Curtis Dahlgren
Morning after in America: Putting higher education in context, part 6
By Curtis Dahlgren
" . . the great state university of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found." - U.W. motto (Daily Cardinal, page 1)
"What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer." – Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans (Francis Bacon, 1561-1626)
THE HOME-SCHOOLED BACON, who became an advisor to the Crown, said that "universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation." What're you talkin' about Willis? Well, "sophistication" originally meant "adulterated, corrupted." While words can change, the results haven't changed!
"One in five co-eds" have been raped? That can't be true, but think what that still says about MORAL-CLIMATE-CHANGE on modern campi (talk about "adulterated")!
As for the "sifting and winnowing," I question whether anyone on campus – having never watched a threshing machine work – has any idea what winnowing is. And, as for "finding the truth," your professor will tell you that liberalism is the wheat and the chaff is conservatism – like your right-wing extremist fundamentalist grandmother. Really?
I, for one, have had it up to my vestigial gills with seeing my ROOTS attacked (Alex Haley, okay, but we ALL have roots, and as Teddy Roosevelt said, there are no hyphenated Americans). Paradoxically, those who divide us complain the loudest about "division." I'm talking about "Big Education."
"Much has been written about the 'two Americas.' One of the sharper divides separates the college bound from the rest." – Froma Harrop ("Kids who don't go to college matter"; Marquette Mining Journal, 9/29/14)
Six out of ten of us don't get "degreed," but the college grads probably have less common sense on average than the rest of us.
"Have you ever sat in a movie theater feeling like you are a necessary component to a seriously flawed humanities project? . . . Perhaps this is how college students feel today when after persistent indoctrination in class they suddenly realize they were duped into paying hundreds of thousands of dollars." - Anna Githens Fabricated Philomena, notorious Nebraska, and Hollywood's anti-Christian bias
Don't you just hate it when people miss the point? Some may accuse me of being "anti-intellectual." I'm well on my way to writing my second 500 unique articles, so why would I be "anti-intellectual"?
Quod enim mavult homo verum esse, id potius credit.
"For what a man had rather be true he more readily believes."
Bacon said that (he said a lot of things, such as "There is superstition in avoiding superstition"). See the classic How to write a column without saying a word (part I)
But this week I want to re-post part of another one of my favorite columns: "Putting Big Education in Perspective; the conclusion of the matter" (August 29, 2013):
"By the time you leave Stanford, you should be completely disoriented." – Stanford prof ("365 Stupidest Things Ever Said" calendar)
"Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it and at whom it is aimed." – Josef Stalin
"The snowman is, of course, white and invariably male . . . His ritual location in the semi-public space of garden or yard imaginatively reinforces a spatial social system, marking women's 'proper' sphere as the domestic-private and men's as the commercial-public . . " – University of Birmingham (UK) professor of art history
EVEN OUR LIFE-LONG DEMOCRAT NEIGHBORS are sick of the political correctness promoted by our Big Box universities (bet you didn't know that when you made snowmen you were being a dastardly chauvenistic pig, did you?). And just think what a snow-angel says about you backward moss-backed flat-earthers in the eyes of our "Best & Brightest"!
SERIOUSLY, as Will Rogers said, "There is nothing so ignorant as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in."
America has been the most creative nation on the planet for over 200 years. We not only invented baseball, football, and basketball, but the bulk of the world's technology. A lot of credit for that goes to the engineering majors from our universities, but sadly, many of them don't notice that the old alma mater has become increasingly anti-business, anti-Christian, and now even anti-Semitic and pro-Islamic. America would be better off if the universities had never gotten involved in the "soft sciences" – the social engineering that has given us the soft nanny-state (plus unsustainable debt). We now know the "social scientists" by their fruits and nuts. They think we're nuts, but I'm going to post this column every August for as many Augusts as America survives:
- "No man who worships education has got the best out of education . . . Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete." – G.K. Chesterton
- "I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cab driver. Then they would really be educated." – Al McGuire (coach, Marquette WARRIORS)*
- "It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense." – Robert Green Ingersoll
-"An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious – just dead wrong." – Russell Baker
- "It's not that our liberal friends are ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." – Ronald Reagan
- "For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a log lion . . Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you – you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned." – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- "An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted." – Arthur Miller
- "Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious . . . That which discloses the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding." – Ambrose Bierce . . . [end excerpt]
P.S. For the information of newer readers or review by "old" readers, you can read the rest of the quotations in the archives. "What's your point?" some may ask. Well, here's the conclusion of the matter, from the preface to my book:
"It will come as no surprise to anyone who has listened to a commencement speech in the last ten years to know that a spirit of elitism has been fostered among students . . by politicians . . Not so well known is the fact that many professors pander this same line to their classes, telling them how smart, how well educated they are . .
"In short, too many professors pander to their audience and help the student to believe . . that youth equates with eternal wisdom, that age equates with obstinacy and wrongness, and that the past has no lessons for the present . . .
"In short, their attitude of elitism leads them to believe that know better what is best for the country than do older or less educated yokels, and they intend to give it to the country whether it wants their solutions or not"! - Professor X, "This Beats Working for a Living" (Arlington House, 1973)
PPS: WHAT HAS TAKEN US SO LONG TO WAKE UP?
