Posted on 02/29/2012 5:59:23 AM PST by SeekAndFind
As high school seniors throughout America will be receiving acceptance letters to colleges within the next month, it would be nice for parents to meditate on what they are getting for the $20–$50,000 they will pay each year.
The United States is no better than any other country, and in many areas worse than many. On the world stage, America is an imperialist country, and domestically it mistreats its minorities and neglects its poor, while discriminating against non-whites.
There is no better and no worse in literature and the arts. The reason universities in the past taught Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Bach rather than, let us say, Guatemalan poets, Sri Lankan musicians, and Native American storytellers was “Eurocentrism.”
God is at best a non-issue, and at worst, a foolish and dangerous belief.
Christianity is largely a history of inquisitions, crusades, oppression, and anti-intellectualism. Islam, on the other hand, is “a religion of peace.” Therefore, criticism of Christianity is enlightened, while criticism of Islam is Islamophobia.
Israel is a racist state, morally no different from apartheid South Africa.
Big government is the only humane way to govern a country.
The South votes Republican because it is still racist and the Republican party caters to racists.
Mothers and fathers are interchangeable. Claims that married mothers and fathers are the parental ideal and bring unique things to a child are heterosexist and homophobic.
Whites can be racist; non-whites cannot be (because whites have power and the powerless cannot be racist).
The great world and societal battles are not between good and evil, but between rich and poor and the powerful and the powerless.
Patriotism is usually a euphemism for chauvinism.
War is ignoble. Pacifism is noble.
Human beings are animals. They differ from “other animals” primarily in having better brains.
We live in a patriarchal society, which is injurious to women.
Women are victims of men.
Blacks are victims of whites.
Latinos are victims of Anglos.
Muslims are victims of non-Muslims
Gays are victims of straights.
Big corporations are bad. Big unions are good.
There is no objective meaning to a text. Every text only means what the reader perceives it to mean.
The American Founders were sexist, racist slaveholders whose primary concern was preserving their wealthy status.
The Constitution says what progressives think it should say.
The American dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima was an act of racism and a war crime.
The wealthy have stacked the capitalist system to maintain their power and economic benefits.
The wealthy Western nations became wealthy by exploiting Third World nations through colonialism and imperialism.
Defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman is as immoral as defining marriage as the union of a white and a white.
Some conclusions:
If this list is accurate — and that may be confirmed by visiting a college bookstore and seeing what books are assigned by any given instructor — most American parents and/or their child are going into debt in order to support an institution that for four years, during the most impressionable years of a person’s life, instills values that are the opposite of those of their parents.
And that is intentional.
As Woodrow Wilson, progressive president of Princeton University before becoming president of the United States, said in a speech in 1914, “I have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.”
In 1996, in his commencement address to the graduating seniors of Dartmouth College, the then president of the college, James O. Freedman, cited the Wilson quote favorably. And in 2002, in another commencement address, Freedman said that “the purpose of a college education is to question your father’s values.”
For Wilson, Freedman, and countless other university presidents, the purpose of a college education is to question (actually, reject) one’s father’s values, not to seek truth. Fathers represented traditional American values. The university is there to undermine them.
Still want to get into years of debt?
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist
I held liberal arts in low regard when going for my engineering degree as well.
Subsequent events have proven us both entirely correct.
I agree that REAL philosophy and logic would be difficult courses. But they’re so rare now that it is a completely irrelevant point to the larger truth that liberal arts schools are intellectual swamps, filled with muck and frothy, flammable gas emissions.
There are two things which would restore balance to the cost of higher education.
1. Reinstate dischargability of student loans in bankruptcy.
2. Have a means test for universities themselves.
so.
1. Dischargable in Bankruptcy of Student Loans: The non-dischagability of student loans has created hyper inflation in cost of higher education and an explosion of junk studies and departments.
This means universitities can sucker minds full of mush that a “women's studies” degree has some sort of intrinsic or economic value when it in fact is a worthless waste of time.
there is no reason to reason for universities to be able to say a ussr Lada is the same as a Lincoln Town car. Universities SHOULD PAY for wasting the years of students.
