Further on the Way We Are Now
I find that local radio gives me a good view of the state of American consciousness, or unconsciousness.
Just today I learned that the government is studying how to help “ailing mortgages.” Defaulters, it seems, have been struck by an unfortunate epidemic. Anyone can get sick, and sick people have to be helped. I also learned today that one of our celebrated university athletes will miss the next game because he is having “academic issues.”
This began some years ago when it became customary to use language suggesting that criminals and AIDS carriers were victims of random misfortunes that we were somehow vaguely responsible for and were obligated to fix.
We may be in a recession, but don’t worry. Your politicians and federal bureaucrats won't have to be distracted from their tireless public service by financial insecurity.
At the last commencement I attended at my university, there were 40 doctorates awarded in the sciences. Thirty-nine Asians and one white lady.
The faculties of my backward Southern state's two medical schools are now substantially dominated by Asians. And they are among the highest paid of all State employees, in some cases receiving more than heads of statewide departments.
What Adam Smith and his successors meant as they advocated the virtues of "free trade": Removing government restrictions and employing comparative advantage in the exchange of goods could enhance the prosperity of a given community of people (and indeed have benefits for all peoples). In its new American form "free trade" means the international slave trade—exchanging the people of a given country for cheaper people from another country. The people subject to this form of "free trade" do not prosper—they disappear. The wealth of the country is not enhanced, but the slave traders and owners prosper.
President Obama is doomed. George W. Bush has promised him full co-operation.
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Scientific and medical faculties tend to be dominated by non-Americans (Asian or others) for one simple reason. American education is infected with Deweyite ideology, which by its very nature is hostile to things like memorization and intellectual discipline, and even to the idea of objective "facts."
Outside of the U.S., there is still a surviving idea that students are meant to put their noses to the grindstone and MEMORIZE things! But the spawn of Columbia Teachers College and other educrat-hatcheries are vociferously hostile to that sort of "rote learning." Naturally this has a negative effect in the sciences, where assimilating a vast amount of factual material is absolutely essential.
Some my best students are Asians, a number of whom have foreign-language difficulties. But they listen to every word of the lecture, take copious notes in their own language, and force themselves to memorize every rule and form that I introduce. As a result, they tend to do well.
I'm sorry to say that quite a few American students have been brainwashed by their Deweyite teachers to think that all lectures are "boring," and that taking notes or studying is stultifying.
Yes we all need rote memorization so we can learn to be in harmony with our "leader."
#1. I know all too well the truth of what you say about today's students. However, absent relentless government pressure to hire and promote nonwhites and absent unrestricted immigration, I do believe Americans could be found to fill those posts. In defense of the youth, it is not their fault that their entire lifetime education has been directed at removing them from Western civilisation. There is some justice (though self-defeating perhaps) in their treating the educational system with contempt and refusing to play in a game where the rules are bent against them.
"President Obama is doomed. George W. Bush has promised him full co-operation."
Priceless!!
Guess you're not a fan of Adam Smith, Dr. Wilson? Wealth of Nations wasn't on my to-read list either, because I suspected that his "free trade" doctrine is the very one that the Beltway establishment has invoked for the past three-quarters of a century for the purpose of eliminating all tariffs and duties, flooding the country with as many foreign goods as possible, and giving CEOs the excuse to outsource our entire manufacturing infrastructure. So now that concept is being applied to the science field? How many more entire fields of profession can the government hand over to Asians or Hispanics? Better start with library technology, my own field of study.
Since you brought up immigration, Prof. Wilson, I thought I'd give you an idea of what it's done to us over here in the People's Republic of California. In my sociology class, the subject of mass immigration was brought up, and my professor was not too good at hiding his glee and giddiness when he mentioned that non-Hispanic whites will drop from majority to plurality status in 2042. I did not want to enter into a debate, but I raised my hand and brought up the subject of ancestry. I asked the class if any of the 5 whites in the class, out of nearly 40, repeat, 40 students, could trace any branch of their ancestry to the 17th century, during the early colonial period. Two white girls kept their hands down, because they were sisters and the daughters of German immigrants. The other two were not sure. I was the ONLY ONE in the class who was surely a descendant of 17th-century American colonists.
America truly is a universal nation (hope you pick up on my sarcasm there).
