NEW INTERVIEW WITH FORUM BOREALIS ON THE MESS OF AMAIRIKUHN ...
July 28, 2017 / /
Here's a new interview with Forum Borealis on the state of American quackademia:
Posted in Tidbits
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Ok… Enough. I have listened to your anti-US university rant and understand your feelings… HOWEVER… if you were interested, either in undergrad or graduate training, in something OTHER than “liberal arts and social sciences” (think on those terms for a moment), there ARE universities that actually have decent both undergraduate and graduate degrees. I went to the U.Michigan in the School of Natural Resources, naturalist program (doesn’t exist any more nor did it in any other university in the country in 1968), in undergraduate school, which included summer studies at the Pellston Biological Station, and then UM SNR Landscape Architecture Program in graduate school. In graduate school, we were told we were all morons and challenged unmercifully, and I attended, with 10 (not so bright) students from Harvard and 10 of us from UM to study LA in France, studying the Loire Valley and Paris utilizing the beaux arts method of study. I got the best education in the world in my area of study. PERIOD.
Having said all that, I also have a degree in education from UM and COULD NOT AGREE MORE. It was a total embarrassment to have to attend any segment of those classes because only the most stupid people at the University were there. Upon graduating with my UM undergraduate BS and BE, I taught 8th grade science in Cincinnati for two years in an experimental (open class) system and attempted to help them develop new ideas for teaching science. Even in the “real world”, those “educators” (taught in the “US University System”) were beyond help. They actually allowed the system to pay me to attend graduate ed programs at U. Cincinnati that helped me develop a new curriculum only to say “thank you”, we are happy with the stupid system we already have (and have done for the past 15 years so we don’t have to prepare anything new).
So my ultimate statement is, as far as US university education schools, I agree fully but it is primarily due to the same people who blew up our ROTC buildings in 1968. They moved into the education departments across the board to ensure that only the brain dead would teach and support the under-education of all children from about 1970 on.
“Those who fail, teach. Those who can’t teach, work for the government.”
J
Maybe so… but let me ask you, it was already bad when we went to them. Would you trust them now even in the “hard” disciplines like mathematics, when on some campuses there are demands for “feminist physics”, and none of them ever seem to get around to mentioning Lise Meitner, or Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher? You’re right, it IS a segment of this society, the progressives… They have taken over everything, every discipline, every institution. So I will continue to rant about American universities… and please note my occasional barbs at Oxford quackademia too. They have taken over there are well. I should also point out that my primary criticism is directed precisely at “education departments”, in my opinion a pseudo-discipline that is the base of operations from which assaults on all the other disciplines have been launched. This is the center of the problem, as far as I’m concerned, for whether one likes it or not, once this same group to which you refer is successful in turning hard disciplines into “matters of cultural opinion” – e.g. history and philosophy of science, it’s game over. They’re even working hard and assiduously at trying to force credentialization on professorship, at which point, professors become “teachers” and “educators” and facilitators.” Are there exceptions to the rule in American education? Certainly. But the exceptions exist to prove the general trend, and that also is my point.
The interviewer is the best I’ve come across.
Still, nothing beats the physical book itself.
Best this could do is put the listener into action by getting the book AND actually reading it.
Great book!
Can’t wait to read your next!
However, I’m part Norwegian.
Miles Mathis seconding Joseph:
“But as we have gotten closer and closer to the present, we have seen the Government taking over all markets, spiritual and mundane. To do this, it had to first destroy existing markets. In religion, it had to destroy existing forms of worship and belief. In art, it had to destroy all existing forms and conventions. In medicine, it had to destroy herbal cures, home remedies, self-medication, and free advice. In pharmaceuticals, it had to destroy the old drugs, co-opt their markets, or create markets for the new lab drugs. In education, it had to destroy the old coursework, the old books, and the old teachers. Since parents were often these teachers, it had to destroy that link as well.”
mileswmathis.com/beat.pdf (p.14)
But as I have written before to quote Mayor Daley of Chicago 1968 American education is not there to promote learning but it there to prevent learning.