The All Things Political Topic - We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office

[Chilloutman]

3 minutes ago, Chairchucker said:

Education isn't useless. I want more educated people in my country, not fewer.

is social studies student more or less educated and/or beneficial to your country than skilled carpenter?

[BruceVC]

50 minutes ago, Chairchucker said:

Education isn't useless. I want more educated people in my country, not fewer.

I cant say for the Oz experience but in SA we have people who have creative\arts degrees like social science and there are no jobs for those skills. So getting any degree doesnt  help if there are no available jobs in that field in a particular country

We need more artisans like plumbers or diesel mechanics and not people with marketing or political science which are basically useless

56 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Ok, so then make it free but have a minimum requirement for it to be so.  

Yes that would be better 

Edited August 26, 2022 by BruceVC

[Amentep]

27 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

I cant say for the Oz experience but in SA we have people who have creative\arts degrees like social science and there are no jobs for those skills. So getting any degree doesnt  help if there are no available jobs in that field in a particular country

Which social science? Anthropology? Psychology? Sociology? History? Political Science? Law? Education? Economics? Communication?

I bet its Geography. Its Geography, innit?

[Hurlshort]

1 hour ago, Chilloutman said:

is social studies student more or less educated and/or beneficial to your country than skilled carpenter?

Funnily enough I just attended my daughter's back to school night, and the most impressive classroom by far was her Woodshop 2 class. It is an entire building/garage, and they have multiple work areas, including a full scale house frame for students to learn on. Unfortunately not every school has such a great set up.

But in regards to your flawed premise, the answer is both are important. It isn't an either/or proposition. We can have carpenters that understand social studies and social studies people that know how to work with wood. 

As Amentep pointed out, Social Science or Social Studies covers a broad range of subjects. At the end of the day though, it is more about Bloom's taxonomy than having some obscure knowledge about a specific part of history. We want critical thinkers in our society.

[Gorth]

8 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

Funnily enough I just attended my daughter's back to school night, and the most impressive classroom by far was her Woodshop 2 class. It is an entire building/garage, and they have multiple work areas, including a full scale house frame for students to learn on. Unfortunately not every school has such a great set up.

But in regards to your flawed premise, the answer is both are important. It isn't an either/or proposition. We can have carpenters that understand social studies and social studies people that know how to work with wood. 

As Amentep pointed out, Social Science or Social Studies covers a broad range of subjects. At the end of the day though, it is more about Bloom's taxonomy than having some obscure knowledge about a specific part of history. We want critical thinkers in our society.

I suspect a few people here are very skeptical, if not outright afraid of academics, as they tend to be left leaning politically. Better to close the universities and open up more workshops

 

[Chilloutman]

2 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

Funnily enough I just attended my daughter's back to school night, and the most impressive classroom by far was her Woodshop 2 class. It is an entire building/garage, and they have multiple work areas, including a full scale house frame for students to learn on. Unfortunately not every school has such a great set up.

But in regards to your flawed premise, the answer is both are important. It isn't an either/or proposition. We can have carpenters that understand social studies and social studies people that know how to work with wood. 

As Amentep pointed out, Social Science or Social Studies covers a broad range of subjects. At the end of the day though, it is more about Bloom's taxonomy than having some obscure knowledge about a specific part of history. We want critical thinkers in our society.

your point is irrelevant to our discussion. I also purposefully omitted discussion about what is 'education' as a whole but focused more on school system. You are asking carpenters to pay schools for social studies workers via their taxes. I am big supporter of state funded schools. I just think those money should be spend wisely. If per say in your state is big demand for doctors, you should support doctor studies. No-one is stopping someone to get educated in whatever they want, its just should not be on expanse of someone else. So If your dream is to be gender studies expert - be my guest and study as much as you want. Just don't ask me to pay it for you

 

so it is either/or - you either spend tax money on educating someone useful skill marked demands or you spend it on someones whim. I think biggest offenders to this are people who than spend their life working for state. In that case someone from private sector basically pay for life to someone else.

