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"This book is stolen. Written in part on stolen time, that is. Because like millions of others who work for a living, I was giving most of my prime time to my employer..."
So begins Jeff Schmidt in this riveting book about the world of professional work. Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to maintain strict "ideological discipline."
The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations, and even democracy.
Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker, showing how an honest reassessment of what it means to be a professional in today's corporate society can be remarkably liberating. After reading this book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job.
- Sales Rank: #614606 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Rowman n Littlefield Publishers
- Published on: 2001-12-04
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.19" h x .71" w x 6.09" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
Disciplined Minds is a witty, incisive, original analysis of the politics of professionalism―especially with respect to those fields in which 'professional training' involves an education in how to become oblivious to the political role of one's profession. (Michael Berube, University of Illinois)
A blistering critique of how knowledge workers have been subordinated in America. Finally, a book that tells it like it is. (Stanley Aronowitz, CUNY Graduate Center, author of From the Ashes of the Old: American Labor and America's Future)
I have been waiting a long time for someone to write this book, and Jeff Schmidt has done it. He exposes, in crystal-clear prose, the inevitably political nature of the professional in our society, and, most importantly, suggests a strategy for resistance. This is an extraordinary and valuable piece of writing. (Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States and professor emeritus of Political Science, Boston University)
Schmidt has hit the bull's-eye. (Texas Observer)
Schmidt analyzes the true meaning of being a professional and the sacrifices that professionals make to achieve their career goals. He challenges them to think outside the box, use their intuition and their attitude to provide for a better society. (Carrie Crystal Van Driel In The Public Citizen)
There is much that is thought provoking and illuminating in Disciplined Minds. (Business & Society)
This book should be read by anyone thinking about embarking on a professional education in any field, as well as by those who wonder why their dream job doesn't seem so dreamy after all. (Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington, D.C.)
Disciplined Minds is a radical, disturbing, and provocative look at professional life. It offers a profound analysis of the personal struggles for identity and meaning in the lives of today's 21 million professionals. The book will shake up the readers. (Education Review)
Just after publication of this book Disciplined Minds, Jeff Schmidt was fired after 19 years as a staff writer for Physics Today magazine. In his book Schmidt argues that a hierarchical organization's structure almost guarantees that its workers cannot devote their full energy to the job; he was terminated after a supervisor learned that in his foreword to the book, he playfully wrote that he had completed it partly on 'stolen time'. (The Washington Post)
Schmidt is a very good writer, and particularly skilled at constructing his case through example and anecdote. His thesis is compelling. (Interchange)
In this book Jeff Schmidt gives us a remarkably insightful political analysis of the process of inculcating graduate school initiates into a discipline, and how this process of 'disciplining' contributes to the making and perpetuating of unfree minds in the professions. (Social Anarchism Thirty-One)
Schmidt offers a provocative critique of how scientists, engineers, and other professionals are groomed to fulfill a specific function in society―that of maintaining the status quo―and, in the process, end up sidelining their own goals and ideals. The book is both well-researched and highly readable. Some readers may disagree with its conclusions, but everyone will recognize its descriptions of the often wrenching choices that today's professionals must make. (Ieee Spectrum)
I found Disciplined Minds while planning a course that will deal with the social role and moral responsibility of intellectuals, and after I finished reading it I whooped with joy. It is the perfect book to engage students on these issues ― well researched, powerfully argued, and clearly written. Even conservative students with politics at odds with Schmidt's find the book valuable because of its (sometimes painful) honesty and clarity. In addition to using it in my course, I wish I could make Disciplined Minds required reading for my faculty colleagues. (Robert Jensen, Director of the Senior Fellows Honors Program of the College of Communication, University of Texas at Austin)
This book comes from the heart...a rallying cry to dissatisfied professionals and disillusioned students to organize and reshape the system that is stifling them. (Review of Radical Political Economics)
Disciplined Minds is a freewheeling, thought-provoking examination of the way ideological control is exercised over an increasingly important section of the working class- the professionals. (John Pappademos Nature, Society, and Thought)
About the Author
Jeff Schmidt was an editor at Physics Today magazine for 19 years, until he was fired for writing this provocative book. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Irvine, and has taught in the United States, Central America, and Africa. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he now lives in Washington, D.C. You may write to him at jeffschmidt@alumni.uci.edu.
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Essential therapy for radicals scarred by school and the workplace!
By EDW
And by "radicals" I mean those wild eyed crazies who believe in democracy and basic human rights! Probably the most eye-opening thing I've read in the past few years, which is saying a lot because I tend to read a lot of eye-opening stuff. This book meant so much to me that I want to give it the review it deserves, but unfortunately my time is limited.
This book helped me come to terms with my past negative feelings and behavior towards authority figures, problems I have to this day as I see most authority as artificial and harmful, particularly in fundamentally undemocratic settings such as school and the workplace where - surprise! - we we just happen to spend the majority of our waking hours. It helped me understand that my push-back to otherwise nice folks was instinctive, normal, and necessary for my own sense of worth. The parallels the author draws between POW survival tactics and work survival tactics are spot on. Those who rule us are quite organized, but frown on us organizing. As a former science professional myself, I found the arguments against elitism and professionalism as part of the problem quite exhilarating and freeing. And I've never seen such a succinct explanation of why the media is so conservative even though the majority of media professionals self-identify as liberal. Bravo Mr. Schmidt!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A compelling, honest, gripping account of the politics behind 'higher education'
By LightningBolt
I could not put it down.