2. Means Test Universities: Many of the effete elite schools are so well endowed with money that they CAN never charge for tuition again and STILL make money. If a school has that much money then there is no need for Univiersity Wealfare. Professor Wackadoo’s study in harmonizing ant pharts as a path to world peas (sic) can be funded by the endowment and not Mr. and Mrs. America's tuition dollars.
(i would say the US universities need an enema, but Professor Wackadoo’s significant other Professor Whatacrock is doing a study on that already using a taxpayer grant endorsed by warrent buffet and signed off by obama.)
FOOTNOTE ONE: Obama is defined as executive incompetence due to a refusal to see reality and a total lack of real world experience.
In the university, you have senior professors conduct lectures to a hundred or more students, with whom they have little or no individual contact. It is but a short step to instead use video lectures by the top experts in the US, supplemented by an FR-style online discussion on the points raised in the lecture.
The real existential threat to worthless academia would be repeal of the EEOC laws. It used to be that companies could hire smart people right out of high school, who would work, be trained on the job, and supplement their training by taking classes on evenings, weekends, or take correspondence courses. The demand for a college degree was just a response the "equal opportunity" laws declaring it illegal to have companies use hiring tests to try to ensure they were hiring somebody with an adequate ability to read, write, and do math.
Ch Eng UF ‘67 taught me the theory and problem solving skills. A one week crash course by my employer taught me important stuff like how to install and repair a pump, instrumentation and extruder design.
Humanities courses were diversion from the hard courses. In civics classes, I was usually the lone voice defending America, even then. Luckily the prof was one who welcomed exchange of ideas. I suceeded mostly because I had world experiences gained in the Marines.
I was suprised to find out that an “education” degree is considered the same as a “general studies” degree.
There should be no guaranteed government money for junk degrees.
The system is easy to game. Just stay on the university reservation earning degree after degree and the loans will never need to be repaid.
In a real sense, what you pay the big bucks for at some colleges is the connections you make, rather than the education itself.
One can learn electrical engineering or English literature quite well at our local community college and/or state college, but if you go to Stanford for the exact same material, what you get for your money is the people you will meet. Same thing with why I would want to go to Harvard or Princeton- your roommates and friends are much more likely to include future senators, CEO’s and other folks who can benefit you. If you just want to design circuits or write books then it’s money wasted, in a lot of cases.
“The whole point of obtaining a university degree is to expose oneself to literature, history, and the arts. It is what makes a person well rounded.”
I disagree. Why would studying Plato make me ‘well-rounded’, but working with horses not? If I went back to college full time now, in my 50s, I’d be expected to take a lot of courses in accepting gays, transvestites, and on why guns are evil and people are good. My 25 years in the military, living in various foreign countries, deployments to many more countries, combat time, etc - that would be irrelevant to being a ‘well-rounded’ person.
I read Plato when I was young. He was full of crap then, and I doubt he’s gotten any smarter in the last 30 years.
I own & have read hundreds of history books in my home. Do you think the University would care?
Art? Sorry, but I’ve toured Art Museums, and wish I had spent that time on horseback, or studying the ballistics of the 44 special vs the 45 acp.
Why does reading a play by an ancient Greek writer make one ‘well-rounded’, but getting a black belt doesn’t count? I’d bet many of the ancient Greeks would say the black belt is more valuable...
Actually, the liberal arts curriculum fell apart at about the same time that logic was dropped.
I would recommend that anyone considering a typical liberal arts program skip it, and replace it with a single book, Peter Kreeft’s Socrates Logic. It teaches how to reason well. The student can figure out the rest for himself.
It is the only classical logic book in print. And at just $35, it’s far cheaper than the $10k cover charge at the bar called “college.”
I don’t think we are ever going to have a real alternative to a 4yr college degree. However I would like to see a tuition restructuring.
If you are going for an EE degree then courses that specifically apply to that degree would cost full tuition.
However, communist indoctrinated liberal arts courses not relevant to an EE degreee should cost one half or one third of tuition credit rates.
Hopefully this plan would bring down the salary of community-organizing professors to that of the Head Start nannies that they are.
This has been going on for at least 60 years in steadily increasing anti-Capitalism and promoting Socialism/Communism.
Obama is our first Marxist....Woodrow Wilson was a Socialist yet this nation elected them.
Doesn't Virginia still have a “law reader program” in which you can study law under the supervision of a licensed attorney and then sit for the bar exam?
