[geeks] geeks Digest, Vol 86, Issue 11

[Phil Stracchino]

On 01/20/10 15:23, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> On Jan 20, 2010, at 2:59 PM, Joshua Boyd <jdboyd at jdboyd.net> wrote:
> 
>> However, I would rather see general
>> liberal arts requirements be sufficiently covered in high school  
>> rather
>> than see people wasting their time on liberal arts college programs.
> 
> Wasting?!
> 
> You my friend are a philistine!

No.  I just don't think that you can teach someone to "appreciate"
something that they don't have any interest in, and that the majority of
liberal-arts requirements are all but useless to anyone who's not
planning on a career somewhere in the pure or applied arts.  I have no
problem whatsoever with people who are *interested* in, say, modern
dance or music history studying it.  But if you take someone who doesn't
give a damn about, say, Shakespeare and force them to study his plays,
they're just going to go through the motions anyway, then sell their
textbooks back to the bookstore at the end of the quarter and never
voluntarily pick up a play again.  A knowledge of Shakepeare, Wagner, or
the history of modern interpretive dance is a useful thing *if* your
avocation is, say, the theater or the orchestra.  But it's not a basic
life competency.  I have no objection whatsoever to them being taught
... *as electives*.  But why on earth does a research chemist, a tank
driver, or an oilwell engineer need to be able to write an essay on the
similarities and differences between salsa and flamenco, or the
influence of the Spanish civil war on the work of Pablo Picasso?


-- 
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
         Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                 It's not the years, it's the mileage.