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.

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?

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?

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“.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/25909.html

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