A Defense of a Liberal Arts Education

[Into the Night]

Liberal Education just means you're able to learn things, simply put.

That is it's purpose, yes.

Arithmetic to calculate things,
Logic to sharpen the mind and provide a means of discernment.
Music to learn regularity and art.
Geometry to determine magnitude and distance.
Astronomy to appreciate the beauty of the stars and other planets and to discover your place in it.
Grammar, to learn to write and speak properly.
Rhetoric, to learn to speak well. It is rhetoric that is part of the quality of any speech you may give.

A good speaker learns to lead, with astronomy, geometery, music, logic, and arithmetic, you are prepared to lead eloquently and with discernment.
You are prepared to learn.

It is not leadership like the brazen horn (the Democrat way), but the quiet leadership of discernment...the whole orchestra as a unit.

 

[Into the Night]

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.

Opinion | A Defense of a Liberal Arts Education in the Age of A.I.

Making the case for a “useless” education.

www.nytimes.com

Nazi fallacy.
False authority fallacy.
Attempted proof in open functional system.

 

[Into the Night]

The seven classic liberal arts include logic, grammar, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, rhetoric, music, logic.

Somewhere in the last 40 years, Rush Limbaugh and Fox convinced right-wingers who never went to college that a liberal arts major means basically taking basket weaving, black studies, and feminist studies courses.

No, Cyborg. The colleges themselves did that. They have long abandoned the seven liberal arts.

The liberal arts education in college still means a classical liberal education with coursework in math at least up to analytical geometry, science electives, language and literature, social studies, and civics.

No, it doesn't.
Liberal education students can't do math and have little understand of it; they deny many theories of science; the don't understand English or Latin; they often have poor grammar; and deny and discard the Constitution of the United States.

 

[Into the Night]

Thanks for the tacit, if unspoken, confession that I never said a word about Ronald Reagan and UC, despite what the voices in your head told you about me.

As for all your frantic word parsing, I am not the one that ranked only two southern schools in the Nation's top 20 elite universities. It was the annual US News and World Report that did that. It's not even remotely controversial for me to observe the overwhelming majority of the nation's most elite universities are concentrated in the north-northeast.

I don't have any problem calling Rice and Duke excellent schools if that will satisfy your massive penchant for word parsing and word-smithing.

Elitism. DON'T TRY TO DENY YOUR OWN POSTS!

 

[Into the Night]

So it sounds like almost everyone else on this thread is thin-skinned and sensitive to hearing that there are elite schools which are academically superior to where ever you all went to school.

My ego doesn't get bruised. The state university I went to is not in the same league as Harvard and MIT. And I'm not thin-skinned enough to be bothered to admit those schools are academically better than mine.

Elitism.

Your own illiteracy shows how little you learned anything.

 

[Into the Night]

Okay, some facts then. I grew up in Philadelphia and cannot remember when the northeast was heavily Republican.

Argument of the Stone fallacy. Argument of ignorance fallacy.

 

[Cypress]

Not this thread in particular. I just notice you tend to start or post more about elite schools you couldn’t get in to than anyone else here.

You write all the time about the US Congess and White House, two institutions you do not have the remotest chance of ever serving in.

 

[Cypress]

I’d go to Northwestern State Louisiana University in Natchitoches before I’d live in NYC or Boston for 4 years.

Neither you nor I ever had the grades or SAT scores to get into Harvard, so the question about choosing between Louisiana State or Harvard is a moot and irrelevant question.

If you had the talent, capability, and grades to get into Harvard you would be a totally different person, and you have no idea how that person would actually think and decide.

 

[Matt Dillon]

Riiiiight, it's "pretentious" to admit I did not have the grades for an elite school, and it's "pretentious" to make the common-sense observation that elite graduate students tend to study under elite professors

Here's the thing, cupcake: I did. They courted me with a full-ride scholarship.
Had to turn it down. The kids that went there had "fuck you" money, and I knew that.
Hell, some of 'em were my friends anyway.
I was working a part time job for food, gas, and books.

 

[cawacko]

Thanks for the tacit, if unspoken, confession that I never said a word about Ronald Reagan and UC, despite what the voices in your head told you about me.

As for all your frantic word parsing, I am not the one that ranked only two southern schools in the Nation's top 20 elite universities. It was the annual US News and World Report that did that. It's not even remotely controversial for me to observe the overwhelming majority of the nation's most elite universities are concentrated in the north-northeast.

I don't have any problem calling Rice and Duke excellent schools if that will satisfy your massive penchant for word parsing and word-smithing.

You are saying things about Reagan I didn't say and I have no desire to go down that rabbit hole with you.

And LOL "word parsing and word smithing".

