3 ms·

If this is news to you, dear HN reader, then you really haven't been paying attention to the discourse surrounding education in the last 30 years of the United

by pnathan 11y ago

If this is news to you, dear HN reader, then you really haven't been paying attention to the discourse surrounding education in the last 30 years of the United States. I believe the big work to hit the popular mind initially was Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, which essentially says the same thing, but the disease was slightly less advanced then. As an interesting linguistic note: the liberal arts were conceived of as the arts for free men; rather then the techincal things - technicalities - which were to be done by slaves. A careful reading of michaelochurch's polemics should suggest to you that this has not changed in substance in the general case. No computer science will save you from someone who can out-rhetoric you.

mooreds 11y ago
Loved the reference to 'Gorgias', which, incidentally, I read in my college days at a liberal arts school. Rhetoric isn't the path to truth, but it can sure help with power. Here it is online: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html Edit: added link to 'Gorgias'.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Finished reading. The text is cut short on this page, but even after reading what is there, I am left amazed. A few points (mind you, I haven't read anything from the classic besides what they managed to force me to ingest in school, which as you can imagine is not much): - Though I found the discussion overtly long (yay my non-existent attention span), it's surprisingly easy to read; I expected ancient Greek texts to be much more difficult in terms of language and style. - All the whining I see and do about manipulators, liars, salesmen and contemporary advertising industry, Plato has described thousands of years ago. It's like, fuck, why do I bother rediscovering and repeating what ancient philosophers knew all along, and why the society doesn't seem to be learning from those lessons? - I should have learned this already, but I'm still amazed every time I read an old text describing exactly the same problems we have in the contemporary world. Here's me thinking they are unique to our age, but apparently King Solomon is right, and there truly is nothing new under the Sun, at least in human relations - we keep repeating the same patterns, generation after generation. - I guess I'm starting to appreciate the stated reasons for classic education. Thank you for linking to the text.
  - Luc 11y ago
    There's another link on that page that has the full text (a fair bit is missing in the web version): http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.1b.txt http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.1b.txt
  - mooreds 11y ago
    Glad it was so helpful. Sorry about that shortened text.
aswanson 11y ago
Amen. I am in the process of educating myself in the classic accomplishments in the humanities after realizing as much.
Domenic_S 11y ago
> the discourse surrounding education in the last 30 years of the United States. Not that you're wrong, but TFA is talking about Canada: > I wish to speak about third- and fourth-tier Canadian schools that are primarily undergraduate institutions. which I find interesting.
- pnathan 11y ago
  Yes, but the US is widely regarded as a, if not the?, leader in higher education. So if you're keen on understanding the intellectual currents of education in your piece of the world, it's wise to keep abreast of the currents in the US: they will show up in your fine part of the world in time. I'd guess in these days, the time between 'major American idea' and 'hits the rest of the world' is under a year, if not under a month. I am not sure how distant the third and fourth tier Canadian schools are from the US paradigm, or how independent they feel. I'd guess they follow the lead of American universities pretty closely. I am super comfortable saying that many UK academics have been lamenting the same thing for the past decade and more; I used to belong to an online academic community with many UK members (also in the Classics) in the 2004-2008 timeframe where the song was being sung with a different verse (but same chorus). If the UK and the US are singing a song; Canada, Australia, and the rest of the English speaking world aren't going to be far behind. Particularly in the Anglophone world (I can't speak to the others, I am sorry), ideas are shared very fast, and often the US is granted leadership, whether it should be or not. Having been deeply involved in the US university system, I would regard a great deal of the modern innovations in the universities to be a tremendous waste of non-intellectual effort, in many cases for the purposes of boosting the support staff (Gotta embiggen the headcount kingdom) or for comforting the tender feelings of immature children. I don't mean to lay all the blame on the universities; and none of the blame should lay on the student's shoulders; those who are older and have the reins of power have driven the cart to the ditch. That the load of the cart fell in is not the fault of the load, but the driver. A great deal of blame sits squarely on the United States electorate's shoulders; a non-trivial portion sits on the k-12 policymaker's shoulders; and the rest of it can be shuffled off to the flow of history, parents, the media, and the usual human condition.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
Bloom's dread was of the Rolling Stones; now elder statesmen - Sir Mick Jagger, once arrested for soft drugs. This reeks of his attempting to separate culture into low and high, and no, he shouldn't have to explain himself. Oh really? Computer science has a long border with linguistics. Somewhere on the other side of that border is rhetoric - the Liberal Art - so computer science is a roundabout way there. This completely ignores the two most significant intellectual innovations - that of Claude Shannon, which revolutionized physics itself and of Godel, who diagonalized logic itself ( at least the Peano calculus ). These represent towering intellectual achievements unlike any other in history. Trying to map classical society onto modern society is an exercise in futility. Classicals were bloody, venal, voracious and cruel. Our engineers, whether they're called that or not, made the difference. We live after the Scots Enlightenment, in which Man was freed from a destiny as a draft animal with thumbs. As an exposition of the phenomenon in the article, I much prefer "I Am Charlotte Simmons."

