The liberal arts

[The Brain]

Spending some tax money on the liberal arts up to and including HS level seems to me to make sense. Beyond that not so much. How to put this... people who study liberal arts at university are not very bright and what they produce is pretty crappy.

[mongers]

The toilet paper dispenser at my University had "Humanities degrees, please take one" written above it.   

You need to get that chiselled off the wall as it's a valuable* artefact, the one joke science undergrads have come up with in 150 years. 


*When I say valuable, it's the only example of it's class, but there are more than 100 examples of this joke as each university seems to had their own copy installed at one time or another.

[alfred russel]

I think I posted this before, hopefully not in this thread, but a particular problem with humanities degrees is that the standards have been lowered enough that there is some question whether the people in the programs learned anything at all. I would guess that I know more history than a number of history majors. Perhaps they developed critical thinking skills that I didn't, but I'm skeptical. A point that particularly bothers me is that people who spend four years majoring in a foreign language graduate without being able to speak the language with proficiency. How does that happen?

These problems exist in other disciplines too, but at least there are objective tests that will presumably wash out an engineering student that is clueless (a strong emphasis on the presumably).

[mongers]

I think I posted this before, hopefully not in this thread, but a particular problem with humanities degrees is that the standards have been lowered enough that there is some question whether the people in the programs learned anything at all. I would guess that I know more history than a number of history majors. Perhaps they developed critical thinking skills that I didn't, but I'm skeptical. A point that particularly bothers me is that people who spend four years majoring in a foreign language graduate without being able to speak the language with proficiency. How does that happen?

These problems exist in other disciplines too, but at least there are objective tests that will presumably wash out an engineering student that is clueless (a strong emphasis on the presumably).

Yes you've touch on some of that recently, but then again who here doesn't now repeat themselves. 

[fhdz]

I think I posted this before, hopefully not in this thread, but a particular problem with humanities degrees is that the standards have been lowered enough that there is some question whether the people in the programs learned anything at all.

Yes, that's a very real problem.

It's not a reflection on the humanities themselves, though, unlike some in this thread (Ide) have opined.

[Camerus]

FWIW, I can't begin to describe how happy I am that I attended a school system that trained me in Shakespeare, western history, Plato and critical thinking, rather than a system that molded me into an IT office worker or a sheet metal cutter.   

Right. Eventually sheet metal is replaced by flubber and you have to start over. If you've been a sheet metal cutter who has a rounded education starting over *should* be a whole lot easier.

And not only that - reducing education solely to its utility in one's job is also not the right way to think about education.

[Camerus]

I think I posted this before, hopefully not in this thread, but a particular problem with humanities degrees is that the standards have been lowered enough that there is some question whether the people in the programs learned anything at all. I would guess that I know more history than a number of history majors. Perhaps they developed critical thinking skills that I didn't, but I'm skeptical. A point that particularly bothers me is that people who spend four years majoring in a foreign language graduate without being able to speak the language with proficiency. How does that happen?

These problems exist in other disciplines too, but at least there are objective tests that will presumably wash out an engineering student that is clueless (a strong emphasis on the presumably).

If we're talking about post-high school education, then I think that's where the quality of the academic institution becomes important.  Trade school / vocational training is probably of more benefit to someone than an arts degree from a klown kollege.

[Ideologue]

I think I posted this before, hopefully not in this thread, but a particular problem with humanities degrees is that the standards have been lowered enough that there is some question whether the people in the programs learned anything at all.

Yes, that's a very real problem.

It's not a reflection on the humanities themselves, though, unlike some in this thread (Ide) have opined.

Do you think the lowering of standards has nothing to do with the guaranteed federal money given to colleges for putting asses in seats?

What's a little annoying to me is how badly my position has been misrepresented.  I expect that kind of shit from Martinus, but the rest of you seem to be fighting the same straw man he is: that I said the study of culture and the arts was worthless in any context.  I'll grant that I haven't helped with overheated rhetoric, but my point is and always has been that debt-funding an education in history, English literature, and the like is a bad move for almost any undergrad, and a terrible use of government money--that liberal arts higher education is very close to less than worthless, and comes with a shockingly high opportunity cost.

