Posted on 05/14/2012 3:20:56 AM PDT by bjorn14
NEW YORK— For years, Gac Filipaj mopped floors, cleaned toilets and took out the trash at Columbia University.
A refugee from war-torn Yugoslavia, he eked out a living at the Ivy League school. But Sunday was payback time: The 52-year-old janitor donned a cap and gown to graduate with a bachelor's degree in classics.
As a Columbia employee, his classes were free. His favorite subject was the Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca, he said during a break from his work at Lerner Hall, the student union building he cleans.
"I love Seneca's letters because they're written in the spirit in which I was educated in my family: not to look for fame and fortune, but to have a simple, honest, honorable life," he said.
His graduation with honors capped a dozen years of study, including readings in ancient Latin and Greek.
"This is a man with great pride, whether he's doing custodial work or academics," said Peter Awn, dean of Columbia's School of General Studies and professor of Islamic studies. "He is immensely humble and grateful, but he's one individual who makes his own future."
Filipaj, now an American citizen, was accepted at Columbia after learning English. His mother tongue is Albanian.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
What can you do with a major in Classics? Anything! The Classics major, like other majors in Columbia and Barnard colleges, is not designed to be a pre-professional training, and while some of our students go on to become professional Classicists, most use the education they receive to help them succeed in a diverse range of fields unconnected with their major. Like students who major in other subjects, Classics majors become doctors, farmers, lawyers, writers, executives, chefs, teachers, social workers, politicians, entrepreneurs, and anything else they choose.The importance of an undergraduate education is primarily to train a student’s mind to cope with the challenges it will meet later, and only secondarily to fill that mind with any particular set of facts. Since all major programs at Barnard and Columbia have been designed to provide similar benefits, we believe that students should choose their fields of study based on their interests. For many people, the undergraduate years offer the only chance they ever have to explore the subjects which really fascinate them, and we hope that every student at Columbia and Barnard will take full advantage of that opportunity.
Having said that, we believe that the particular training offered by the Classics program will be more useful than most others when it comes to success later in life. Classics is a difficult subject, and students who have mastered Latin and Greek will find other intellectual challenges much less daunting than people who have never learned anything quite so difficult. Classics graduates know how to absorb large quantities of information quickly, retain it, and use it rapidly. They know how to analyse and interpret, to pay attention to details without losing track of the big picture, and to relate a work or event to its context. They have the kind of thorough understanding of grammar that only a training in Latin and Greek can give, and that understanding is reflected in the high quality of their English writing. Having been taught for four years in small classes by professors who know them as individuals and want them to succeed, they have received an education tailored to their own needs and goals. They also have the ability to read some of the world’s greatest literature in its original form, and at times when the task of earning a living seems tedious and uninspiring, many Classics graduates are very glad to have access to the riches of ancient literature, as well as to the many later works which cannot be fully appreciated without a substantial background in the ancient world. In addition, on a crasser level, Classics degrees are highly respected by law schools, medical schools, and employers.
I also worked as a janitor during my college years....
Very good post, thank you.
My son will be starting next year at an Ivy League school, double-majoring in classics and engineering. The engineering is to earn a living. The classics is to be well-educated.
In looking at classics programs at various schools in the United States, it was welcome relief to see that many programs (including the one in which he is enrolled) have not been too influenced by political correctness. Yes, there is the obligatory elective course in “woman in the classical period,” but mostly, it appears to be good stuff.
As you say, lots of folks don't want to have to learn two foreign languages to pursue a degree, so that acts to filter out a lot OWS-types from this field. My son's own classics teachers from high school included a retired Marine officer who is currently finishing his Ph.D., a Ph.D. in eastern Christian studies in the early Church, and a devout, orthodox Catholic.
With six years of Latin and four years of Greek, many of his college application packages included essays on Greek and Latin topics, and he submitted one essay to one school entirely in Latin. Every one of the schools that accepted him made special note of their appreciation of his interest and relative expertise in the field, and his intention to double-major.
What many folks may not realize is that a classics degree is considered a "classic" (pun intended) undergraduate degree for those who wish to go to graduate school, especially those who wish to obtain professional degrees (including in business, law and medicine), or advanced degrees in other fields.
sitetest
——. I remember clearly graduating with my BSME and one of our professors told us that everything we had learned in four years wasn’t very valuable to us...but we had learned a way to approach and solve a problem.——
I wish someone told me that before I got my BSME. But I’ve come to the same conclusion.
