🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2615@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> dean@violet.berkeley.edu (Dean Pentcheff) writes:
>Relevant to the topic at hand.  You may not agree with it, but it raises
>interesting concerns.
>
>Quoted without permission from the New York Times "Letters" section, 2/23/87:
>------------------------------------------------
>College, Unfortunately, Is Nothing But a Product
>------------------------------------------------
>To the Editor:

This kind of sweeping statement means very little. Even soap can arguably be
nothing but a product, or something more than a product.

>	In 1914, John Alexander Smith, professor of moral philosopy at
>Oxford University, told the members of the incoming class that if they
>were diligent in their studies they could, at the end of their time
>there, expect to have absolutely no useful knowledge.  They could,
>however, expect to be able to recognize when a man is talking rot.

The British are very interesting people, but just because somebody with
a generic name says something does not make it right. For the record,
a British educator once told me that the first 12 years of an Englishman's
education is meant to keep him off the streets. You see, education is
such an ill-defined thing, I can say that the only objective of education
is to enable one to recognize rot. And that will be wonderful indeed.

>	The attitude was unremarkable.  College was then a haven for the
>small minority of people who were truly seeking wisdom....  [Today,] Kids
>go to college because Wall Street, itself gulled, will not hire the
>undocumented tyro.

It's definitely not true that, in those days, they were "truly seeking 
wisdom". Rather it is a kind of finishing school for the aristocratic
class. Not that there aren't some noble souls. But a significant portion
are in there for a foreign office post abroad, for example.

>	This is silly, since compared with a period of apprenticeship, a
>dose of amition and luck, a degree is not so useful in business....

I am not sure. I don't think anybody could be able to run our modern 
Fortune 500 Corporation effectively without some formal education -
I didn't say MBA. This formal education means, for example, a good
grasp however acquired of many disciplines: corporate finance, 
organization theory,
strategic planning and positioning etc. These theories are usually organized
and put together by academic  observers working in an environment that
provide them the freedom to "theoretize" these ideas. I think business
schools grow out of necessity. I don't think Wall Street would be this big
if, in order to learn the trade, you have to apprentice with J.P. Morgan
Loeb Kuhn etc.
I would say the prosperity of our age is significantly affected by the
training and theories development at business schools.

>	Mortimer Adler once asked a group of students how many of them,
>were they to be guaranteed enough money to be comfortable for the rest
>of their lives, would not return to class the following day.  Every hand
>shot up.  He told them they might as well leave right away, since they
>were wasting their own time and his.

Again I don't agree. Morty's students don't speak for everybody, neither
does he speak for all educators.
I am working hard so that I'll earn enough money 
to retire from work, to study physics. I am sure I am not the only
one in the whole world.  Again, Morty is making a moral judgment about 
education which I don't think is justified. Much of the benefit of 
education is to prepare one for a vocation, including that of a professor. 
Why does he feels his time is wasted. He get paid for educating them,
and they pay him to be educated. If he has any wishful thinking about
their deal, it is his unrealistic expectation of how others should behave.
Education failed in his case that it didn't enlighten him to the fact that
nobody can claim a monopoly on moral absolutes.

>	College not a product?  College is nothing but a product.  Were
>it otherwise, Plato, Cicero and "all that" would not be at a discount,
>and the higher education would be recognized as an avocation for driven
>eccentrics rather than a way station for unimaginative children.
>

Your implicit assumption is that the classics are inherently good and that
are now by the wayside is gross injustice.  I happen to think otherwise. 
The modern man is now enlightened to the fact that what plato says is logically
inconsistent, that what the greek thinkers say are curious at their time,
and as irrelavant in theirs as in ours. The modern man has matured from
his romantic adolescence, ready to take on the harsh reality of the universe
that we live in. The modern homer and plato are the scientists, engineers
musicians, novelists. In order for the modern man to be "educated", it
is necessary to refute untruth and irrelevance - or to discount, using
your word. That does not say that the greek thinkers are not historical
curiosities, but let's not make them anymore than that; even they would
find it silly.


--