KEY POINTS:
The more I hear from academics, the more I prefer the underqualified. Why do we hold academics in such awe? Not all, I know, are wobbly thinkers. Most publish interesting, soundly researched, and well-referenced theories.
But I wonder if the current mania for tertiary qualifications, which includes silly career-oriented degrees in lines like communication, tourism, marketing and even, for pity's sake, nail sculpture, has contributed to the dumbing-down of ideas emanating from ivory towers.
Every now and then you come across the writings of someone who appears completely off the planet, such as those from Janet Holmes, who teaches "socio-linguistics" at Victoria University. Writing last week in the Dominion Post, she advocated abolishing the apostrophe from all forms of written language.
She claimed the apostrophe was "largely redundant punctuational [sic] paraphernalia, supported by those who have learned how to use them in order to keep those who haven't in their subordinate place".
Judging by the photograph accompanying this twaddle, Holmes is about the same age as me, so I'm guessing she also benefited from a fine education, where learning the correct use of apostrophes was mandatory.
Holmes calmly accepts, however, that these days "children rarely learn what pronouns are".
The skills she learned were important in her rise through academia, and indeed contributed to Holmes being commissioned to write a column on the op-ed page.
But, hey, now the apostrophe is just a symbol of the eternal class struggle, this time between the educated and the ignorant, an attitude implicit in Holmes' column, in which she quotes, favourably, Noam Chomsky and George Bernard Shaw.
Citing no evidence at all, Holmes claims "some employers" use correct grammar as a way of "sorting the wheat from the chaff, to decide who they will employ and who they wont [sic]."
And in that sentence it's obvious why the apostrophe is important.
Holmes deliberately excludes the apostrophe from "wont", so we're confused about her meaning. Does she mean to write "who they won't [employ]" or was that a typo, missed by the sub-editor, and she meant to write "who they want"?
Take away the apostrophe, and what's the difference between the abbreviated form of "can not" and talking in an affected way? Perhaps no difference in this case.
And what would Holmes do with Rodney So'oialo?
Ah, but we know how terribly careful academics are when it comes to Maori and Pacific languages; only English may be abused.
Who could deny the success of the Maori Language Commission, but isn't it time to replace it with an English Language Commission to protect our language from vandals? Here's another loony example from Victoria University. John Pratt, professor of criminology, was this week reported in the Law Society's journal as claiming the "explosion in prison population" was caused by government listening to "ordinary people" and organisations which claimed to speak for crime victims, "at the expense of civil servants and academics".
His argument was that this "punitive" attitude towards criminals didn't benefit victims and, anyway, the public was not as punitive as governments think. His evidence? The Act Party at the 2005 election, the only party with a law and order policy as its "centrepiece", only got 1 per cent of the vote. Perhaps, professor, that might have had something to do with its botched election campaign, which abandoned the party vote in favour of Hide winning the Epsom seat?
We can't have "ordinary people" influencing government policy - that won't do at all.
To be fair these are, at first glance, harmless discussions. Holmes was deliberately provoking hostile reaction - an activity we should encourage in this debate-shy country. Pratt's public lecture was organised by his university, so he was probably singing to the choir.
More wearying, however, is that intelligent, learned and trusted people are paid by the taxpayer (or student loan money backed by the taxpayer) to foist this one-sided, often undisputed nonsense on tertiary students.
Ideas matter, but not if that's as far as they go. Academics need to think through the application of their ideas. We need to examine the quality of taxpayer-funded research.
Unlike the Race Relations Commissioner investigating Greg Clydesdale's discussion paper on Pacific Island immigrants, I'm not calling for academics like Holmes and Pratt to be stomped on, but why don't we hear from other ivory tower-dwellers with opposing views? Are there any?
* deb.coddington@xtra.co.nz
