[lit-ideas] Re: education
- From: Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2011 19:49:38 -0700 (PDT)
A major thing, probably the major thing, that drives most people today is
money, how to get more of everything. Liberal arts is not conducive to
that. Wall Street was such a big draw until the crash that there was a visible
drain in the sciences, and the slack was picked up by foreign
students. After Reagan made greed fashionable everything became unbalanced.
The economy began to financialize, to its eventual detriment, which is to say,
here we are. I heard an excerpt from the Paddy Chayefsky movie Network from
1976; his character says, 3% of you read a book; 15% of you read a newspaper.
He's talking about how life imitates art basically, that people think what's on
television is reality while their own lives are not real. And in fact, where
once we kept up with the Joneses, now we keep up with the movie stars, as if
that's reality. To think that at one time Wall Street was a boring place that
college students considered oh so
bourgeois. There was a sense of elitism almost.
Obviously not all professionals all the time are clueless outside of their
fields, but based on my experience, for the most part the 3% and 15% is across
the board. It's possible that in academia there's still enough cross
fertilization that it might be different, but in the real world, intellectually
speaking, the playing field between higher and lower life forms when they're
not at work is pretty level.
Andy
________________________________
From: Ursula Stange <ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, November 4, 2011 7:33 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: education
Well...in our little college in Northern Ontario, the liberal arts have to be
argued for almost every year. There's very little support for programs that
can't find connections with or support from the mercantile/industrial world
outside our doors (of very little perception...).
That said, we do have some amazing students who very much do want a liberal
arts education. They didn't always know that coming in...but things turn them
on.
Sent from my kitchen...
On 2011-11-04, at 7:33 PM, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Irene wrote
>
>
>That couples with the fact that college nowadays is just a variation on
>vocational training anyway, whether it's the MBA, doctor, lawyer, engineer,
>whatever. The days of learning because it's fun, i.e., liberal arts, are
>over.
>Nonsense.
>
>Robert Paul
>
>
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