Replies

You were commenting on me saying — “It’s all mental gymnastics.”

You said — “No, not really! There are some people who benefit and get a good education, but any more, the curriculum is weak, and the product the universities are producing is poor.”

When I said “mental gymnastics”, I was contrasting the type of “work” that is done by the students there, to other “work” in the public.

Now, when you look at someone at “work” (in the public), you might be looking at one kind of laborer or another, perhaps. It could be any sort of the trades or whatever. It actually “looks busy”. You can see people “doing” things. It actually looks like “work”. And so it is. Even with office jobs, where you’re not hauling things around in a warehouse or building something or whatever — you can see people “working” in an office, too.

But, when you come to the university, what do you see most of the time. Well, when they’re “working” — they’re simply sitting around, maybe reading a book, perhaps writing something on paper, or perhaps just sitting contemplating or trying to figure something out. It all looks sort of what a person at “real work” would be doing when they are “on vacation”.

Most of the time, as a student, you’re either at a library, on a bench somewhere, at a computer terminal, sitting around in some public space, at a park, in your room, or just sitting around — when you’re “doing work”. Maybe there are times when you may be in a lab and perhaps that looks a bit more like “work” than the other. But really, most of the time it “looks like” nothing at all. It looks like “vacation”.

However, it’s far from vacation. It can be grueling to get through all that stuff, understand it, make sense of it, memorize it, categorize it and then be able to repeat it back again. And all this stuff is supposed to carry you through on some future job or occupation that you get, later on, when you get out of school.

So, that’s what I’m referring to as “mental gymnastics” — in that the “work” consists *mostly* of the totally unseen and totally in the mind. That’s where all the work is being done. That’s the “gymnastics”.

I remember when I first started college and was accepted at a particular university. I got a letter that asked me to come in and talk to some people about a special program that the university was trying. I have no idea how they got me, but apparently it was me and a few others. I never saw who else though.

They wanted me to participate in some sort of program where I would be the one to set my own curriculum. I would design and devise my own course work, and then I would follow through on it, too. I would be working closely with some kind of university advisor/counselor (have no idea what he was...). So, in essence — they were telling me I would pretty much devise my entire curriculum for the entire four years.

Well, let me tell you, I had no idea at all what to think about that one. I thought and thought about it, but I finally came to the conclusion that although it would be interesting to do and I could probably do it — it simply looked like *way too much work* for what I wanted to do. Thus, I turned them down and said that I would go with the standard curriculum and the standard course. Who knows what would have happened if I had designed my own entire college course load myself.

They did tell me that not very many were chosen to do this and it would be a marvelous opportunity. Maybe so, but I figured if I did that, they should be paying me to go to college.... :-)

You then said — “Many of the teachers are at best “think they know it alls” typically with no practical experience beyond reading books and sitting in front of computer screens, and the children (forgive me if I don’t call them adults because they are not) party all the time and have the delusion that they really know something when they get their degree.”

That may be for a certain part of them. And for them, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, if you’re a mathematics professor and teaching Calculus, what kind of “job” do you need? In fact, I don’t know of too many “jobs” that most of us work at, that would be using calculus. So, what is that professor supposed to do — in order to enhance his teaching abilities at caculus? Is he supposed to work at McDonalds, or perhaps Best Western, or maybe Kroger’s Grocery, or maybe learn how to weld, or perhaps learn how to build a house, or be an auto mechanic or what? It doesn’t make any sense for his job in teaching calculus to to any of that other stuff. It doesn’t relate.

And then, there are lots of other positions like that. At the same time, I’ve come across professors who have come from the work force and they teach also from their experience. For example, I also took some university level business courses at one time (later than my college days). Now one guy was teaching about the stock market. He had been a floor trader on the New York Stock Exchange for many years. He knew that subject inside and out, and he knew it first-hand. And he could talk from his experience, besides teach what was in the course curriculum. Another guy taught another business course. He was a successful business owner, having over a hundred employees and having retired from it (actually from several businesses) and was now teaching. So, his teaching benefitted from that.

Therefore a lot of the professors will not benefit from the workforce while others will. Calculus, geometry, computer programming, physics, astronomy, literature, and so on. It goes on and on. There may be some aspects of certain things that *may* — once in a while — be used in business, but some of those — there are no business aspect to it. They are merely “knowledge areas” where a certain business may from time to time use a piece of that knowledge — but that “knowledge area” is never a business unto itself.

Thus a university is an entirely different type of environment and it is not supposed to match the job market or what people are doing on jobs. If you want that — don’t go to a university — go to a trade school to learn a particular skill for a particular job — if that’s what you want. Universities are not trade schools.

And then — “I know I have offended you, but I have to call it the way I see it; American colleges are typically the home of over paid under achievers - both young and old,.”

No, I haven’t been offended, I just talk like I have been (although I hardly ever am offended). But, you just have to understand that universities are not trade schools and they are not for directly educating anyone about getting a job. They are simply places where a lot of knowledge is stored and passed on to another generation — and not job skills. Like I said, if it’s “job skills” and learning a trade, just go to a trade school and that will suffice. But, if it’s about learning a lot of those things about the scineces or mathematics or sociology or literature or many other areas of education, then the universities are it.

Finally — “But it’s odd; every once in a while you meet one of those oddities that you know could change the world if they don’t get crushed like a bug by some under achieving bean counter in government or industry.”

There are a lot of smart people in universities, that’s for sure. And there is a problem with a certain part of that culture in universities that breeds a liberal political philosophy, besides also breeding contempt for Biblical matters, like Jesus Christ and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They seem to think that they are “centers of self-sufficiency” in terms of those two things. Aside from that, on the pure knowledge basis, they do manage to convey that to the up and coming generation. If they could leave the philosophies of the two areas that I just mentioned, alone, then it would be much better.