June 26, 2007
WHICH IS TO SLANDER SALMON:
Marx loses currency in new China: Teaching socialism is mandatory, but learning it is monotonous for today's students, who revere money more than Mao. (Mitchell Landsberg, June 26, 2007, LA Times)
IT was like watching a man try to swim up a waterfall.Professor Tao Xiuao cracked jokes, told stories, projected a Power Point presentation on a large video screen. But his students at Beijing Foreign Studies University didn't even try to hide their boredom.
Young men spread newspapers out on their desks and pored over the sports news. A couple of students listened to iPods; others sent text messages on their cellphones. One young woman with chic red-framed glasses spent the entire two hours engrossed in "Jane Eyre," in the original English. Some drifted out of class, ate lunch and returned. Some just lay their heads on their desktops and went to sleep.
It isn't easy teaching Marxism in China these days.
"It's a big challenge," acknowledged Tao, a likable man who demonstrates remarkable patience in the face of students more interested in capitalism than "Das Kapital."
In the future, the only place that Marxism will be taught with a straight face is at the Ivies. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 26, 2007 4:53 PM
Of course it's boring; it's all cr*p.
Has anyone tried to read any of this childish nonsense? It's actually embarassing to think that anyone could take it seriously. All Marxism ever was was a mobilization of envy, hatred and ressentment.
As it started to fall apart, even before it was ever tried, Lenin gave it a Hesperophobic spin to enlist the Boxers of the world.
Well, thanks in part to communcations technology, Boxerism has failed, even in the land of the Boxers. All those wretched of the earth have begun to see themselves as individuals and not class members, and the last vestiges of the scribbling of a neurotic, God-hating charletan are fininshing their slide into the dustbin of history.
Posted by: Lou Gots at June 27, 2007 1:19 AMMay the wind be at their backs!
Posted by: erp at June 27, 2007 9:12 AMLou: do you mean "Boxerism" as in "Boxer Rebellion" or as in "Barbara Boxer"? I mean, it really could be either one.
Posted by: Mike Morley at June 27, 2007 10:48 AM