© Curtis Dahlgren
October 4, 2014
" . . the great state university of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found." - U.W. motto (Daily Cardinal, page 1)
"What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer." – Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans (Francis Bacon, 1561-1626)
THE HOME-SCHOOLED BACON, who became an advisor to the Crown, said that "universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation." What're you talkin' about Willis? Well, "sophistication" originally meant "adulterated, corrupted." While words can change, the results haven't changed!
"One in five co-eds" have been raped? That can't be true, but think what that still says about MORAL-CLIMATE-CHANGE on modern campi (talk about "adulterated")!
As for the "sifting and winnowing," I question whether anyone on campus – having never watched a threshing machine work – has any idea what winnowing is. And, as for "finding the truth," your professor will tell you that liberalism is the wheat and the chaff is conservatism – like your right-wing extremist fundamentalist grandmother. Really?
I, for one, have had it up to my vestigial gills with seeing my ROOTS attacked (Alex Haley, okay, but we ALL have roots, and as Teddy Roosevelt said, there are no hyphenated Americans). Paradoxically, those who divide us complain the loudest about "division." I'm talking about "Big Education."
"Much has been written about the 'two Americas.' One of the sharper divides separates the college bound from the rest." – Froma Harrop ("Kids who don't go to college matter"; Marquette Mining Journal, 9/29/14)
Six out of ten of us don't get "degreed," but the college grads probably have less common sense on average than the rest of us.
"Have you ever sat in a movie theater feeling like you are a necessary component to a seriously flawed humanities project? . . . Perhaps this is how college students feel today when after persistent indoctrination in class they suddenly realize they were duped into paying hundreds of thousands of dollars." - Anna Githens Fabricated Philomena, notorious Nebraska, and Hollywood's anti-Christian bias
Don't you just hate it when people miss the point? Some may accuse me of being "anti-intellectual." I'm well on my way to writing my second 500 unique articles, so why would I be "anti-intellectual"?
Quod enim mavult homo verum esse, id potius credit.
"For what a man had rather be true he more readily believes."
Bacon said that (he said a lot of things, such as "There is superstition in avoiding superstition"). See the classic How to write a column without saying a word (part I)
But this week I want to re-post part of another one of my favorite columns: "Putting Big Education in Perspective; the conclusion of the matter" (August 29, 2013):
"By the time you leave Stanford, you should be completely disoriented." – Stanford prof ("365 Stupidest Things Ever Said" calendar)
"Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it and at whom it is aimed." – Josef Stalin
"The snowman is, of course, white and invariably male . . . His ritual location in the semi-public space of garden or yard imaginatively reinforces a spatial social system, marking women's 'proper' sphere as the domestic-private and men's as the commercial-public . . " – University of Birmingham (UK) professor of art history
EVEN OUR LIFE-LONG DEMOCRAT NEIGHBORS are sick of the political correctness promoted by our Big Box universities (bet you didn't know that when you made snowmen you were being a dastardly chauvenistic pig, did you?). And just think what a snow-angel says about you backward moss-backed flat-earthers in the eyes of our "Best & Brightest"!
SERIOUSLY, as Will Rogers said, "There is nothing so ignorant as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in."
America has been the most creative nation on the planet for over 200 years. We not only invented baseball, football, and basketball, but the bulk of the world's technology. A lot of credit for that goes to the engineering majors from our universities, but sadly, many of them don't notice that the old alma mater has become increasingly anti-business, anti-Christian, and now even anti-Semitic and pro-Islamic. America would be better off if the universities had never gotten involved in the "soft sciences" – the social engineering that has given us the soft nanny-state (plus unsustainable debt). We now know the "social scientists" by their fruits and nuts. They think we're nuts, but I'm going to post this column every August for as many Augusts as America survives:
- "No man who worships education has got the best out of education . . . Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete." – G.K. Chesterton
- "I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cab driver. Then they would really be educated." – Al McGuire (coach, Marquette WARRIORS)*
- "It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense." – Robert Green Ingersoll
-"An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious – just dead wrong." – Russell Baker
- "It's not that our liberal friends are ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." – Ronald Reagan
- "For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a log lion . . Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you – you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned." – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- "An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted." – Arthur Miller
- "Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious . . . That which discloses the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding." – Ambrose Bierce . . . [end excerpt]
P.S. For the information of newer readers or review by "old" readers, you can read the rest of the quotations in the archives. "What's your point?" some may ask. Well, here's the conclusion of the matter, from the preface to my book:
"It will come as no surprise to anyone who has listened to a commencement speech in the last ten years to know that a spirit of elitism has been fostered among students . . by politicians . . Not so well known is the fact that many professors pander this same line to their classes, telling them how smart, how well educated they are . .
"In short, too many professors pander to their audience and help the student to believe . . that youth equates with eternal wisdom, that age equates with obstinacy and wrongness, and that the past has no lessons for the present . . .
"In short, their attitude of elitism leads them to believe that know better what is best for the country than do older or less educated yokels, and they intend to give it to the country whether it wants their solutions or not"! - Professor X, "This Beats Working for a Living" (Arlington House, 1973)
PPS: WHAT HAS TAKEN US SO LONG TO WAKE UP?
© Curtis Dahlgren
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