Disqus - Friends of rodmitch

Re: The Stupak Amendment

mills — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:00:18 -0000

That's a great point about referendums, but I'm not yet sold on democracy totally anyway. People in aggregate are very difficult.

Re: The Stupak Amendment

mills — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:59:38 -0000

Getting yelled at is horrible; it's why I never say what I believe. That's also because I don't believe in anything (cue Jeffrey Lebowski: "Looks exhausting."). Your analysis is totally correct, I think, but will be hard for the noisemakers of the party to accept without ire.

Democracy! Too messy! We're actually very lucky it's messy, I think.

Re: mills baker - My parents just returned from Spain, and my father...

mills — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:26:19 -0000

What a wonderful quote!

Re: What Good Is a College Education?

mills — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:29:01 -0000

"...as though they would become little more than vocational programs. Also, how would this be implemented beyond the obvious sectors where professional licensing is already required?"

Hey, Bunnynico! Those are both good points; I imagine I do Murray a disservice in trying to answer them. I think the first issue is that, in Murray's view, a democratic acceptance of what most people seem to want, based on the popular majors these days, the rates of graduation, and so on, requires that we admit it: vocational programs are preferred by many, so long as they're not stigmatized.

The many arguments to be made in support of a liberal or humanities-oriented education, principally that it better-prepares people for citizenship and human thoughtfulness and awareness, must be contextualized: not everyone wants that, or cares, and we ought not decide for them what is best. In the not-too-distant past, when education was less common, everyone had a vocational education: apprenticeships, for example.

This does not forbid general courses, but four years is a long time. I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned our institutions motive for financial expansion. It is in no college's interests to abbreviate coursework, focus it on what is requires, and get students out.

The second element is beyond me, personally. I mean: I don't know! Murray perhaps has some idea!

Last, I want to note this:

As a result, they often fail to develop the critical thinking, communication skills and logic that are often byproducts of a traditional BA program (for students who participate), yet they're important skills for virtually every profession. I have two siblings who attended schools for design and architecture, who were appalled by this lack in their curriculum.

I have observed recently that, as far as I can tell, most of the skills you mention are not byproducts of the traditional BA program but are, in fact, correlated with its pursuit; that is, they are qualities of mind and focus that come mostly from upbringing, early education, or -if we believe S. Pinker- genetics. However we slice it, it seems to me the case that very few people change dramatically or even substantially in the course of the BA.

Note that your siblings went to schools without coursework designed to increase those skills and were appalled; how were they appalled? Because they already knew what ought to be developed; they already had such skills.

I don't believe my mind has changed very much since high school. Feel free to make whatever jokes occur at once! But it is the case, then, that Bard -for its absurd cost- was a drug vacation in which I barely attenuated what I already had.

Re: What Good Is a College Education?

mills — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:18:51 -0000

Hey Squashed! Let me try and answer those questions. You ask about the 42%; the majority, the DOE concluded, were not academically able to keep up. As I mentioned in my post, I wouldn't have understood this objection ten years ago, but in the past decade living and working among poorer people I've met people who haven't heard of "Vietnam," believed in unicorns, and were almost universally creationists. I don't mean to slander them; they are ignorant to a degree I wouldn't have thought possible because of their schools and their milieus, and they aren't really worse off for it.

But they are pressured to go to LSU, Southern, and the community colleges where they will not be sufficiently literate or leaned to pass, a fact that will only become clear to them after they've wasted a lot of money; then they will be "college-drop-outs." My company requires a college degree for management positions; almost none of our entry-level people have them. Think about what that means for their careers!

I live among law students and lawyers, and your figure seems right (or even conservative) to me. But perhaps you'd be surprised at how many LSU students are exactly the same way in undergrad: they don't give a damn about any of it, and just want to party and survive the courses. I cannot tell you the malaise and indifference I've seen, and it's better at LSU than at Southern!

It is well and good for us to say that "Electives, in theory, should encourage people to explore areas they hadn't thought they were interested in." But electives aren't elective; it is one of the great misnomers of academic life. And the people forced to take them, by and large, aren't exploring or growing; they are surviving, with irritation, until they can get out.

You and I and Ross and I might not like this, but part of the problem is that the BA doesn't respect the abilities or interests of many Americans; it is a one-size-fits all standard that is in the interests of universities and people like us, but not in the interests of those who want to start earning money and living their lives but cannot without this arbitrary and unfair goal for the pursuit of which they are unprepared.

Hey, Ross! I don't know about Murray's proposal, which I am sure he can defend better than I. "The barrier is important, and I feel that even if a student decides to sleepwalk his way through an elective, it's still necessary."

What is the barrier keeping out? And what is it letting in? And what connection does its sifting have with the capacities of our workforce, the interests of our thinkers, and the creation of an underclass carrying heavy loan debt, with no degree and thus few job prospects? That is the question.