Peter Kreeft, a preeminent advocate of Socratic logic and Catholic theology, has said that students who major in the hard sciences are better suited to studying classic philosophers, like Aristotle and Aquinas,because they believe in, and have the habit of searching for, objective truth.
If modern liberal arts teaches anything, it is skepticism.
But a truly classical education is worth its weight in gold.
The daughter of a life long friend graduated yesterday from St. John’s in Annapolis. Among the classics, she learned geometry from Euclid in Greek and calculus from Sir Isaac Newton.
To the point, I’m convinced she learned how to learn.
Priceless.
“Never thought I’d see achieving an Ivy League Classics degree being denigrated on FR.”
Too many insecure, nonproductve, jealous folks here.
I may be wrong here--I often am--but I do suspect that a majority of these Freepers who condemn certain students' majors--have never seen the inside of a college classroom.
I base this upon the complete ignorance of their posts. They believe that unless your major is in engineering or some such "practical" subject, you are worthless in the job market, notwithstanding the fact that a college education confers upon students the ability to think rationally, write well, read comprehensively, and the overall "polish" that one receives, all valuable skills and personal presentation that a good college education confers upon an individual.
All the attributes above explain why the well-to-do traders and other personnel on Wall Street may well have majored in English, British literature, etc.
No, they think of college as a form of trade school and unless the student studies something they can relate to outside of welding and plumbing (and it seems that "engineering" is the "other" that they know of that's taught in college), it's no damn good.
Marking
I don’t have scorn for the man. I love to see people improve themselves.
I just believe if you are going to college and study you need to study something that will help you in making a living.
I don’t feel the Classics will do that.
It isn’t something I would choose to help me earn a good living.Maybe there IS a big demand in this country for people with a Bachelors degree in the Classics. If so good for him.
You made my point... thanks..
Exactly. I’m glad he got a degree. But since his classes were FREE it might have been a better idea to get a degree in something that would get him a better job than being a janitor. Now he will be a janitor with a degree in a useless subject.
No, but if you only want to educate yourself for the sake of learning things you can do that for free at the public library. I ain’t never been to no fancy school and I ain’t got no degree but I am always reading and learning new things.
And when I research and learn on my own I can get my info from many sources and decide for myself what I think the right answer is instead of being indoctrinated by some liberal professor.
You are assuming a scholarship. As an employee, free tuition is a taxable benefit. I work at a college and have paid the taxes.
Smart advice........It's better to be happy and poor than rich and miserable......
I started to post a story of a guy in the manufacturing plant I used to work for.
To make a long story short, the guy was a machine repairman, (Skilled tradesman) who was brilliant in his job, he could fix any of the stamping presses and any associated equipment in the plant.
Because of his expertise, they promoted him to supervision. Within 6 months he requested to go back to his old job. He didn't have supervisory skills and he couldn't complete the end of day maintenance reports or the weeklys.....he never completed high school and thus had both reading and writing problems.
I don't know if you're familiar with the songs of Harry Chapin, but this gentleman reminds me of the song "Mr. Tanner"..........
Correct you are! The rules seem to have changed since the last time I took a free course. Here’s the IRS info:
Education Below the Graduate Level
If you receive a tuition reduction for education below the graduate level (including primary, secondary, or high school), it is a qualified tuition reduction, and therefore tax free, only if your relationship to the educational institution providing the benefit is described below.
You are an employee of the eligible educational institution.
You were an employee of the eligible educational institution, but you retired or left on disability.
You are a widow or widower of an individual who died while an employee of the eligible educational institution or who retired or left on disability.
You are the dependent child or spouse of an individual described in (1) through (3), above.
Agreed, but I'd qualify that. Some of the most anti-intellectual people I know are conservatives who got the required degrees for their fields, bitterly hated their liberal professors, became successful in their fields not because of what they learned in college but because their own abilities or their self-study enabled them to use the “certification” given by their degree, and have now become vehement haters of academia because they think it's worthless, not having seen what liberal arts education is supposed to be.
Our Founding Fathers were highly, highly educated men. We are conservatives who advocate educating “the masses” to become educated citizens capable of casting intelligent votes. That is key to the American experiment. We are not Communists who extol the virtues of a dumbed-down proletariat or European elitists who think the unwashed masses should be placated with some freebies when their complaints can no longer be ignored.
Conservatives think — or at least we should. If we aren't, there's a problem.
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