In the same way that we need statesmen to spare us the abjection of exercising power, we need scholars to spare us the abjection of learning.
Interpretation
Baudrillard suggests that just as we require politicians to manage power responsibly, we also need scholars to guide us in the pursuit of knowledge without degrading the learning experience.
In this quote, Jean Baudrillard reflects on the vital roles of statesmen and scholars in society. He draws a parallel between the necessity of statesmen to wield power wisely, thus preventing the negative aspects of authority, and the need for scholars to approach the act of learning with integrity and depth, avoiding its trivialization. Baudrillard emphasizes that both governance and education are crucial in shaping a meaningful society, highlighting the responsibilities that come with these roles.
In practice
As a professor, I often refer to Baudrillard when discussing the importance of integrity in education.
The war was won on both sides: by the Vietnamese on the ground, by the Americans in the electronic mental space. And if the one side won an ideological and political victory, the other made Apocalypse Now and that has gone right around the world.
Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.
This false distance is present everywhere: in spy films, in Godard, in modern advertising, which uses it continually as a cultural allusion. It is not really clear in the end whether this 'cool' smile is the smile of humour or that of commercial complicity. This is also the case with pop, and its smile ultimately encapsulates all its ambiguity: it is not the smile of critical distance, but the smile of collusion
There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.
the neighborhood is nothing but a protective zone- remodeling, disinfection, a snobbish and hygenic design- but above all in a figurative sense: it is a machine for making emptiness.
Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.
One summer morning at sunrise a long time ago I met a little girl with a book under her arm. I asked her why she was out so early and she answered that there were too many books and far too little time. And there she was absolutely right.
It's one of the biggest fibs going that American newspapers are now being forced to give up their commitment to investigative reporting. Most of them gave up long ago as their greedy managements squeezed every cent out of the bottom line and turned their newsrooms into eunuchs.
A teacher who establishes rapport with the taught, becomes one with them, learns more from them than he teaches them. He who learns nothing from his disciples is, in my opinion, worthless. Whenever I talk with someone I learn from him. I take from him more than I give him.
She could smell the pages. She could almost taste the words as they stacked up around her.
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No-it is Robinson Crusoe.
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