On 11/11/2011 2:23 PM, Hawke wrote:
On 11/10/2011 9:31 PM, David R. Birch wrote:

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.

Then you finally admit that you are not educated.

If I were to do that then I'd be like you, a liar. I am well educated
and I have the credentials to prove it. But not only do I have a formal
education I have a whole life worth of experience. So by any measure you
would apply to yourself I have passed the bar of being an educated
person. In words even you can understand it's like this if someone like
me isn't educated then no one is.

Education is not a question of having a piece of paper from a school
saying you graduated, it is an ongoing process that starts when you are
born and ends (maybe) when you die. Some people learn well and quickly,
others only go through the motions and learn only what is needed to get
by. The educational system in the US often ignores that first group so
it can support the majority in the second.

Did you know what you were getting when you put that check in the mail
for your diploma?

I had a pretty good idea. But even so I was surprised at how difficult
it was to accomplish. You get out what you put in and I put in a lot.
But then they expected a lot too.




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.

Why didn't you?

I did.




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.

Again, you admit that you are not educated.

What I will admit to is that you come across as someone who is not
educated. I would have to lie if I said I wasn't, and I'm not about to
do that.


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.

I agree, I've read Marx and its gibberish.

If Marx's writing and philosophy are gibberish to you I can understand
that. You don't understand much. Based on the number of people around
the world who have read and heard of Marx, his work is clearly not
gibberish to most people.

Marx is gibberish because it depends on people being what he thought
they should be, not what they really are. His fundamental
misunderstanding of human nature is typical of the elitism of the left.


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.

So those poor fools majoring in psych, English, soc sci and poli sci
were wasting their time by specializing their ignorance.

Only an idiot would think that psychologists, social scientists, English
teachers, and political advisers, wasted their time training for those
occupations.

Once again you fail in reading comprehension. I was using a device
called irony, a bit too subtle for you as usual.

Anyone who doesn't understand that those and many other
occupations are filled by people with liberal arts degrees
is seriously stupid. In your case, I'd suggest you spend some time with
a psychologist. I know you don't think he learned anything in school and
wasted his time there, but he will present you with a good sized bill
for using his skill, and he'll likely make a lot more money than you do
as well.

I have spent time with psychologists, but not as a patient or client.
Initially as a student, then later as consultant.


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?

Yes, they have learned that regurgitating what the prof said is of great
value in pursuit of a grade.

Only ignorant people think that way. That's as stupid as saying food
preparation, clothes cleaning, and home cleaning are just women's work.

Totally irrelevant comparison. If you think a college student will get
far while publicly supporting theories that his advisers don't support,
your grasp of college department politics is as weak as your
understanding of national and world politics.



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?

I wish we had schools like that here on Earth.

We do. It's just that some people like you never got the chance to
experience what they are like so you don't think they exist.

If they exist, they are the exception, not the rule.


"uneducated"? As in "didn't go to a liberal arts college"?

No, as in people like you. The ignorant. College educated people do have
skills.

You seem to think that only college educated people have skills and that
a college education means you therefore have those skills.

In many ways you remind me of Shelly Long's character Diane Chambers in
"Cheers", a woman with a lot of education who didn't know anything about
the real world and had acquired no wisdom or common sense.

But she had been to the best schools and had diplomas to prove it.


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.

Which will do better, a person with brains and skills, but no degree, or
someone like you with a degree but no brains?

You got that backwards. You meant someone like me with brains and
education. The opposite of someone like you.

No soup for you, loser. I have been to colleges, took their meager
offerings and went far beyond them.

"Would you like fresh ground pepper" is so much more fulfilling than
"d'ya want fries with that"?

That beats the alternative, which is no job at all. If you had to
compete with liberal arts educated people you would come out the loser.

Actually, my education, training and skills would land me a job by
simply calling any number of HR departments in large corporations...if I
weren't close to retirement age.

Not true of poli sci graduates.

Yes, they will never know the satisfaction of pretentiousness that you
cherish.

Spoken like a man without an education.

Certainly not an education consisting of a degree of no practical use.


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.

The mail from that diploma mill must be slow, is it offshore?

Nope, got it right here in California where I live and went to school.
Which I'll take over where ever it is you live in some red state full of
religious nut cases without any education. Are you a southerner, by any
chance?

SE Wisconsin, a blue state, as if it matters. Usual assortment of nut
cases on the left and right.

You continually demonstrate that you think that just having a diploma
makes you special and superior, yet you show at the same time that you
haven't gone beyond that piece of paper and actually have not found a
use for it.

Worse yet, you lack knowledge and understanding of the world of politics
because you don't recognize that there are valid views outside your
narrow world that embraces only what your idols tell you to believe.
Most of the people I know have at least some advanced education, many
with multiple MAs and MSs and/or doctorates, yet when I correspond with
you, its like engaging in a discussion in a freshman bull session,
earnest views from someone with no idea what its like out there in the
real world.

You need to recognize that a diploma is not an end, but just another start.

I'm done here for now, you'll never find wisdom if you refuse to think
beyond the limits you set for yourself. I hope you mature beyond that
level, but you haven't shown that potential.

David