 

My father is bookbinder/printing machine operator and he only spend 3 years in school (after of course 9 years in basic school) yet he is very bookish and educated person. He just didn't needed state to pay for his 'education'

[Chilloutman]

1 minute ago, Gorth said:

I suspect a few people here are very skeptical, if not outright afraid of academics, as they tend to be left leaning politically. Better to close the universities and open up more workshops

 

quite contrary. I am all for better and well funded universities. I just feel like we should be able to choose which are more beneficial and/or profitable. Also there is my leaning for exact sciences so you can take it with grain of salt

[alanschu]

1 hour ago, Chilloutman said:

is social studies student more or less educated and/or beneficial to your country than skilled carpenter?

Social Studies is probably a more generally useful subject (it teaches you about history and politics, for example) than carpentry. I'm a computer programmer and I benefit from social studies. Carpentry would not be a useful skill for me for hopefully obvious reasons; it is of course a useful for skill for society as well.

[Malcador]

STEM Lords rise up. 

[Chilloutman]

1 minute ago, alanschu said:

Social Studies is probably a more generally useful subject (it teaches you about history and politics, for example) than carpentry. 

I think I would argue that but I feel there is not point.  I will leave it to more educated people to discuss 

[Gromnir]

14 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

But in regards to your flawed premise, the answer is both are important. It isn't an either/or proposition. We can have carpenters that understand social studies and social studies people that know how to work with wood. 

we would like for our carpenters and plumbers to recognize how much o' what is happening today is reminiscent o' the early decades o' 20th century USA, with increasing violent rhetoric supporting nativism and a widening gap in income disparity leading to widespread anger. ignorance at the time made americans easily manipulated by the worst political elements. democracy don't work particular well w/o an educated electorate.

Gromnir worked ranch jobs and roofing for much o' our youth and university years. we learned useful skills, but more important we recognized how the folks working backbreaking jobs for little pay ain't stoopid and it were circumstances more than intellect which led our coworkers fixing barb wire fences in blizzard conditions instead o' being seated in lecture hall classrooms being taught how commodity based economies o' africa and elsewhere where doomed by systemic forces to be almost perpetual excluded from the ranks o' capital producers and service-based economies. am thinking it would be useful education for university folks to actual spend months/years doing physical demanding work if for no other reason than to disabuse 'em o' the notion education is somehow making a person insightful or special.

just our opinion.

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

[alanschu]

3 minutes ago, Malcador said:

STEM Lords rise up. 

It's interesting because some of the classes I'm most grateful for having taken were arts electives in my otherwise STEM heavy education haha.

It's invaluable to understand psychology when interfacing with dozens of different people and the different ways they prefer to work, learn, and interact. Even taking stuff like Sociology and understanding Social Desirability Bias and Learned Helplessness helps me understand post mortem survey feedback whether through private/public betas with end users (the smaller and more private, the more likely social desirability has an impact) or coworkers that feel like their current situation is "just the way it is" and they need to just deal with it.

But I also have reservations about "University should be about getting a job." IMO that's more the purview of trade schools. Even with programming, if your interest is about getting a job in programming then a technical school will likely have a shorter/cheaper program and you'll very likely come out of it a more technically capable programmer than a lot of CS programs.

[ShadySands]

DOJ reveals redacted affidavit justifying Trump Mar-a-Lago raid

 

[Malcador]

Just now, alanschu said:

It's interesting because some of the classes I'm most grateful for having taken were arts electives in my otherwise STEM heavy education haha.

Me too, I desperately needed those 80s   But generally the idea of "useful" degrees just devolves into STEM graduates degrading everything else, heh.

1 minute ago, alanschu said:

But I also have reservations about "University should be about getting a job." IMO that's more the purview of trade schools. Even with programming, if your interest is about getting a job in programming then a technical school will likely have a shorter/cheaper program and you'll very likely come out of it a more technically capable programmer than a lot of CS programs.

Yep, but that ship has sailed long ago - can argue the focus on them now does warrant tertiary education being free or heavily assisted, I guess.  Anecdotal for sure, but the rare time I interviewed college graduates (once the senior people stopped masturbating over Waterloo) I found them to be capable at just doing the work needed. 