I know IT certifications are problematic; I think that mostly has to do with the industry and how product-driven they tend to be. The next time you want an accountant, though, you'll probably not regard the CPA as nonsense. For most jobs where people have to know how to do something, there is already a certification program: it's called graduate school. Lawyers and doctors need separate schooling. Pilots don't get on the job-training after studying Marketing and waiting for the weekend football games. So in fields where specific knowledge matters, we require certification; there's nothing new in that.

Re: What Good Is a College Education?

mills — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:32:36 -0000

But you and Squashed have demolished a straw man! Neither Murray nor Brissenden nor I -all, it's worth noting, academic or intellectually-inclined people- said anything against liberal education, literary studies, analytical abilities, the humanities, philosophy, or anything of the sort. To me personally, there is no finer, more useful education than that offered by the liberal arts, by what learns from novels, from the humanities, etc. I've made that point many times.

But that's not what 80% of university students encounter, and you know it: here in Louisiana, most students labor in curricula that have no depth or intensity at all; they don't read the novels assigned; they muddle through the history taught by disengaged professors; they take liberals arts as electives only because their degree in "business" or "marketing" requires it; and they struggle through it all while racking up huge bills.

Murray cites a DOE study that determined that 42% of those entering college do not obtain a degree. You and Squashed and I have the luxury of waxing about how we've earned "critical thinking skills" and so on, but for the poorer -and I mean the really poor- who did not enter college knowing what, say, the Reformation was or the Theory of Relativity -and there are many such people, more than most know- this is nonsense. They learn no such things by trying, and failing, to understand Faulkner.

This is not about vocational studies versus the liberal humanist tradition. It isn't an indictment of idle scholarship or thought for its own sake. It is a condemnation of one thing: the standard of the BA as the "ticket to the dance" in American society. You can't get interviews without one, yet many students cannot earn one and most jobs do not actually require one.

Murray, for what it's worth, proposes an alternative: certifications. No company hires a senior accountant based on his fucking major! He must be a CPA. This tests what he needs to know to do his job. Certifications -without the dispiriting "electives" cruft that please all us clever folk without doing those who want to be managers and marketers and designers and so on any demonstrable good at all while costing them thousands and often flunking them out- can be earned in just a couple of years, and will not be what our universities now are:

Rooms in which 10% of students give a fuck, the rest don't and are just waiting for the "degree" so they can start making money, and almost half cannot graduate and will be stigmatized forever.

Re: The Trunk

mills — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:45:41 -0000

If you ban me, I will personally make American a socialist dictatorship of the proletarian vanguard.

Re: The Trunk

mills — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:44:50 -0000

I mean, really. Rent Gigantic Shop of Rick Moranis' Horror, which has Steve McQueen as a killer anesthesiologist in it. Check that plant out!

Re: The Trunk

mills — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:43:41 -0000

Saturday mornings are my "off the wagon" time. But that's not what this is about.

Re: my socks don't fit

hilker — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:34:19 -0000

it deserves the full effect, i think. nbsatob doesn't have the same oomph.

however, maybe i should actually use a theme that supports tags...

Re: mills baker - Ills Manor, Est. 2008 (larger) I got many nice...

mills — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:29:25 -0000

All the comments disappeared again?! Amazing! Giannii said he's working on it. If they can resolve this soon I'm just going to have to delete comments, I guess.

Re: Greg Brown, [Malcolm] Gladwell promised readers mastery of the...

mills — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:21:14 -0000

I disagree! Writing her paragraph, or saying he is a "tool of the man," makes all sorts of indefensible assumptions that exemplify the foggy thinking we ostensibly bemoan: that there is a "man," that those who do not agree with our political concerns are his "tools," that journalism must advocate social change and not stand as a bulwark against, say, classist hysteria, etc. etc. Incidentally, I think he is partly disliked by her ilk for his equivocation, which the passionately certain always detest.

In any event, it speaks in an ad hominem way to the motivations behind Gladwell's work, about which she (and you and I) know effectively nothing.

If there are logical flaws, show them (she does, I think). But don't then say and these flaws are so absurd they could only come from the willing lackey of the evil plutocrats! Hasn't it occurred to her that perhaps he's just wrong?

I am uncomfortable with reducing to their political consequences (as we imagine them: articles leading to inaction! Articles affecting the polity!) the works of thinkers whom we dislike. It's a way of making error a moral issue, critical disagreement some sort of emotionally-charged drama.

Re: My sentiments exactly, Hahaha! Click for full picture. I’m always a fan...

davereed — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:16:01 -0000

Hahaha Awesome!

Re: Brer Fly

mills — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:49:02 -0000

Oh, and obviously this is great and she is great and you guys are great. Medals for you all.

Re: mills baker - Neither a pathology nor an index of moral default,...

mills — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:19:21 -0000

I know you're partly joking, but I believe your last paragraph in particular is right on. My hope with these posts on stupidity -or lack of wisdom, or whatever it is: the propensity for error, the making of mistakes that aren't unpreventable- is to problematize both notions: (1) that stupidity is a condition of "moral default" and (2) that intelligence is moral.

The latter I regard as particularly absurd. I don't see how anyone who knows anything about the 20th century -that century alone, but many others too!- can dispute that intelligence and knowledge are as easily put to work in service of brutal idiocy as stupidity and ignorance.