Re: #5
Actually, if I read Dr.Wilson's article correctly, he was simply stating Adam Smith's version of free trade. He made no comment on whether or not he disagreed with it. He then contrasts it with the modern elite's (non)free-trade. In the past, Dr Wilson has gotten criticism from some on the old right for not being a protectionist, in the Buchanan mold. Being the premiere Calhoun-partisan, it is not surprising to me that he seems to arrived at such views.
"This began some years ago when it became customary to use language suggesting that criminals and AIDS carriers were victims of random misfortunes that we were somehow vaguely responsible for and were obligated to fix."
The demise of personal responsibility is the slow death of Western civilization - to be eventually replaced by a parasite state.
Daniel Maxwell @6:
Rigid protectionism is the only characteristic of the Old Right or, as Dr. Wilson might call it, the Yankee Right, that I disagree with. As Chronicles contributors like him and posters like Mr. Robert Peters have pointed out, protectionist economics might have been good for the North and especially for all of their manufacturing plant and factory owners, but it wasn't good for the agrarian South.
... my backward Southern state’s two medical schools are now substantially dominated by Asians.
Dr Wilson, the reason this has come about is that medical school is tough. Follow that gruelling four years up with residency and internship for little pay, and you can see the incentive go out of the window unless the new sawbones plans to default on the massive debt incurred. At best, a new doctor will not have a house backing up to a golf course unless he becomes a shrink. The malpractice suits djinned up by the lawyer scum industry have made it more profitable to become wealthy by operating a pornographic website.
A doctor from India, if hounded by frivolous lawsuits, can easily return to Delhi and set up shop performing surgery on American patients by operating on a broken hip followed up by the therapy of a 2 week vacation in South Asia. An American might find such an escape to be too difficult.
Clyde Wilson@3
Yes, I agree. I would never dream of blaming young persons today for the horrors that have been inflicted on them in the name of Deweyite education. It's not their fault.
And you have put your finger on another symptom of our anti-western and anti-male educational ethos: the resentment and anger of white males in our colleges. Every year there are fewer and fewer of them attending. Why should they? To be told by some tenure-track feminist that they are brutes, or by some post-colonialist ideologue that they are the oppressors?
Joe Salemi @ #9,
I am not too sure anger is what drives young white males away from college, for without a college education you will be stuck working worthless minimum wage style jobs that won't cut it in terms of meeting even the basics. The real reason white males are not in college or university in full force is that the cost of tuition is staggering compared to what it was when I was both an undergrad and grad student in the early to mid 90's. The cost of tuition has almost doubled and not too many middle class folks can swing that. To get financial aid, both parents' salaries cannot exceed a certain amount in order to qualify for it, so if junior's folks make more than the requirement, but have say 2 more kids to feed, junior is SOL, or has to forgo college til he earns money himself as he goes to night school. I myself had t ocontend with the anti white male thing while attending Eastern Micigan University, but you just ignored it for the most part. It was just another small hurdle to contend with in getting my degree.
Robert Bruce @ 10
You are right about the skyrocketing tuition. Some of my students tell me that when they graduate, they will have a six-figure debt to pay off. SIX FIGURES! That would have been inconceivable in my day.
But the fact that white males have to put up with routine denigration and contempt while going to college is outrageous. Yes, of course, if you have to get through with your education, you just grit your teeth and bear it. But that doesn't make it any less outrageous.
The most promising and intelligent student I ever had the honor to teach told me last year that he was changing his major from the humanities to mathematics. When I asked why, he just said "Politics." I pressed him further. He said "There's no way one can get through a literature or a philosophy or a history class without discussion. And discussion leads to vicious arguments with the professor and other students. And that leads to bad grades, no matter how well you write."
A lot of other white male students of right-wing opinions, not as versatile or articulate as this student, simply give up. And if you think this isn't part of a deliberate gentlemen's agreement among the left-liberal faculty, think harder. They hate these students, and want them out.
There is no question that immigration has driven whites out of technical professions. It is simple supply and demand.
#10 The anti-white, anti-male hurdles are higher now and getting higher every day, and they cannot be simply ignored.