[Chilloutman]

4 minutes ago, alanschu said:

But I also have reservations about "University should be about getting a job." IMO that's more the purview of trade schools. Even with programming, if your interest is about getting a job in programming then a technical school will likely have a shorter/cheaper program and you'll very likely come out of it a more technically capable programmer than a lot of CS programs.

Well I agree with you (but we have different system here in EU than in US). I am just questioning if you should fund it by state or by yourself

[Gromnir]

8 minutes ago, alanschu said:

It's interesting because some of the classes I'm most grateful for having taken were arts electives in my otherwise STEM heavy education haha.

best professor and best class we had in pursuit o' our bs in physics from berkeley were a community college american history class we took during the summer so we could graduate on-time (early).

HA! Good Fun!

 

[ShadySands]

My best professor and class was probably business ethics if for no other reason than he played this clip the first day of class.

 

[alanschu]

1 minute ago, Malcador said:

Yep, but that ship has sailed long ago - can argue the focus on them now does warrant tertiary education being free or heavily assisted, I guess.  Anecdotal for sure, but the rare time I interviewed college graduates (once the senior people stopped masturbating over Waterloo) I found them to be capable at just doing the work needed. 

The biggest "employability" value I find virtually any degree provides is an implicit "You were able to start a reasonably difficult thing and committed to finishing it" which... is often a useful mindset to have hahaha.

 

2 minutes ago, Malcador said:

But generally the idea of "useful" degrees just devolves into STEM graduates degrading everything else, heh.

I agree. Although even then I find it very much depends on whether the STEM you're taking is in the applied sciences way. Engineering has specific accreditations and whatnot and very current and obvious uses for a variety of purposes. Someone with "simply" a Physics or Math degree (both still STEM) will often not have the same degree of opportunity. Plenty of rivalry between us (Computer Scientists) and the Computer Engineers too.

But I know a Master in Microbiology that now makes movies. I wouldn't suggest that subsidizing her academic career (she did some post-grad work doing some research at U of A) was worthless or anything simply because she did not continue to work in that field.

 

@Gromnir brings up a good point that there is 100% varying degrees of elitism that come from people that attend University and that definitely needs to get nipped in the bud. It is very easy for me to toss shade at my oil worker high school peers that mocked me for going to University instead of the oil patch because, unfortunately for them, the oil patch is very cyclical in its booms and busts and many of them are struggling now while I am not. But I do feel it's vital to understand that the ire they feel towards "environmental groups destroying their jobs" and concern over anyone that talks about wanting to reduce dependency on oil isn't necessarily because of some frothing insistence that producing oil is definitely not harmful. But that it's what they know, how they once made a very good living, and now it feels like that has been taken from them and for many life is now much, much more difficult. The challenging part has been trying to help them recognize that I don't fundamentally think they're pieces of **** for working in the oil field because that is a narrative they have often internalized (that is varying degrees of false... but still varying degrees of truth in a lot of cases.

Those CompSci/CompEng rivalries had their degree of smug elitism (I'm learning the pure science... you're just applying it - and will probably make way more money than me... so I need to concoct a justification to make me feel better) during those interactions.

[alanschu]

17 minutes ago, Chilloutman said:

Well I agree with you (but we have different system here in EU than in US). I am just questioning if you should fund it by state or by yourself

That's not unreasonable. I'm a lefty but recognizing "is this a good use for government funding" is always a valid question. My biggest concern is that if you make it self funded, it will become privileged. And once that happens, I wouldn't be surprised that University degrees even in "useless" sciences become increasingly valuable (it will empower employers - often richer in our society - to more effectively gatekeep).

There's also some differences in getting into a field more as an interest/hobby (I read a lot more history now, and definitely learn from it), which is definitely valuable, compared to having an organized academic discipline that is in some way organized and able to petition for grants and funding moreso than Allan With a Passing Hobby in History would be able to do. And even then those grants are still pretty political. My Microbiologist friend talked about how it was a lot easier to secure funding if your proposal included cancer or HIV over napthenic acids of tailing ponds. The latter though is very important to understanding the environmental impact Alberta's oil sands developments have.

 

13 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

best professor and best class we had in pursuit o' our bs in physics from berkeley were a community college american history class we took during the summer so we could graduate on-time (early).

