Higher education in impractical subjects

[_Chap]

Physics Guy seems to divide knowledge into two categories:

1. How to produce stuff that people with money are willing to pay you to produce.

2. How to consume stuff.

That would be all a person would need if we are aiming to produce people equipped to live in a society where their value and functions are limited to what is needed by the small minority of people who own and control large corporations.

But (so far at least) the USA has not yet declared itself to be such a society. It still presents itself as a democracy of equal citizens, each of whom has the right and duty to participate actively in choosing the nature and direction of their republic through the political process - as a voter, and perhaps also as a candidate for elected office.

And to exercise that right and perform that duty effectively demands knowledge and understanding far wider and deeper than the equipment needed by a simple production/consumption unit. You need to have knowledge of the history of the society you live in, and understand something of the choices that have conditioned its evolution in past centuries. You need to be trained in the critical evaluation of political programmes, and what may lie behind the claims of those who advance them. You need to be trained to understand how hard it can be to make ethical choices in an imperfect world - something for which the study of history provides an ideal preparation.

And all that should come from a good, free, public education, funded by tax dollars because the raising of good and well-informed citizens is a precondition for the existence of any decent free society.

I thought this would be something that everybody already knew ...

[_Morley]

[My God, I love the word bifurcation. I still remember the moment I learned it, more than 30 years ago. Here, I almost passed up my chance to use it again. Ahem.]

The bifurcation of academics into producing degrees and consuming degrees is capricious.

[/ahem.]

[_moksha]

So Symmachus' contention concerns modern interpretations of classical literature and not necessarily new discoveries in language translation and archeology? I know I would not wish for anything to impede much-needed Temple work being done for the Homo Neanderthals (whom we suspect of being pure and delightsome).

[_honorentheos]

I know more than a few professional archeologists. To my knowledge, other than papers and curation they largely do not produce anything new other than information about stuff other people produced that humanity has forgotten about.

I'm trying to figure out which side that falls under.

[_moksha]

I know more than a few professional archeologists. To my knowledge, other than papers and curation they largely do not produce anything new other than information about stuff other people produced that humanity has forgotten about.

I'm trying to figure out which side that falls under.

Excellent point. It is not like they are creating ancient pottery or Clovis weapons by themselves!!! They are merely a Johnny come lately on the scene. I suppose that could all be brushed aside and we could meet the residents of the Denisova Cave for ourselves in Spirit Paradise. Even better we could ask the artists from the Lascaux Cave what they think of modern French impressionism.

Speaking of creating ancient pottery, that sure could have saved Hamblin's butt in the great debate with Professor Jenkins.

[_huckelberry]

[My God, I love the word bifurcation. I still remember the moment I learned it, more than 30 years ago. Here, I almost passed up my chance to use it again. Ahem.]

The bifurcation of academics into producing degrees and consuming degrees is capricious.

[/ahem.]

Morley, tacking on "capricious" here makes me suspect that you did not get a degree in corporate memo composition.

[_Morley]

[My God, I love the word bifurcation. I still remember the moment I learned it, more than 30 years ago. Here, I almost passed up my chance to use it again. Ahem.]

The bifurcation of academics into producing degrees and consuming degrees is capricious.

[/ahem.]

Morley, tacking on "capricious" here makes me suspect that you did not get a degree in corporate memo composition.

Ha! Good sleuthing, Huckelberry!

[_NorthboundZax]

Well, not to be a one-trick pony, but Thorstein Veblen figured this out a long time ago. A classical education is a market of status and leisure. And anyone who doubts the present relevance of this idea should go spend some time on Sic et Non where the gang over there becomes a near parody of what Veblen was talking about. Even way back then, Veblen was arguing that the whole point of learning dead languages was because it's a total waste of time, and therefore, proof that the student had the time to waste.

I've not heard of Veblen, but this is a notion I have thought a lot about over the years after watching a nature show on the action of gazelles 'stotting' - basically, dancing around in front of lions to show off that "I'm so good, I don't even need to conserve energy". I think there are lots of dimensions in culture that we all do stotting - e.g., designer jeans instead of less expensive, but just as functional clothing (pre-ripped jeans take this to an extreme). I think you are right that there is an element to this in studying dead languages, but this doesn't have to be entirely cynical and can even be better than your modern slightly less cynical summary of signaling to others about how fit one is. In actuality, we all want to stot and are proud when we can do it, even if it is a bit annoying in others. By encouraging these disciplines to flourish, we are able to stot a bit as a community. In effect, we would be saying as a community/country/culture/world that we are good enough to spend energy on things that make us better people and more culturally enriched in the aggregate than if we all simply focus on making widgets. Not that I am an expert on such things, but I think one thing that set western democracies apart from Soviet culture during the cold war is that we had robust cultural programs while simultaneously matching Soviet strength in STEM fields. We could have form with our function in architecture and so forth. It isn't as easy to articulate that we all benefit together having a more educated populace as it is to say individuals come out of an education with skills - but I think it could help cut through this myopic cost-benefit analysis and be a strong case for supporting disciplines that don't have direct lines to specific jobs.

All this isn't to say that I disagree with Symmachus that spending time in literature is of at least as much value as spending time in a business text. It is pretty clear that the more specific the business text - and therefore the more applicable to modern business - the quicker it will be outdated. Literature done right has a much longer shelf life with very broad lessons that will carry. The two arguments together could have a lot of punch - if academics and administrators were ever willing to go beyond justification via job training.

[_Chap]

I think there are lots of dimensions in culture that we all do stotting - e.g., designer jeans instead of less expensive, but just as functional clothing (pre-ripped jeans take this to an extreme).

Not all of us play such games. Maybe you could say that my stotting is the resolute refusal to do anything of the kind? But that might be a bit perverse.

I think you are right that there is an element to this in studying dead languages, but this doesn't have to be entirely cynical and can even be better than your modern slightly less cynical summary of signaling to others about how fit one is.

My desire to learn 'dead' languages came from the fact that (c. age 10) certain translations of Greek into English woke me up like a bucket of cold water thrown into my face, and I realised that a life passed without hearing the original voices would seem wasted. I could not, to be frank, have given a <insert obscenity here> whether anybody else knew what i was up to or not.

Life has taught me that I am not alone in this.

[_Gadianton]

By encouraging these disciplines to flourish, we are able to stot a bit as a community. In effect, we would be saying as a community/country/culture/world that we are good enough to spend energy on things that make us better people and more culturally enriched in the aggregate than if we all simply focus on making widgets.

All this isn't to say that I disagree with Symmachus that spending time in literature is of at least as much value as spending time in a business text. It is pretty clear that the more specific the business text - and therefore the more applicable to modern business - the quicker it will be outdated.

Well, Veblen also wrote about the absurdity of business, and so there wasn't much left for humanity to brag about. It's not the kind of commentary that is necessarily exclusive to other types of commentary, though. For instance, Symmachus made some entertaining remarks about lack of raw materials. There are a finite number of texts to mine, and as they get harder to find, our population is also increasing in size and wealth, there are more people to do the work, and what are they going to do? What prompted my comment was thinking about all the grad students Symmachus mentioned who have so much invested in their education, and a big part of that is opportunity cost as these are among the brightest kids who could be making good money elsewhere. Why do they do it? presuming something close to equilibrium, somehow, the choice must be worth it anyway for these students.