Quotessence
Home / Authors / Jeff Schmidt Books

Jeff Schmidt Books

Author

Related Quotes

“You finally complete your first paper, but even its appearance in a “highly respected” and thick biweekly journal sandwiched between two other equally dull and opaque articles fails to alleviate your growing boredom and disillusionment with a career in physics, a career that once seemed to promise excitement, glamor and importance. Are you going to spend your whole life in a mad, cutthroat ego trip just to see your name in print every six months? Or is the real pleasure in seeing your name referenced in someone else’s useless article?”

WorkMeaningAcademiaFarce
Book:Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives
Create image

“Nothing reveals more clearly the degree to which employed professionals are alienated from their subjects than does the sharply contrasting behavior of the hobbyists or “buffs” in their fields. When hobbyists encounter one another at a social gathering, before long you will find them talking eagerly about the content of their subject of common interest, showing an excitement, enthusiasm, wonder and curiosity that is reminiscent of beginning professional students. This rarely happens when professionals talk casually with their colleagues. Unlike the amateurs, the professionals don’t talk much about the work itself: they often appear detached from their subject, as if they don’t derive much satisfaction from it. Yes, they “talk shop,” but their focus is so far from the content of the work itself that you would have a hard time if you had to guess what kind of “shop” they work in. A commercial bank? A junior high school? A government agency? A university department? Casual conversation among professionals tends to focus on the actions and personalities of employers and powerful figures within their fields—the standard gossip topics of the powerless. Their gossip is by no means idle, however, for the politics are central to their work as professionals.”

PoliticsWorkMeaningProfessionalsHobbyists
Book:Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives
Create image

“Indeed, the most difficult part about becoming a professional is adopting the professional attitude and learning to be comfortable adhering to the given ideological framework, which some students find quite alien. When students fail to complete professional training programs, they almost always do so because they have problems adjusting their attitude, not because they are unable to learn the technical tricks of the trade. That is, people who drop out of school usually do so not because they lack the ability to go farther, but because they are consciously or unconsciously unwilling to become the type of person the system demands. The greater the adjustment an individual has to make to behave in the expected way, the less likely it is that that individual will do so.”

LifeWorkMeaningProfessional
Book:Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives
Create image

“If you are a professional, coming to understand the political nature of what you do, as part of an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional, can be liberating. It can help you recover your long-forgotten social goals and begin to pursue them immediately, giving your life greater meaning and eliminating a major source of stress. It can help you become a savvy player in the workplace and reclaim some lost autonomy. And, ironically, it can help you command greater respect from management and receive greater recognition and reward, without necessarily working harder.”

PoliticsWorkMeaningProfessionals
Book:Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives
Create image

“The criteria by which individuals are deemed qualified or unqualified to become professionals involve not just technical knowledge as is generally assumed, but also attitude—in particular, attitude toward working within an assigned political and ideological framework.”

WorkIdeologyProfessionalism
Book:Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives
Create image

“As a professional, the teacher is "objective" when presenting the school curriculum: she doesn't "take sides," or "get political." However, the ideology of the status quo is built into the curriculum. The professional's objectivity, then, boils down to not challenging this built-in ideology.”

WorkIdeologyProfessionalismPedagogy
Book:Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives
Create image

“It was 1984, and journalist Bernard Kalb had been on the State Department beat for eight years. As a veteran of the New York Times, CBS News and NBC News, Kalb knew the frustrations of trying to squeeze information out of tight-lipped government officials like State Department spokesman John Hughes, whom Kalb faced almost daily. In his 38 years of reporting. Kalb had dealt with countless government spokespeople, and so when Hughes decided to leave the department and move back home to Cape Cod, Kalb at first anticipated just another routine change of faces. But the change was to be unlike any in Kalb’s experience. On 28 November 1984 Secretary of State George Shultz announced that he had recruited someone to replace Hughes as his assistant secretary of state for public affairs. State’s new mouthpiece would be—that’s right— Bernard Kalb. And so for the next two years Kalb’s former colleagues struggled to squeeze information out of him—with no greater success, of course, even though they addressed him at press conferences as “Bernie.” How did the Reagan administration know that Kalb, seemingly a longtime adversary as a journalist, could be trusted to speak for its side and routinely tell journalists less than he knew? The answer, put simply, is that Kalb was a professional. At one level, journalism and public relations are conflicting professions, yet the hack and the flack have the same essential qualifying attribute. The administration expects its spokespeople to answer questions at contentious press conferences without making even the slightest ideological slip. Kalb, with his decades of experience maintaining the very strict ideological discipline that is required of New York Times and network television news reporters, had the essential skill for the new job. The administration knew that his transition would be an easy one and that they could train him to be a public relations professional in a matter of days; to train a nonprofessional for such a job would take years. Politically, professionals are interchangeable parts.”

JobsPoliticsDisciplineIdeologyProfessionals
Book:Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives
Create image

“The U.S. socioeconomic system, like the hustler, makes false promises, the principal one being that social mobility is available to all who work hard. By its very nature, a hierarchical system cannot possibly keep such a promise. The number of positions at successively higher levels decreases very quickly and is always less than the number of hardworking people who want the positions. This structure sets many ambitious workers on a collision course with the reality of limited opportunity. When they are finally hit with the tragic disappointment, they may become angry or resentful, and so the hierarchical system must engage in widespread cooling out. It does this not only to protect its agents who stand at the gate and do the dirty work of exclusion, but also to make sure that those who have been disappointed do not become opponents of the hierarchical system itself and enemies of its power elite. It is vital to the system that the losers serve the hierarchy respectfully, and not sabotage it, when they find themselves with jobs that have lower social status than the society of “unlimited opportunity” had led them to expect. Cooling out is therefore an integral part of the socioeconomic system. Those who say “That’s life” should understand that there is nothing natural about a system that kills the spirit of large numbers of people by first putting them in a position where they need opportunity, then promising them virtually unlimited opportunity and finally making them losers.”

AmericaEconomicsSystemScamsWasted LifeHustler
Book:Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives
Create image