3 ms·

I like much of your writing Daniel, but I found this piece to be way off the mark. You're conflating political liberalism and liberal arts ... with disastrous

by _pius 15y ago

I like much of your writing Daniel, but I found this piece to be way off the mark. You're conflating political liberalism and liberal arts ... with disastrous results.

DanielBMarkham 15y ago
Thanks for the comment. Can you elaborate? Like most mistakes, the person making it is always the last to see it. My point was that the facade that a liberal arts education brings is many (not all) times associated with a set of behaviors: NPR, certain websites, ability to reason about economics, etc. My point is that to most people dropping 80K or more on an education, the only thing they're getting is a pre-canned set of attitudes and opinions, which is not supposed to be the goal of a liberal arts education at all. So yes, I am conflating them, but that's by design, not accident. Perhaps I should have stated my thesis clearer?
- rhizome 15y ago
  Perhaps I should have stated my thesis clearer? You could get a good jump on this by excising all of the sentences where you talk about what you're not doing.
  - DanielBMarkham 15y ago
    The problem here is that there is a larger political argument, which I acknowledge but really don't want to participate in, which goes something like college only exists to indoctrinate young liberals. As you can see from one of the other commenters on this article, people take it like that whether I mean it that way or not. I find this statement to be true, but an oversimplification, and it's not my point at all. I think what we're really seeing is a sociological phenomenon: teaching people to appear as if they've learned something instead of actually teaching them anything. I find this deeper point to be much more important. You might find the same thing at right-leaning universities -- perhaps. (Although there is an interesting inverse relationship on the right. Perhaps at right-leaning universities you would find students who pose as tolerant and worldly yet have no idea why they do so? It bears study.) Not an excuse for not doing a rewrite, but I wanted to point out that there is a fine line here, hence the "I'm not saying" text. (Still needs a rewrite. Your point is well made. Thank you.)

by _pius 15y ago

I like much of your writing Daniel, but I found this piece to be way off the mark. You're conflating political liberalism and liberal arts ... with disastrous results.

DanielBMarkham 15y ago

Thanks for the comment. Can you elaborate? Like most mistakes, the person making it is always the last to see it. My point was that the facade that a liberal arts education brings is many (not all) times associated with a set of behaviors: NPR, certain websites, ability to reason about economics, etc. My point is that to most people dropping 80K or more on an education, the only thing they're getting is a pre-canned set of attitudes and opinions, which is not supposed to be the goal of a liberal arts education at all. So yes, I am conflating them, but that's by design, not accident. Perhaps I should have stated my thesis clearer?

rhizome 15y ago
Perhaps I should have stated my thesis clearer? You could get a good jump on this by excising all of the sentences where you talk about what you're not doing.
- DanielBMarkham 15y ago
  The problem here is that there is a larger political argument, which I acknowledge but really don't want to participate in, which goes something like college only exists to indoctrinate young liberals. As you can see from one of the other commenters on this article, people take it like that whether I mean it that way or not. I find this statement to be true, but an oversimplification, and it's not my point at all. I think what we're really seeing is a sociological phenomenon: teaching people to appear as if they've learned something instead of actually teaching them anything. I find this deeper point to be much more important. You might find the same thing at right-leaning universities -- perhaps. (Although there is an interesting inverse relationship on the right. Perhaps at right-leaning universities you would find students who pose as tolerant and worldly yet have no idea why they do so? It bears study.) Not an excuse for not doing a rewrite, but I wanted to point out that there is a fine line here, hence the "I'm not saying" text. (Still needs a rewrite. Your point is well made. Thank you.)