[lit-ideas] Re: Chomsky on education
- From: "Veronica Caley" <molleo1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:17:44 -0400
Among the things happening here is that for profit private colleges, and I use
the term loosely, recruit students, any students, qualified or not. Then they
apply for government tuition aid for the students. In one case I read about a
young woman wanted to become a psychiatric pediatric nurse. She didn't learn
much I guess and they sent her to a day care center for practicum. Of course,
when she applied for jobs, she was rejected. Then she and others in similar
situations, default on the government loans. I don't know whether she didn't
learn much because she couldn't, or because teachers were not qualified. But
she is a class A victim of these places. And to my knowledge, none of them
have arrangements with accredited hospitals or any other business enterprise as
colleges do with hospitals, schools for student teachers, etc.
It has been the custom here for the government to give student loans to persons
attending private colleges and universities with great reputations such as
Harvard, Yale, Catholic and Protestant institutions. These are not part of the
above situation although right wing Protestants have started some of their own
colleges relatively recently. Among their graduates were sent to Iraq at 22 or
23 years of age to start stock markets. Of course they had no clue even where
to start. It was a reward to G.W. Bush's religious supporters.
Veronica Caley
Milford, MI
From: Judith Evans
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 8:14 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Chomsky on education
I just skimmed the piece, I'm looking at it again. I didn't realise
the US was going down the same road as us (from September/October, our
state/public universities will, I read, charge the highest fees in the world,
and we're privatising rapidly).
Eric,
>>>>>>>>
One thing. If, as Noam assumes, being a good Marxist, $ = SCIENCE, most
innovations wouldn’t be here
<<<<<<<<
I can't quite see what's Marxist about the idea that funding for
science is necessary. Just two e.g.s -- off the top of my head -- the double
helix discovery rested on years of experimentation and on, among other
expensive things, x-ray crystallography. And the discovery of radio pulsars
rested on radio telescopes. And both required expensive research units.
More? Theoretical physicists/cosmologists rely on, for example,
experimental data from CERN and astronomical observations by astronomers using
radio-telescopes.
Etc.
Judy Evans, Cardiff
--- On Mon, 15/8/11, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Chomsky on education
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Monday, 15 August, 2011, 19:58
Noam Chomsky, I used to love him. I was seventeen and the world
seemed less complex. Listening to or reading Noam was an echo of what it must
have been like for 19th century teenagers to listen to Emerson. An eloquent
debunker, the anti-Wizard of Oz, an American original.
Now Noam is sort of an embarrassment, as if Emerson had calcified
into a shrill and predictable downer with no alternative solutions, just an
endless debunking that felt like … well, like bunk, and also like that old man
smell one can never quite forget from one’s graybearded ancestry in hospitals.
I’m sure there is a lot of useful information in the article I just
skimmed, but it’s Noam, so the motives behind the information are all wrong. Ad
hominem as pragmatic conclusion unfortunately.
One thing. If, as Noam assumes, being a good Marxist, $ = SCIENCE,
most innovations wouldn’t be here. Murray Feigenbaum, for instance, was an
outré mathematician who lived on Coca-Cola and cigarettes and was working on an
unrelated project, when, as was habitual during his night-long strolls, he got
a clue to the numbers that unlocked sequences in Chaos theory. Qubits in
quantum information theory were developed in a Chinese restaurant.
One could populate the examples, but I’m sure the point is obvious. A
lot of very smart people don’t give an owl’s hoot about money. They think of
their projects as beloved callings, as a “that for the sake of which,” the
terminus ad quem in Aristotelian causation. They think of their work as Noam
must have thought, so very long ago, about linguistics.
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