# Disciplined Minds  ## Metadata - Author: [[Jeff Schmidt]] - Full Title: Disciplined Minds - Category: #books ## Highlights - Indeed, employers that are seen as less socially responsible do have to pay a "moral reservation premium" to get the workers they want. Frank found that men are more likely than women to sell out, and this accounts for at least part of the gap in average salaries between equal men and women.' ([Location 1871](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=1871)) - professional training can come to be different in outlook from those beginning it: ideological weeding out and ideological transformation. Both mechanisms-elimination and assiinilation-operate at every step in the production of the professional. ([Location 1886](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=1886)) - The process of preparing for the qualifying test, because of the kind of questions on the test and the way they must be answered, tragically alienates this student from his or her own field of interest. The test emphasizes quick recall, memorized tricks, work on problem fragments, work under time pressure, endurance, quantitative results, comfort with confinement to details, comfort with a particular social framework, comfort with the hierarchical division of labor, and so on, and it de-emphasizes physical insight, qualitative discussion, exploration, curiosity, creativity, history, philosophy and ([Location 2101](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=2101)) - Performing intense alienated labor for an extended period of time changes the student. It dampens his creativity and curiosity, clouds his memory of his original interests and ideas and weakens his resolve to pursue them, while getting him used to doing protracted, disciplined labor on assigned problems.2U It is empty rhetoric to tell the student who has gone through the qualification process that he is free now to pursue in his career his original goals, for he is now a different person. ([Location 2115](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=2115)) - Clearly, an endurance obstacle does not act neutrally in a test. On it typical qualifying examination it acts to weed out students who are merely interested in their field's primary role in the system, and to select students who are comfortable with and committed to the kind of work involved in playing that role. ([Location 2708](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=2708)) - The system is set up to produce servants, not critics, and it succeeds at this in part by propagating a culture of science that is fundamentally uncritical. ([Location 2748](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=2748)) - Thus, the qualification test favors those who support the hierarchical division of labor-those with elitist beliefs. ([Location 2789](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=2789)) - The social framework imposed by the examination problems and by the rest of the qualification system maps out a domain of allowed activity that ultimately becomes the playpen of the nonradical credentialed expert and the cage of the individual working for progress in the social structure. To have any chance of success, the latter must step outside the confines of professional work. ([Location 2801](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=2801)) - Note: Puzzle solving of paradigm kuhn - Those whose political orientation leads them to comply with schemes for bureaucratic control feel at home working within systems of rules like the ones in the above questions, and typically have a lifetime of experience with such an approach to draw upon in answering this type of question. ([Location 2967](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=2967)) - This cleansing of the ranks is a great loss not only to the individuals involved, but to society as well. Indeed, the biggest losers in the game of professional qualification are not those shut out of professional careers, but working people in general, who are deprived of the allies they would have in the professional ranks if the politics of professional qualification were different. ([Location 3138](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=3138)) - At the core of the conflict is an unstated but highly contentious issue: Who will the student become? Professional training programs work routinely, methodically and often consciously to turn students into very different persons, and so individuals who want to control who they are must fight to do so. ([Location 3304](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=3304)) - Here then, in summary, is a list of symptoms of a totalist organization:1. Big promises.2. Milieu control.3. Unquestioned authority.4. Guilt tripping and shaming.5. Total personal exposure.6. "Scientific" dogma.7. Taking away true self-confidence.8. The only path to salvation. ([Location 3662](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=3662)) - Hence, the formula for surviving professional training with your attitude and values intact is, in a word: Organize. Work with others and fight for your values consciously. You are going to have conflict in any case, and so you might as well do it right and retain control of your identity. The same word-organize-summarizes the military:s advice. ([Location 3713](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=3713)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - You've disliked snitches and brownnosers ever since you first encountered them-in elementary school if not earlier. They are a by-product of social hierarchy, and so can be found, for example, in every graduate school and every workplace. ([Location 3826](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=3826)) - (For an unrepressed critique of those 16 disempowering years of preprofessional schooling, see Jerry Farber's The Student as Nigger.82) ([Location 3853](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=3853)) - Students who want to survive professional training as independent thinkers need a way to take breaks from the otherwise ruinous conformity, self-censorship and ideological discipline that is required-that is, they need a foothold outside the training system. The only way to maintain such a foothold is to work with other independent thinkers in organized oppositional activity. Only by playing a creative role in some organized form of opposition can an individual gain perspective on what otherwise appears to be an all-encompassing, total system. The system is forced to reveal its true nature to those involved in such struggles. ([Location 3860](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=3860)) - Those taking the easy road avoid pain only in the short run, because they are headed for a lifetime of personally stressful political and intellectual subordination. ([Location 3870](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=3870)) - You understand the politics of professional qualification too well to think that the progressive outlook of oppositional professionals is due to the enlightening effect of their extensive formal education. You know that when professionals have good politics it is not because of their professional training, but in spite of it. ([Location 4253](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=4253)) - You get a lot of your information by reading the very same publications that your institution's top management reads to get its broad perspective. These almost certainly include the Wall Street Journal, as well as the appropriate trade publications. If the institution deals with academics, for example, the Chronicle of Higher Education would be required reading. ([Location 4284](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=4284)) - Note from the descriptions listed above that the radical, of all people, is on an intellectual par with the employer. Both see the big picture and know the utmost importance of ideology. Only the radical, however, wants to bring other employees up to this higher level of understanding. ([Location 4303](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008GRDKPG&location=4303)) - Tags: [[favorite]]