This is just gossip talk. I'm amazed that journalists get paid for writing such hearsay junk, completely lacking nuance and insight. How much do they per word for this drivel?
One can say now that Lincoln didn't need higher education, 150 years after he became the most famous American president and perhaps the most famous American after Washington. It's judgment by hindsight. During his term as President he was greatly vilified and frequently caricatured as a vulgar and stupid backwoods brute. Today, he'd likely have a Harvard degree or maybe a Univ. Chicago degree. I'm not so sure about Princeton or Yale. or some other still too upper class-oriented schools. The larger issue is whether or not higher education is meeting the needs of our society. It does a good job for those preparing for the hard professions and a terrible job identifying and preparing people for the kinds of skill and knowledge most needed and wanted. By that I mean the concept of what good college ed should be. Many kinds of activities used to be considered too vocational for college....excepting some in agriculture and lower tech areas. But know many fields and quasi-professional activities have become far more complicated and require a better across the board education -- not only in the humanities in developing critical skills -- but also in the more sophisticated technical areas. There should be more degree programs in those areas and less pretense that all students should study the humanities or hard sciences...and be prepared for....nothing. This still leaves plenty of room for the elite studies. Too many state colleges have tried to become "research institutions" when they should broaden their curricula to meet and anticipate social needs in the emerging economy. A lot more can be said. I have little respect for journalists who go for simplified exaggeration of a complex issue with bombastic or startling counterintuitive confabulations. That why I almost always have a grumpy attitude about Berg's sending such stuff to the list. We all see newspapers and the gossip of the lowbrow press. How about some serious ideas? Berg???? If you are a human and not just a auto-sender from a robotic source, can you answer that? wc ----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Tue, March 22, 2011 5:12:29 PM Subject: "Today we often confuse certification with education. In fact our society seems to value the former more than the latter..." Isn't that also becoming true in the world of art?: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucds/20110321/cm_ucds/doesformaleducationmatter