@10 Robert
My son worked his tail off in high school to get into engineering school but was passed over so more minorities with lower grades could get in -- it makes the stats look good. He also could not face the demoralizing prospect of having to sit through 20 credits of liberal arts courses regurgitating political correctness to dull-witted professors who delight in passing out failing grades to freethinkers who don't toe the progressive line.
He also told me that getting a degree so he could spend 40 years in a cubicle sucking up to some lame-brained boss (probably female) seemed more like death than life. He graduates from Fort Jackson this Friday.
See what's happening, folks?
Higher education will slowly but surely become the preserve of the four F's: feminists, freaks, faggots, and French theorists.
And for no apparent reason this poem from page 413 of Alexander Zinoviev's "The Yawning Heights" (1978) seem presently relevant.
We stuff ourselves with porridge every day,
That's why we live the best in every way.
And with our lusty voices proudly say:
Left! Left! Left! Right!
You are alone! We come in might!
And if you want to eat your fill,
You'll have to be like us as well.
If not, it's best you make your will!
We're certain of our past, oh yes, we are.
We don't need criticism from afar.
The critics -- they're the guilty ones for sure.
Left! Left! Left! Right!
You are alone! We come in might!
Stay quiet, or else we'll beat you black and blue.
Join the enemy, and that's the end for you.
You'd do as well to march the way we do.
The Boss [Stalin], our Father, taught us in his prime
We're right to beat or kill at any time.
Because we sing of progress in our rhyme.
You are alone! We come in might!
Our own good sense will teach us right,
To tell the black sheep from the white.
You are alone! We come in might!
Left! Left! Left! Right!
@15 Joseph
Hey mon frere, ease up on the frog-bashing! They did give us Charles Martel, Saint Joan, Saint William of York (yes, French), and the martyr Abbot Charles Eugene Miroy who was executed by the invading Prussians in 1870 for arming a village. They have not done much lately except for Camp of the Saints, but neither have the English.
Etienne @ 17
No, I don't attack the French--only French critical theory, a leprous modern development that has its roots in a non-Frenchman, Jacques Derrida, and his acolytes.
Once, in a fit of patriotic pique, I wrote anti-French ballade because I was fed up with a lot of anti-American sniping from the usual suspects in the Hexagon. But that was several years ago. Pardonnez-moi.
On the discussion of white males and education:
The high costs are the same for females, so I think their must be political and cultural reasons for the decline of males in college. The most likely cause is feminism, but this begins long before college. The feminist, new historicist theories trickle all the way down to kindergarten. Grade school and high school teachers might not even be concious of it, but all their training in education is geared toward feminizing males. Unless one can find a good Christian or Liberal Arts college (do they still exist?), I would seriously consider homeschooling, teaching your son a trade (if possible), and unless your son is gifted in math and science, explore any and all alternatives to college. I realize it is a tough row to hoe without a degree, but it can't be overstated how demoralizing college can be to anyone who resists the educational establishment. It can also seriously stunt learning and character. I am a "young white male," one semester away from graduating, and I'm very seriously considering skipping that semester to take a farm apprenticeship. I'd rather scoop horse #@$% than listen to one more lecture on "queer theory." To answer one of the above questions, yes, I think it is anger and frustration that keeps males from continuing in college.
mistake, it should say, "there must be political reasons..." not "their..." I can't blame education for that.
I think I am a little less pessimistic than most of the people posting here. The reality is this. White European men are and have always been the greatest engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and inventors in the world. (I won't even get into arts and literature) This is because of that wonderful thing called genetics.
If they are pushed out of higher education by the liberal, politically correct do-gooders, it won't be the death of western civilization, it will be the death of civilization period! In which case, it won't matter, because who would want to be alive then anyway?
I went through university and medicine with all those Asians that Clyde is talking about, and to tell you the truth, I wasn't very impressed. They get by almost entirely on hard work, which is commendable, but to be a good doctor, engineer, inventor, etc., there are many other traits that are needed to thrive. Of all Asian doctors I have worked with in my career, there is one that I would trust my life with, and he happens to be third generation Japanese American. Interestingly enough, I talked with him about this and he completely agrees.
Sadly, I don't even know how any of them got through the interview process. There has to be quotas because on a level playing field, the entire academic system would still be white males. This reality will become apparent very soon as the medical world will eventually be dominated by Asians. At this point, I would put your faith in the Lord to save you and don't even chance a visit to the hospital. But that is just my opinion.
