This generation of kids...

[sheeplady]

And I didn't have to pay twenty grand a year to learn it, either.

lol

Although the cost of education is spiraling out of control and I feel really sorry for today's kids. I had absolutely no debt for college (and I paid much less than $20,000 for the degrees I do have) but the world where you can pay your own way through and have most of it paid for by scholarships and financial aid is fast disappearing. I do still meet many students who are doing it, but they often have loans.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You deserve congratulations for that. None of that was an option for me -- I had to go to fulltime work straight out of high school to help support my family, so college was out of the question. It wasn't that I couldn't get loans, it was that the family couldn't spare the rent I was paying.

I had a guidance counselor practically threaten me to get me to go to Bowling Green University and major in popular culture, but I read some of the stuff he gave me as examples of what I could be doing, and I couldn't see any possible reason why I would ever want to do that. Read some of the pomo pop culture analyses out there, and you'll see every possible bit of joy or pleasure leached out of the topic. I enjoy the popular culture of the Era far too much to ever want to hold it up and sniff its bottom the way the Social Science crowd does. To read a four-hundred page book about the vaudeville aesthetic in 1930s film comedy and not find a single occasion to laugh except at the author's horrible prose is to understand why I think the writer of such a book should be sewn up in a bag and dropped off a bridge.

 

[sheeplady]

It was more a matter of luck and timing. I had no siblings and my parent's business did OK with me coming home often. And needless to say, even if my parents had needed my financial help, I had reasons to leave home.

 

[jamespowers]

And I didn't have to pay twenty grand a year to learn it, either.

:rofl:

 

[jamespowers]

Then point pout where I equated communism and Marxism- I said a good deal of people who call people Marxists have never read Marx's major work.

I didn't say that you did. You just mentioned both so I differentiated them.
Mentioning Marx without Engels leaves something out though as Engels is puported to not only help Marx write what he did but simply wrote it for him--at least his early stuff before the schism developed between them.
I have studied both extensively(against my will) and thoroughly reject it all. When you start with this:
"Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." Then you clearly have an agenda at work more than just an ideology. It is more rejectionist than change.
I doubt anyone has truly read all their Collected Works. 50 volumes and 600 pages each? Then the developing changes within Marx's writings would confuse the heck out of you. His theories were not static like Engles' were.
This is verging far too far out on the political limb to go further.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Anyway, I always preferred Thorstein Veblen. He was a better writer, and had a sense of humor. The only Marxist who ever had a sense of humor was Groucho.

 

[Gregg Axley]

Anyway, I always preferred Thorstein Veblen. He was a better writer, and had a sense of humor. The only Marxist who ever had a sense of humor was Groucho.

And one of my favorites too.
Lizzie you could have gotten a degree in Popular Culture, and been on the E! channel. All 10 people watching it would be better off learning something from you. I say 10 because that's about how many people watch that channel, but with you on it, maybe that number would increase.
I got my degree because I come from a college degree family. My sister has one, my father has 2, and my mother has one.
I can't say I'm president of a corporation, but it's gotten me pretty far.
Then again, I have coworkers that make more because of who they know.
Is College what it used to be? No, not in my opinion.
Some of the degrees they come up with will get you nowhere in this world, well they'll get you that much more in debt, that's somewhere I suppose.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Your contention then, jp, is that any ideology that challenges status quo is not worth thinking about (against your will) because the challenge is an agenda, and agendas are somehow outlawed? … That inequalities are simply a function of the system (perhaps inherent in the human condition - cue straw men, stage right) and not created and perpetrated by the system (cue straw men, stage left)? To defend the status quo is itself an agenda, no? A bit too political, probably, for here. (straw men, left and right, aflame … a veritable conflagration with no-one prepared to piss on any of them)

Anyhow, the statement here is at the root of much current further education thinking.

"Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." Then you clearly have an agenda at work more than just an ideology. It is more rejectionist than change.

 

[jamespowers]

Anyway, I always preferred Thorstein Veblen. He was a better writer, and had a sense of humor. The only Marxist who ever had a sense of humor was Groucho.

:rofl:

 

[jamespowers]

Your contention then, jp, is that any ideology that challenges status quo is not worth thinking about (against your will) because the challenge is an agenda, and agendas are somehow outlawed? … That inequalities are simply a function of the system (perhaps inherent in the human condition - cue straw men, stage right) and not created and perpetrated by the system (cue straw men, stage left)? To defend the status quo is itself an agenda, no? A bit too political, probably, for here. (straw men, left and right, aflame … a veritable conflagration with no-one prepared to piss on any of them)

Anyhow, the statement here is at the root of much current further education thinking.

All of those things are subject to debate and yes, political.
Ideologies that do not learn anything for what came before it and do not take into account human nature are indeed flawed. At least Marx recast his doctrine altogether in evolutionary-materialist terms; Engels had no such inhibitions.

 

[Flicka]

I have a university degree because I come from a family where education has always been considered mandatory rather than an option, because I have an extremely good head for theoretical knowledge, because I love learning new things and because education here is free. Without all of the above, I might not have bothered; who knows? However, without education free of charge, I wouldn't have been able, no matter my inclination.

