"Hi! Would you like me to interpret some 14th century Middle English poetry while you wait for your latte?"
Mwahahaha! I’m finally recognized as relevant!
High-tech has a SERIOUS problem with language/documentation. I’ve been highly-desirable in my industry since I graduated because I do what most IT people don’t: documentation.
My motto: “You can lead an engineer to documentation, but you can’t make him read it.”
As an engineering student I struggled mightily to get past the few “Introduction to the humanities” required courses in my curriculum. But I did learn one thing - and it sometimes seems that I must be the only one who remembers it now. And that is the etymology of the terms “Philosopher” and “sophistry.”
- sophist
- 1542, earlier sophister (c.1380), from L. sophista, sophistes, from Gk. sophistes, from sophizesthai "to become wise or learned," from sophos "wise, clever," of unknown origin. Gk. sophistes came to mean "one who gives intellectual instruction for pay," and, contrasted with "philosopher," it became a term of contempt. Ancient sophists were famous for their clever, specious arguments.
- philosopher
- O.E. philosophe, from L. philosophus, from Gk. philosophos "philosopher," lit. "lover of wisdom," from philos "loving" + sophos "wise, a sage."
"Pythagoras was the first who called himself philosophos, instead of sophos, 'wise man,' since this latter term was suggestive of immodesty." [Klein]
"Hi! Would you like me to interpret some 14th century Middle English poetry while you wait for your latte?"
On what planet? Scientists and engineers are eggheads. I was a history major in the 70s. It was a stupid major then, and it's even more stupid now. Learn a real skill, otherwise there is no hope for you.
Tell ya who could use some English majors....the MSM.
The writing is BRUTAL out there!
There are no English majors any more. Serious literature is deader than a doornail. My tiny clique in college that communicated in Yeats, Pound, and Eliot allusions is a distant memory.
How hard it is too major in English? When its you’re fist language. Arts and cratfts magors is pointless.
That's too bad. Without the passion that stirs the soul with great writing, it's easy to overlook the riches of a liberal arts education. When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad, he noted that Apple's DNA was not made up of technology alone. "It's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing," he said. Jobs was not alone in recognizing that the high-tech employers seek innovators who employ imagination, metaphor and storytelling, all growing from the rediscovery of great works of literature.
Ping for later
What you really want are people with a double major in Math and English. You want people who can write about something they actually understand.
On a more serious note than my previous post, one reason the humanities are in trouble is because they are overrun with Marxists. History and English departments mostly offer lots of courses on the Marxist-Feminist view of this, that, or the other thing. Genuine scholarship takes a back seat to Political Correctness. I’m very glad that I came through a department that wasn’t like that (over 20 years ago).
Just an observation :)
“It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing,”
http://www.johnspeedie.com/healy/bull.wav
Rachel Jeantel has a better chance of getting into a law school (as she’s planning to do) obtaining her masters degree in English than in Rocket Engineering!
This is, to a large extent, no longer offered. That's the actual problem. Instead the Humanities major sits through diatribes about race, class, and gender.
They need people that can read and write cursive.
I don’t need an English major, just somebody who can read and write English properly.