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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| pietillidie wrote: | | Mugwump wrote: | | ^ yeah, it was one of PTID's better posts. Then I read his post indicating rooted complacency about the bias in publicly-funded university departments, and the warm feeling melted away. If the average social science dept were a public company, i think PTID would be skywriting about that level of unbalanced attribution of public funds in the service of a political agenda. |
You mean like the progressive bias in astrophysics or conservative bias in business studies or corporate business or whatever no one is worried about? (Just guessing, but there's probably data to support such tendencies somewhere).
Just what "outputs" do you want a humanities or social science department to have? Pray list them. Just what measures aside from the right of appeal serious universities already have would you install? Just what "right thought" would you replace "wrong thought" with if you could even define either of those?
Of course, Haidt won't and can't do any of that because there is no objective science *of* these departments, and nothing obvious to demand from them beyond complex idea construction, articulation and dissemination, universal anti-discrimination policies, and access facilitation which existed as a political movement decades before Haidt.
Surely, you of all numerate people agree the main thing excluding people from education is simple stuff like basic economics forces: Cost, incentive and reward. It's not my fault Haidt has turned into a Niall Ferguson-Christopher Hitchens conservative book and stage show marketer whose job is to invent issues and rile people to make money out of one side of his mouth, even as his research says nothing of the sort out the other side of his mouth when careful analysis and claim is required.
Between you and I, let's roll our eyes at the Internet talkers and circuit marketers, and start with parameters we both agree on: The plain old dirty forces of incentive, best understood in hard biological science, and rightly recognised (if poorly and only partly operationalised) in economics.
If kids can't access study because it's too expensive, or because their community doesn't offer them high enough monetary or ego incentive for doing so, let's do what many of us have been pushing for years now: Let's make it easier rather than harder for young conservative folk to access education, and let's encourage them to do so, talking up education in its own humanistic right, rather than talking it down and telling them to "get a real job" in the Salt Mines of Kessel, or whatever.
Let's also push for German-style industry apprenticeship arrangements, and create new ways of combining pure classical study with economic trades. Please note, none of these things are of interest to Haidt. Getting the working class into education by making it more accessible or creating new practical educational combinations are of no interest to him. Generating vague Internet anger and hysteria void of serious analysis and sensible solutions is his book-selling schtick-in-trade.
It's a bit like the teaching problem people are obsessed with. The simple reality no one wants to face is a plain economics one: The financial and ego reward for doing such a difficult, godforsaken job is too low. Increasing the entry requirements will be costly, and it will reduce the applicant pool. Okay, so deal with it by finding the budget for it, and increase its status as a career choice worthy of the best minds, or stop the incessant whining. There are no free lunches here that also allow that other ideology of perpetually cutting taxes and not closing local and international tax avoidance mechanisms. Unless, of course, a return to a more feudal order where kids are burdened with the sins and misfortunes of their parents, and can't afford education unless daddy is a millionaire, is seen as preferable.
Just in case you've forgotten my interests, they are the following:
I'm interested in economic access of the sort which allows any child of any persuasion to receive a HQ education. I care about busting limiting old myths and taboos which trap kids in outdated, life-restricting approaches or world views. I care about creative new ways of solving problems in order to bypass or dissolve economic and cultural obstacles. And such.
I'm not sure how that differs from what you normally hold important. Are you closely familiar with Haidt's work? He got to the edge of the serious questions you and I value in biology, cognitive science and economics, and backed away before pursuing them with a careful seriousness befitting a serious social science, let alone a science. What he is saying is well beneath your level of sophisticated reasoning (not because he's not capable, but he has made his career choices).
Pi, for some reason you think popping up with the odd unexplained link to a mouthpiece who emboldens you, like a climate denier with his favourite new town hall quote, is a contribution to the world worthy of reverence.
Tell us something beyond the Internet wars and Facebook spats which so exercise you. Put a decently-constructed theory or three together, as best you can given the vague nature of the topic, and push to move things forward. Hoarding resentment and then unleashing it in very occasional paragraphs otherwise lacking in context and explanation, and leaning entirely on one conveniently-aligned individual's views, is hardly a good basis for progress and improvement.
