Skills Not Schools: Lessons from the Renaissance

American Thinker.com ^ | May 15, 2021 | Brian Parson

[Kaslin]

Renaissance education is the foundation of the modern university system. It was based on the concept of the Universal Man or Uomo Universale. As mankind was the ultimate creation of God, it was man’s job to reach his maximum by continual self-improvement. This idea led to the notion that men should try to embrace all knowledge and develop their own capacities as fully as possible. To be a Renaissance man, one must develop his knowledge base as well as his craft. Perhaps no person embodies this concept more than Renaissance artist, scientist, and inventor Leonardo da Vinci. In Leonardo, a duality of the mind and hands is found. Out of this ideal, the university and the journeyman education are born. Yet, rather than striving for this unity of the mind and the body, the education system has juxtaposed these two disciplines in competition with one another.

The modern workforce demands a college degree. Visit any job recruitment board and you will find it a prerequisite for getting in front of a hiring manager. From the time that students are in secondary school, it is hammered into them that they are either on a college preparatory curriculum track or a vocational curriculum track. And there is a stigma associated with the vocational track as lesser-than, and for those who can’t muster the academic rigor of the college preparatory curriculum. Real or perceived, this association places a disproportionate amount of value on the college degree. This imbalance of value serves to both distort the job market, as well as to lessen the value of the college degree itself. As stated in another piece on meritocracy, it is rarity that gives something value. When college degrees become commonplace, they impede one’s ability to differentiate from all other job applicants.

[Keyhopper]

Now that there is a shortage of young people coming into the trades they’re begging us not to retire

[GailA]

My HS was a Tech/Vocational one, gave you the options to choose your path. And some free hrs to pick up extra courses over 4 yrs. We need HS’S that offer both. Open them up to both sexes. Gym remains the same separated.

[Gen.Blather]

I read a list of all the things a man should be able to do. It was long and included such diverse skills as plan an invasion and take care of a baby. I’ve noticed that young adults can’t do even a fraction of the items from that list. I am much less capable that my earliest coworkers who had been brought up in the forties and fifties. I had to overcome such advances in education as “sight reading” and “new math.”. Modern kids will have to overcome diversity and critical race training. The Renaissance man had been a dead ideal for a long time.

[VanShuyten]

Of course skilled labor in the Renaissance was controlled by the guild system and apprenticeships, the older version of SloJo’s wet dream of a Union-controlled labor force.

[Macoozie]

The problem here is that with all the off-shoring, those High Paying technical/mechanical jobs become almost politically seasonal.

A well established electrician, in a big-city suburb with lots of highly paid Goobermint or Financial job holders, can make a very good living indeed.

That same electrician is putting in ceiling fans to pay bills in a downturn.

In MAGA land, skills would rule the roost. That’s why Blue Collar, NON UNION, NON GOOBERMINT is all in for our PDJT.

Roll MAGA, roll!

[AbolishCSEU]

On other sites, I have heard horror stories about 21 year olds not knowing how to operate a microwave, stove, washer, dryer, toaster, etc. They’ve only eaten from the drive thru their entire lives. I blame the soccer moms and disney dads.

Flame suit ON.

[Colinsky]

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

—Robert A. Heinlein

[Lazamataz]

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

[Gen.Blather]

Hey! Many thanks. I had forgotten the origins.

[loveliberty2]

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278

"No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and their people were so demoralized and depraved as to be incapable of exercising a wholesome control. Their reformation then was to be taken up ab incunabulis. Their minds were to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and deterred from those of vice by the dread of punishments proportioned, indeed, but irremissible; in all cases, to follow truth as the only safe guide, and to eschew error, which bewilders us in one false consequence after another in endless succession. These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure of order and good government. . . ." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1819. ME 15:233

"An enlightened people, and an energetic public opinion... will control and enchain the aristocratic spirit of the government." --Thomas Jefferson to Chevalier de Ouis, 1814. ME 14:130

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820.

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782.

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787.

"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789.

"Whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, the people, if well informed, may be relied on to set them to rights." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789.

"Although all men are born free, and all nations might be so, yet too true it is, that slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant – they have been cheated; asleep – they have been surprised; divided – the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson?... The people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it." - James Madison

"A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people." - James Madison

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison

"To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea." - James Madison

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Kaslin. This will be the Digest ping for this week as well. The rest of the week's new topics are linked below.

• Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection 'justified white male superiority' [05/10/2021]
• England is on for its Coldest May since Record-Keeping Began back in 1659 (during the Maunder Minimum) [05/10/2021]
• Ancient Roman 'Gate to Hell' Killed Victims With Its Deadly Lake [05/10/2021]
• 'Living Fossil' Thought Extinct For 273 Million Years Found Thriving on Ocean Floor [05/10/2021]
• Archaeologists discover remains of 9 Neanderthals near Rome [05/09/2021]
• T. rex’s incredible biting force came from its stiff lower jaw [05/09/2021]
• Earliest evidence of humans changing ecosystems with fire [05/08/2021]
• Neanderthal remains unearthed in Italian cave [05/08/2021]
• “Alas! You propose men unfit for the charge of public affairs.” ~ The abdication of Diocletian and his fascinating dialogue with Galerius [[05/08/2021]

[oldvirginian]

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein”

[gleeaikin]

I have done or can do at least 12 of those things. I think my sons who are around age 50 could also count at least 12. I’ll have to ask about the grandchildren, 3 of whom are 17 or older.

[colorado tanker]

I grew up in a Midwestern state viewed as backward by the coastal elites. So, I was lucky enough to learn phonics and old math before the contagion hit my state. The year after I graduated they started to allow students to avoid the core grammar and literature courses and started offering the unserious electives that have since taken over.

[dsc]

I’ve done 17 of those 20 things.

The only one that might still lie before me is the last.

The one I miss the most is conning a ship.

[M.K. Borders]

I went to H.S. in a University town,

After seeing some of the cool things some of my friends were making in the Vocational Ed building. (Yes building. It was kept separated/blocked from the rest of the school.)
I expressed an interest to my “counselor” in taking a class or two “over there”.

Before I could get back to class, the Counselor had called my Father to inform him that I had decided to be a Juvenile Delinquent.