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Your post makes me consider what other avenues to achieve the growth of intellectual souls and exposure to depth of thought could exist other than paid-for high

Your post makes me consider what other avenues to achieve the growth of intellectual souls and exposure to depth of thought could exist other than paid-for highly-structured institutions. I think people wax poetically about their own experiences without really considering the experiences of others. We've had free public libraries for centuries now. We've had a pretty open Internet for decades. There is literally nothing stopping a 20 year old human who lives in Western society from growing their intellectual soul through learning. For a lot of young kids, school is more like a prison than an intellectual garden. Yet a certain kind of thinking keeps these institutions mandated with the good intention of growing souls. My own opinion is that the current means is utterly failing at generating the desired ends. As the antiquated expression goes: You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

thomastjeffery 4y ago
What a university can provide is direction: an explicit decision about the order concepts are learned, and the perspective each concept is approached from. That can be really useful, especially when professors have enough free time to spend with individual students. It can also be really detrimental: every person has a unique education history that determines what order and perspectives are most optimal to their learning. The problem I see is that university is structure. The entire design is intended to be predetermined and inflexible. Edge cases are handled by bringing a student "back on track", assuming that track to be the best learning approach for every student. Most of the substance of "liberal arts" is exactly what a person needs to learn to progress out of this system. The irony of a successful university experience is that the more successful it is at teaching you, the sooner you can walk away and continue learning on your own.
- Izkata 4y ago
  > What a university can provide is direction: an explicit decision about the order concepts are learned, and the perspective each concept is approached from. Also just touching on "these things exist", converting unknown unknowns into known unknowns. That's the single biggest thing I got from my degree (having already been programming for years before), that nowadays I'm occasionally reminded of in a relevant context and can now dig deeper into.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
morelisp 4y ago
> We've had free public libraries for centuries now. Not even a century and a half, really. The first Carnegie library was opened in 1883, for example.
- zoogeny 4y ago
  I mean, pedantry aside this is such an easy question that even Google can find a result. [1] According to that link: The Darby Free Library in Darby, Pennsylvania, is “America’s oldest public library, in continuous service since 1743.” But really, without going too off topic, why would you even bother to try to correct a statement that is used for effect? Are you trying to suggest that 150 years vs "centuries" is a relevant distinction for a point made about college-aged knowledge seekers? Are you interested in showing you have the trivial fact on hand for when the first Carnegie library was formed? I'm open to being corrected but sometimes I just have to shake my head. Not only was your attempt to correct irrelevant, it is factually off base. 1. https://www.sturgislibrary.org/oldest-library/ https://www.sturgislibrary.org/oldest-library/
  - morelisp 4y ago
    I contend that "We have had free public libraries" is not a statement about the mere existence of a public library somewhere, but rather and especially in the context of this discussion a claim about how widely available resources for self-education are. And that's firmly the latter half of the 19th century, following efforts of people like Buckingham, Edwards, and Carnegie. And these are still not even close to universally accessible - there can be plenty stopping "a 20 year old human who lives in Western society" from accessing them. So, no, not pedantry - just asking that you genuinely consider the experiences of others before waxing poetic about some irrelevant historicism. Perhaps unguided education is today not as accessible for everyone as it was for you, for many reasons. (p.s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_Free_Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_Free_Library says it was a subscription library until 1898. Maybe also Google, which seems to be what you meant by "the open internet", is not that great a resource either?)
    - 4y ago
FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
I hear it used to be that there was a culture of serious working-class learning in England. Like, the barbers in the shop would pay some street-kid to read them books -- there was no TV -- while they cut hair. And the cabbie could get into a conversation about Kant or something with his passenger. Maybe just to mess with them, but still.
- revelio 4y ago
  The surprisingly intellectual cabbie is practically a trope. They get to talk to a lot of different people so can end up learning all sorts of things you wouldn't expect.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    They also have to be pretty smart and able to study to get past the knowledge, so cabbies in London are often actually pretty intellectual people.
- TorontoTheGood 4y ago
  [dead]
Dudeman112 4y ago
>There is literally nothing stopping a 20 year old human who lives in Western society from growing their intellectual soul through learning Except for humans in general being utterly shite at pursuing learning without guidance or an immediate goal, both in regards to the learning effectiveness (i.e. how much you learn per amount of time or effort), and having the discipline to keep the grind Most people are not, in fact, capable of just going to a library (or using the internet) every day and deeply learning a subject. They need an external force to actually keep grinding, even if they do want to do it by themselves
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Also learning is more than just reading a whole lot. Not every field or subject is software development where the tools you need to actually do are so easily accessible.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
Of course there's something stopping them from learning. It's called their own lack of understanding. Take virtually any topic about anything and do a search for it on the internet. If it's even remotely controversial, there will be thousands of pages screaming at each other in opposition to each other. Meanwhile, the academics who are doing actual research are sitting over there in the quiet corner, making an attempt to cut through the bullshit. It definitely gets easier to cut through the bullshit on your own once you've been around the block a few times, but that's as an actual adult with an actual education, not a child who doesn't know much about anything or a man-child who can be convinced to believe the truthiness of a topic. The internet is a problem because actual knowledge is often boring. There's no controversy in many fields amongst scholars because they've either exhausted the research on a topic or there's so much data supporting the general consensus that it's not likely to budge. People don't get excited about knowing the things that everyone should know. They get excited about knowing the hot, new thing regardless of whether it's even verifiable or valid.

