Georgia Tech's Propaganda War

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | December 5, 2005 | Orit T. Sklar

[quadrant]

I have no doubt that your husband is a patriotic and talented engineer, but an engineering degree does not necessarily prepare one to make decisions about sophisticated matters involving politics and history.
Lets not forget that many of the hijackers and terrorists had technical training.

Anyone who has been on the GA Tech campus recently knows that the Institute is not as it was: the student body is far more diverse, which in itself is not bad, and Tech has attempted to transform itself, somewhat hesitantly and surreptitiously, into a university instead of a school for engineers. I doubt this transformation has succeeded, but that is another matter.

GA Tech should stick to what it does very, very well: train students as engineers and leave politics to Georgia, Emory, Georgia State, or Mercer.

[aberaussie]

I have no doubt that your husband is a patriotic and talented engineer, but an engineering degree does not necessarily prepare one to make decisions about sophisticated matters involving politics and history.

GA Tech should stick to what it does very, very well: train students as engineers and leave politics to Georgia, Emory, Georgia State, or Mercer.

So, by getting an engineering degree a person cannot become well informed in the (much more sophisticated) areas of politics, government, foreign policy, etc.?

Don't tell my very well informed family members who are engineers or studying to be engineers and also manage to have a very good understanding of those areas.

I think people who are intelligent enough to make it through an engineering degree probably have enough brain power left over to contemplate politics.

[Hoodat]

"For other students like me who are in the College of Engineering, leftist intrusion into our education is not always apparent. "

This is true. As an engineering student, I had no idea this kind of crap was going on. I suppose all the non-engineers here have too much spare time on their hands for hatred.

I hardly know what goes on outside ES&T, but I would definitely find time to get involved to stop these lies. This campus is Bush Country, damnit!

(feel free to email me if you need some Freeper support. gtg469t)

[geezerwheezer]

Perhaps quandrant does not know that one of the USA's brightest foreign policy experts, and a erstwhile defense expert is a Georgia Tech grad. His name is Sam Nunn, and the school of international study at Ga. Tech is named after Mr. Nunn. He was, and continues to be, a person of integrity, honesty, and knows the "real politics" of the world and does more for our country than most folks know. Not bad for an engineer, huh?

[writmeister]

Shouldn't that be the ACC Champions since Georgia Tech is not in the SEC.

[quadrant]

I did not say that an engineer could not become well informed as to other subjects.
However, engineering - as is medicine, law, or accounting - is as much a method of thinking as it is the technical aspects of the subject matter.
Perhaps you remember the movie "The Paper Chase". The aged professor of tort law tells the first year student that law students teach themselves the law, but professors teach students how to think like a lawyers.
Or if you want a real life example, try this. When Adm Hyman Rickover was on active duty, so great was his influence over the Navy that - I'm told - the curriculum of the Naval Academy was 85% math, science, and engineering. More than one person observed that Naval officers were extremely well trained in technical matters but were sadly lacking in knowledge that could not be quantified.

Mere brain power is no substitute for wisdom. As Mortimer Adler observed about Albert Einstein: he was a brilliant theoretical physicist but his knowledge and opinions about politics were childlike.

I'm certain that your family members are well-informed about politics, but I'd bet they didn't learn about it
in a class on thermodynamics or aeronautics.

[attiladhun2]

Thomas Sowell has recently written a book dealing with anti-Semitism. He observed that Germany was not particularly anti-Semitic, and was a good deal less so than many other European nations at the time. His conclusion: if such a
thing could take place there, it could happen anywhere.

[Dark Skies]

You don't happen to know the name of Sowell's book on antisemitism do you. I am a devoted admirer and wouldn't mind giving myself a little stocking stuffer for Christmas.

[JeffAtlanta]

"I'ma Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech and a hell of an engineer" :-)

Me too! Glad to see I'm in good company here.

I believe that you can find 200 radical students at any school. Most of the student body was higher priority things to do.

[attiladhun2]

Actually, I'm not sure which book it was in. It was not an entire book, only a section within it. Just go to your local book store and go through the section dealing with current events (I believe). Don't ask the store clerk for help, many of them are ardent left-wingers and will tell you Sowell's books are not in stock or they will just shrug there shoulders. Go to the index of each of his books under "antisemitism," and the subsection "Germany." You should be able to find it. I read that section from a library book, so you might look there under his works.

[killjoy]

I rue the day

Rue the day? Who talks like that?

[geezerwheezer]

People who say what I wrote are usually well edumacated and real damn smartt 2!! :0 )

[killjoy]

People who say what I wrote are usually well edumacated and real damn smartt 2!! :0 )

No, you just watch too many 80s movies. :)