Posts by giovanni tiso
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to James Butler,
Also, is it redundant to add that you don't need to have a Humanities education in order to benefit from a Humanities education? Teachers would be the obvious example - not only do I want my children to have high-school English teachers who have studied literature, but I want them to have primary teachers who have a real grasp of analytical reading and thinking. You might imagine that people who want to be teachers would have that already - most I know do, but I have known counterexamples, and I imagine teacher training needs to foster this.
That's a great point. And I think we didn't include primary and secondary education in the conversation, where the humanities are - thankfully - still appreciated. (In fact I would say that the new NZ curriculum is based on a humanities approach to the whole of education. And it looks great and many countries envy it to us.)
I saw a presentation yesterday at Vic on a digital humanities tool hosted at UCLA (HyperCities) by a graduate history student who teaches social science at Wellington High School. It was heartening for a number of reasons, and a great illustration of what the humanities are good for - as is another project I've been banging on about on this site from time to time, Kete Horowhenua. Not all of these things happen inside of universities, but it would be ludicrous to suggest that they would still happen if we didn't teach humanities subjects at tertiary level.
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Not for the first time, I have to say big props to Ben for that comment. But I'd also say that PAS in the past has sustained very long and perfectly civil conversations in spite of sharp disagreement - on The Hobbit vs. The Unions, for instance.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Does understanding that tell us nothing about who we are, what we are, and how we are? Me- I think it could tell us quite a lot.
But even if it didn't, it's just incorrect (and quite possibly dishonest) to claim that what a university course on Rowling would achieve is just get you to read the books. You'd also have to study them and write about them critically and analytically, hopefully in connection with other aspects of the culture. Those are valuable skills that you don't just get by reading during your commute. You need them in all sorts of professions.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
One last point: a couple of commentators have pointed out that Russell is some kind of rara avis because he can think critically even though he has not been to university! The obvious reply to this is that almost everyone in our society who is intelligent and intellectually curious can go to university, so he’s rare in that respect, not in that he’s somehow, amazingly, stumbled onto the ability to think for himself despite not having attained an undergraduate degree.
And history is full of self-taught engineers and scientists (close to these shores, let's say Bruce McLaren), which doesn't devalue technical and scientific degrees either. Formal education isn't the only education there is, and at their worst university courses can have the sole value of validating what you already know. It's certainly wasn't the case for me, but you may think that doesn't matter a jot.
It's also worth noting that I know more than one trained scientist who ended up working in other fields. I'd argue that their degree wasn't any more of a waste than yours.
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?
I wouldn't stay up too late waiting for an answer to that one.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Amy Gale,
Is it really a big sekrit? Georgetti, right?
I was more scared of the GG and Chief Justice, myself.
Wasn't the chief justice yet when I saw him - it was still his grunge period. But otherwise yes.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
It's a frequently recurring phenomenon on PAS: someone comes along and disagrees with the clique's gestalt consensus
Your original comment was this, Danyl:
I think the social value of people going to university and studying literature, philosophy etc is currently a negative value, since the net result is generally a person who is unable to communicate their ideas about art/philosophy/whatever to a non-academic audience.
Which wasn’t a disagreement, it was just disagreeable: a tendentious statement, completely unsupported by evidence, designed to provoke and quite likely offend (area in which you have something of a track record, incidentally). When somebody tried to turn it into a reasoned, content-filled conversation, you came back with many more rejoinders of that tenor, dismissing all the propositions that you had no come back for and without actually arguing anything. It seems to me that you insulted other people a lot more than you were insulted yourself, but apparently that still reflects badly on us, whereas you were simply exercising your right not to agree with our ‘gestalt consensus’. Well, guess what: the Internet isn’t a troll-soothing device. And the chips on your shoulder aren’t our problem.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Russell Brown,
Including a guest post explaining yourself here. I will accept no less.
Wonderful - we have a deal.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Russell Brown,
I was struck when I talked at the launch of the Humanities Research Network about blogs and other modern communications by the way that nearly everything I said seemed to be news to those present. (But not, clearly, to Gio.)
It is - and I really don't know how else to put this - funny you should say that. There will be an announcement hopefully soon about a new stage in that project, and involving some of the people on this very thread. Much work to do.
(I was at that presentation! That's where we were first introduced.)
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Megan Clayton,
Whether that's because the academy attracts certain temperaments or whether it merely shapes 'em that way is largely moot in the face of the institutional pressure to operate almost entirely within closed, professionalised locii which means that academic intellectualism, if not exactly private, is in practice not more widely visible.
I'm not inclined to give academics such an easy pass on this one. They should in fact view it as their responsibility, even if their employer doesn't reward them for it. Very few do. Too few.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Neil Morrison,
why would public intellectuals necessarily have opposed Rogernomics?
You'd hope some of them would, quite aside from the merit of the reforms (which, if nothing else, where extremely poorly supported by analytical thinking). Simply because you need plurality of points of view and the capacity to articulate dissent in your public intellectual class. Denis Dutton was a right wing intellectual, but I'm glad he was around. Ditto Craig.
Well, you've have been nominated. How about making a film?
If only I didn't completely lack the necessary talent, training, time, money and opportunity, I so would! But even Pasolini wasn't born in a vacuum - there were a number of extraordinary journalists, commentators, writers, artists and filmmakers in those days in Italy, and each of their works encouraged the others to think and do more. I strongly believe we need to create the conditions for that sort of talent to emerge and be nurtured and supported - and to my mind it goes through aggressively promoting higher education in the humanities as well as the sciences, grounded in a strong commitment to the public good, independent thinking and equality of access. (Indeed, it's arguably how this came about in Italy, when access to an elitist education system that was perhaps even excessively oriented towards the humanities was opened up to the working class.)