If there were underwriting standards and the government guarantee vanished, the loans going to these programs would never be made; this is practically inarguable.  The economy does not require baristas who've read Epicoene.

given that I feel there is a low social value to post-HS liberal arts education and that there is objectively a low economic value to it, and given that you all apparently feel much the same way since no one has voted "other" and said it should be 100% paid for by society rather than individual student debtors, why should billions of dollars be transferred from the young consumers who drive our economy and from the taxpayers as a whole to enrich nothing more than university administrators, professors, and their staffs, particularly when the program by its very existence devalues the credentials it pays for so dearly?

How Yi is the only one who understood this is beyond me.  Not a slam on Yi, he's a smart guy, but the rest of you are supposed to be smart to, and when you get all "POETRY DEGREES MAKE DEMOCRACY HAPPEN" and "YOUR ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM MAKES ME SAD," i.e. behaving in the hyperbolic and functionally-illiterate manner ordinarily reserved for dumb Polacks, I can't help but wonder if perhaps I should have been a bit more serious myself.

Oh, and Martinus?  Your willingness to never let your presumed ability to understand what someone else is saying get in the way of a boring insult is why no one respects you.  The idea that I have no cultural education is negated by any knowledge of my interests, which you know damned well includes ancient and modern history, Greek plays, French literature, and the preservation of ephemeral popular culture for future generations, whether they give a shit or not.  That there should be some government-funded archival system with trained people running it is not the debate here--to that extent, I want my government to fund the preservation of all forms of culture so that the future can enjoy whatever bullshit they're into.  However, until the point that such preservation will provide jobs for the hundreds of thousands of liberal arts majors coasting through our overpriced and underperforming university system, it doesn't seem like a very good idea to flood our nation's food service and retail labor markets with hundreds of thousands of debtors.

[Ideologue]

FWIW, I can't begin to describe how happy I am that I attended a school system that trained me in Shakespeare, western history, Plato and critical thinking, rather than a system that molded me into an IT office worker or a sheet metal cutter.   

Do you think you would not care for Shakespeare, western history, and Plato if you'd been trained as a metal cutter?  Do you think you'd just watch plays about metal cutting and read about the history and philosophy of metal cutting or something?

[Ideologue]

Ide, imagine a generation growing up without being force fed basic humanities knowledge. Then imagine them raising children. Their children raising more children. Do you think that society has gotten better or worse in the interim?

As I said before, I think it's valuable enough in the K-12 arena to teach it, for democracy and culture and critical thinking and all the other reasons outlined by my opponents.

But, related to my reply above, do you really--really--think that in a world where the number of liberal arts grads was reduced by a factor of ten, it would have any profound affect on the amount and quality of the cultural product we create, or that our conversations would become lowbrow and our lives gray?

I'm talking about keeping kids out of debt and unfucking the higher education market.  How this is even controversial, let alone worthy of invective, suggests how ingrained in our society is the idea, but not the reality, of what our colleges do.

[Camerus]

FWIW, I can't begin to describe how happy I am that I attended a school system that trained me in Shakespeare, western history, Plato and critical thinking, rather than a system that molded me into an IT office worker or a sheet metal cutter.   

Do you think you would not care for Shakespeare, western history, and Plato if you'd been trained as a metal cutter?

Oh, it's entirely possible - and I'd be worse off for it.

[fhdz]

Well, looks like Ide had a cup of coffee. Iumpin' Iesu Christe.

[HVC]

Well, looks like Ide had a cup of coffee. Iumpin' Iesu Christe.

He's had a classical education! Get him!

[Camerus]

I favour a Pol Pot-esque, Year Zero, peasantization and return to the farm, so as to gain virtue and meaning through hard, agricultural labour.   

[fhdz]

As I said before, I think it's valuable enough in the K-12 arena to teach it, for democracy and culture and critical thinking and all the other reasons outlined by my opponents.

Do you really think it's sufficiently taught in grades 1-12 to ensure good participants in civic life?