To a much greater degree than is generally recognised. minoriities now attend college without having to pay the high costs that are mentioned above.
There's another important point to be considered. In the business world, there is a saying: "Personnel is policy." This means that, if you want a certain policy to be implemented, you have to have employees who are fully convinced of the policy's value, and who therefore will be enthusiastic about applying it. Employees who are indifferent or hostile to the policy just won't make the effort to do it.
This is doubly true in education, particularly in regard to the humanities. If the English professor is a left-liberal, you are going to get a left-liberal take on anything and everything that he discusses in the classroom. I don't care if it's a conservative school, or a Christian academy, or a Roman Catholic college. I no longer believe the myth of the "disinterested liberal scholar," who leaves aside his sociopolitical convictions when he steps up to the podium. There may have been persons like that in the 1940s and 50s, but they are all dead or retired now. All left-liberal faculty in our universities, if they teach in the humanities, are conscious proselytizers for a distinct sociopolitical pont of view. And most of them make no bones about it.
Personnel is policy. So if you want to change the anti-white, anti-western culture of of universities, you have to be willing to replace the vast majority of the people who teach there. And there simply is no mechanism for doing that.
When I began teaching back in 1968, the administrators who ran our school district were the typical liberal scum: Deweyite, radicalized, pro-minority educrats. They would give us long lectures on how we were supposed to behave and how we were expected to run our classrooms.
Did we listen? Not on your life. We ignored these verminous educrats and did exactly as we thought best. We were the personnel, so we set the policy.
I studied for my engineering degree as an adult student, AFTER receiving my tradesman's certification.
It was a personal challenge and now, almost 35 years later, I am glad that I persevered. The degree and jurisdictional authorization opened many doors, plus the opportunity to "hang out my own shingle", a most satisfying endeavour in its own right.
When my sons progressed through primary school and high school I was horrified to learn that mathematics and science were taught by teachers with BA degrees in history and English. I'm afraid that possessors of these degrees cannot convey the enthusiasm necessary, plus the real-world applications, of math and science. Some informal remedial study at home solves THAT with practical applications.
Example: Ahead is a bridge with a load capacity of 60 tons. How do you KNOW that that heavy piece of machinery plus trailer weigh less? Who would have the legal authority to determine and certify this? You need a pipeline to carry hot water at 125 psig. What wall thickness of pipe would be required? What other considerations would require assessment to make the pipeline safe?
For high schoolers these were fascinating questions and answers. Ditto that for interest calculations and the "magic of compound interest", to wit, paying a mortgage for 5 years and having only paid for the front door. My wife was horrified at this and we "pulled out all the stops" and paid it off a few years later. It was a lesson for my sons, and duly noted, when it became time to purchase a first car. No loans or time payments!
As a matter of fact the negative feelings, perhaps unconsciously but probably due to ignorance, that are conveyed by answers such as "you really don't need to know that", or "leave it to the nerds and gearheads" when the teacher finds it difficult to answer the more insightful questions, is hardly conducive to instilling curiosity and enthusiasm in that field.
Combine the foregoing with "studies" in fields such as feminism, holocaustianism, etc. etc. in university, where serious questioning as to the origins and factual basis of these "studies" will cause failure at best or jailing at worst, it is no wonder that by the time an intelligent and curious mind arrives at this stage of his education he will have all that curiosity "beaten" out of him.
For this reason I strongly urged my nieces and nephews to study the hard sciences in university and to limit exposure to liberal arts to a few non-technical electives. Those that lean towards "political science" I encouraged to incluse serious courses in statistics and finance so that they can, at least, ask intelligent and penetrating questions when presented with masses of numbers.
One of the greatest injustices foisted upon the current generations is the nonsense of "truth is relative" in its various incarnations. I get a perverse pleasure out of such idiocies at parties, meetings, dinners, etc. My standard reply is "just keep this in mind the next time you drive your car and you expect the steering and brakes to work as expected, or you fly in an airplane, cross a bridge, take an elevator, or simply use a phone or a ball-point pen". No arm-waving, truth-is-relative nonsense on these issues, right?
19Josh Cooney,
who is thinking of dropping his pursuit of a degree: Grit your teeth and finish what you began and spent so much energy on. You can always shovel manure with a degree! The world is paper mad and you don't want to burn any bridges when you have come so far.
