Like most other students, I long accepted the excuses from academia regarding its high barrier to entry and flat out pretentious use of language. “The jargon of the field is necessary to be technically accurate” they would tell me. Proponents of the academy allude to some benevolent purpose behind the absolutely ridiculous babble in almost every academic book above the high school level. Is there really such a purpose at the heart of every agonizing passage of the modern metaphysician’s prose? Is the author using his obscure vocabulary to help you better understand the subject at hand, or is it exactly the opposite?
There are, of course, certain sciences where technical and/or classifying vocabulary must be used to remain accurate, but in most of academia outside of technical sciences, the level of language used is unreasonably high. One wouldn’t have much basis for questioning this common practice if it weren’t for a few authors who manage to convey their points with extreme precision and ease while using a more reasonable level of language. Bertrand Russell is a shining example of this, as his philosophy is undeniably brilliant (and accepted, if grudgingly, by academia based purely on its technical merit), yet his prose is startlingly clear and direct. His sentences are coherent to the lay person and he uses advanced vocabulary only when it is absolutely necessary. Even then he properly introduces new terms and uses them judiciously. We know it’s possible to convey a point without the pretentious nonsense, so why then is academia so obsessed with it?
I have asked a few professors about this subject and I am usually met with a joke or an uneasy subject change like “oh you know us old professors need to be sufficiently cryptic so no one realizes that they are paying us for such mundane research.” It seems that most professors simply don’t know why academia is stifled with pretense, but I have a suggestion. I think the reason such practices of language and vocabulary use are popular in modern academia is because they were popular during the last generation. Each new generation of graduate students simply learns the jargon and devices of pretense on his or her way to becoming a professor of the next generation. Articles and papers that are targeted at the lay person are simply not viewed as an acceptable fit for academia because that’s what everyone in academia has been trained to think.
I hope that somehow that wall will be torn down and the metaphysics, quantum physics, and modern economic theory of academia will be accessible to every high school graduate. The goal, again, should be a better education for the nation and the world at large, not just for those few who spend the time and money required to get a doctorate.
[...] Brad, a friend of mine with a knack for philosophical writing, wrote something worth reading. [...]
[...] Related offsite: h3h.net: The tired pretense of academia [...]
Interesting that you mentioned this. It’s a pet peeve of mine too. I’m currently doing an MA in English/TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and it seems to plague this field a bit less than my last field–East Asian Studies at Stanford with an anthropological slant. Oy with the impenetrable jargonbabble and tortured sentences! I occasionally complain about academia in my pseudo-blog (wintersweet.livejournal.com), but half of it’s protected in case I name names. Anyway, I just dropped by from the WordCamp Roll Call page (I had to head home early, so I’m surfing the roll call from my couch).
I dont understand how someone could expect a highschool student to understand someone else’s phd research in a highly technical field. I dont expect to understand phd level physics research since i have only basic training.
Secondly, most if not all of the scientific research (biology, chemistry, math, comp sci) that is published in scientific journals is written for “peers”. The authors are not writing for the highschool student. A certain level of understanding or knowledge is assumed.
Keep digging; there is something for everybody!
Tess
anon: Your first point was disclaimed:
Your second is exactly the point of the article: scientists and researchers publish for jargon-skilled peers instead of the lay man. This is a mistake without justification.
[...] One of my major dislikes about my entire course has been the pretentious waffle that so many papers spout. It just makes things harder to understand and makes the subject seem remote and stuck-up. From h3h.net, here. [...]