Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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    Saturday, July 7. 2007

    A Therapeutic Rant about Higher Education

    I will be able to recover my usual sanguine approach to life once I dump this comment on ye olde blogge.

    How can it be possible to earn an undergraduate degree without having studied calculus, chemistry, economics, Plato, statistics, Classical History, Shakespeare, and physics? The sheer ignorance of supposedly "educated" (at great cost and parental sacrifice) Americans never ceases to amaze me.

    I know why this is, too: it is market-driven. Give those young brains-full-of-mush nice dorm rooms and eliminate standards for what a degree means, and the applications will flow in. People aren't stupid: they know they are just buying a piece of paper. And yes, I know that many serious kids do not approach college that way, but today I have had several encounters with recent grads of fancy schools which were beyond appalling.

    Some smart people, from outside the education establishment, ought to sit down and re-think the whole idea and purpose of "liberal arts education" in America.

    American college education is a scam on the same dimensions as the scam of investment management. And now I feel much better. Thanks for listening!

    Posted by The Barrister at 22:06 | Comments (17) | Trackback (1)

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    VDH on Modern Education
    A reader pointed out that VDH emitted an excellent rant on education which, while more articulate and detailed than mine of last week, led in the same direction. Plus he was a prof for a long time, and I never was. All that I did was to pay the bills.
    Weblog: Maggie's Farm
    Tracked: Jul 11, 12:48

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