It’s just sad to think about how in 2007, when I was at Simon’s Rock, pretentious intellectual college kids who argued about both Foucault and multivariate calculus were already a highly endangered species with just a few remaining refuges.
Now they’re functionally extinct.
Now they’re functionally extinct.
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The Spectacle! the Panopticon!
From everything she told me, SR seemed to be an escape for a lot of queer kids from unwelcoming hometowns. Tragic to see that it's shutting down now, when a refuge like that is so badly needed.
We need balance with STEM. Instead, liberal arts are being taken out back and shot.
can build something if you can’t communicate it
That no-college path is dystopian.. We have a two track path to the equivalent of the diploma here, but you can still go to college if you choose the less academic, more hands-on path (Called "leaving cert applied").
Bet it's not like that
Now, May I return the favour?
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft
As an Art History major in IT, I'm all for the humanities.
There's more but just those things are plenty.
It has almost definitely decreased with the recent waves but has to still exceed the general population.
But as modern theists go the Jesuits seem to me pretty okay.
I think SHC is a generally good school (called out explicitly in MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail Cell for 1st southern school to voluntarily integrate).
But her telling me a former Jesuit professor left the order, married his husband & got hired back (in 2001!) convinced me.
Plus being in jail for finals getting me kicked out the Honors College.
The idea that STEM makes people useful and Arts make people ethical isn’t doing anyone any good.
Belittling artistic education and shitting on service workers in one swoop.
Hiring anthropologists to help the census do it’s thing meant vastly more correct results, etc
(Even if Agile in the real world is generally just Waterfall With Extra Steps)
It revolutionized anthropology and also proved a lot of people in design correct
Get crackin, anthropologists
(We only have the “people are pervs for x” Freud stuff because his initially theory of “wow, sexual abuse is HORRIFYINGLY COMMON” upset ppl)
My other theory is “people are weird but it’s multiplicative”.
1. BAPCPA in 2005 made college debt nondischargeable
2. Tuition and fees ⬆️⬆️
3. College marketing shifts to "95% of recent grads have jobs in their chosen field!"
4. Parents and kids rank schools based on #3...
I'm 37. I'm old enough to know a world before that. And it fucking SUCKED.
The liberal Arts degrees were being derided even before social media. Critical thinking was going away before that point.
Social media has its problems, but it's not entirely to blame.
Book reports. Annotations. Chapter quizzes. They all helped nurture that seed. But if the kids are struggling to read we can’t even talk about critical thinking yet.
It’s rough and definitely a struggle felt even communicating online.
- The best places I have worked are ones that have understood the value of a cross-discinplinary background
- As a linguistics major I have multiple times had to teach SW engineering principles to IT graduates
Chemists are alchemists
(I am an English major who now works in STEM myself)
So Jordon Peterson taught Humanities
pushed heavily towards that & not liberal arts which was seen as a unnecessary burden to engineering students, being required to have those courses anyway was the best thing
would NOT have missed those experiences for the world,
1) not the same point; and
2) one that drives me bonkers, as an eng school alum who was required to take SO MANY humanities courses 1/
I’m an English major who works in STEM, I am a big fan of both!
I had to take so many I just up and got a second major because it was barely more courses 2/
Once I spent a while looking at many eng school catalogs and...this is normal??? 3/
This is all a way of saying 4/
These are vital for a successful & meaningful STEM education.
Thinking about why this is bad and how to prevent it—That’s the humanities.
the best class I ever took was a winter term 12-person medieval literature seminar mostly with other non-majors. it ruled
I am a much better scientist due to the humanities, especially in my case history.
I do think there’s less tolerance of the FAFO in youth and in the end I blame big data.
*heavy breathing intensifies* 😊
And we still have some in the wild…
I’m currently hiding a dozen or so in a safe place. Ph.D. students and candidates.
It’s not over by a long shot. Fight the ignorance. Knowledge ultimately wins and we can no longer afford complacence.
Bard itself is still Bard. It’s not going away.
YMMV. I can only say that I’m meeting the current students from these places.
Here’s the network they’ve grown with 11 “Simon’s Rocks.”
https://bhsec.bard.edu/
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.
Btw have you heard, they are relocating from Berkshires to Hudson, in a former Catholic Seminary, later Unification Church, called "Massena Campus"!