Press "Enter" to skip to content

Weekend links

12 Comments

  1. ~Qjay
    ~Qjay March 17, 2018 6:53 am

    As a semi-useless business major, I’m looking forward to the implosion of the “education” system. They deserve it. I’m proud of my degree, Bachelor of Science in Business, I got it in under 3 years, as an adult, and I’m still only qualified for entry level jobs. Now I need an MBA even with years of experience?
    Right… I’m building my own damn company. At least now I have the financial knowledge to do it correctly.

  2. Pat
    Pat March 17, 2018 8:50 am

    “It’s becoming increasingly likely that only the most elite college students will have the opportunity to choose to widen their minds while in school.”

    Ironic that these elite students who “will have the opportunity to choose to widen their minds” are often the ones ending up with the narrowest minds.

    Very little to add to Michael Tanner’s article on mental health. He is absolutely correct re: both the history and the present situation.

    Except this: re Trump’s suggestion of a return to psychiatric institutions of yesterday,

    “Yet, we should understand why deinstitutionalization happened in the first place, and why it enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Many psychiatric facilities at the time weren’t much more than warehouses, offering little real treatment. Others were literal houses of horrors, utilizing shock treatment and other discredited approaches, while confining patients in squalor and neglect. The abuses and concerns that sparked deinstitutionalization were real and justified.”

    Perhaps he should spend some time in one as a patient. Most patients were not Jack Nicholsons (as in “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”), able to understand or control their mental environment so perfectly. The longer they stayed, the more confused they became – due to both medication forced on them and the manner in which they were handled.

  3. ellendra
    ellendra March 17, 2018 8:53 am

    The University of Wisconsin is known for its STEM programs. The medical department alone is famous worldwide. It makes sense that they wouldn’t want to dilute it with fluff anymore.

  4. Joel
    Joel March 17, 2018 11:30 am

    On making your own tire sandals, something I’d really like to try…

    ‘step one, find a tire that doesn’t have steel fibers through it.’

    Actually I believe that would make step one finding a way to time-travel back to 1965 or so. Not sure how many rayon-belted tires still exist in this hemisphere.

  5. larryarnold
    larryarnold March 17, 2018 12:09 pm

    Spend a decade preaching STEM; watch the value of liberal education drop. Who could have seen that coming?
    I note that I’ve used my degrees in English and sociology much more than classes in STEM, and to much better effect. Of course, I last graduated in 1977. It’s amazing how much less liberal things have gotten wherever the Liberals took control.

    Over at American Thinker, anti-gun signs that Onion couldn’t parody:
    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/03/the_downside_of_student_protests_against_guns_moronic_signs.html

    I remember when tire sandals were Vietnam trophies. [sigh]

    What’s scary about the current mental health reform talk is how much of it involves cops, and how much is devoid of any actual mental health evaluation or treatment.

  6. Shel
    Shel March 17, 2018 12:30 pm

    I have an old pair that almost fit.

  7. lairdminor
    lairdminor March 17, 2018 2:33 pm

    If parents want college to prepare their kids for a job, they should send them to a technical school. All this article proves is that far too many kids go to college in the first place. We have debased the entire purpose of college to the point that it’s mostly an extension of high school, “teaching” (if it teaches anything at all) things that should have been learned there. Of course, we have so watered down high school, and indulged in the fraud of “social promotion” and indoctrination with leftist concepts rather than true education, that I suppose that was inevitable. But the fundamental purpose of college was supposed to be liberal arts, expanding one’s mind, not job training. Most aren’t suited for that, nor should they be expected to be.

    We have far too many “institutions of higher learning” (yes, those were sneer quotes), and far too many unqualified kids attending them. And every community college aspires to be a college and every colleges fancies itself a university. Half of them should be closed down. And the federal student loan program eliminated.

  8. Shel
    Shel March 17, 2018 7:29 pm

    Sir John Glubb, in his essay “The Fate of Empires…” notes on p. 10 (his numbering) under “XVIII The Age of Intellect” colleges and universities increase greatly in number. “It is remarkable with what regularity this phase follows on that of wealth, in empire after empire, divided by many centuries,” he wrote. http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf I never fail to be astounded by how closely we are following the overall pattern he so clearly describes.

  9. lairdminor
    lairdminor March 18, 2018 10:11 am

    Shel, thank you for that link.

  10. Dana
    Dana March 22, 2018 8:34 am

    Fallout ensues after due consideration of the “wrong” (conservative) question.

Leave a Reply