thomastjeffery 4y ago

What a university can provide is direction: an explicit decision about the order concepts are learned, and the perspective each concept is approached from. That can be really useful, especially when professors have enough free time to spend with individual students. It can also be really detrimental: every person has a unique education history that determines what order and perspectives are most optimal to their learning. The problem I see is that university is structure. The entire design is intended to be predetermined and inflexible. Edge cases are handled by bringing a student "back on track", assuming that track to be the best learning approach for every student. Most of the substance of "liberal arts" is exactly what a person needs to learn to progress out of this system. The irony of a successful university experience is that the more successful it is at teaching you, the sooner you can walk away and continue learning on your own.

Izkata 4y ago
> What a university can provide is direction: an explicit decision about the order concepts are learned, and the perspective each concept is approached from. Also just touching on "these things exist", converting unknown unknowns into known unknowns. That's the single biggest thing I got from my degree (having already been programming for years before), that nowadays I'm occasionally reminded of in a relevant context and can now dig deeper into.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

morelisp 4y ago

> We've had free public libraries for centuries now. Not even a century and a half, really. The first Carnegie library was opened in 1883, for example.

zoogeny 4y ago
I mean, pedantry aside this is such an easy question that even Google can find a result. [1] According to that link: The Darby Free Library in Darby, Pennsylvania, is “America’s oldest public library, in continuous service since 1743.” But really, without going too off topic, why would you even bother to try to correct a statement that is used for effect? Are you trying to suggest that 150 years vs "centuries" is a relevant distinction for a point made about college-aged knowledge seekers? Are you interested in showing you have the trivial fact on hand for when the first Carnegie library was formed? I'm open to being corrected but sometimes I just have to shake my head. Not only was your attempt to correct irrelevant, it is factually off base. 1. https://www.sturgislibrary.org/oldest-library/ https://www.sturgislibrary.org/oldest-library/
- morelisp 4y ago
  I contend that "We have had free public libraries" is not a statement about the mere existence of a public library somewhere, but rather and especially in the context of this discussion a claim about how widely available resources for self-education are. And that's firmly the latter half of the 19th century, following efforts of people like Buckingham, Edwards, and Carnegie. And these are still not even close to universally accessible - there can be plenty stopping "a 20 year old human who lives in Western society" from accessing them. So, no, not pedantry - just asking that you genuinely consider the experiences of others before waxing poetic about some irrelevant historicism. Perhaps unguided education is today not as accessible for everyone as it was for you, for many reasons. (p.s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_Free_Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_Free_Library says it was a subscription library until 1898. Maybe also Google, which seems to be what you meant by "the open internet", is not that great a resource either?)
  - 4y ago

FooBarBizBazz 4y ago

I hear it used to be that there was a culture of serious working-class learning in England. Like, the barbers in the shop would pay some street-kid to read them books -- there was no TV -- while they cut hair. And the cabbie could get into a conversation about Kant or something with his passenger. Maybe just to mess with them, but still.

revelio 4y ago
The surprisingly intellectual cabbie is practically a trope. They get to talk to a lot of different people so can end up learning all sorts of things you wouldn't expect.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  They also have to be pretty smart and able to study to get past the knowledge, so cabbies in London are often actually pretty intellectual people.
TorontoTheGood 4y ago
[dead]

Dudeman112 4y ago

>There is literally nothing stopping a 20 year old human who lives in Western society from growing their intellectual soul through learning Except for humans in general being utterly shite at pursuing learning without guidance or an immediate goal, both in regards to the learning effectiveness (i.e. how much you learn per amount of time or effort), and having the discipline to keep the grind Most people are not, in fact, capable of just going to a library (or using the internet) every day and deeply learning a subject. They need an external force to actually keep grinding, even if they do want to do it by themselves

the_only_law 4y ago
Also learning is more than just reading a whole lot. Not every field or subject is software development where the tools you need to actually do are so easily accessible.

MisterBastahrd 4y ago

Of course there's something stopping them from learning. It's called their own lack of understanding. Take virtually any topic about anything and do a search for it on the internet. If it's even remotely controversial, there will be thousands of pages screaming at each other in opposition to each other. Meanwhile, the academics who are doing actual research are sitting over there in the quiet corner, making an attempt to cut through the bullshit. It definitely gets easier to cut through the bullshit on your own once you've been around the block a few times, but that's as an actual adult with an actual education, not a child who doesn't know much about anything or a man-child who can be convinced to believe the truthiness of a topic. The internet is a problem because actual knowledge is often boring. There's no controversy in many fields amongst scholars because they've either exhausted the research on a topic or there's so much data supporting the general consensus that it's not likely to budge. People don't get excited about knowing the things that everyone should know. They get excited about knowing the hot, new thing regardless of whether it's even verifiable or valid.