On Thu, 10 Nov 2011 11:00:02 -0800, Hawke
wrote:

On 11/9/2011 8:32 PM, Benny Fishhole wrote:
How Do You Know You Have Been “Educated”?

from Chicago Boyz by Shannon Love

Following on my previous post on the “We are the 99%” people who seem
to view education as more ritual than the acquisition of practical
skills or knowledge, it occurred to me that many of these young people
may not understand that they aren’t really, despite the time and money
spent, actually educated.

Well, that all depends on what you think "educated" means. If you think
educated means you have learned a specific job skill; and are ready to
enter the job market and be hired to do that job then it's true, people
with liberal arts educations aren't educated. But if by educated you
mean someone who has gone through a disciplined process of learning that
teaches them how to think and how the world works then you are.


The liberal arts of today are those fields with little or no
empiricism. In other words, if the field doesn’t have a lot of math,
the information it deals with is subjective and untestable. Even
supposed “soft” sciences in the liberal arts like sociology or
psychology lack true scientific rigor. Given that, how do liberal-arts
graduates know that they’ve really been taught something worthwhile?
How do they know they haven’t been loaded up with gibberish?

Funny isn't it how economics isn't looked at as subjective and
untestable like sociology or psychology but it is also a soft science.
So some of the negativity is subjective regarding the lack of empiricism
in those subjects.

As to how do you know you have been taught something worthwhile, you go
to an institution that has a history and a reputation for what it does.
There's a reason why people go to Ivy League schools. There is a reason
why people go to the military academies. You know what you are getting.
Go to a reputable school. You'll know what you're getting.


For example, I don’t know much about music, so someday I want to take
some courses about music. How would I know whether any particular
instructor was teaching me anything valid? Since I have no real
knowledge about music, how would I know if I was paying someone to
fill my head with nonsense?

You got to someone that has a good reputation, and is a professional.
You go to someone with impeccable credentials.


Some music education would teach concrete skills, e.g., reading music
or learning to play an instrument, so I could evaluate whether I had
been educated by my ability to read music or play an instrument.


However, what if I spend $50,000 being taught “Music Theory” or “The
Sociology of Music“.

Then you wouldn't be learning how to be a musician. You would be
learning something entirely different. A practitioner is nothing like a
theorist. Depending on your goal you would go to some place or someone
different for whatever it is you wanted to learn.



How would I ever know whether I was taught anything remotely true and,
more important, of practical use? If I want to be a musician will a
degree in either actually help my career or am I better off spending
more time practicing in the garage studio?

That's a question about how will you do in the marketplace. You never
know that until you test the waters. It's like a college football player
wondering how he will do in the pros. He won't know until he gets there.


Most of what is taught in the liberal arts does not equip the student
with objective skills.

That is simply not true. Objective skills are a must in any liberal arts
program I have ever seen. Soft sciences don't have the precision of math
or science but students in those areas still have to learn objective
skills and critical thinking.



Instead, most of what students learn are
elaborate hypotheses validated only by a popularity contest among the
professors themselves. Most of those hypotheses will end up judged by
history to be gibberish — e.g., Marxism.

That's gibberish.


Most degrees in the liberal arts, especially the advanced degrees,
really just equip the student to become a liberal-arts professor.
Given how few professorships open up, most liberal-arts graduates
don’t actually end up with marketable skills.

Since most of them don't go to college to get a marketable job skill
that's perfectly understandable. Liberal arts students go to college to
become educated people. When they graduate they then find what area they
want to go to work in, and that may or may not be related to their
college degree. They don't look at college as vocational training. They
go to get educated. When they have done that they enter the marketplace
and see what they want to do as far as work goes. The idea is they are
prepared for many more things by having a general education.



I think a lot of liberal-arts graduates have been convinced they have
learned something of great value.

They have, in fact they have learned a great many things of value if
they have earned a liberal arts degree.

Why should they believe otherwise?
We are taught since childhood how wise and wonderful all our teachers
are. We are told how uplifting and ennobling education is. Why would
students question whether their trusted professors are teaching them
anything true and/or valuable in the future workplace?

They shouldn't. The truth is that teachers are smart and well educated.
They do the job of teaching the next generation how to live their lives.
They have both life experience and education behind them. If you can't
trust people like that who can you trust? If they don't know anything
about the world their students are about to enter then who would?


You were doing right well, right up to here. Teachers are not always
smart and well educated, and quite frequently not fully qualified to
teach their subject. A high school mate, for example, who spoke, read
and wrote French at home, failed French (mainly because he was chasing
girls instead of turning in work assignments) and his folks, both
native French speakers showed up at the Principal's office with fire
in their eye. The Principal, not wanting to get in the midst of this,
call the teacher in. When she showed Mama and Papa started berating
her, in French. She couldn't speak French.

This, by the way, is extremely common among language teachers. I've
encountered it in every country I've lived in. They read and write the
language but can't carry on a conversation in the language. I know,
the teachers all say it is important to be able to read the language
but practically I can get along in a language, speaking it even though
I can't read it. What is the good in being able to read the Great
Authors if you can't order dinner?

As for collage graduates being educated.... maybe. The people with
professional educations - engineers, etc., all know their stuff. They
lack experience, but so do all beginners. But the liberal-arts people
don't know a specialty and from my contact with them they don't know
much of anything else either. They seldom have much knowledge of
literature, even modern authors. They don't seem to have a clue about
logical thinking - all you need to do is listen to the Wall Street
Mob. They don't seem to have even a rudimentary knowledge of economics
(you can't live forever on borrowed money). They can, however,
usually, speak English, and usually understand what they've read and
most of them can learn. :-)


What a horrible realization to find out that you haven’t actually been
educated. What a horrible realization to find out you owe tens of
thousands of dollars and you don’t have any skills to compensate. What
a horrible realization to find out you are no more employable than
someone who never went to college in the first place.

If you have a decent liberal arts degree you do have skills. You aren't
usually trained in a specific way for a specific job but you have skills
that the uneducated do not have.

Like what, man?

Proof of this is the unemployment rate for people with a college degree
is 4%. For those without degrees it's much higher. So don't tell me a
degree isn't worth anything. The market tells me otherwise.


Hawke, according to Table A-4. Employment status of the civilian
population 25 years and over by educational attainment
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm
the unemployment rate for people 25 years or older for September 2011
a

4 year collage degree or higher education is 30%
Associate or some collage 36%
High School only 45%
No High School 41%

Hower, your basic hypothesis is correct higher education usually, or
may, result in higher pay. But history shows (Boeing Seattle, lay-offs
in 1970) during times of lower employment it may well be that a
skilled blue collar worker will have a better chance of finding work,
i.e., the engineers were driving taxi's the welders all went to Los
Angeles and worked.


These kids feel cheated and they are right. They were told they were
actually getting “educated” but they weren’t. They borrowed tens of
thousands of dollars for nothing.

It seems that way now but in time that will change. They will always
have their educations and will find jobs in the future. Those who don't
have a degree will never have one and will never understand what they
are lacking.

Not necessarily true. I talked with a computer programmer who's job
went offshore to India. No job. Now works as a security guard.

Not to mention the 50 years of his life that Hack wasted earning his
cosmic debris. LOL!

If you weren't such a dolt you would know that it didn't take me 50
years to get my degree. All told it took me no longer than average. The
only thing I did was spread out the time I did it in over many years. I
can understand why that would confuse someone like you. Most everything
does.

Hawke

--
John B.