Re: Semi off-topic: Anything above a grade 10 education is a waste of
- From: Tim Norfolk <timsn274@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:54:14 -0700 (PDT)
On Oct 27, 4:17�pm, Daoud <daoud...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/columnists/story.html?id=21065ebc....
The neat thing is, he would probably label himself a defender of
Western civilization. � God knows Western Civilization would be far
better off if everyone was illiterate...
For what it's worth, I sent the following to the author of that piece:
____________________
I had some small hope that the anti-intellectualism and anti-science
attitudes in the English-speaking world might be restricted to my
adopted country, the USA, and the country of my birth, the UK. Those
hopes were dashed by your column on Sunday ('The soul-destroying
effect of an elite education').
As a practicing scientist and teacher, there are two phrases in your
piece that leapt out at me:
'There are some areas, such as advanced engineering, in which the best
post-secondary schools still have something substantial to offer. But
these are not university courses, rather specialized technical
courses.'
This is rather dismissive of the subjects that made the 20th century
livable for most people, and reminds me of the Greek philosophers who
dismissed anyone who could actually do things as 'artisans'. I would
like to see you try to live without the products of those disciplines,
including all of science-based medicine (developed mostly by engineers
and scientists) and everything that involves semi-conductors, such as
all cars built since 1975, cell phones, and computers.
'Across the broad horizon of the humanities -- the university's raison
d'�tre -- a degree today has come to represent "the expense of spirit
in a waste of shame."'
So 'real' education contains less natural philosophy (science) than
was known by the elite in the 1800's? This might have been true before
World War II, but today we depend on well-educated technically-trained
people just to survive.
I would point out that the facts and models of reality discovered by
scientists in the last 200 years far exceed everything discovered by
'pure' philosophers and theologians to date, both in scope and
usefulness.
The creation of the 'Red Brick' universities in Britain was intended
to generate such people, in order to re-build the economy.
At this point, I have to partly agree with some of your comments.
Sadly, the large number of students taking ridiculously watered-down
majors (Golf Course Management, Communications, Political Science,
Alternative Health Therapies) has meant even fewer of the ones that we
desperately need. Many students who would do well in the sciences are
discouraged by both social pressures against 'geeks' and by the large
incomes possible in things like Accounting.
While it may be inevitable that China and India become the scientific
and technological giants of the World, leading to Third-World status
for North America, I would rather do my part to prevent this from
happening.
I realize that your last paragraph describes the motivation for your
diatribe (the comparison of Barack Obama with Sarah Palin). I would be
happier with one presidential candidate who could describe some
science correctly, but that isn't the way the system works. The US
presidents with such knowledge (Hoover and Carter) were, but most
opinion, disasters. I do know that the last 8 years have seen a
determined attack on all of science and education by the Republicans,
which will take decades to undo.
.
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