Nowadays I would advocate that an ambitious person obtain a tradesman's certificate in one of the following designated trades: HVAC (heating ventilating and air condition services), pressure vessel & pipe line welding, automotive electrician, and any other field where good intelligence and inquisitiveness will make the difference between success and so-so performance.
Right now the north American teaching and training is so bad that new pipes, theories, or philosophies barely hold water.
H.F. Wolff
H.F. Wolff @24:
I agree with you concerning the trades. It's very difficult for a technician sitting at a computer in India to diagnos and fix an electrical problem in your car (at least so far). On the other hand, I'm not so sure about the hard sciences and mathematics. By definition, science is limited to the least important things (i.e., dead matter). Math and science can tell us only what we can do. More important is what we ought to do, about which math and science have no answer.
Andrew G. Van Sant @ 25
"More important is what we ought to do, about which math and science have no answer."
Precisely. And that it is why it would be tragic if the teaching of the humanities were to fall, by default, into the hands of left-liberal faculty. It's all very well to advise young people to get jobs in technology and the various trades. But when no one with our viewpoint bothers to study the humanities, then literature, history, philosophy, languages, and the arts will be totally dominated by the enemy.
That's what it means to be a subject people. Others write your history and tell you who you are, how to behave, and what to think. That is what will happen to Westerners in our brave new world.
Ask any former subject people how this feels. Ask the Irish, or the Poles, or the Ruthenians.
25Andrew G. Van Sant:
It is one thing to go through life ignorant ie. uninformed, and quite another to be burdened with half-truths or un-truths throughout one's life.
In the former case there is always the possibility of learning the truth along the way. In the latter case learning the truth is much, much harder, besides the waste of time and money only to be taught rubbish in the first place.
I understand the case you are trying to make with regards that science and mathematics deals primarily with dead things; since this is what I do for a living I believe this to be a simplification.
Engineering is an art, the art of applying mathematics and scientific principles to real world problems in a cost-effective and timely manner. And the real-world part includes real-world people. Bridges, airplanes, elevators, brakes and steering, DVD players, etc. all had better work as claimed because of the real-world effect on living breathing tax payers ie. you and me.
If a philosopher makes a mistake he's a lousy philosopher; if a psychologist makes a mistake... so what if an axe murderer is released prematurely from prison; if a surgeon makes a mistake the body gets buried. If a lawyer makes a mistake... tough luck and here's your bill.
If an engineer makes a mistake and it remains undetected... catastrophe in the real world affecting tens, hundreds, if not thousands of living breathing people.
As an aside, toolmaking and engineering are the second oldest professions, and the world developed quite nicely without the modern trappings of liberal arts or the so-called soft sciences. And now that these are taught so badly... why bother?
Mr Salemi makes a good point. Why have these liberal arts courses become the breeding grounds of charlatans who are able to poison the minds of young adults? Why have the great thinkers in those fields not spoken up when it would have done some good? lazyness? Complacency? I'm all right jack?
In the hard sciences this clearly could not have happened, at least not for very long. Just picture passenger airliners dropping out of the sky, or bridges collapsing, with some regularity? The public would not stand for it.
It is my obviously biased observation that individuals taught the hard sciences ask questions and seek answers about topics that others are less inclined to do because of a lack of understanding. I can cite examples but I'd just get edited out again.
H.F. Wolff
I would think that the study of mathematics and science, and of the "dead" languages, is to train the mind and to acquaint the young with the accumulated wisdom we have been bequeathed.
H.F. Wolff @ 27
I understand your point. And yes, an intelligent engineer or scientist, if he has the energy and time and intellectual curiosity, can certainly discover a great many human truths on his own. His natural capacity for reasoning will guarantee that.
But you also have to understand that the body of knowledge that now exists in the various humanities is, at this point in Western culture, unbelievably vast. No individual could master it in a single lifetime. Someone trying to re-discover it all on his own initiative, with nothing but his natural intelligence to guide him, would barely scratch the surface of available knowledge. Competent teachers in the humanities are necessary to give students a start and a roadmap to the sea of wisdom that is out there.
