A Defense of a Liberal Arts Education

STEM is just pragmatic and mechanistic.

Who told you that?

“Always” and “just” are overclaims.

The foundations of physics, philosophy of science, and systems design routinely question frames.

A large share of contemporary humanities work does the opposite: it accepts a political frame and applies it.
 
You really are retarded arent you?

When you look at a culture, and you want to ask yourself: “Well, how did we go from Weimar Germany to Nazism?” Obviously, education is going to be a part of that, but it’s not in any way going to be the whole of it.

I don’t buy that Nazism is proof that higher learning doesn’t work. The point of fact is that the Nazis were very much against higher education in many ways and wanted to constrain and control it.
 


Here:

When you look at a culture, and you want to ask yourself: “Well, how did we go from Weimar Germany to Nazism?” Obviously, education is going to be a part of that, but it’s not in any way going to be the whole of it. I don’t buy that Nazism is proof that higher learning doesn’t work. The point of fact is that the Nazis were very much against higher education in many ways and wanted to constrain and control it.
 
Who told you that?

“Always” and “just” are overclaims.

The foundations of physics, philosophy of science, and systems design routinely question frames.

A large share of contemporary humanities work does the opposite: it accepts a political frame and applies it.
shut up moron
 
Parents should have a say in both questions. Who gets to decide ultimately whats taught is important Teachers shouldnt be untouchable as they are the who teaches portion And what gets taught is what matters most of all

Home and community schooling for the young already are a “what and who” model.

The parent (or a small co-op of parents and specialists) chooses the content and is the teacher. That is Bennett’s own ranking applied without the middleman.

Homeschool students, on average, score well above national norms on standardized tests—typically 15–25 percentile points higher—and that pattern holds across a large share of peer-reviewed studies, including recent nationwide work.

Parental certification and household income predict far less in that setting than they do in conventional schools.

Community variants (co-ops, micro schools, hybrid programs) keep the same logic at a slightly larger scale: small groups, parental involvement, flexible pacing, and a chosen curriculum rather than a district default.

Homeschooling has roughly doubled as a share of K–12 since before the pandemic and now sits around 6 percent of school-age children—on the order of 3.4 million students—and is still growing in most reporting states.
 
Missed the point. Topic is university education. Not all education.
Why the distinction?


The vast majority of public two- and four-year colleges report enrolling students – more than half a million of them–who are not ready for college-level work, a Hechinger Report investigation of 44 states has found.

The numbers reveal a glaring gap in the nation’s education system: A high school diploma, no matter how recently earned, doesn’t guarantee that students are prepared for college courses. Higher education institutions across the country are forced to spend time, money and energy to solve this disconnect. They must determine who’s not ready for college and attempt to get those students up to speed as quickly as possible, or risk losing them altogether.




 
Why the distinction?


The vast majority of public two- and four-year colleges report enrolling students – more than half a million of them–who are not ready for college-level work, a Hechinger Report investigation of 44 states has found.

The numbers reveal a glaring gap in the nation’s education system: A high school diploma, no matter how recently earned, doesn’t guarantee that students are prepared for college courses. Higher education institutions across the country are forced to spend time, money and energy to solve this disconnect. They must determine who’s not ready for college and attempt to get those students up to speed as quickly as possible, or risk losing them altogether.




The distinction is nobody refers to high school as a liberal arts education.
 
@Hume has what people in the UK call "form" for making claims and refusing to even try to prove them.



Yes. In this thread that is not a vibe. It is the method.


What “form” looks like here


  1. Assert the strong version, then treat proof as optional.
    “Philosophy always questions the frame. STEM is just pragmatic and mechanistic.” That is a universal claim about two families of disciplines. When it is challenged with counterexamples (foundations of physics, philosophy of science, systems design; captured humanities that apply a frame rather than test one), the reply is not evidence. It is “shut up moron.”
  2. Own the text, deny the text.
    He opened with the Weimar/Nazi passage. Asked why he brought Nazis in, he said “Where?” The quote was post #1. That is not confusion. It is refusal to stay hitched to a claim once the claim becomes expensive.
  3. Redefine the topic instead of meeting the objection.
    “Topic is university liberal arts.” Fair as a scope rule once. Used repeatedly, it becomes a shield: K–12 readiness, incoming remediation, and “what is actually taught in these departments” are waved off as a different subject even when they determine whether his university ideal can occur.
  4. Substitute status moves for reasons.
    “Stop lying.” “I see why you are confused.” “pea brain.” “shut up moron.” Those are not asides. They are the load-bearing replies after the two-sentence thesis.

That pattern is visible in his recent posting generally: short verdicts (“Yes, you fascists hate everybody,” “shut up moron,” “Trump does not try to hide his corruption”), article drops without development, “No link, no read,” and a habit of naming (“fascism”) without defining when asked. Twenty thousand posts is a long enough sample that this is not a bad day. It is how he argues.


What this does to the liberal-arts claim


The claim needed the opposite of that method. Frame-questioning is a practice. You show it by answering “always / just,” by separating the ideal seminar from the modal department, and by saying what would count as failure. Hume’s form is the inverse: maximum wording, minimum burden.


So the UK sense of form applies. He has a record of planting a large statement and then treating requests for proof as hostility or off-topic. In this thread the large statement was about what philosophy is and what STEM is. He has not tried to prove it. He has tried to make asking the price of the conversation.
 
I really do not know what you mean. All universities teach students what to think no matter what your major is.
I know you dont. Thats precisely the problem. They accept people entirely unprepared for college and fill them with stuff. Is that "stuff" good? calling it a "liberal education" doesnt automatically make it good.
 
I know you dont. Thats precisely the problem. They accept people entirely unprepared for college and fill them with stuff. Is that "stuff" good? calling it a "liberal education" doesnt automatically make it good.
You really have no idea what is happening in universities.
 
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