Posted on 11/06/2015 7:11:34 PM PST by MtnClimber
I’m constantly hearing from folks – particularly young adults – having a tough time landing a decent job, let alone developing a career with long-term potential.
In nearly every case they got a useless degree, dropped out, are unwilling to move to where the jobs are, are just not driven to do what it takes to be successful or were duped into thinking that making it in the wonderful world of Web 2.0 is like falling off a log.
Let’s talk about why that is, starting with some very low hanging fruit: useless degrees.
In this day and age, what in the world inspires so many supposedly career-minded young people to take on ginormous student loan debt to obtain liberal arts degrees that haven’t been in demand since resumes were done on typewriters? And where are their doting, or maybe the more accurate word is coddling, parents in all this?
In the past these degrees still taught how to think, work and write.
People could get a degree in them and be prepared for a job.
Not now. Now they are indoctrination and learning skills and discipline are not necessary.
I spent an hour on the phone tonight with an 85 year old Reagan Republican who started as a teacher and ended up a vice principal and then a principal at some of our local high schools for over 20 years. She is a retired head of the retired teachers association. She escaped the poverty of post war Germany by marrying an American soldier. They are still married. Strangely, we discussed what I read in the op/ed that started this thread and she said almost exactly what you just wrote.
I am a baby boomer as is the author of the op/ed. When I was a kid average class size in our public schools was between 30 and 40 students. In dollars adjusted for inflation our local public school district now spends almost exactly three times as much per student as when I was in school.
One fact that a lot of my baby boomer brethren do not seem to be aware of is that in most cases the performance of current high school graduates from our local school systems on standardized tests is far lower than when we baby boomers graduated. In many cases those who receive associates degrees from community colleges and even some of those graduating with four year degrees are not as well educated as those of us who received a high school diploma forty years ago. This is even more true in critical thinking than in math and English.
All of our own children graduated a long time ago, but we have a whole heard of nieces nephews and grandchildren in public schools. When I try to have a discussion with any of them it becomes obvious quickly that their critical thinking abilities are especially deficient. They are able to parrot what their liberal teachers and the mass media have told them. When you ask questions that challenge the belief system they have been indoctrinated with it causes them to become agitated. Their ability to comprehend anything that contradicts what they have been spoon fed is nearly nonexistent. Unfortunately, further “education” by liberals who have taken over all levels of public education from preschool through graduate school is unlikely to expand these young people's horizon. They have almost no exposure to rational conservative thought.
This has me really mad. What the author is lashing out at is not a liberal education.. It is the deconstruction of the humanities. Liberal education teaches you how to think and process information and choose wisely. Topics of liberal education include logic, rhetoric, philosophy, theology, math, natural science, art - and not anti art Dadaism -, music, literature and history. And by history, I mean the foundations of civilization, not a deconstruction of institutions through Marxist pseudo analysis. Women’s Studies, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and so forth are not liberal education. They are liberal arts and sciences.
If you want to be a cog in a statist machine, go ahead and neglect liberal education. If you want to be able to reform and improve society and bring our culture back do its judeo-christian and constitutionalist foundations, find the college that makes room for true liberal education amidst the science, business, math, Engineering and pre professional programs. Better yet, if you’re going to grad school anyway, make sure you make the most of your undergraduate education and get a liberal education, make the most of your undergraduate education and get a liberal education, not just topics you’re going to have to retake at the graduate level anyway
I value my liberal arts education - which, btw, I received in the 70s. To get a BA, you certainly have to investigate the colleges to see that they are offering a classical education. I realize more and more they are not but such schools do exist. It’s a shame that so many freepers (I’m not including you) seem to despise such an education today. Especially the engineers among us who have a very weird attitude to people who have degrees in English Literature and Art.
Of course, your opening sentence is an illiterate version of philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ famous aphorism but you’re apparently too smart to know that.
An electrician in my town has tickets to the opera, goes to Europe with his family every couple of years, daughter’s wedding picture appeared in “Town and Country Magazine.”
I wouldn’t consider him to be a highly trained slave.
Let’s be clear, a “liberal arts” degree today does not include much math or science. It was not always so (the Quadrivium and Trivium formed the basis for the original 7 liberal arts), and I suspect the lack of math and science requirement has more than a little to do with getting the female half of the population to matriculate.
I’ve always thought that you can determine someone’s intellectual capacity to function in a civilized culture by how much math they can do. No math skills? Neolithic. Arithmetic? Sumerian. Geometry? Greek. Algebra? Medieval Arab. Calculus? Early Enlightenment. And so on.
