MessageAnd a few points in response, Ray. ----- Original Message ----- From: Ray Harrell To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION' Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 1:40 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] What makes Quebec students 'distinct'?
As my students say: "I feel a lecture coming on." There are three comments and three points I want to make about this. Comment one: I 've never heard more of a complaining bunch of folks than civil servants and ex-civil servants here, in Canada and in England. It escapes me why so many of them here are conservatives who want to downsize their own jobs. Is it any wonder that with such viral toxicity, the rest of us poor schmoos question the value in what civil servants do and so we opt to stop funding their jobs considering them to be: "just throwing our money away?" For those of us who believe in the value of an efficient public and private sector, this whole argument is disturbing to say the least. Don't overlook that fact that the public is organized hierarchically. The guys at the top work very closely with politically appointed cabinet members. It's the guys much lower down that are thrown out in 'downsizings'. Comment two: Vocational Technology has been around since Taylor and the positivists. From the beginning they have been flying the Utilitarian flag over education and completely missing the point of the value of the Creative Arts and Liberal Arts. They also haven't the foggiest idea about the way a cultural system is put together, however they have never failed to walk into successful systems, make a mess and then propose their solutions. Sort of like the Doctor who infects his patients with cancer and then proposes the cure that will make them cripples for the rest of their lives. (example: Indian Reservations and Classical Artists with economists and social scientists as the "doctors." ). It is no accident that fundamentalist religions are happy to join your movement. The faux history of economics is of the same sort faux history on the internet, as their version of history that eliminates the existence of the Catholic Church. Don't blame economists or other social scientists for the state of affairs in Native communities. I and others spent a lot of time working on the problems faced by northern Indians and Inuit. We didn't cause the problems; they were already there. What we tried to do was help work out solutions. Comment three: The purpose of science is not technology. Technology is a product not a purpose. The purpose of science in society is the arrival at archival, generic knowledge that is trustworthy in building the society's reality upon. It has to be truly predictable or it isn't "real", "good" etc. i.e. science. Art grows from a growing chaos and even mistakes within the discipline of virtuosity and formal creativity but when the forms become predictable and generic the art becomes mere craft and entertainment. Art is not science although generic artistic formal theory is a variety of science. Vocational Tech schools are generic schools that teach craft, not human growth or potential, they teach the generic modes of scientific thought. They are the final product of the scientific archive. Predictable, ritualistic and almost "church like" as in the case of the musical vo-tec schools that we call "conservatories" (i.e. Phi Beta Kappa lists Juilliard Conservatory as not eligible for a chapter because it is in their vocational technology category of schools) or we could use an "apple" crystal cathedral as another example. In computers, if you don't know the "bible" you are a "sinner" or worse "stupid." Apple techies are called "geniuses" in the Apple church. No comment here. Point number one: Students are always anxious. Aren't most people who have difficult work to do? Point number two: Today's sixty to a hundred thousand dollar educational loan bills enslave people for life and make entrepreneurship impossible except for the very wealthy. It's no accident that so many of our CEOs like Jobs, Gates, Gelb etc. did not accept high college tuition as a "necessity" in establishing their dreams. i.e. Education IS a public good in the long term. Not quite sure of this. I guess the real question is whether paying for education will get you somewhere. I graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1957 and had no problem getting a very good job. But then those were the times. Things are different now. Point number three: The "Productivity Lag" that Ed and others are now complaining about has been a long time coming after the New Deal but we are now back to the 1870s and 80s with its grand theft by the Robber Barons and the mass genocide based in their prejudicial social theories. The root of the military term "Captains" of Industry used for CEOs. (War mongering anyone?) To that I say "no" to all of the economists on the list: Wealth production is not "value" it is "a" value, one of many and may be much less important in the long run than any of the "eternal verities" and if Utilitarianism is anything more than a nasty piece of British cultural chauvinism in history like Imperialism and missionary Christianity, then one has to admit that the idea of "practical use = happiness" is just plain nuts. It has the same kind of justifying impulse as any fanatical system whose logic works but kills everyone it touches. I don't buy that grand theft by the Robber Barons, etc., is based on prejudicial social theories. Surely there's an element of greed and self-promotion involved. CODA: If you really want to see the end result of what Ed is advocating you can come to NYCity and see the result of the specialty schools that are tremendous Vo-tec high schools in every possible job. Most of the time they make advanced schooling unnecessary for the profession they teach. (Not unlike the description of the old Soviet System we used to make fun of for Cold War purposes.) I prefer the old generalist Liberal Arts or at least the imaginative Arts approach. I believe the human instrument has to be highly developed first before you specialize. The beginning of that development is the development of the senses, the physical body and the cultural matrix. I'm not advocating anything. All I'm doing is trying to understand. Ed REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 12:10 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] What makes Quebec students 'distinct'? Michael's observations and the Winnipeg Free Press notwithstanding, I still think that being a student these days leaves one with rather limited choices about the future. Getting a good professional job now requires a graduate degree and there are plenty of people out there with graduate degrees. As well, there really aren't that many good professional jobs and it looks as though there will be fewer in future. The public sector used to be a good choice for many university graduates -- a good place to start and work your way up. Now it's the scene of extensive cut-backs. Moreover, there aren't the plethora of summer jobs out there anymore, so students have to borrow to pay there way through. It's now very different from back in the stone age when I was a student. I was able to earn enough during the summer to pay my way through the following year. Most of my friends could too. So, no matter how the students who are marching in Quebec look at themselves, I don't think it's all that wrong to see them reacting out of a deep anxiety. Will they be able to get good jobs when they graduate? Will they be able to pay their loans back? And yes, it's correct to see them as part of the Occupy movement, but then what drives the Occupy movement if not a deep anxiety about the very uncertain future? Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: michael gurstein To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION' Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 10:09 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] What makes Quebec students 'distinct'? This interprestation flies in the face of the students' own interpretation of why they are demonstrating (as in the article I originally noted), the global interpretation of why they are demonstrating as in http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/quebec-student-fight-goes-international-how-a-battle-over-1625-got-noticed-149349285.html and simple logic, since the Quebec students who are demonstrating pay the lowest tuition in Canada (and one of the lowest tuitions in the OECD countries where tuition is paid) and the students in the rest of Canada are not demonstrating. For better (or worse) the Quebec students seem to have decided that education should be treated as a public good rather than a private one as the neo-libs and the economics profession have been hammering away for a couple of generations and are in this way making connections with the Occupy Movement and with the broader energies towards redefining political and social directions. M -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 6:50 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] What makes Quebec students 'distinct'? This makes sense. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 4:28 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] What makes Quebec students 'distinct'? I suspect that what is happening in Quebec will soon happen in the rest of Canada and perhaps in the US as well. In a previous posting, I suggested that universities have become "holding tanks" for young people who probably couldn't find the kind of work they're after if they were out in the labour force and who therefore see universities not only as a safe haven but as a place in which they can learn something that may be useful later on. However, as students, they have to pay tuition and room and board, and much of the money that keeps them going is borrowed. Given the uncertainties that will beset them when they emerge from the hallowed halls, they want to pay and borrow as little as possible. Many, reading the world that is out there, may have reached the point of being very uncertain about being able to repay their debts when they graduate, so they march in an effort to keep their costs down. Universities, on the other hand, are expensive to operate. One suggestion aired on TVO's Agenda a couple of nights ago was that universities are too diverse in what they teach. They offer far too many subjects. Perhaps they could cut costs by specializing much more -- e.g. in a given geographic area, University A could specialize in law, University B in health sciences, and University C in the arts, social sciences and humanities. Would this work? Perhaps though perhaps not. The largest component of university costs by far is professorial salaries. You'd still have to pay these. And you might miss the cost advantages of having all of your infrastructure in one place. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray Harrell" <[email protected]> To: "'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION'" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 1:41 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] What makes Quebec students 'distinct'? > PS. Canada really is becoming more Republican in the American sense. That > means you will have poorer health and the magnificent achievement of the > Canada Council on the Arts will disappear except for the very wealthy as it > has here. The battle is lost here but is raging full force in England and > in the old Iron Curtain countries. The virus is now in Canada as well. > Wealth as Aristocracy or wealth as private wealth. If I had to choose > either I would choose aristocracy. At least they are a part of the > government and have the paternalistic ideal of social responsibility for > their serfs. That's why we had so many educated and culturally > sophisticated immigrants in the 19th century. Even the house slave in New > Orleans were treated better than today's non-wealthy youths. Rent or own? > Which do you like? Personally what I like is irrelevant. We lost the > war. But for the record I think both choices suck! > > REH > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of michael gurstein > Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 10:02 AM > To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; > [email protected] > Subject: [Futurework] What makes Quebec students 'distinct'? > > http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/04/26/f-quebec-students-tu > ition-debate.html?cmp=rss > > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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