They way the book starts is gripping already. In it the author shows a considerable amount of statistics showing how unempathic and conservative professionals can be, in comparison to other strata of society.
The point the author makes about internships in Medicine is, in my opinion, key. Many, if not most, of the things interns do could be done by nurses; doctors sleep very little, eat poorly, and some resort to stimulants in order to survive the ordeal of sitting the feared exam. The stress, lack of sleep and of nutrients, leaves them in such a mental state that they can do little but memorise the stuff they are to study, if they wish to pass the exam.
It is clear, however, that this will not improve the quality of the doctors-to-be; their bedside manner won't improve, and they are not encouraged to devise new methods for restoring their patients' health but simply to memorise and study the solutions presented by big pharma without the faintest hint of critical sense.
The author lost his job at the Institute Of Physics since this book was published. I am a scientist by trade, and the book made me think quite a bit. Since I read it I recommend it and pass it on to colleagues and students alike.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Insightful, Incendiary Critique of the Professional Class
By Chris
I just finished Jeff Schmidt's book about salaried professionals. The central theme of his book is that all work is political. That is, whatever work the professional in America is doing, it's goals are to support the status quo. This includes all areas of work life. It is the same in the Defense industry as it is in the Medical industry.
Speaking of the medical industry, I imagine Patch Adams would be considered a radical professional in Jeff's estimation. He challenged the status quo in a way that changed lives.
The author traces the indoctrination process from undergraduate social background to graduate admission and through graduate school, deftly showing how each component is in place to select those with the best attitude. And of course that attitude is one of uncritical acceptance of the work assigned. There's never any thought of how your work is affecting society as a whole.
His strongest chapters in the book are The Division of Labor and the first chapter in Part 2, Opportunity. The book is worth getting if you only read these two chapters. It speaks to not only the technical divide, but also the social divide that has become more hidden these days. A person who has raised himself out of the working class to the professional class through the "meritocracy" has had a harder time of it. They've had to discard their working class beliefs in equality and freedom and subjugate them to those in charge now: the large corporations.
A few relevant quotes from the book that were most impacting to me:
"Widespread belief in individual opportunity protects the system from potentially devastating attack -- it protects a backward setup in which a minute number of people exercise control over the nation's huge amount of capital in industry, agriculture, and transportation, while vast numbers of people work that capital and get nothing more than monetary compensation for their time."
- page 101
"Thus, through the ideology of individual opportunity, the system can keep the majority of workers in stressful and alienating jobs, and even get some enthusiastic support, just by maintaining the opportunity for a few workers to escape their survival-oriented work lives."
- page 101
So, in a capitalist system, only those with real capital have any chance of competing. And how many times do we see the "under-capitalized" small business with a great idea get that idea stolen and then out-marketed by a large corporation who has money to throw into the venture. The company (C-level's and shareholders) get a bit bigger bonus while the small entrepreneur is decimated.
The other bombshell from this book comes from page 128:
"The academically average working-class student who gets no offer of employment, but who tries to attend graduate school anyway, is at a tremendous disadvantage with respect to a similar student from a middle-class family with financial resources. The extra burden of having to leave the department to earn money goes to the working-class student, helping to perpetuate that student's relatively low academic standing. This is an example of what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu describes as the university's tendency to transmute social hierarchies into academic hierarchies -- to guide stedents to academic slots that correspond to the socioeconomic slots from which they come."
And I always thought it was that I wasn't smart enough to compete! If all of us got into Harvard and had our MBA living expenses paid by our family like Romney, I'll bet a good majority of us could complete the degree successfully as he did.
But that wouldn't be the whole story. Because you see, apparently the lower classes aren't as fit as the middle and upper classes to be professionals. As the author states (again on page 128):
"Middle-class students are simply easier than working-class students to train as professionals. They are not smarter; their attitudes and outlook simply need less adjustment to meet the system's demands."
Wow. Now for statements like this, the book is criticized as a Marxist rant. I'll admit the book is a bit of a rant, but it is not Marxist. I guess the anti-Marxists would prefer that people simply accept their station in life and learn to like it. Well, what's American about that? Sounds like a statement right out of 14th and 15th century Europe and the "divine right of kings."
There are some great chapters on how the actual admissions tests are more attitude selectors than aptitude selectors. Those insights opened my eyes and I'm sure they will for you too.
It's an admittedly hard read, but well worth your investment. It backs up with solid (not mere anecdotal) references to what you've always had a hunch about in the workplace.
The book ends with a bunch of suggestions on how to begin to transform the system from within. You won't agree with all of them, but this is a worthy addition to the legacy of previous writers (Noam Chomsky, Neil Postman, Aldous Huxley) warning us about the systems we are born into.
Other books tell you why and who, but if you want to know HOW "They" managed to perpetuate the status quo for all these years, this book gives an inside glimpse. As an independent professional myself, I now know why I was instinctively against staying a full time employee. This book just confirms I made the right decision.
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