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Varsity Blues (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Rebecca


In: USA
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Only the School of Life for me. At 16 I thought I'd lost the plot in organized education so left school and got a job. I worked my way up the corporate ladder from Junior clerk to Accountant then Company Secretary. Every second step required a quick course at night school and I didn't bother wasting time on the subjects that had nothing to do with the goal in front of my face.

Learnt Remedial Massage by working on the other side of the table from one of the best in the profession. Expanded my knowledge by studying anatomy and every kind of alternative modality which might enhance my work. Learnt Journalism by taking a position as a Junior Cadet (the most senior Junior cadet you'll ever come across).

Many times I have picked up the University course brochures and thought I should give it a try. I read through the list of subjects and wonder why in the hell one would want to study 5 subjects which have some relevance and another 15 that don't. Makes no sense and wastes precious time.

If you go to University you might end up with a very nice paper tiger on your wall after you've finished learning what they wanted you to learn. I have no paper tigers on my walls. I wonder what difference it would have made to me if I owned one for everything I've accomplished.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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But you haven't told us how you acquired your intellectual knowledge.
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Rebecca


In: USA
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But you haven't told us how you acquired your intellectual knowledge

Well you might learn it at university but you need to have a certain amount of intellect before they even let you through the doors of the Great Halls.

I think I learnt it by observation and by reading. I read the entire Junior School library at age 10. I had a thirst for learning which has never ceased. The books I read as a child, I have read with new understanding as an adult. This might illustrate that the acquisition of intellect is something which is learnt.

btw, I'm just reading the Kebra Nagast and I think the Queen of Sheba was Queen Hatshepsut, given that Ray wants to take 600 years from the EXACT dates between the reign of King Solomon (who I think is the Pharoah Siamon)and the good Queen Hatshepsut who went off on her fabulous holiday to Punt (and no one knows where that was anyway, so I'd suggest that it may have been in Nubia. So shoot me, they have actually found a pyramid belong to Siamon at the Dongola Reach and it is quite unusual.)

If you've read this paragraph and am totally puzzled, I am using it as an example. Because I didn't get a formal education my mind is "intellectually allowed" to cross barriers put up by conservatively fashioned intellectuals.

Whilst historians would choke on the thought of what I put together, it is quite logical to me because the barriers don't exist. I don't make them until I've proved to myself that what I proposed initially is absolutely impossible. I think that there are other people on this board who use their intellect in the same way.
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Mick Harper
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Your experience aged ten is familiar enough. The world appears to divide around this time into
a) those who want to hoover up "knowledge" on an undifferentiated and apparently random basis and
b) those who realise that they'd rather do other things and therefore acquire knowledge on a "need-to-know" basis, i.e. whether it will be specifically useful to their particular lives.

The first lot become intellecuals and spend their lives not quite knowing what they are supposed to do with all this knowledge (which continues to expand). The second lot become useful citizens and forget knowledge they previously acquired when the original reasons for acquiring it (like passing exams) are no longer relevant.

The two nations have considerable contempt for one another. Which seems a shame.
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berniegreen



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This is a very very important issue that you have floated, Michael, my sunshine.

I am an old man. When I went to university the ruling paradigm was that you were there to "complete your education". A few people were concerned with what was going to be "useful" in LIFE. But most still thought that that was a whole load of horse-shit.

I read Economics. The attitude of my Prof. (the blessed Brian Tew) and my Tutor (the sainted Gabor Andre) was that unless you really and truly wanted to be a professional economist then the purpose of studying for a degree in Economics was to teach you how to think clearly. (Hopefully, they succeeded.)

So far as Universities now in 2008 are concerned, I often think that we would all be better off to blow them all up and begin again.
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Mick Harper
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The best thing about Tew were his tew-boots -- bright orange. Certainly his ludicrous sub-Keynesian caperings can be blown out of the water in about five minutes.
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EndlesslyRocking



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Mick Harper wrote:
...there are the first glimmerings of eighteen-year-olds actually regarding not-going-to-university as something to brag about.

I don't know about the UK, but in Canada and the US, the braggart is probably more likely to be male.

In Canada:
Women dominate university enrolment because it pays more for them to earn a degree than it does for men, new research suggests.

Noting women's participation in university has outpaced men for the last three decades, including at an especially quick rate in the 1990s, Statistics Canada set out to understand why women now fill six out of 10 undergrad spots in the country's universities.

http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/life/story.html?id=69db8fc3-28d4-404d-b4d2-34c471a40952

Here's how the gender gap breaks down at Queen's: according to the University's own gender statistics, based on 2005 graduates, just less than 57 per cent of total graduates were women. In Arts and Science, the ratio is about 2:1, women to men, across the board, with the most disparate ratios in
art (6:1), biology (3:1), English (3:1), French (5:1), psychology (8:1) and sociology (6:1). Within Arts and Science, men are only the more common gender in five departments: computer science, economics, film studies, physics and philosophy. The gender gap is also conversely pronounced in Applied Science, where there are about four men for every woman.

Still, Nursing is by far the most disparate, with a ratio of 81:2, women to men.

http://www.queensjournal.ca/story/2007-02-13/supplement/falling-gender-gap/

Statistics Canada also surveyed 15-year-old teens and found that boys had lower marks on standardized reading tests. Twenty per cent of boys scored in the top 25 per cent of those who took the tests, while girls scored better, with 30 per cent registering in the top 25 per cent.

Boys also scored lower than girls in overall marks, with 69 per cent of boys reporting they received grades of less than 80 per cent as compared with 53.7 per cent of girls.