There are many contributors to this site of deep erudition and culture. They didn't get that way by being autodidacts. They had serious teachers and mentors and guides who carefully nurtured them into the paths of genuine learning and scholarship. That is why the fall of the humanities into the hands of left-liberal ideologues is a catastrophe of cosmic dimensions.
Now it may very well be that the situation is irremediable at this point. Perhaps the near future will see Westerners reduced to teaching their children in ditches and behind bushes, like the Irish "hedge-teachers" who worked during the Penal times. But it certainly would be nice if we could avoid that extremity.
Scientists and technologists and engineers studying the humanities on their own, from scratch, is commendably heroic. But it's sort of like re-inventing the wheel.
28Clyde Wilson
29Joseph Salemi
Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
By no stretch of the imagination would I advocate that science and mathematics be the only fields worth of serious study; personally I enjoyed English literature and geography in high school. I wished to point out that the hard sciences tend to be self-correcting ie. charlatans and incompetents get weeded out which, judging by the tone of the posts in this thread, is not the case for the liberal arts field.
My curiosity is why?
Why have the deep thinkers in these fields not spoken vociferously at a time when it could have done some good? Why was this mediocrity permitted to continue and grow worse? And, most importantly, who paid for and benefits from this current set of circumstances?
I would advocate that the deep thinkers in the liberal arts make a strong attempt to attract students from the hard sciences to teach these subjects as non-technical electives. This won't be easy and would require a serious review and edit of the relevant literature and course material. From personal experience I remember a course in psychology and the extensive reading required to discover one solitary thought or fact "one could sink one's teeth into". And as you pointed out Mr Salemi, engineering students can be very critical... I pity teachers that can't field probing questions.
Any opinions? Thanks.
H.F. Wolff
H.F. Wolff@30
The questions that you are asking cut right to the core of the problem.
WHY are the humanities in the hands of our enemies? WHY are they not self-correcting, as the hard sciences are? All I can do is give you my opinion, which may not be the same as that given by other people in the field.
As I see it, the humanities went wrong when they ceased to be closely tied to the study of the classical languages and to the philology that is a concomitant of classical scholarship. In the past, anyone who was involved in the study of "literature" was expected to be conversant with the classical patrimony. To create a metaphor, Latin and Greek literature was the periodic table for humanists--everybody had to know it, just as every chemist has to know the periodic table of elements.
That ended at the beginning of the last century. The study of literary texts in the vernacular languages became an end in itself, without any of the connecting context or historical underpinning that the classics might have provided. As a result, the door was left open for all sorts of strange developments and by-ways and bizarre interpretations. The twentieth century became the century of "theories" (translation: crackpot ideas).
With all due respect to my Protestant friends, it's comparable to what happened after the break of Luther and Calvin with the Catholic Church. The floodgates were opened for the proliferation of all kinds of sects, unrestrained by the universal teachings.
That's the historical reason. But there is also an intrinsic reason for what has happened.
The humanities can't be self-correcting in the same way that the sciences are, because they are to some degree "interpretative" by nature. If two scientists disagree about the causes of a natural phenomenon, all they need to resolve the question is a bit of investigation, experimentation, and measurement. But if two literary scholars disagree on the merits of a given text, the issue can't be resolved. It's partially a matter of taste, temperament, and prejudice.
In the past this sort of literary disagreement didn't matter, because we lived in a fairly homogeneous society where basic presuppositions about society, religion, human behavior, and aesthetics were shared by almost everybody. In short, we were Westerners. Even if two scholars disagreed on the relative merits of Dickens and Thackeray, they were still educated Westerners and their disagreement was part of a larger, overarching loyalty to Western culture and its artifacts.
But today, those presuppositions are no longer shared. There has been what I call "a collapse of taste." You can no longer assume that what you find good and true and beautiful is similarly appreciated by the guy next door. I am utterly appalled at what many people think is "attractive" and "beautiful" today. And I think Westerners in 1890 would have had the same appalled reaction that I have. As for any "loyalty" to Western culture and its artifacts, forget it. The people who run the show now in our universities are explicitly and ferociously hostile to what they call "ethnocentrism" or "Eurocentrism" or whatever other neologism they have coined for our preference for our own.
In our new world, therefore, you can longer trust to an certain rough unity of aesthetic response. And since the humanities are to a large degree concerned with goodness, truth, beauty, order, symmetry... well then, they are going to be in the disordered state that we find them in today.
