----- Original Message -----
From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 10:40 AM
Subject: RE: The Rotting Universities
> We are also seeing in the US a plethora of degree-mills -- fake
universities
> whose goal is to sell 'degrees' so that the buyers can enhance their
> resumes. They sometimes do so by giving academic 'credits' to applicants
> for their 'life experiences.'
There are two kinds of knowledge. Universities only teach one and usually
not very well due to the "scale" factor that modern economics idolizes.
They have to play "Procrustes" in order to seriously test the material that
they must certify. But sluch academic intellectual knowledge has its
place although it is not much use outside of that place.
The key word is "use" which brings us to "utility" or that which must be
useful in order to have value. I've commented on Taylor and the
Postivists here on the list before as well as the disasterous theories of
J.S. Mill for the cultures and cultural identites of the nations of the
world so I won't repeat myself. Suffice it to say that what is efficient
in Positivist thought is often just a dumbing down of the complexity of
skill development required by the second type of knowledge.
In fact that type has been eleminated from Liberal Arts schools and placed
in the areas of Vocational Technology. It would seem that Vo-Tec would be
Positivist (since Positivists call themselves "Scientists") but only in the
sense of simple "shop" environments. As work has grown more complicated
we are returned to the issues of skill and the conquest of complexity where
perfect execution is the beginning of knowledge and not its end.
> On another front, what do you think about the
> distance-education/computer-based academic programs?
No one will ever learn to accomplish complex performance knowledge on a
computer or any other academic program. It is just too hard and even with
accurate feedback, too complicated. They have tried for years to develop
machines that could create an adaquate feedback loop for vocal instruction.
The problem is the same with language. Art is subjective only to those who
don't know how to read its language. Unfortunately that includes computers
and most of the rest of the dumbed down scientific world. So those voice
teaching machines are useful to the competant already but, like books,
useless for the uninformed.
As for Astrology, I would recommend the Romani for that. They call the
street practitioner Gitche' Serve' or "one who guesses." That is a
far sight different from the real carriers of the culture who I have no
right to speak of on Internet lists. We all have our Gitche' Serve's and
sometimes they have advanced degrees in Psycho-Analytic disciplines from
schools like America's Ivy, England's Teapots and France's wonderful
propogators of Solfegge. My point is that fraud has an old tradition in
the schools of the world and no discipline has the right to stick up its
nose.
We were besieged first by murderers calling themselves Phrenologists until
they found that our brains were bigger than theirs (through dissection) and
then by Anthropologists who robbed our Intellectual and other Capital for
publication and profit. Today I can't even get Keith and others to
understand our Forestry Methods and Agricultural technology. Their "RAM"
memory is clogged with those fake and "made up" stories about worlds that
never existed except in their minds. They can't get past their
anthropological Grandfathers Lewis Cass and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.. (C & S
invented the modern "Hunter/Gatherers" catagory first popularly recognized
in Am. Heritage II Dictionary) Sometimes it seems that we exist in two
such different worlds that we don't seem the same species and yet in tragedy
we touch and know our humanity and compassion. But language is, as they
say over here, a "bitch" and understanding how people visually manifest the
same reality is often impossible.
Look at all of these people reading the same translation of their sacred
bible and then killing each other over the differences of opinions.
Science sticks up its nose at religion but the problem with science is that
it too is often self-serving, and in the case of "key-hole" definitions of
the universe, science is just as big a liar as the rest of the world when it
serves its own purposes. Contrast those myths that science preached
religiously about the stars before they had Hubbell with one decent picture.
And even that picture is limited to the human mind's capability to put the
numbers together. What should stir humility stirs hubris instead.
Astrology teaches the validity of interconnection and then mis-usues it in
banal predictions of the future. A more appropriate use would be the Media
which considers it Entertainment. Science, on the other hand, "cures" a
disease while killing the patient and ruining the lives of children for
several generations and refuses to call such short sightedness
irresponsible. Is that to say that neither have purpose in this world?
No, but either has purpose only when used in the proper context with long
range responsibility. Well I've quoted two cultures today that I
shouldn't and so I think I'll stop.
REH
>
> Lawry
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson
> > Sent: Monday, August 13, 2001 6:30 AM
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Subject: The Rotting Universities
> >
> >
> > I see from today's Times that our country is not the only one with
rotting
> > universities. In Paris, The Sorbonne, founded in the 13th century and
once
> > France's most renowned university with the highest standards of
> > scholarship, has now given a doctorate to a 63 woman who wrote a thesis
on
> > astrology (repeat: astro*l*ogy, not astronomy).
> >
> > In England, only about one-fifth of our universities (known as the "Top
> > Ten") are worthy of the name. The rest vary between sub-standard and the
> > pathetic; some will accept anybody able to write their names on an
> > examination paper even if they can't write or do arithmetic as well as
the
> > average 12-year old Victorian pauper schoolchild in a charity school.
> >
> > I guess the proportion of worthwhile universities in America is about
the
> > same. On the basis of the above news item, I would guess that
> > France has no
> > universities at all with any respectable intellectual standards, though
> > they still have their �coles, thank goodness. On this list I dare not
make
> > a guess as to the state of Canadian universities -- not that I know
> > anything about them. But I have my suspicions.
> >
> > Keith Hudson
> > ___________________________________________________________________
> >
> > Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
> > 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
> > Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
> > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > ________________________________________________________________________
>
