Politics and university study

[Pies4shaw]

[Wokko]

The routine horror of the voluntary exchange of goods and services. How horrific.

No system has pulled more people out of poverty, no system has generated levels of wealth and prosperity like unfettered capitalism. No other system would allow the self indulgence of the progressive left; they'd all be working in factories or farms under the system they want to force on us. People should be able to do whatever they want, even take courses in feminist interpretive pottery, but they shouldn't expect everyone else to pay for it.

[Mugwump]

^ yes, the “horrors” of capitalism have built every prosperous society on the planet. While every economic system bears the marks of human frailty, and capitalism needs a regulatory framework and solid political institutions to work anywhere near its best, few issues have been resolved as decisively by history as the superiority of regulated capitalism over the homicidal, immiserating, imprisonng horrors of Communism.

[David]

[thesoretoothsayer]

[Pies4shaw]

The "system" is good for people like me. It's no bad thing to acknowledge that it's very, very bad for lots of other people.

There are always winners and losers in what passes for a "free market". I would rather people went looking for meaning and purpose at my expense than for a car to jack or a break and enter to commit.

[Mugwump]

[stui magpie]

Interesting how this thread twists.

There's little doubt that humanities subjects have a left wing bias both in the lecturers and the students, in general. The subject matter leans that way.

What would be the political bias of the science based subjects? Chemistry, physics, maths, engineering, IT, medical etc. Is there a conclusion to be drawn there, as these subjects generally attract the most intelligent students.

Regardless of political leanings, I stand by my comments that basically started this thread. A university these days is a glorified tech college with degrees for sale, which people pay for, to get a job and the curriculum are employment specific.

You want to be a Nurse, you do a nursing degree. Ditto for an engineer, journalist etc. Is it better than the old ideal of learning on the job and topping up with study as needed? I'm unconvinced, but i am sure that doing an arts degree doesn't confer some magic powers on the person. They are just as smart of dumb as they were when they started it, they just hopefully have learned enough stuff to justify 4 years at school

[Mugwump]

^ Intersting post, Stui, but I disagree with at least two things.

I don’t agree that science and maths generally attract the more intelligent students. I think science and maths at a high level benefits from a certain kind of intellect, but I’ve seen plenty of science and maths grads who are good with (say) differential equations but useless at structuring an argument, which is arguably just as important in organizational life. Perhaps one difference is that science types can reach across to the subject matter of the Arts with relative ease, compared to the reverse : if you don’t know maths, you’re not going to freelance at it easily. I really think the problem with the arts often lies in the assumptions that underpin the teaching of them. In maths, for instance, there is an agreed truth and your job is to find it. In the arts, the assumption seems to be that whatever the agreed truth is, it’s your job to disagree with it. And that’s great if you’re really bright, but if you’re not, then it’s just painful.

That brings me to my second point of disagreement, which is that I don’t believe the arts subjects lean Left. I think that’s really a phenomenon of the youth culture and post-Vietnam ethos that took over our society years ago. It’s just as possible to write outstanding history from a conservative (or even better, disinterested) point of view. And literature does not have to be taught with a feminist or Marxist or postmodern (ie utterly relativist) slant. It is part of the genius of all ideological systems that they become so ingrown that no one notices that they are a choice.

Final note is that my history student son is back home this weekend and I asked him about it. I should record that he agreed with Nomadjack’s view, more than I expected. Most lecturers lean Left, but their politics does not overtly influence their teaching, and you probably could make an argument from Conservative principles if you did it well, without suffering too much risk. The one thing he did note was that when you get an academic with “out there” views, they are almost always of the Left, never of the right. I thought that was interetesing, for what it’s worth.

Agree with you that universities are increasingly vocational, which I think is really about the fact that graduate employers mostly screen, rather lazily, on qualifications first before they get to real merit.

[K]

Of some relevance to parts of this thread:

http://www.theage.com.au/business/somethings-gone-badly-wrong-with-teaching-20171110-gzilhr.html

[K]

[think positive]

[Mugwump]

There is a key phrase in the Gittins article :

“One of the worst inhibitors to gains in learning is "learner [dis]engagement" – being inattentive, noisy or anti-social. About 40 per cent of our students are involved in such unproductive behaviour.”

This will be corroborated by the five or so teachers with whom I regularly socialise. Imagine trying to impart knowledge to a classroom where 40% have little desire to learn, and also also make it very difficult for the remainder. When I went to state schools 40 years ago they were not like this. What will it take for us to realise that we have chosen a society that simply does not work very well to fulfill human potential, especially among the poorest ? Where the alluring idea of freedom has been corrupted to mean mere personal freedom and boorish selfishness, not the balance between freedom and responsibility which makes real freedom for all possible ?

Our insistence on our right to consume too much, to drug ourselves, to walk in and out of marriages and families, to consume hard core pornography, to sneer at legitimate authority and to evade the chaos of state schools by sending children to private schools ... all these freedoms can (just) be managed by middle classes with moderate damage to themselves and their children. But for the poor, they have been an utter disaster. It is quite an achievement, in the midst of a long age of peace and plenty, to rack up such a toll of ignorance, wasted lives, crime-mangled bodies and early death.

[Wokko]

http://newbostonpost.com/2017/11/09/undoing-the-dis-education-of-millennials/

[stui magpie]