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New York, 1:22 AM
Sat Dec 19
54 posts in the last 24 hours
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05/03/09
When we pay huge amounts of money for a bridge, or a sewer system, or whatever, we can reasonably expect the public to have a distinct and real benefit. But when we pay huge amounts (nationally) for philosophy professors, the public fails to benefit in any real way. I'm sure there is some vague benefit that some arcane and obtuse academic philosophical creations have been created, but to 99.9% of society, that money is essentially wasted.
And what is even worse is that the focus for the 'industry' of education is more about cranking out useless liberal arts research rather than teaching kids. It's a GREAT idea for our society to invest lots of money to teach students how to read and write well. It's not a great idea for our society to invest lots of money to produce arcane literary papers that 12 people will ever read (and all of them will hate it, likely including the author).
And yet every professor is more motivated by research than teaching. They are promoted and demoted by 'quality' of research, not by how well they teach students. The head of the English department couldn't give two shits if they can teach or not. They care about how many papers have been cranked out. And it's a damn shame, because they're ignoring the thing that could help society in favor of something that produces little to no benefit for most of the real world.
Please don't think I'm hating on academics, or liberal-arts professors. I considered becoming one. But really, which is more efficient and which does society really need? A paper examining the historical significance of the 16th century French aristocracy's clothing changes in response to civil unrest, or a classroom full of kids who can understand basic history?
Personally, I feel like the one that is useful is not what we are producing.
05/04/09
05/04/09
@DannyOcean: I relpied to your other post and now, having read this one, I'd say that we agree.
05/02/09
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05/02/09
Want to learn a foreign language? Go to State U in City A.
Math? State U in City B.
Let's quit duplicating resources. And, actually, let's just cut out extra-disciplinary elective requirements. I don't care if my local CPA has ever read a single letter of Shakespeare's work.
05/02/09
Oh, what you sed. My mother in law was wealthy, see, was, and she betook herself to her accountant and said, I'm old and tired; so what if I disperse my goods to my children and retire?
Had that CPA not read Lear, she may've gone along with the bad choice of enabling ungrateful sprites. But as it was, she convinced ma-in-law that way madness lied, and, to prove it, she had her committed and set herself up as her guardian. Now it's the children who write beseaching letters - to the accountant.
If I've seen that story work out once, I seen it a thousand times.
05/02/09
As for consolidating disciplines, this is the bean counter's mentality, and it's a large part of why universities have gone to hell. The mix of disciplines, to say nothing of all those breadth requirements, are designed, again, to try to turn out well-rounded people.
Some students remain obdurate to any attempt to open their pea-like minds, and that's why we have the "University" of Phoenix.
05/02/09
Thus, Shakespeare is free, adjunct professors of literature are cheap and 3D game engine programmers are expensive. And the best of them never wasted a day in college.
05/02/09
Also, which might be to your dismay, Shakespeare and those with talent in the humanities will long be remembered and their work appreciated before the impressive parlor trick of higher-order math tapped out on a cell phone. That does not contribute to culture, a social knowledge, or provide any psychological archetype.
You also gut your own argument by saying that the best programmers never went to college; why have curriculums that focus only upon sciences and mathematics when the experts are not in the collegiate system but in the field? You're not going to get the best insights and discourse outside of the university though. By that logic then, those in the hard sciences should avoid university training, and thrive off of their own mathematical ingenuity...
05/02/09
I can write as well as any English major, but a professor of English literature without a thorough grounding in mathematics and programming will never build a video game.
05/03/09
I must admit, I was (am) knee-jerking as a silly liberal-arts major myself. By the same token, the fact that you can excel at both mathematics and language is a very desirable trait. I know plenty of programmers whose only language comprehension is code, just as there are plenty of liberal arts majors who have no aptitude with numbers. One should not go so far as to discredit one as a waste of time from the other as to push both of them to the furthest extent an individual has to mastering them; i.e., paychecks do not make the value of an education (it sure is fucking nice, no doubt, but I had no illusions when I jumped into my field).
05/03/09
Society needs fewer people trained in the arcane works of Elizabeth Barret Browning and more people who can do calculus.
I think you'll find the marketplace agrees.
05/03/09
Declaring the liberal arts as a "soft and squishy" discipline is one of the oldest, most prevalent, and pervasive insecurities of the engineering and science fields. It's as if they're insulted that someone could regard anything other than their own subject of study as anything worth devotion. And I don't disagree that their expertise produces real benefits, real products, tangible improvements to life. But it doesn't mean their talents are essential to everybody either. They are specialists. Video game creation might have similar fields in programming and computer science that one can bail out to in case of an industry implosion, but the fact of the matter is the majority of people live well without knowing higher-level math themselves. The marketplace can only support so many mathheads to make the game engines, just as it only needs to rely on so many artists and writers for the creative portions of the game.
But who's even going to know who Elizabeth Barret Browning is when they have only marketplace culture? Not to renew the high/low art distinction debate as the difference between elitist/mass consumption, but how can there be any development of a national aesthetic beyond the Hollywood hills? What happened to the expression of creativity without concern for profitablity? Before I get the snarky comment that creativity's worth is determined by sales, I just need to remind you that Moby Dick was an utter flop and forgotten for decades before resurging to become one of the great American novels.
The tl;dr version: Trying to pick sides on the science/humanitarian purpose of education is old hat, and really not the problem. It's the expectation that a student should have learned how to fellate his new boss first and foremost in college.
05/03/09
We need scientists, doctors, engineers, and yes, English teachers. We've got plenty of history majors working at Home Depot.
05/03/09
This is probably unique in the annals of blog commentary. Didn't Hume declare that any statement is made because no other evidence for it exists? And didn't Hume create Donkey Kong?
05/03/09
GLENDOWER: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
HOTSPUR: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
- King Henry IV, part I > Act III, scene I
05/03/09
She was a Republican Democrat, who settled for the first when Joseph united Italy with a military coup. She was ever and always a champion of the underclasses, except when her lifetime loyal maid sought to live with her serving man husband and also 18 instead of 16 guineas a year. Both were denied her. Elizabeth Barret married in her forties, and, at that time, not only had she never been loved, she had never in her life dressed herself or combed out her own hair.
There is simply no calculus to account for an Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
05/02/09
For example, what is the point of a master's in journalism? It makes more sense to take your bachelor's, get a reporting job in a small or medium town and work your way up the food chain. I love to learn, but it just seems like such a bad investment to go to grad school unless you want to be in academia.
Also, I like the short bus with the monster tires, but that's because I'm a declassé yokel with a mere bachelor's.
05/02/09
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05/02/09
So, armed with a PhD, a degree that most people don't understand, and turned loose from academe, i've wandered. I taught for a while, because it paid, sometimes even reasonably well. I'm doing an office job right now, again because it pays, but i don't need my degree for it. Classmates of mine from grad school who bailed planned to leave grad school off their CVs and tell people they were in prison to account for the missing years.
I'm hell in Trivial Pursuit (does anyone still play that?), but the rest? From a practical standpoint, it was a waste of time. I learned a lot (including about myself), though. Please don't ask me if it was worth it.
05/02/09
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