreds or thousands of students graduate in literary subjects and Hispanic Studies without having read anything, not Don Quixote or anything else. And the fact that many of their professors have read it—and I am sure many have not—does not guarantee anything either. Most readers, interpreters, or chatterers about Don Quixote read this work as a self-help book, an affirmation of idealism, and many nonsense. They have understood nothing because they do not read the work; instead, they project onto a text they do not understand personal anxieties or unconscious prejudices. They do not engage in literary interpretation but personal projection of emotions and ideals. For them, literature is an emotional or therapeutic session, not a challenge to human intelligence. They prefer the sensible to the intelligible. For that, it's better for them to read Harry Potter, Mark Twain, or Edgar Allan Poe.

 

8. Do you believe that, as an interviewer, I am painting a picture that is not actually real, and that education and students are in better health than we think?

 

They are in excellent health to be idealists, to be happy, to be narcissistic, that is, to be ignorant. Not long ago, a video circulated on the internet, precisely on a social network boasting of being intended for professionals in specialized sectors. In the video, a teacher tells her students, still children, that she is going to show them what is in a box on the table. The teacher says that the box contains the photo of the student she considers her 'favorite student.' Each student passes individually by the teacher's table to open the box and see the photo of the favorite. In reality, the photo is a mirror, so that each student, looking at the supposed photo, only sees their own face, their own image, their face. The teacher is happy. The students are happy. The video viewers are happy. But perhaps they all ignore that it is self-deception. A very dangerous self-deception. Why? Because such a procedure can induce a narcissistic personality disorder. There is no need to make anyone believe they are favored or preferred in anything. You go to class to work, to impart knowledge, and to disillusion the human being to make them skillful in facing life's problems and capable of meeting the demands of reality. Inducing or perpetuating deception is the most powerful way to lead a person to failure.

 

9. You wrote this on your blog: 'To flee from intelligence means, above all, to flee from imagination, since the most seductive imagination is always the most rationalistic imagination.' The latest PISA report gave Spanish youth a mediocre grade in reading comprehension. Do you think they would understand what you said at first glance?

 

I neither know nor care, frankly, and forgive the candor of my response. I don't speak or write for the young, the old, or anyone in particular. I write and speak to express a system of ideas. What I say or write is not the result of spontaneity or a whim; these are assertions that are part of larger texts, from which they are extracted as a quote and can be read as aphorisms or proverbs. Neither I nor anyone else can claim that what is said or written is understood. Each text selects its own readers and interpreters. Today, with social media, confusion and the destruction of communication are guaranteed. People live on social media and comment on everything they read without understanding anything. My work, widely disseminated through social networks, has been the subject of many comments, videos, replies, etc. Most of these comments come from people who have no knowledge of anything but, under the illusion of using the internet, believe they know something. Let me give you an example. I have always said that literature is not a science. It is thesis number 4 of the Critique of Literary Reason: 'literature is not a science.' Well, countless people, commenting foolishly on the internet, object to me—playing the wise person—that I said 'literature is a science.' In other words, they understand everything backward. Another reads it and follows the thread. And so on. Social networks are the magistracy of ignorance, the metathesis of infinite foolishness. Yet, they are also a means of disseminating knowledge and first-rate wisdom for those who know how to interpret it. Reality is dialectical and conflictive. Knowing how to survive these contrasts is fundamental, and education should be the main instrument to achieve this, not the most insistent means of causing all kinds of personality disorders in children and young people.

 

10. Allow me another play on words, in this case, drawing from proverbs: 'With literature, does the letter get in? Or is literature that subject for which the student will not be held accountable in the company where he begins his journey as a worker?'

 

Life and work are two different matters. The Anglo-Saxon world has subordinated the former to the latter, that is, it has mortgaged life in the name of work, and it has done so as the Anglo-Sphere always does: cruelly. Today, everything is reduced to work, performance, and productivity. There is no room for anything else. All kinds of non-profitable qualities have disappeared. There is a simulacrum of bread, frozen, but not real bread. Artificial meat will be imposed, and very few will consume real meat. Powdered milk will soon be back on the market (something that was done in times of scarcity), and the consumption of real milk will be demonized. Propaganda does the rest, and people will accept it because the 'system' knows how to do it. Literature is one of these quality products that has been replaced by emotionally more powerful substitutes: cinema can be more exciting than literature, just as sensationalist journalism is more exciting and profitable than critical and truthful information. Today, all journalism is sensationalist because not being so means disappearing from the internet. We are heading towards a world without quality products: no milk, no bread, no meat, no literature. No information. People will spend their lives working. Why does someone who does not know how to live need literature? I have already said that work is something that is only done for money. Work consists of selling your freedom for money. Slavery consists of selling your entire life in exchange for surviving day by day, that is, in exchange for nothing because living without freedom is not living. The slave replaces money with survival. Why does someone who does not have freedom need money? The 21st century is the century of slaves. The rich have no ideology; they have money. Ideology is the emotion of the poor.

 

11. They tell us about programming, computer science, big data, blockchain... They say this is what the job market demands, and young people are alert, of course. How do you see it?

 

I see it for what it is: the postmodern enslavement of the human being. It is an uninhabitable world outside the job market. And within it, absolutely inhumane. Consequently, those of us who live in the 21st century move between the inhuman and the uninhabitable. It is better that people do not know it. For that, there is education, to plunge people into collective unconsciousness, mass consumption, and happy self-deception.

 

12. As an educator, do you fear Artificial Intelligence?

 

It is very useful. I use it to respond to 99% of the emails I open (which are less than one percent of those I receive). On the other hand, I must be honest, despite being dry in my way of expressing myself: I am not an educator; I am only a professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature. I do not educate; I explain literature. It's not the same.

 

13. I would ask much more, but I prefer to give you the option, rhetorically, to send a message, first, to that naturally dissatisfied student, and second, to that overwhelmed school director who, at the end of the school year, realizes that his students are not achieving the expected results and, by default, blames it on the latest reform. Or are both, dissatisfied students and overwhelmed directors, also co-responsible for the situation?

 

Intelligent people do not need advice. They are satisfied with reading the classical authors of the Hispanic-Greek-Latin cultural tradition and—above all—living each day the reality of the world: facing it at work, that is, working.

 

Jesús G. Maestro
January 17, 2024.