#32. You are right about where learning started going wrong. I would ascribe slightly different reasons for the decline that began in the late 19th/early 20th century. 1) Harvard and other elite institutions started preaching about a "relevant" curriculum. This was merely an expression of the Yankee "pragmatism" that characterises the mainstream American mentality. Since it fits the national character, there is little that can be done about it. 2)The educational elite became enamoured of German specialised scholarship---the "progressive" fashion---as opposed to gentlemanly learning. 3) Massive immigration from hitherto alien parts of Europe swamped the solid American culture that was striving to be born.
Clyde Wilson @ 32
Well, as for "Massive immigration from hitherto alien parts of Europe," I can't see that as part of the problem back then. At least most of those immigrants were Europeans. My own ancestors came here from Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century. Besides, most of these new immigrants did not go on to higher learning.
But what you say about Harvard pragmatism is right on target. John Dewey came directly out of that melange of ideas. And yes, it fits a basic flaw in the American character: the obsession with being "practical" and "businesslike" all the time. If you are into pragmatism, you can't really see the advantage of learning Latin and Greek, or studying poetry, or devoting time to the arts. As a dimwitted American poet (Philip Freneau, I believe) wrote concerning classical education towards the end of the eighteenth century:
We should not be wasting our time on this trash--
Instead we should learn to accumulate cash.
There are lots of morons in America who still take this view, and some of them call themselves "conservatives."
As for German "specialized scholarship," I'll agree that it has its problems. It did make the study of the humanities somewhat rigid and pedantic, in the typical German manner. The popular image of Herr Doktor Professor Schmuckmeister of Heidelberg, with his spectacles and his massively footnoted tomes, all reeking of pipe tobacco, beer, and Kartoffelsalat, comes from this period and has more than a grain of truth in its depiction.
But the new German approach, despite these drawbacks, did rejuvenate Western scholarship with its meticulous philology and its close textual analysis. Combined with what you call the older "gentlemanly learning," it made for a Renaissance of great scholarship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When I read some of the scholarship produced by Americans back then--men from Illinois and Indiana and South Carolina, and indeed all our nation--I am fiercely proud. We could hold our heads up with the best that Europe produced.
Alas, it didn't last. The Deweyites wrecked the basis for it all with their criminal theories. And let's not forget that Dewey was a pure American Vermonter.
Nearly every bad thing in America can be traced back to that Vermont and the adjacent states to its south. Without the aggressions of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont this would be a very different country.
Dr. Wilson wrote: "At the last commencement I attended at my university, there were 40 doctorates awarded in the sciences. Thirty-nine Asians and one white lady."
When managers of hedge funds, who have helped to grind the economy into the ground, are obscenely rewarded for relatively little effort and acting with fiscal recklessness, should anyone be surprised that few American children would want to spend years getting PhD's in physics, biochemistry or engineering for relatively paltry sums of money instead of getting rich trading IOU's? The coarse and unbridled lust for mammon that this administration let prey upon the American people has harmed our social fabric even more than the most wild-eyed socialist can imagine.
Clyde Wilson @ 34
Well, at least they make good maple syrup. Too bad they didn't stick to that occupation exclusively.
H.F. Wolff @ 27:
I'm sympathetic to your defense of science, math, and engineering, as I am a mechanical engineer. I still believe that scientists, mathematicians, and engineers need to know more than just their specialties.
I once, in my mis-spent youth, interviewed with Adm. Rickover, the "Father of Our Nuclear Navy." He believed that every Naval officer had to be an expert in some technical field. I discovered this just before going in for the interview while reading a transcript of his testimony in the Congressional Record. I thought, and still think, he was wrong. Not wanting to be in a program led by someone who thought as he did, I answered his first question, "I don't know, sir," which was guaranteed to make him very angry. It did. His response? "Out! Out! If you don't know, who does?" That's how I became a destroyer sailor in the conventional Navy.
37Andrew G. Van Sant
I am in the same profession, working out of my own office.
After 17 glorious years in heavy engineering I got caught up in the early 1990's downturn.
