So your saying, the point of studying things like art and history isn't necessarily to prepare you for the business world and school shouldn't just be about improving yourself financially.
That's totally fine! And he's not disagreeing with that idea.
If your goal isn't financial, though, why are you shocked when you come out of school and your degree won't help you financially?
It's fine if you are learning and it's not for the purpose of getting a job. But.... when you can't get a good job and end up working at Mcdonalds, don't be surprised and call it a tragedy....
My problem isn't with SMuffin's belief that an art history degree is hardly a guarantor of success. Which is true. My problem is comments like
I would say the tragedy is that these people went to school at all. That they wasted so much time and money on an education that obviously did not benefit them.
Also, there’s always a little tone of elitism in articles like this.
and
The recent push in western societies for everyone to go to college is almost an indirect suggestion that we don’t need any service industry jobs at all.
and
The drive through girl at McDonalds does about a hundred times more to directly improve the quality of my day to day life than every philosopher, politician, and art historian on Earth combined.
which suggest, in order, a fierce anti-educational sentiment, a tired (and potentially dangerous) Republican cliche regurgitated from the media, and a bizarre rejection of the importance of truth, beauty, and political order. Especially odd coming from someone who writes a blog about politics.
foolm0ron posted...
From: Westbrick | #025Philosophy is probably the most important field of study for learning how to think critically and independently
Of course, but the trick is, do you need to dump $20K/year to learn this? Philosophy is a very broad subject, and there are many, many ways to learn the essential concepts. I have never taken a single class in philosophy, but I have always been very strong in the subject (other than the historical part of it cuz **** reading).
The "essential concepts" of philosophy, namely ethics and logic (and perhaps some metaphysics for more abstract questions), definitely get intersected by other disciplines- really, every discipline relies on philosophy at base- but any attempt to get at philosophical questions from another discipline ends up being less than perfect. The ethical principles you learn in, say, a PoliSci class are never going to be as clear or as consistent as ones learned in a pure ethics classroom; similarly, pure logic is something that just about every discipline deals with indirectly, making it a rather important skill to have. And only philosophy can offer it.
Anyway, it's late and I'm rambling now, but the point is that it's misleading to pretend that other disciplines somehow "suffice" in place of philosophical learning. Other disciplines intersect with philosophy, yes, but this is simply a testament to how wide-reaching and essential basic philosophical issues can be.
The though that you would need to wait until college to learn philosophy is kind of terrible, too. It should be focused on from the beginning of education, in kindergarten even. That would definitely help those who aren't "natural learners" like me.
Agree 100%. Expose Kindergarteners to some Plato now and then.
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Fire Emblem: Awakening has the best music ever. Listen to it \/
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