From: ant.mcwatt@ntlworld.com
Date: Sat Sep 18 2004 - 15:24:42 BST
Ant McWatt stated September 13th 2004:
As you ask, I highly doubt that Pirsig (as a free thinking intellectual)would ever support such a bill. You only have to read his experience (in ZMM) with the Republicans at Montana State College to realise this. The teaching only college they tried to implement at Montana was done to give
an impression of a high quality education on the cheap (through rigged examinations which all students had to pass) while, in reality, they reduced quality.
In connection with this, Platt asked:
1. Republicans set this up?
2. I don't see any reference to "Republicans"?
Ant McWatt comments:
The answer to Platt’s first question is clearly “yes” as seen in the following paragraphs taken from the beginning of Chapter 13 in ZMM.
An indirect reference to “Republicans” is made in the first paragraph pasted below (i.e. “ultra-right-wing”) while the term “Republican” specifically appears in the third paragraph (which I’ve put into BOLD to make clear):
ZMM, Chapter 13 (near beginning of chapter):
The state of Montana at this time was undergoing an outbreak of ultra-right-wing
politics like that which occurred in Dallas, Texas, just prior to President
Kennedy's assassination. A nationally known professor from the University of
Montana at Missoula was prohibited from speaking on campus on the grounds that
it would ‘stir up trouble.’ Professors were told that all public statements
must be cleared through the college public-relations office before they could be
made.
Academic standards were demolished. The legislature had previously prohibited
the school from refusing entry to any student over twenty-one whether he had a
high-school diploma or not. Now the legislature had passed a law fining the
college eight thousand dollars for every student who failed, virtually an order
to pass every student.
The newly elected governor was trying to fire the college president for both
personal and political reasons. The college president was not only a personal
enemy, he was a Democrat, and the governor was no ordinary REPUBLICAN. His
campaign manager doubled as state coordinator for the John Birch Society. This
was the same governor who supplied the list of fifty subversives we heard about
a few days ago.
Now, as part of this vendetta, funds to the college were being cut. The college
president had passed on an unusually large part of the cut to the English
department, of which Phædrus was a member, and whose members had been quite
vocal on issues of academic freedom.
Phædrus had given up, was exchanging letters with the Northwest Regional
Accrediting Association to see if they could help prevent these violations of
accreditation requirements. In addition to this private correspondence he had
publicly called for an investigation of the entire school situation.
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