I'm actually 100% certain you've got much more carefully-constructed ideas to express, but they can't be engaged if they remain trapped in your head as you hide in the shadows of others. |
A good answer, and indeed we share a fair bit of common ground in our aspirations. It's always good to acknowledge that. I don't know Haidt well, as I really do not follow academic literature. He may be a polemicist, I don't know. But i think a political bias in the humanities is different to a political bias in business studies, to use your example. Someone who does business studies has probably already decided that they believe in the competitive market economy, so there's an element of self-selection there. I'd expect people on the Left in (say) gender studies for the same reason. But the humanities - English, history, politics, psychology, philosophy and economics inter alia - represent fields where both political perspectives should be expected in rough balance, if education is to be the balanced and open inquiry which it should be.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| stui magpie wrote: | | What does a degree in humanities actually qualify someone to do anyway apart from growing a beard and riding a bicycle around Brunswick? |
- Read
- Write
- Assess evidence
- Think
- Drink
- Reason
- Learn
- Be a worthwhile citizen
Apart from that, nothing much.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
So all of the people who can do all that without the degree are just special?
Seriously, if you need to spend 4 years at uni learning to do stuff you should have mastered in primary school (apart from drinking, but hey)you have issues bigger then the course can fix.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| stui magpie wrote: | ^
So all of the people who can do all that without the degree are just special?
Seriously, if you need to spend 4 years at uni learning to do stuff you should have mastered in primary school (apart from drinking, but hey)you have issues bigger then the course can fix. |
Stui , they're only truly special if they can achieve the required level of bite-the-hand-that-feeds you entitlement without doing 4 years of humanities.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| stui magpie wrote: | ^
So all of the people who can do all that without the degree are just special?
Seriously, if you need to spend 4 years at uni learning to do stuff you should have mastered in primary school (apart from drinking, but hey)you have issues bigger then the course can fix. |
I know you were well balanced; there's that other chip on the shoulder 
_________________
“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| Mugwump wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | ^
So all of the people who can do all that without the degree are just special?
Seriously, if you need to spend 4 years at uni learning to do stuff you should have mastered in primary school (apart from drinking, but hey)you have issues bigger then the course can fix. |
Stui , they're only truly special if they can achieve the required level of bite-the-hand-that-feeds you entitlement without doing 4 years of humanities. |
I know in my day things were much better. We did what we were told. Authority especially fathers view was to be respected. We all knew our station. We would smack them till they learned respect.
Sorry, thought for a moment I was in the 1950's 
_________________
“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ Though you probably don't need a humanities degree to achieve a chippy non-sequitur like that.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| Mugwump wrote: | | ^ Though you probably don't need a humanities degree to achieve a chippy non-sequitur like that. |
Now now, just leave gardening out of the equation. I find I can make small chips with secateurs just like Chauncey Gardener
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgGvd1UPZ88
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“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| Thanks for telling me your opinion. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| watt price tully wrote: | | Mugwump wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | ^
So all of the people who can do all that without the degree are just special?
Seriously, if you need to spend 4 years at uni learning to do stuff you should have mastered in primary school (apart from drinking, but hey)you have issues bigger then the course can fix. |
Stui , they're only truly special if they can achieve the required level of bite-the-hand-that-feeds you entitlement without doing 4 years of humanities. |
I know in my day things were much better. We did what we were told. Authority especially fathers view was to be respected. We all knew our station. We would smack them till they learned respect.
Sorry, thought for a moment I was in the 1950's |
Must have been a bitch carting round those stone tablets and taking notes with a chisel.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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I can't help but think some people would prefer if we all spent our whole lives working on factory production lines, contributing our labour as efficiently as possible so that our children and grandchildren can do exactly the same. Forget history, forget art, forget philosophy, just work until you drop. What a civilisation that would be!
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All watched over by machines of loving grace
Last edited by David on Thu Dec 31, 2015 9:02 am; edited 2 times in total |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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Lol this thread!
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| David wrote: | | I can't help but think some people would prefer if we all spent our whole lives working on factory production lines, contributing our labour as efficiently as possible so that our children and grandchildren can do exactly the same. Forget history, forget art, forget philosophy, just work until you drop. What a civilisation that would be! |
Well if they taught you to think like that in humanities, they're doing it wrong cos that's a dead set stupid extrapolation of what's in the thread.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Wokko 
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ Agreed, Wokko. The question is whether the majority who graduate from the Humanities - inexperienced kids full of virtue-signalling, and shaped by the academic left to exclude contrary thought - are really the guarantors of civilisation that David seems to believe they are. It's not what I see in the workplace, and not what I read in the newspapers. There are good ones, of course, and the best (whatever their politics) can be something very special ; but for analytical skills and independent thinking, in numbers or in argument, the average STEM grad is a better bet, in my experience. They have learned how to think about the world and its facts, not what to think - so they are more lucid, and less inclined to reach for simplistic answers when faced with things that do not have a "received answer".
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Two more flags before I die! |
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