David Mamet's controversial play coursework on oleanna definition was oleanna definition Off Broadway sensation in and went on to a long, successful run oleanna definition London. The film version, directed by Mamet and based on his screenplay, opened Friday. When it debuted in the wake of the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings on Capitol Hill, "Oleanna" seemed to encapsulate the stormy national debate over coursework harassment.
In its gripping coursework on oleanna definition of an ambiguous, increasingly tortured exchange between a male professor and his female student, it challenged the rampant political correctness of the time. By showing that conflicts between superiors and subordinates are far more complex than conventional victim-centered feminism coursework on oleanna definition, Mamet dared to suggest that both parties bear equal responsibility in any social transaction.
Different viewers will come to different conclusions.
But Mamet incisively demonstrates that women cannot--as too many partisans of Anita Hill claimed--be automatically believed simply because they coursework women. Continue reading the two coursework oleanna oleanna definition the first production of the play, the tide has begun to turn go here the forces of political correctness in America. There is a powerful, bipartisan reform movement at work in the media and in academe that is systematically critiquing the excesses of feminist ideology and of fanatical special interests of all kinds.
The trend toward campus speech codes has been reversed, as thoughtful liberals have begun to realize that progressive values cannot be achieved by totalitarian means. Now that the dust is settling, "Oleanna" can be seen more clearly. Oleanna definition early, largely enthusiastic reviewers of the play reduced it to its terrifying Inquisitional theme: The student comes to the professor's office oleanna definition inquire about her grade and ends up, with little discernible provocation, accusing him of sexual harassment and oleanna definition, hysterical charges that lead to his sudden dismissal from his job and, as the play ends, perhaps his future arrest.
But Mamet is using sex war to explore a much larger subject, one that has been amazingly neglected by contemporary artists and writers: For the last 20 years, arguments over American education have been polarized into a simplistic opposition between Right and Left. Conservatives call for a back-to-basics curriculum supported by traditional values of morality and patriotism, while many liberals demand a multicultural curriculum organized around "identity politics," the claims coursework on oleanna definition historically oppressed groups for recognition and restitution.
What is the purpose of education? Mamet asks a philosophical question that is as oleanna definition as Socrates but that oleanna definition moved to the center of the modern cultural agenda.
Is education memorization of facts or enlargement of perspective? Is it technical training or general enlightenment? In "Emile"Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the coursework of Romanticism whose ideas helped trigger the French Revolution, argued that children's upbringing should follow benevolent Mother Nature rather than corrupt masculine civilization--which coursework definition currently calls "patriarchy.
He denied that authority figures oleanna definition teachers have oleanna definition special knowledge.
Rousseau's ideas remain a dominant force in educational policy and child psychology. His major disciples included Coursework on oleanna definition Dewey, whose thinking inspired the definition of experimental, alternative colleges like Bennington, and Maria Oleanna definition, whose relaxed program for preschoolers focuses on stimulating children's innate creativity rather than imposing adult expectations and concepts on them. Mamet attended Vermont's alternative Goddard College in the late s, a turbulent decade that tried to transform the traditional American model of strict classroom education, devised in the 19th Century for a rapidly industrializing pioneer nation of farmers coursework on oleanna definition immigrants.
Students of the s counterculture were demanding "relevance" in their courses, and the most utopian among them prophesied the birth of open universities with no entrance requirements, no exams, no grades, no classrooms and no hierarchy of any kind.
Strolling through idyllic green meadows, how to do mca definition student would see more friendly equals in the quest for truth. Unfortunately, there is a bit of a time warp in his characterization of the professor, who talks in a smarmy, lates way about the folly of pretending to know oleanna definition coursework on oleanna definition the student and who denigrates the teaching-and-testing format as merely sadistic definition of the young.
The Real Lesson of coursework on oleanna definition David Mamet's play is now a film, and while deftly exposing the complexity of sexual harassment cases, it also takes on another coursework on oleanna definition long overdue for coursework on oleanna definition New Essays," has just been released by Vintage Books.
She is professor of humanities at the University of the Definition in Philadelphia. Seizure Led to FloJo's Death. Read article scores make his case. Copyright Los Angeles Times.
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Oleanna is a two-character play by David Mamet , about the power struggle between a university professor and one of his female students, who accuses him of sexual exploitation and, by doing so, spoils his chances of being accorded tenure. The play's title, taken from a folk song , refers to a 19th-century escapist vision of utopia. Carol, a college student, is in the office of her professor, John.
David Mamet is an enigma. Prolific, contentious, articulate and intelligent he has been writing plays, films, novels and essays for almost half a century. Lauded as the king of theatrical conversation both cut throat, witty, incisive and inflammatory, Mamet is revered for his contributions to drama.
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