Thursday, July 12, 2012
The real problem with Higher Education
Sometimes conservatives overly misdiagnose the Problem. For instance you'd think there was a veritable epidemic of bad teachers in the NYC public schools system and for this reason teacher ratings and evaluations need to be made public not tomorrow but NOW. Conservatives love this particular bandwagon but I say it's the kids, home-training. With Higher Education, colleges and universities conservatives say the problem is liberal bias. Well yeah there's some of that, having two years of college under my belt you could sense it from time to time but I really don't care, whatever floats your boat. You have a political leaning well if the students know where you're coming from I don't see the problem but the real problem in a nutshell is that colleges and universities make you take courses you're never gonna use in Life. Went to that Catholic institution for two years and they made us take an advanced math class so this older white-haired priest is writing calculus equations on the board, really breezing along with his chalk and I'm like what in hell? I'm never gonna use this in my day-to-day. Then we had to go to the college bookstore on the corner of course and buy our own textbooks which cost a small fortune and I remember thinking back then in high school the class that just made it to the next grade just passed their books down to the next generation of students gratis. What a racket! One of my younger male managers going back a few years said after high school he just wanted to dive right into the workforce, make money and so he went with chefing and avoided the whole higher education experience. Practical skills you learn by actually doing, how to make money, interacting with people and customers and learning new trades on the spot. Better for the economy. I'm glad to see a few conservatives like Maggie Gallagher more or less put down the whole college experience as a serious waste of time, you're gonna spend years paying back that student loan and what exactly are you gonna do with that advanced art or history degree anyway? Education is one of the most controversial issues in this country, everyone has an opinion. I say kids don't need to be taught how to masturbate just how to make the dinars:)
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Higher education is not a right and it certainly isn't right for everyone.
ReplyDeleteLot of good points, Z-Man. Businesses are always complaining
ReplyDeleteabout poorly educated young workers, and one aspect of education is preparing for a lifework. For example, one nephew
took a 4 yr BS in aviation tech
(now a senior pilot, major airline) another took computer science (now a BMW owner at
Microsoft). Other relatives skipped
higher ed after HS and include some
business owners. College is hugely expensive anymore (I paid as low
as $123 a semester) so it is a serious investment. We read of
MD's with $250,000 in student loans to pay off...better than your
above-mentioned Art History person
with $75,000 worth of loans standing in the unemployment line.
IMO, ed is important and a person
should take a course that interests
them (not calculus from a white-
haired priest!). But there is much merit and sense in using ed
as a stepping stone to a job: last week when we hit 105 in the shade,
my AC up and quit. The repair tech
in my opinion was brilliant!! He
had a 2 year trade degree; after I thanked him for saving my life, I
asked him about his job. He loved
it..diagnosing mechanical/elecrical problems is as challenging and rewarding as CSI
or medicine...and as important!
Though I was heavy in chem, physics, math, bio, I never thought
the art, history, polysci stuff was
useless. To this day I dig history as much as thermodynamics..
Unfortunately BOCES type programs were some of the most heavily cut from the 90s onward. I am a firm believer in vocational education and especially to have it offered during highschool. There used to be a 2 year LPN program where you go half a day for your junior and senior year and when you graduate you're ready to sit for boards. That's a solid and seriously good way to start someone off in a necessary and substantial career.
ReplyDelete"Went to that Catholic institution for two years and they made us take an advanced math class so this older white-haired priest is writing calculus equations on the board, really breezing along with his chalk and I'm like what in hell? I'm never gonna use this in my day-to-day."
ReplyDeleteCompound this and you will find the root of the problem.
It is the root of the problem soapster, you're exactly right. Conservatives waste their time complaining about liberal bias in higher eduction. Liberal bias shliberal bias, I wouldn't care if Saty was my professor so long as she taught a practical course that is gonna make me money that I'm gonna use throughout my life. Where's Nietzsche gonna get me? the guy went mad at the end ya know:)
ReplyDeleteRe Higher Education Beth said: "It certainly isn't right for everyone."
ReplyDeleteBut part of the problem is society acts like it's right for everyone. Parents sock away money for their children's future college educations, partly makes sense as tuition's so expensive but what if it ain't right for them?
BB: "One aspect of education is preparing for a lifework."
ReplyDeleteAgreed and this is where your typical liberal arts education fails imo. Does reading Sartre's No Exit and Nausea prepare you for a life's work? I kinda dug Philosophy though, can now pepper my blog discourse with words like existential.
Saty: "I am a firm believer in vocational education."
Trade and vocational schools is the way to go. Much later after my two years of liberal arts education which I still see as a waste of time the company sent me to a chef school and I found that immensely more practical. I once took one of those correspondence courses in photography and while I learned alot and it was interesting this was in the days when film was king. Now we live in the age of the digital camera and while you can still shoot film I look back and kinda consider it a waste of time, slow shutter speeds and polarizing filters, the gray card. Advancing technology sometimes makes past knowledge kinda irrelevant.
I think you missed the entire point of my comment. If you learned calculus..if you learned half the shit that you don't think you need in your day to day and instead made it a part of your day to day, you just might do quite well.
ReplyDeleteCalculus can be practical. Knew a
ReplyDeletecollege girl, math major (even gave her an old Differential Equations book. Now 10 years later, she is an actuary (figuring
odds for the insurance business) at
$150,000 a year. 8 hours, no shifts, AC office. Another math
major I knew from HS got into the
finance area and is a millionaire.
If you like it and are good at it,
...calculus can be practical.
On different wavelengths again as usual soapster. Well let's see, I coulda chosen to be an astrophysicist. Nah:)
ReplyDeleteBut here's the problem BB, there was a whole class of us forced to take that calculus class. There should at least have been some serious weeding out, say sit them all down with a skilled counselor and vet their interests and see if calculus would play a part someday. What soapie is missing is that in the vast majority of cases MOST folks are not gonna use calculus in their day-to-day. I have a problem with CRS (Can't Remember Shit) and that's caused by CBS (or Crowded Brain Syndrome) which millions of Americans suffer from because our noggins are jam-packed with perfectly useless information like Britney Spears and Snooki and calculus and Beowulf. Then there's CRAFT (Can't Remember a F'n Thing) a stronger version of CRS.
ReplyDelete"...sit them all down with a skilled counselor and vet their interests..."
ReplyDelete"skilled" counselor and "vet their interests".
Mmmmkay...sounds a little statist if you ask me but whatevs floats your boat.
I never much cared for counselors myself but something is way off with getting a roomful of 20 or 30 students and having them watch a white-haired priest scribbling down differential equations on a chalkboard. BB and you apparently feel a little differently, for me it's a waste of time. Lib bias I really don't care just don't waste my time:)
ReplyDeleteHad a counselor in HS said my tests showed I should be a welder.
ReplyDeleteThe welding teacher cussed out my
piece which had 12 rods still stuck to it and I pulled a 'D'.
..became my own counselor (and haven't welded since)
Part of learning is the process, and higher education is learning new processes in a more advanced way than high school.
ReplyDeleteBut it should always be tailored to what suits the individual, what he or she plans to do with his or her life. The typical college mission statement and I'm paraphrasing here wants YOU to become a well-rounded individual and they define this as knowing all about Kant and behaviorism and Pavlov's dog and the Canterbury Tales with the racy Wife of Bath (see I remember) and white-haired priests doing differential equations and maybe some polymorphous perversity thrown in but I say
ReplyDeleteYOU GOTTA MAKE THE DINARS,
(no money no honey).
Who needs an education when you gots afirmititive action?
ReplyDelete