The great thing about the math is that it acts as a tool for accountability on the narrative dispensed by govts, churches, business, schools, media, etc. Where you have a culture that can’t do math, you have a bunch of people who are going to be bullcrapped their entire lives.
And unfortunately the Liberal Arts curriculum has degenerated into a gaggle of unaccountable narratives based on emotion, spoonfed to innumerate losers who don’t understand that sitting around thinking deep thoughts doesn’t put food on the table.
I made really, really poor decisions for choosing majors.
My first major was in Mythology, my second major was in Creative Writing.
Once out of school and unable to find a job, I got into personal computing (this was back in the early 90s) and taught myself how they work. Ended up working at IBM for a while.
You make some excellent observations.
My feelings about my watered down education is I learned in my undergrad work what I should have learned in HS, my grad work, what I should have learned as an undergrad, and that was over 20 years ago.
Generally speaking, if I read a book about literary criticism or grammar, I usually look for authors who were educated before the 50s or for texts written before then.
There was another thread on this site about Colorado students sexting. Educators are more concerned with children’s sexuality than their education. They think many of our difficulties stem from our sense or perceptions of sexuality. Had they been taught critical thinking/classic logic and the value of a solid sense of virtue along with some basic reading and math skills, I do not believe we would be reading such things.
Yes. One of Common Core's stated goals -- though not in those words.
It's intended to produce kids who don't know history, can't think, but follow directions and observe procedures instinctively.
I am proud of our youngest daughter. Unfortunately, she got pregnant in High School so she and her boyfriend got married and had to start thinking about consequences and responsibilities. First she went to vocational school to learn a skill where she would make more than minimum wage. Then while working she earned an associated degree in accounting taking night classes at a local Community College. Then she got a better job and worked while she earned a higher degree in accounting at a local University. She still has some student loan debt but it is minimal compared to most graduates.
After she received her baccalaureate in accounting she was offered a job with the state. She tried that for six months but did not like the atmosphere. Her former employer offered her a better position as their human resources director and she took that. So it is a little funny that she got the degree in accounting and now she is not really using it, but I feel that along the way she did pick up some of what we used to regard as the goal of a liberal arts education. I think her circumstances and responsibilities forced her not to slack off like most of the kids I know who are currently going to universities and colleges.
Sometimes I feel a little bad that my wife and I didn’t coddle her more after she got off track. She has always been very strong willed. Unfortunately, although they tried her first marriage ended in divorce. We did do a lot of baby sitting and we gave her a used car which I maintained and tried to make sure she had what she needed. She was always a very smart girl and we were glad that she wanted to keep our grandson after she got pregnant. He is a very good kid who is now fourteen. I think that working and having responsibilities while going to school gave her more incentive to keep her eye on the ball.
I do not advocate a liberal arts degree for young people today as the programs I have reviewed are far more political than they should be.
If you were to look at a reading list for a liberal arts program prior to 1970, you would find literature that deals with the human condition in a relatively objective way. This is the material I was speaking of.
Yes humanity is stupid, brutal and selfish but the reasons are far more interesting than you might imagine. People today are told there are no absolutes; what is is right. The lack of moral absolutes drives the problem.
Learning about humanity through literature and the arts gives one a sense of reality that has not change in five millennia. How we deal with humanity can be based on law or compassion. I would suggest that exercising compassion leaves you in a better position than law. I would suggest you can only gain compassion or empathy through an energetic application learning in areas of humanity.
I have been a technologist for 49 years. I currently work as a software developer and have done so for the past 20 years. You can be a technologist and a human being should you choose to do so.
A BA has become a search for a justification for abortion, utopian communism, and the eradication of non-believers.
I just finished a biography of Mao. 70,000,000 killed. Liberal Arts majors only see that he failed to create a true secular equality. Not that he killed.
The question is whether you are willing to hate back, at least enough to protect yourself.
I couldn't agree more. Granted, my college degree is now 62 years old, but I think my experiences may still be relevant.
I attended a liberal arts college. However, I took a technical major (physics). In addition to that major, I had to take a lot of liberal arts courses: history, economics, literature, etc. I ended up making a living as an engineer, but that living was enhanced by the liberal arts courses I'd taken. As a high school English teacher once told me, "A technical education teaches you how to make a living. A liberal education teaches you how to live." She was right.
Good cabinet makers can lead a quite prosperous life as well.
I agree with you completely. Today, that sort of learning you have to get largely on your own, if you can.
Just clever enough, but not too clever. That would only cause trouble.
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