Re: mills baker - Neither a pathology nor an index of moral default,...

mills — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:59:37 -0000

Her contention would be that, very often, "errors in judgment" are reflective of stupidity; for example: would Hitlerian or Nazi racial theories be "errors in judgment" or stupidity? Well, both! There were errors, yes; there was also enormous stupidity. Errors are often engendered by stupidity.

And it was stupid of the Germans to believe such nonsensical tripe, yes? And it was stupid of Americans to believe that all Japanese are loyal to Imperial Japan and to inter them, yes? Or was it an "error in judgement"? The same questions can be asked of Vietnam or Iraq or anything else.

Believing in reason means believing that errors are a kind of stupidity; properly reasoned through, a false proposition is exposed as false. So there is a connection between errors in judgement and stupidity.

I agree with you: intelligent people are often worse! But then we must ask (let's say, of Lenin): if Lenin had been smart, would he not have acted differently? Is it not the case that he was not smart but clever in some idiotic way? Learned in some irrelevant way? Schooled in a false way?

Others -smarter men- avoided his mistakes, after all. But the link between stupidity and error is strong!

Re: mills baker - Ills Manor, Est. 2008 (larger) I got many nice...

mills — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:22:14 -0000

I don't even say anything anymore; it's like living with Norman Bates, you know? The delicacy of the situation -psychologically- is such that I don't want to disturb it with further interrogation. (And never mention it to Raynor!).

Re: mills baker - Neither a pathology nor an index of moral default,...

mills — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:20:59 -0000

Thank you! Did you see that the wonderful Wolf and Fox also studied under Ronell? I am amazed that you both survived! My efforts to understand The Telephone Book were pitiful and useless! Have you ever been -speaking of this subject- too stupid to understand something?

The temptation is to say it is too arcane, not interesting to you, opaquely expressed (deliberately!), or nonsense. I cannot give in to that temptation anymore, however; it's happened too often. I read things which require knowledge I don't have, focus I cannot muster, attention I can't pay, memory I lack, cleverness I'm without, mental agility I don't possess, and I run out of ways to avoid saying "I'm not smart enough!"

Usually trying helps, but not always. It's an interesting thing to not understand things others do (see much Benjamin); it it useful to know your mind's limits and accept them, just as one must learn the limits of one's body.

Re: mills baker - Ills Manor, Est. 2008 (larger) I got many nice...

mills — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:42:12 -0000

The mind reels. I demand photographs!

Re: mills baker - Ills Manor, Est. 2008 (larger) I got many nice...

mills — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:41:49 -0000

"America's favorite couple"? That will make morning time more awkward in Ills Manor!

Lacey, it was super-mega-awesome! I cannot thank you enough! So excellent!

Re: mills baker - If the rule you followed brought you to this, of...

mills — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:40:30 -0000

Right! It is a very powerful posing of one of the means for testing rules. One might also add that in addition to control, rules can provide consolation for when one (inevitably) loses control or cannot assert control. Imagine those Buddhist monks who self-immolated during the Vietnam War: they were not only not afraid of death, they weren't afraid of maximum physical pain.

What would Chigurh say to them? "If, brough to this, the rule you followed allowed you to face me without fear or anguish, it was a good rule"?

Re: mills baker - If the rule you followed brought you to this, of...

mills — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:37:21 -0000

I think it's pertinent mainly because it is posed regularly by people arguing about (1) atheism or skepticism vs. religiosity and (2) socially- or politically-engaged religiosity vs. what might be called traditions of withdrawal. Many seem to have implicit, unexamined beliefs about whether one should attempt to make peace with (and thereby overcome) the world, with its vicissitudes, or whether to do so is cowardly and retards social progress. I think there are many points one can make on all sides.

I completely agree with your second paragraph. I wonder if one point about Chigurh's character is that his nihilistic response to the impossibility of a unitary, holistic "rule" that can delivery us from evil is a kind of archetypal response to the messiness of reality. E.g., we might believe in some religion until the moment tragedy befalls us; we followed the rule, it led us to this, what's the point? Etc.

Re: Crazy Nut Job - My fiancée learned to tie a bowline tonight. If...

hilker — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:31:51 -0000

mittens while climbing? not if you want to live. for one, it's not real safe. we'll also mock you to death if you try it.

a pre-wedding wedding toast: "May your knot-tying expertise be best at work as you tie *the* knot. Here here!"

Re: mills baker - Fig. 1. Astute viewers will note that ordinarily,...

mills — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:57:38 -0000

Giannii just Tweeted to let me know I'm on his list for today; I'll keep you posted. I assure you: no one is sicker about it than I am. I keep losing the comments that matter most: the nice thoughts, the expressions of sympathy, etc.

Re: mills baker - Fig. 1. Astute viewers will note that ordinarily,...

mills — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:49:43 -0000

I'm going to have to remove Disqus. Giannii and Daniel refuse to help with this problem, which has now persisted for months. Sometimes they write back and then never look into the issue.