Proof that if you can dream it, you can be it.
Posted on 04/15/2018 6:18:22 AM PDT by SandRat
Three men walk into a bar — the owner of a successful engineering company, the CEO of a private financial institution, and the president of a software company.
No, wait. Let’s make that three men walk into an upscale pub. After all, the men are high mucky mucks.
They find a semicircular booth toward the back of the place, which allows them to observe everyone in the pub and still maintain a semblance of anonymity. After all, in their respective worlds, they are big shots.
After the waitress delivers the drink orders, those successful men turn into whining babies. What could cause such a collapse into what some may describe as girly behavior? The answer, dear reader, is a flaw many employees exhibit.
Based on a recent news article, the outlook is bleak. But do not feel bad if you missed it. The story was not blasted 24/7 until your ears bled. In fact, it was practically invisible.
“The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point has proposed dropping 13 majors in the humanities and social sciences — including English, philosophy, history, sociology, and Spanish — while adding programs with ‘clear career pathways’ as a way to address declining enrollment and a multimillion-dollar deficit.”
Such plans intend to change the mission of the university system “by removing words that commanded the university to ‘search for truth’ and ‘improve the human condition.’” The replacement courses ‘meet the state’s workforce needs.’ In other words, the pragmatic intention is to make universities into trade schools, rather than institutions of higher learning.
After all, churning out ignorant, single-purpose citizens is essential to maintain and grow the ever-evolving, technologically focused economy. There is no need to teach English and proper grammar or develop a love for books if your job is robotic.
There is no need for courses in philosophy and sociology. There is no need for deep thoughts or to better the human condition when people are nothing but isolated. Forget about history, because that information may confuse the masses.
The lessons of history teach us not to repeat the same mistakes. However, it is clear to anyone observing the ignorance of the masses regarding history; the puppetmasters DO wish to repeat those mistakes. The better to manipulate and control folks. powered by
A liberal arts education gives students a firm foundation, making it possible to understand new concepts, adding to and expanding on the underpinnings of one’s knowledge.
Following the preferred path of no liberal arts basics, the focus of education narrows down to practical professions. Consequently, the university may churn out brilliant engineers who lack the ability to communicate their concepts, which explains the lament of the software company as well as the engineering company bosses.
The same is true for the financial institution. If one lacks the basics of English grammar, it is possible for portfolio managers to struggle when writing up a recommended course of action. Such presentations can make or break multibillion dollar deals. Even on a smaller scale, a written presentation can make the difference between granting a company more funding or driving it into bankruptcy.
We often forget, verbal and written communication coupled with the ability to reason is the domain of humans. Sadly, all we have to do is look around to find countless college graduates behaving like their more furry cousins, the apes. Hand them a goody (or freebie), and they are yours to command. No rational thought required.
Jill Tiefenthaler, president of Colorado College, stated, “A rapidly changing world means that young people will need to know the value of seeing things from different perspectives and be experts in collaboration and communication. The only way they can prepare for the future … is to develop nimble minds, comfort with different cultures and ideas, and skill at writing and speaking … many people … confuse education with training. A liberal arts education teaches students to learn how to learn, and inspires them to go on learning throughout their lives.”
Continued growth in knowledge is as crucial for humanity as are the trades that keep the wheels of progress turning. If the decision becomes an either-or proposition, we all lose.
Perhaps the powers that be would prefer we join our cousins in the treetops and be content poking at navel fleas?
ELIZABETH COWAN is an author of romantic suspense novels and humor books, which are available at amazon.com. Visit elizabethcowan.com to learn more.
Girl knows how to tell a joke, huh? She learn that in college, ya think?
Humans are the only species with a capacity for mysticism. There is a craving in man that goes beyond robotics, political correctness and the herd. Eventually the neo dark age where free speech and “offensive thoughts” are suppressed at educational institutions will pass. History has shown that however brutal the suppression, be it communist rule or cultural censors, free thinkers emerge, the demand for freedom asserts itself and things change often for the better. Take heart philosophy majors. The demand for your services and teaching will return. Yes they had it right at Faber College “Knowledge is good”.
MAY-BE FROM HER GRAND-PA?
I can get plenty of history, languages, etc. off the Internet. Pretty hard to learn the hard sciences all by your lonesome when the job suddenly calls for it.
“A liberal arts education teaches students to learn how to learn, and inspires them to go on learning throughout their lives.”
That is what it was intended to do, but that is no longer what it does. It functions as the indoctrination academy. Learning that there are other philosophies than your own does not in today’s academia mean merely respecting their existence, it means denying your own and ACCEPTING any but your own. By preaching that all systems are equally valid, equally moral, equally worth emulating, they preach the destruction of yours with an easily manipulated nothingness that has no moral home beyond the indoctrinated thought lines impressed on the mind as truth, not acquired by one’s own experience.
The author doesn’t conflate much, does she? If I needed a full degree in every area that touches upon my daily work, I’d have to go to school until I retired. Courses in philosophy, English, Math, etc are not the same as degrees. One can still take courses focused on those subjects, as it may relate to their degree. They do not need to have a freaking degree in the same subject.
It all depends upon what you want. Some people have a great life rising maybe one or two layers in an organization while others aspire to enter the upper eschelon. Some people would rather die than work for someone else and others thrive in corporate setting.
The fallacy is that we need a once-size-fits-all (or worse yet, a government-mandated) path to education. Or course specialization is needed in many cases....I hope my cardiologist has more than an MBA, and I hope my tax lawyer didn't cut people open for a living at the Mayo Clinic. That said, not everyone benefits from a Liberal Arts education and not all Business School graduates are Gordon Gekko.
My favorite opinion in this sort of matter comes from Frank Zappa: I don't give musicians a "questionnaire" when they join the band about where they went to school or about what sort of technical information they possess - I'll hear during the audition whether they can play or not.
Well, I only read about half of this, but I could tell I disagree. You can learn history, philosophy, and what-all on the internet. We don’t need anymore Starbucks coffee-pullers with $70,000 student loans and a brain washed of anything but socialism.
“A liberal arts education teaches students to learn how to learn, and inspires them to go on learning throughout their lives.”
This same old BS wastes billions of $’s each year to pay left wing professors to preach their left wing dogma to idiots whose parents pay for this bs.
Then, after 5-7 years and a ton of money to get a BS (appropriate abbreviation) degree, the so called graduates or ‘Intellectual Yet Idiots’ are worthless in the job market.
They can’t think for themselves nor do they have marketable skill.
Then, as tax payers, we are expected to pay for this bs because the IYI’s supposedly learned how to think from being snowflakes hating white people and our constitution.
The UK started the college for everyone and their healthcare for everyone after WWII. Look at how successful both of those programs have been for the UK.
Learning to learn is pretty much innate, until our “education” system takes over.
Learning to learn is was pretty much innate, until our “education” system takes over.
Liberal Arts as practiced in most colleges today bear no resemblance to Liberal Arts as understood by most colleges half a century ago. A few small schools and Hillsdale still retain Liberal Arts as what it should be.
LA today is misdirection to steer students away from culturally necessary knowledge, History, Philosophy, Literature (the greats, NOT Black Homosexual Women Writers of the nineteenth Century)
The art history and the theater majors put on their waitstaff aprons while the womyns studies major heads to the back to wash the dishes.
Between them they have over a quarter million dollars in student debt and these are the only jobs they are qualified for.
Deep envy boils in their hearts as they observe the smiling faces of the bartender (a few courses in Culinary Arts) and the owner (business AA from local community collage).
It just was not fair that some people got all the breaks.
How desparet is the Sierera Vista Herald to publish this garbage article?
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