One job interview I had, the 3 interviewers were particularly aggressive; upon conclusion I said you had your turn now answer this question: I'm plant manager and looking to purchase a major piece of replacement equipment. I have 3 quotations before me, all from major corporations, good warranty, the evaluated price differences are not enough to differentiate between the three. WHY SHOULD I BUY FROM YOU? The silence that followed was deafening as I bid them adieu.
After that it was never the same and 5 years ago I decided to go it alone. So far so good with some guidance from the old testament where Joseph saves grain during the 7 fat years to feed his people during the 7 lean years and, of course, "never a borrower nor a lender be".
The main point I wished to make was that studying the hard sciences is inclined to make one a skeptic and ask "where is the proof" or "yeah tell us another one" when hare-brained theories or philosophies are propounded.
I happened to think that this proclivity would be most useful for a student of the liberal arts where, judging by the posts in this thread, charlatans and third-rate thinking abound.
Toss a bunch of skeptical students into the classes of loose thinking liberal arts professors, these may well find it easier to earn a living in selling... whatever, instead of polluting the minds of our young.
The academic freedom to be disruptive would stem from the fact that hard science students would study the liberal arts as non-technical electives. The marks of these courses do not affect the academic standing in the technical subjects, at least they did not in my school at that time. This freedom would provide much room to offer heavy criticism, and would be a place to start.
H.F. Wolff
Actually, one of the very best places to study the humanities is in a military academy like West Point or Annapolis.
There the subjects are treated with the rigor, precision, and attention to detail that one expects from the military mind. When a cadet takes a poetry class in one of those places, he gets an in-depth, solid grounding in the nature of poetic composition, how poems are put together, what all the tropes and figures are, and an overview of the various genres.
In most colleges, you'd be lucky if the feckless professor even manages to answer the question "What is poetry?" by mid-semester, after weeks of tedious jawboning and emoting.
H.F. Wolff @38:
My personal experience is that many persons trained in math, science, and engineering are taken in by hare-brained theories or philosophies. Likewise, I know people with various non-technical degrees who are clear thinkers.
Coincidentally, just before I came on-line, I read Polonius' line to his son, Laertes, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” Act 1, Scene 3, Line 75 of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. A few lines later he says: "This above all: to thine own self be true,/And it must follow, as night the day,/ Thou canst not then be false to any man." (1.3.78-80.) Seeing all of the falsehood around us, we must conclude that either Polonius was wrong or there are many who are not true to themselves. Which do you think is the case?
40Andrew G. Van Sant:
Methinks Polonius' philosophy has withstood the test of time, and that large portions of today's populace are enamored with too many "get rich quick without pain" schemes, or "I deserve it" (regardless). These people are "not true to themselves".
I follow the economic news with some regularity and I am absolutely astounded how many businesses and individuals borrow funds to expand their business or lifestyle.
Whatever happened to retained earnings and savings? Are these principles too old-fashioned? Don't apply anymore? We shall see.
My main concern is inflation; I must plead ignorance here because with all this "money" being thrown around one would expect serious inflation to rear its ugly head, yet so far all indications point to deflation. This, of course, is agreeable to those without debt and who saved for a rainy day. Still, my wife and I did take a haircut on our investments but it could be much worse.
It is truly amazing the small amount of money it takes to live on in the absence of debt!
H.F. Wolff
H.F. Wolff @41:
There seem to be a lot of financial advisors who recommend using OPM (other peoples' money) to get ahead. Why risk your money when you can risk money that belongs to someone else? If your gamble pays off, you pay back with cheaper dollars; if not, it's not your money that was lost - just declare bankruptcy and move on.
The Liberal Establishment WANTS people to be in debt, just as they want you to be a salaried worker with your children in a public school. All this makes it much easier to keep you under control. You can't make political waves if you are under a crushing burden of debt. Taxes are taken out in advance by withholding, yoour kids get brainwashed by left-liberal teachers, and you slave away to make the minimum payments on your credit-card balance. You have neither the time nor the energy to think about who's controlling things, and why.
Since I attended the same commencement, don't forget about all the Indians receiving engineering degrees, while most of the American students obtained degrees in hotel management and psychology. As the commencement speaker brilliantly remarked, and I paraphrase, ideas have consequences. WOW! It probably took him 30 years to figure that out.
I recently watched a DVD--2 Million Minutes--that compared two American high-school students to a couple of students from India and China. If you have the time and can find it, I would recommend checking it out.