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THE_PROFESSIONAL_GOODMAN

                                             November 7, 2011

This is a long quotation of a summary
of an experience of Paul Goodman's
that seems all-too-familiar...

Thomas L. Haskell leads off his article
"Power to the Experts" in the October
13, 1977 issue of "The New York Review
of Books" with a discussion of some
problems Paul Goodman's experienced
teaching in the late 60's (he references
Paul Goodman, "The New Reformation," in
Beyond the New Left, edited by Irving
Howe (New York, McCall, 1970), p. 86):

  Ten years ago Paul Goodman tried to teach a course on
  "Professionalism," at the New School for Social
  Research. The course failed. Goodman watched with mounting
  embarrassment as the journalist, the physician, the
  engineer, the architect, and other friends he brought to
  speak to the class were dismissed as "liars," "finks," and
  "mystifiers." [...]  Goodman could not persuade his class
  even to take seriously what he thought was the premise of
  the course: that "professionals are autonomous individuals
  beholden to the nature of things and the judgment of their
  peers, and bound by an explicit or implicit oath to benefit
  their clients and the community."

  He knew, of course, that these words express an ideal and do
  not correspond in any simple way to the corrupt reality of
  professional life. But admitting that did him no good. The
  students were intent on showing that "every professional was
  co-opted by the System," that "every decision was made
  topdown by the power structure," and that professions were
  "conspiracies to make more money." [...]  Goodman tried to
  get them to concede that however corrupt the professions
  might be the tasks they performed were indispensable in any
  imaginable social order. The students replied that "it was
  important only to be human and all else will follow."

  "Suddenly," said Goodman, "I realized that they did not
  really believe that there was a nature of things. Somehow
  all functions could be reduced to interpersonal relations
  and power. There was no knowledge, but only the sociology
  of knowledge."



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