This has been going on for at least 60 years in steadily increasing anti-Capitalism and promoting Socialism/Communism.
Obama is our first Marxist....Woodrow Wilson was a Socialist yet this nation elected them.
RE: I read Plato when I was young. He was full of crap then, and I doubt he’s gotten any smarter in the last 30 years.
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Plato can’t change anything he taught, unless he can come back to life and observe how his ideas have been sort of implemented in the real world.
He’s the guy the Commies want to emulate. The one who envisions a Republic where children are taken from their parents and molded by the elite and enlightened teachers of the state.
Good idea.
Three of my college professors were self-made millionaires who taught full schedules and received $1.00 as their salaries for each semester.
They taught Economics, Engineering(civil), and History.
But, did your ‘love’ for poetry come from college; or would you have discovered this affinity all on your own. I think you are selling yourself short here.
Why is it an Engineer needs “Rounding Out”, and the only way humanly possible to acquire this is by taking Liberal Arts classes?
For example, by the same process - shouldn’t we demand that Art degrees take Calculus, Organic Chemistry and Relativistic Physics? I mean, you have to ‘round out’ them too, or do we only ‘round out’ the hard sciences? Are the Soft Sciences inherently superior to Hard Science students?
I submit that these classes are a collassal waste of time, energy and money. They could not support themselves, if not for the demand that everyone take those classes. While interesting - they have no role as being required.
bump
bttt
BS. I want to buy a car; but I'm now forced to buy a Motorcycle, a Truck and get licensed to drive those; before you will allow me to have a car? No - this is called extortion. Mastering all modes of transportation may make me a better driver, but they are not required to drive a car - and that's all I want. Give me a car, and let me drive my car.
I want to be an engineer, taking 3 months of Intro to Ethics, History, Social Sciences and other crap will not make me any 'better' of a person than I am now. The books, papers and magazines I have read in the past 25 years, the experiencs I have had, travelling, raising kids and grandkids, and experiences gained from my career have impacted me. A forgotten class from 25 yrs ago did nothing but rob me, to enrich to some non-econimcally viable college department.
Now, if you want a Military Academy to turn out 'rounded' officers; fine. But this is a State College, seems highly arrogant to have anyone say "You can't be a well-rounded person unless you take this list of courses I have selected, from liberal, soft-sciences".
Want to cut the cost of college education? Easy, start cutting those fields of study that cannot support themselves in a capitalistic system. C'mon, demanding students pay 3 cr. hours x $150/cr hr plus $75 for a book on Music Appreciation? Really? Forcing them to sit in class for 3 hrs a week listening to music - exactly how will that help them get a job?
College exists to help educate and teach specialized skills to students, who wish to pursue a life-long career in a specialized field. Demanding they support non-viable courses is nothing less than extortion.
Yes, I do think that a Bachelor's degree in anything should require some math and science. As to the specific I don't know. I think I was only required to take a selection of freshman level courses, and one or two sophomore level courses.
I still hold that a smattering of Liberal Arts courses is good for people in technical fields in that it broadens one's exposure and reinforces other avenues of creativity. Plus, there's chicks...
I'll concede that point. As a geek, aside from the dorm parties and bars; this was true.
But, the music I listen to, the plays I've attended, the symphonies I've paid to see - all these I did on my own .... voluntarily.
One way to trim excessive college expenses, is to remove those courses that do not contribute to the course of study. Forcing me to sit through 2 semesters of "Spanish", "German" or "French" will not help me as an engineer - probably because my industry workmates will likely speak English, Chinese, Japanese or Hindi. If we were to remove the non-contributing college courses; I submit that a 4 yr degree would become a 2.5-3 yr degree. That's a 25% cut in college courses, without affecting the educational skills of the graduates. Do you care if your engineering new-hire likes Poetry, Art, History, Womyn's Studies, Child Development, Theater or Music? No. You care that he can do what he was hired to do.
What we learn and take to heart, we do voluntarily. You cannot 'force' someone to be well-rounded; any more than I can 'force' you to be kind, passionate, and self-sacrificing. I can encourage these things, we can agree that they are good things; but these come from within. Forcing you to take these classes does little more than consume your time, rob your money and take away time and effort that could be better spent studying the discipline you wish to puruse as a career.
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