by pnathan 11y ago

mooreds 11y ago

Loved the reference to 'Gorgias', which, incidentally, I read in my college days at a liberal arts school. Rhetoric isn't the path to truth, but it can sure help with power. Here it is online: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html Edit: added link to 'Gorgias'.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Finished reading. The text is cut short on this page, but even after reading what is there, I am left amazed. A few points (mind you, I haven't read anything from the classic besides what they managed to force me to ingest in school, which as you can imagine is not much): - Though I found the discussion overtly long (yay my non-existent attention span), it's surprisingly easy to read; I expected ancient Greek texts to be much more difficult in terms of language and style. - All the whining I see and do about manipulators, liars, salesmen and contemporary advertising industry, Plato has described thousands of years ago. It's like, fuck, why do I bother rediscovering and repeating what ancient philosophers knew all along, and why the society doesn't seem to be learning from those lessons? - I should have learned this already, but I'm still amazed every time I read an old text describing exactly the same problems we have in the contemporary world. Here's me thinking they are unique to our age, but apparently King Solomon is right, and there truly is nothing new under the Sun, at least in human relations - we keep repeating the same patterns, generation after generation. - I guess I'm starting to appreciate the stated reasons for classic education. Thank you for linking to the text.
- Luc 11y ago
  There's another link on that page that has the full text (a fair bit is missing in the web version): http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.1b.txt http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.1b.txt
- mooreds 11y ago
  Glad it was so helpful. Sorry about that shortened text.

aswanson 11y ago

Amen. I am in the process of educating myself in the classic accomplishments in the humanities after realizing as much.

Domenic_S 11y ago

> the discourse surrounding education in the last 30 years of the United States. Not that you're wrong, but TFA is talking about Canada: > I wish to speak about third- and fourth-tier Canadian schools that are primarily undergraduate institutions. which I find interesting.

pnathan 11y ago
Yes, but the US is widely regarded as a, if not the?, leader in higher education. So if you're keen on understanding the intellectual currents of education in your piece of the world, it's wise to keep abreast of the currents in the US: they will show up in your fine part of the world in time. I'd guess in these days, the time between 'major American idea' and 'hits the rest of the world' is under a year, if not under a month. I am not sure how distant the third and fourth tier Canadian schools are from the US paradigm, or how independent they feel. I'd guess they follow the lead of American universities pretty closely. I am super comfortable saying that many UK academics have been lamenting the same thing for the past decade and more; I used to belong to an online academic community with many UK members (also in the Classics) in the 2004-2008 timeframe where the song was being sung with a different verse (but same chorus). If the UK and the US are singing a song; Canada, Australia, and the rest of the English speaking world aren't going to be far behind. Particularly in the Anglophone world (I can't speak to the others, I am sorry), ideas are shared very fast, and often the US is granted leadership, whether it should be or not. Having been deeply involved in the US university system, I would regard a great deal of the modern innovations in the universities to be a tremendous waste of non-intellectual effort, in many cases for the purposes of boosting the support staff (Gotta embiggen the headcount kingdom) or for comforting the tender feelings of immature children. I don't mean to lay all the blame on the universities; and none of the blame should lay on the student's shoulders; those who are older and have the reins of power have driven the cart to the ditch. That the load of the cart fell in is not the fault of the load, but the driver. A great deal of blame sits squarely on the United States electorate's shoulders; a non-trivial portion sits on the k-12 policymaker's shoulders; and the rest of it can be shuffled off to the flow of history, parents, the media, and the usual human condition.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

Bloom's dread was of the Rolling Stones; now elder statesmen - Sir Mick Jagger, once arrested for soft drugs. This reeks of his attempting to separate culture into low and high, and no, he shouldn't have to explain himself. Oh really? Computer science has a long border with linguistics. Somewhere on the other side of that border is rhetoric - the Liberal Art - so computer science is a roundabout way there. This completely ignores the two most significant intellectual innovations - that of Claude Shannon, which revolutionized physics itself and of Godel, who diagonalized logic itself ( at least the Peano calculus ). These represent towering intellectual achievements unlike any other in history. Trying to map classical society onto modern society is an exercise in futility. Classicals were bloody, venal, voracious and cruel. Our engineers, whether they're called that or not, made the difference. We live after the Scots Enlightenment, in which Man was freed from a destiny as a draft animal with thumbs. As an exposition of the phenomenon in the article, I much prefer "I Am Charlotte Simmons."