Mine was a sociology of health and wellness course. I was so engaged that professor actually asked me if I would be open to a graduate degree even though I was in a Science-Specialization program. It was very fascinating and some of the truisms I had that got challenged (especially with our culture's focus on weight) was just, well, very interesting.

[Malcador]

I liked the professor that assumed we were all subhuman trash he was forced to teach things our troglodytic minds couldn't grasp in a century.

Nice guy once you get to know him though

[BruceVC]

1 hour ago, Amentep said:

Which social science? Anthropology? Psychology? Sociology? History? Political Science? Law? Education? Economics? Communication?

I bet its Geography. Its Geography, innit?

The degrees changed when I was at University but I didnt mean subjects like engineering, finance, law, medicine, computer science

Here is link but any degree like public relations, diplomacy, political science, philosophy etc. 

All degrees mean a person has studied for at least 3 years and that must be recognized but there are very few  jobs in SA  in these fields and there are too many people who study them

https://www.bachelorsportal.com/search/bachelor/social-sciences/south-africa/page-2

And @alanschu cant be more wrong, in SA you are suppose to go to University to get a degree and get a job. Thats how we suppose to transform and sustain  our economy and address inequality. He is well meaning as usual but his view is coming from the privlidege of a first world country where I assume its not a big deal if you dont work

Subjects like history and politics dont help much

 

 

Edited August 26, 2022 by BruceVC

[Chilloutman]

3 minutes ago, alanschu said:

That's not unreasonable. I'm a lefty but recognizing "is this a good use for government funding" is always a valid question. My biggest concern is that if you make it self funded, it will become privileged. And once that happens, I wouldn't be surprised that University degrees even in "useless" sciences become increasingly valuable (it will empower employers - often richer in our society - to more effectively gatekeep).

Thats why I think there should be grants for top students in all fields. But in general only those fields which are profitable in long run should be paid by state at large.

[alanschu]

12 minutes ago, Malcador said:

I liked the professor that assumed we were all subhuman trash he was forced to teach things our troglodytic minds couldn't grasp in a century.

Nice guy once you get to know him though

LMAO.

I remember having one (CMPUT 201 too!) giving a lecture and then pausing at the slides and saying "Hmmm... I don't think that that is right." I then realized that he was just using the slides from the other section's professor and definitely fit the bill of "professor that wants to research, but is obligated to teach some class."

I did get a research internship with him though (he was making an RTS to study AI!) which was still pretty cool. Led to his course's mark distribution being a comical spike lol.

It's one of the things I learned which is that a lot of the times you get better educators at less prestigious institutions. My time at Macewan Community College I had all PhDs for professors... but it wasn't a research institution. So the profs that were there largely enjoyed teaching. Definitely had some of my favourite profs there.

 

10 minutes ago, Chilloutman said:

Thats why I think there should be grants for top students in all fields. But in general only those fields which are profitable in long run should be paid by state at large.

I used to think similarly. Excluding less/unprofitable fields from a wider student body necessarily limits pool of prospective students though. And if top students across all fields are equally eligible for grants and funding, then I feel it is even more likely it will become a vehicle of abuse for more privileged students getting equal access to funding/grants while having innately less competition from a smaller pool of eligible students to become the top student in an "unprofitable" field.

Edited August 26, 2022 by alanschu

[Malcador]

8 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

He is well meaning as usual but his view is coming from the privlidege of a first world country where I assume its not a big deal if you dont work

Really now, Bruce.

[Chilloutman]

Just now, alanschu said:

I used to think similarly. Excluding less/unprofitable fields from a wider student body necessarily limits pool of prospective students though. And if top students across all fields are equally eligible for grants and funding, then I feel it is even more likely it will become a vehicle of abuse for more privileged students getting equal access to funding/grants while having innately less competition from a smaller pool of eligible students to become the top student in an "unprofitable" field.

I don't follow am afraid my poor handle of English is limiting me here or its my European experience with schooling system. How is making demanded schools free and only supporting top students in 'non-profitable' by grants creating abuse of 'less privileged' students? Are we still talking about merit here? Lessening the 'pool of perspective students' for' non-profitable' degrees is exactly why I am arguing for this