Posts by Danielle
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You can teach people analytic thinking and reasoning skills without exposing them to subject matter that is trivial
Well, but that 'trivial' matter being introduced to universities is actually a sign of greater democratisation, which is actually something you've been angling for as a good thing, yes? The fact that some classes engage with popular culture, for example, means that larger numbers of people are able to see university as accessible or approachable. And then perhaps that engagement with complex ideas *surrounding* trivial subject matter may take them on to more traditional, canonical works.
(There are also a series of "who decides what's trivial?" questions which handily take us into big issues like class, race and gender. Which we might want to consider when we dismiss certain subjects as 'trivial'.)
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This is my earworm, because this is what our household is all about right now:
In the toddler sense, not the "picking up men for booty" sense. (Both are equally valid, of course. I ain't judging.)
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nebulous ways
Oh yeah. I meant to note that merely because you can't quantify the benefit in some sort of bean-counting fashion, that doesn't mean it isn't there.
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You get a better environment when you pay attention to the women.
Because we're so inherently caring and nurturing, of course.
(I'm surprised I managed to get that joke out without hurling slightly.)
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It’s also a nasty online culture – far more so than Kiwiblog, since it’s rather more sophisticated.
FWIW, PAS is a much "safer" place for women to post than Kiwiblog, and obviously that counts for something pretty significant in my book.
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But a course that teaches, say, Harry Potter and C S Lewis, for people to take because they’re not sure what they want to do with their lives, and justify retrospectively because they like to think it helped them out in some other career, in rather nebulous ways, is not – to my mind – a good way to spend the public wealth.
How, then, do you respond to Megan C's theory that courses you consider 'trivial' may not be useful for their subject matter necessarily, but because they teach analytical thinking and writing?
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It's telling
Of what? Danyl posited that humanities subjects were of limited economic (and by extension, social) utility. He framed the argument in those terms, so that's where it went.
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Would that be pointing out that other people's arguments are a straw man and re-iterating one's actual position?
Yes, I know my short-term memory is rather poor, but I do recall that part. Unfortunately 'one's actual position' wasn't all that convincing either, I'm afraid.
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once he bought into the straw man that got foisted onto him
There's one very simple way to avoid buying into a straw man argument, you know.
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I suspect it’s not your life and money Danyl is lamenting the wasting of, but of the taxpayer’s.
Ah, but he's also giving us the 'you can't handle my torpedoes of truth' runaround. Which is clearly, if I may quote one of our foremost public intellectuals, bollocks.