I teach occasionally at the law faculty and I'm just shocked at how lazy some of the students are. They get good grades, sure, but if they can get out of doing something, they try. They want the degree, but they couldn't care less about actually learning. I find it really sad and hard to understand.

 

[Dawna]

I have a couple of degrees (and counting...) and while I don't think they're the most practical things in the world, I do think they're worth having, but only because I took them because I really wanted to. I enjoy the academic environment and am pretty good at it. I think the problem, as far as I can tell, why a lot of students are so lazy and apathetic is because college/university degrees have become expected, for lack of a better word. They say that a BA now is worth what a high school diploma was 25 years ago, and I think that's the problem. A lot of people don't go to college because they're fascinated by some subject or just by learning in general; rather, they go because they're expected to, it's the thing to do, and so they're not really invested in it. I worked in marketing almost straight out of high school and that was enough to convince me that University was where I'd rather be. You have to want to do it, otherwise, like Flicka says, you won't care less about learning.

 

[jamespowers]

They want the degree, but they couldn't care less about actually learning.

And that is the most salient point about education at any level. If it isn't interesting or related to daily life then it is seemingly useless. If they can relate to education as something involved in their lives then it makes more sense to pay attention.

 

[sheeplady]

And that is the most salient point about education at any level. If it isn't interesting or related to daily life then it is seemingly useless. If they can relate to education as something involved in their lives then it makes more sense to pay attention.

I think that this is sadly giving too much credit to a very few students who are lazy for the sake of laziness. I'm not going to believe that for some students (especially some of those who cheat and/or are lazy) that it is simply a matter of relating the material to them. Not every lazy student is lazy because they don't see the applicability, some just actually are that way. Just like some employees are lazy, even when they know their laziness will cost them their job.

 

[Flicka]

And that is the most salient point about education at any level. If it isn't interesting or related to daily life then it is seemingly useless. If they can relate to education as something involved in their lives then it makes more sense to pay attention.

I teach a courtroom workshop where we act out a trial in a real courtroom setting for a procedural law course. I don't know if it relates to their daily lives (kinda hope not as would prefer they weren't hardened criminals) but it should feel pretty relevant for a law student. We still have to take down attendance three times (beginning mid and end) or they slip away or come in late. If it wasn't necessary fro credits towards the exam, plenty of them wouldn't show up at all.

 

[LizzieMaine]

If you ran a class on drinking, you can bet they'd all show up.

 

[sheeplady]

If you ran a class on drinking, you can bet they'd all show up.

Where I went to college, we had a class called "Wines" which was for the hotel students although other students could take it. Lots of students took it thinking that it was an easy class- sit around and drink wine, right? But it was in the hotel school (known for "deceptively" easy looking courses which kicked everybody's butt) and you really had to spit out all the wine you tasted to get through the class without being drunk. And even if you avoided getting drunk there was little chance of your passing the class, since a lot of the quizzes were blind folded taste tests where you had to be able to taste wines you had never drunk, get the correct type, and do the pairings in an oral test based upon something similar you might have tasted 10 weeks ago when you tasted 10 other wines that same day.

Yeah, I was too scared to take Wines. But I did take Meat (in the Animal Science program).

 

[kiwilrdg]

We still have to take down attendance three times (beginning mid and end) or they slip away or come in late. If it wasn't necessary fro credits towards the exam, plenty of them wouldn't show up at all.

If they are not there can you issue a bench warrent and have them brought to class in shackles? That would add realism to the course.:eeek:

 

[jamespowers]

I think that this is sadly giving too much credit to a very few students who are lazy for the sake of laziness. I'm not going to believe that for some students (especially some of those who cheat and/or are lazy) that it is simply a matter of relating the material to them. Not every lazy student is lazy because they don't see the applicability, some just actually are that way. Just like some employees are lazy, even when they know their laziness will cost them their job.

I can relate to the boring nature of classes as I, myself, went through high school just taking the tests and doing the work for a grade. Most of it was pointless in real life and I didn't relate to it at all. As I put it at the time: "I am begrudgingly satisfying the requirements forced on me by the schools."
College was a different thing. I paid for it so I choose what interested me and I retained what I learned because of it. Having the choice to learn what is applicable to you is much more interesting and seems like it is presented with more flair. I suppose I also wanted to get my money's worth.

 

[jamespowers]

I teach a courtroom workshop where we act out a trial in a real courtroom setting for a procedural law course. I don't know if it relates to their daily lives (kinda hope not as would prefer they weren't hardened criminals) but it should feel pretty relevant for a law student. We still have to take down attendance three times (beginning mid and end) or they slip away or come in late. If it wasn't necessary fro credits towards the exam, plenty of them wouldn't show up at all.

That should be interesting and applicable to a law student. It makes no sense why they are there if they find it boring. That is going to be their career. lol lol Perhaps they need to think about where they are going in life. lol lol