The authors suggested the ability to focus in a classroom setting may be linked to future university enrolment.

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2007/09/20/statscan-university.html

In the US:

Demographers predict that by 2009, only 42 percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men.
...
The elephant that looms large in the middle of the room is the importance of gender balance. Should it trump the qualifications of talented young female applicants? At those colleges that have reached what the experts call a "tipping point," where 60 percent or more of their enrolled students are female, you'll hear a hint of desperation in the voices of admissions officers.

Beyond the availability of dance partners for the winter formal, gender balance matters in ways both large and small on a residential college campus. Once you become decidedly female in enrollment, fewer males and, as it turns out, fewer females find your campus attractive.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/opinion/23britz.html
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Beyond the availability of dance partners for the winter formal, gender balance matters in ways both large and small on a residential college campus. Once you become decidedly female in enrollment, fewer males and, as it turns out, fewer females find your campus attractive.

Fewer male enrolments suggests that the university isn't providing either the subjects which male students want or, perhaps more likely, it lacks prestige overall. Undergrads know that the most popular places will attract the brightest and best, from whom they'll learn far more than from the professors and lecturers.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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In the NY Times article you referred to, there's this revealing comment:

Had she been a male applicant, there would have been little, if any, hesitation to admit. The reality is that because young men are rarer, they're more valued applicants.

At one time it would doubtless have been the other way round when women were being actively encouraged to go into higher education. It arouses the usual suspicion that a degree doesn't count for much yet it's still practically mandatory to be a graduate to enter most professions, if you don't want to get passed over for promotion repeatedly that is. So presumably the degree subject and where you got it counts most.

At what point will applicants, particularly women, say to themselves that it ain't worth the hassle?
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Mick Harper
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Consider the gender gap in music colleges. This is currently running in terms of ten women for every man (and many of the men are just in it to learn guitar, drums etc).. Presumably this will mean eventually that orchestras will eventually be ten-to-one female. At which point nobody will go to see them. Sorry, but that's the way it is...I don't make the rules.

Then we can finally put the kybosh on classical music and all its works. Next up...wine.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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men are only the more common gender in five departments: computer science, economics, film studies, physics and philosophy. The gender gap is also conversely pronounced in Applied Science, where there are about four men for every woman.

Do these male-dominated areas coincide with the highest-paid jobs? Just asking.

Presumably this will mean eventually that orchestras will eventually be ten-to-one female. At which point nobody will go to see them.

It will probably mean that, as per Endlessly's university admission figures, male players will find it easier to join an orchestra than their female counterparts. Or that the pay for orchestras will plummet.
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Rebecca


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The first lot become intellecuals and spend their lives not quite knowing what they are supposed to do with all this knowledge (which continues to expand). The second lot become useful citizens and forget knowledge they previously acquired when the original reasons for acquiring it (like passing exams) are no longer relevant.

It ain't necessarily so, but I expect it's true most of the time.
I always feel that there is something else I'm supposed to do with "all that knowledge" and yet, as a "useful citizen", refuse to let go of the things I've learnt just in case they might be necessary for the next "something else I'm supposed to do."

Does one ever believe they've done it all? That there is nothing left to learn, nothing else to achieve? I guess the "second lot" example probably demonstrates that it's true.

The two nations have considerable contempt for one another. Which seems a shame.

They'd have even more if the whole truth was finally exposed. How do they think it can remain hidden?
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Mick Harper
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I always feel that there is something else I'm supposed to do with "all that knowledge" and yet, as a "useful citizen", refuse to let go of the things I've learnt just in case they might be necessary for the next "something else I'm supposed to do."

I think you'll find that, as an intellectual, you are not in fact a "useful citizen". The test is always the same: do people say to you, "I'm sure that's very interesting, dear, but when are you going to get a proper job." Over time, however, fewer and fewer people ask this as they slowly come to the realisation that "a proper job" is not necessarily all it's cracked up to be. Until, as you clearly indicate, the point is reached when the only person still asking it is yourself.

Does one ever believe they've done it all? That there is nothing left to learn, nothing else to achieve?

This is precisely the parting of the ways. For non-intellectuals, this is nirvana and reached with remarkable ease and at a remarkably young age. Whatever lip-service they pay to "keeping up to date", they make sure there really is "nothing left to learn" as early as possible. They do not change their careers, they do not change their political opinions, they do not start a second family, they do not emigrate to another country, they do not alter their circle-of-friends, they do not undergo religious conversions, they do not start having sex with the light on, they do not start believing in astrology, they do not start dis-believing in astrology.

They'd have even more if the whole truth was finally exposed. How do they think it can remain hidden?

I think you misunderstand the mind-set. Whenever a new truth is revealed to them, they incorporate it into their lives without breaking step.

But we should not forget that "the two nations" are inside our heads too.
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Rebecca


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I think you'll find that, as an intellectual, you are not in fact a "useful citizen".

When I was busy climbing the corporate ladder, or in my other jobs, was I a useful citizen? As a farmer am I not still?

Maybe I'm not an intellectual at all. Give me your specific definition of intellectual. After all one does not have to sit on their arse to be intellectual.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Mick Harper wrote:
Consider the gender gap in music colleges. This is currently running in terms of ten women for every man (and many of the men are just in it to learn guitar, drums etc).. Presumably this will mean eventually that orchestras will eventually be ten-to-one female. At which point nobody will go to see them. Sorry, but that's the way it is...I don't make the rules.

But you forget that virtuosos tend to be male, in every art and field. Females will fill the B sections. Males will play the solos.
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