Almost completed the online course in Chinese Philosophy. It started off as a test, to take an online course from an ivy league university to add to my CV to get a full time job teaching and make my CV look more impressive. Something from Harvard. I like Glenn Loury’s channel very much and few months ago listened to an interview between himself and another economist whose name I forget but that other guy, while talking about the usual stuff economic professors might talk about, said you could easily take courses online and make your CV look more impressive plus some of the courses are free. Ding Ding Ding went the bell between my ears. There is some irony in studying this course specifically in being tested. I bet Mencius, Xunzi, Zhuangzi and the big cheese himself, Confucius, all aghast at agreeing to a system where proving you know who said what and when serves as proof that you understand the meaning of their work, but so goes education. Can I really teach someone songwriting or how to improvise? Can I really be employed as a teacher if I admit to believing no one can be taught? I might have a new job in September teaching my songwriting course to non musicians at a Toronto college, in the creative writing department. It’s bad bad bad luck to write about something that isn’t yet a sealed deal, fortunately Xunzi doesn’t believe in luck and I’m on Xunzi’s team. He also says we are like clay, born moldable. In fact I agree with all of them or at least I can agree more or less at different times. That’s why testing seems insulting, seems a game. Even earlier, when I returned to school in 2017, there were online tests which could be played like games. Easy peazie lemon squeazie. You could figure out the answer not knowing the content. Sometimes multiple choice and you get 3 attempts and there’s four possibilities. Even a shit gambler wins every time. No studying necessary, reminding one of Zhuangzi’s original sage advice, keep beverages away from the desktop keyboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"