You above "I am not the one that ranked only two southern schools in the Nation's top 20 elite universities."

And then you say Duke and Rice (and might as well add Vanderbilt) are respectable schools.

So which is it? My amazing niece is a Freshman at Colorado. Colorado is a fine school, it is definitely respectable. Elite it is not. But you want to put Colorado alongside Duke? Please.

You knew what you were saying. I hate Duke but acknowledge it is elite. But you could only upgrade the #7 school in the country from respectable to excellent. In your mind by saying it is elite would be an affront to your political worldview. And that's ultimately what this discussion is all about, because it sure isn't about learning in 2026 where elite schools are located.

 

[cawacko]

Sorry.

1) This is JPP

2) This thread is 575 posts long

You owe zero apologies.

 

[Matt Dillon]

You are saying things about Reagan I didn't say and I have no desire to go down that rabbit hole with you.

And LOL "word parsing and word smithing".

You above "I am not the one that ranked only two southern schools in the Nation's top 20 elite universities."

And then you say Duke and Rice (and might as well add Vanderbilt) are respectable schools.

So which is it? My amazing niece is a Freshman at Colorado. Colorado is a fine school, it is definitely respectable. Elite it is not. But you want to put Colorado alongside Duke? Please.

You knew what you were saying. I hate Duke but acknowledge it is elite. But you could only upgrade the #7 school in the country from respectable to excellent. In your mind by saying it is elite would be an affront to your political worldview. And that's ultimately what this discussion is all about, because it sure isn't about learning in 2026 where elite schools are located.

Dude didn't even have grades for an elite school and is talking shit.
That's pretty much all one needs to know.
@Cypress is taking airs above his station.
Oh but he knows where they are, that he didn't have the grades for.
I betcha they never called him.

 

[cawacko]

Thanks for the tacit, if unspoken, confession that I never said a word about Ronald Reagan and UC, despite what the voices in your head told you about me.

As for all your frantic word parsing, I am not the one that ranked only two southern schools in the Nation's top 20 elite universities. It was the annual US News and World Report that did that. It's not even remotely controversial for me to observe the overwhelming majority of the nation's most elite universities are concentrated in the north-northeast.

I don't have any problem calling Rice and Duke excellent schools if that will satisfy your massive penchant for word parsing and word-smithing.

And I recall your conversation with Walt where you stated something to the effect of 'it's too bad West Virginia and Mississippi don't know that having world class universities is good for economic growth...'

So if the #7 school in the country is only respectable (or even just excellent) and there are no public schools in front of it, then no state has world class universities that they have control over.

I go back to you don't have a principled position, it's a partisan one. You change your rhetoric and language based on partisanship. And it's transparent.

 

[Cypress]

And LOL "word parsing and word smithing".

You above "I am not the one that ranked only two southern schools in the Nation's top 20 elite universities."

^^ A massively obsessed word-smither.

I have no problem saying Duke is an elite school. I never said there were no Top 20 schools in the South.

But you do seem to have a problem admitting that I was 100% correct in saying the nation's most elite research universities overwhelmingly cluster in the north and northeast. That statement isn't even remotely controversial, and independently confirmed by USN's annual ranking of American universities.

Will you explain to the board why you are so reticent to admit my statement was perfectly correct?
.

 

[Cypress]

Here's the thing, cupcake: I did. They courted me with a full-ride scholarship.
Had to turn it down. The kids that went there had "fuck you" money, and I knew that.
Hell, some of 'em were my friends anyway.
I was working a part time job for food, gas, and books.

I'll let others decide how credible your story is that Ivy League schools and other super elite universities schools begged you to attend, but you turned them down.

 

[Hume]

I'll let others decide how credible your story is that Ivy League schools and other super elite universities schools begged you to attend, but you turned them down.

Rather comical. Matt is pretty much a dope.

 

[Matt Dillon]

Rather comical. Matt is pretty much a dope.

You smell that? Smells like jelly.

 

[Hume]

You smell that? Smells like jelly.

No idea what your post is. Maybe you should have gone to college.

 

[Matt Dillon]

I'll let others decide how credible your story is that Ivy League schools and other super elite universities schools begged you to attend, but you turned them down.

Zero private colleges that require 4.1+ GPA for consideration called you, but several called me.
Just so you know, I was in Advanced classes, which adds a little boost to that.
That's where I scored.
Chose not to make a life out of Academia because it seemed too easy, like I would be copping out and never experiencing the real world, which I went and did.

 

[Matt Dillon]

No idea what your post is. Maybe you should have gone to college.

Humanities is a required class for an undergraduate degree.
Also, if someone isn't capable of posting or understanding coherent things on an internet message board by 5th grade, they may have issues.