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The Forum > Article Comments > Not for profit: why education needs the humanities > Comments

Not for profit: why education needs the humanities : Comments

By Martha Nussbaum, published 15/8/2011

If educational trends continue nations all over the world will soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves.

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Ultimately education will be determined by what the corporates require in the way of a skilled workforce.

There was an excellent article recently in The Australian where businesses are now requiring more than just technical skills and abillity.

They are finding that graduates, while generally ok as useful machines, lack the fairy floss of relating to other human beings and being able to think for themselves.

Simple and basic things like working as a team, thinking solutions through, being cooperative with others outside the terms of their performance management agreement, asking for help when stumped with a problem outside their sandpit or even being polite on the phone.

If there is not a written procedure much less a precedent for it they come to a grinding halt.

Having experienced this first hand in the corporate financial world, it is not surprising that some universities have already responded to business calls to provide a more rounded education by including a commensurate amount of fairy floss with the machine oil.
Posted by Neutral, Monday, 15 August 2011 3:12:32 PM
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Clearly Peter Hume has not enjoyed an education that incorporates the identification of fallacies. There are no logical fallacies in this piece - not surprising given that Nussbaum is a Professor of philosophy who, among other things, teaches logic. Of course there are things with which people will disagree but the fact that one disagree does not make the piece "riddled with fallacies".
her criticism of government is not about Government providing education but rather about the underlying assumptions of that provision.
To assume that it is reasonable to apply market forces to the provision of education fails to ask the question who is the consumer? Is it the prospective employer? The parent? The student? or Society? Given that society pays we need to ask what sort of education will serve the needs of society?
As far as truck drivers are concerned - at what stage did we know they were to be truck drivers? Should we have made that assumption when they entered school? Should we assume that truck drivers are not interested in the humanities?
Posted by BAYGON, Monday, 15 August 2011 3:17:17 PM
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I have heard it said that universities should be teaching morality, but where are the examples of morality in universities.

Now centers for research that is rarely commercialised or used by anyone, where denigration of the male gender is totally accepted if not encouraged, where calls for more and more taxpayer funding are heard almost daily, but at the same time these universities have almost no accountability or standards, other than those applied by themselves.

Finding a university academic in Australia prepared to say anything positive about the male gender is a joke, but I have also found it extremely difficult to find a university academic in Australia prepared to say anything positive about the Australian public.
Posted by vanna, Monday, 15 August 2011 3:44:57 PM
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Marta C Nussbaum,

“The broad humanistic vision is under threat from a retrenchment in the humanities at all levels”.

Does today anything differ from the times in which such Vision was well sustained by the Nation’s rulers who sent their scions to schools designed to retain the system of class privilege?

Are not those times precursors to the present ones?

Kindly, Lady, do not let nostalgia infect your life.

The very energy that has made you pen this article, says that you are young enough to shake away the web of academia that impedes your pursuing the real causes of today’s malaise.
Posted by skeptic, Monday, 15 August 2011 4:40:59 PM
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Sadly our system of education is rubbish;
Hardly any of our subjects help us in the real world- and the most vital topics are taught as entirely optional courses in the last few years at school.
Students are not trained to think- but taught to assume that what is handed to them is right or important (including rubbish like Shakespeare) and they take it or leave it (most often they leave it).
The idea that we are taught only to be trained for a business is definitely the approach schools take- but sadly not the outcome.
We read plenty of papers- but not to critique them, or to understand that they are the result of the author's opinion, even when accurate and balanced- we just identify the font and format- never the semantics.

The strange thing is, businesses do not endorse this notion either- as the students would need to be trained from scratch anyway, and whatever is taught in high school may well be obsolete at the rates businesses change.

If I had my way, schools would cut down on workloads, but all economics, history, geography, politics and society courses would be compulsory and they would start much earlier. Arts and drama are fine- minus the fact that choosing them depreciates the UAI value of the graduate, on default.
Posted by King Hazza, Monday, 15 August 2011 4:43:54 PM
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Baygon

“her criticism of government is not about Government providing education but rather about the underlying assumptions of that provision.”

True, however the fact that government is not providing education as she wants it to, goes to her underlying assumptions about government (best decision-maker as to what education should be), which do involve logical fallacies, for the reasons shown by your questions.

What is the best service? How much of it should there be? What should it contain? Who should provide it? Who fund it? Who should decide? These are the questions that need to be answered, and they can either by answered by
a) the voluntary participation of the parties based on private property, or
b) by compulsion, violation of property rights and individual choice, and central planning.

But provision by central dictate involves numerous logical fallacies.

It is the fallacy of conceptual realism – to attribute to abstract collective *concepts* the character of personhood -
a) to talk of “society” as a decision-making entity. It isn’t. It’s an aspect of human action, namely social co-operation.
b) to identify “society” with the state. The state is not society and society is not the state, nor is there any evidence that the state represents society more or better than society represents itself.

It is a fallacy to assert that the state can increase whatever you want to call the ultimate human welfare criterion you assert - by providing education.

Why? Because the only thing government can offer that is otherwise unavailable is legalized force. Government is made up of people just like you and me. It is not a superbeing. It does not have superior wisdom, or goodness, or knowledge, or effectuality. The assumption that government knows better - or would if only it followed your opinion - is fallacious because value is subjective. It’s decentralized in all the relevant people. It’s not known, and not knowable, to the central planners. You cannot increase the ultimate human welfare criterion you assert, by forcibly overriding their decisions and substituting a state of affairs they prefer less. It’s logically invalid reasoning.

(cont.)
Posted by Peter Hume, Monday, 15 August 2011 5:34:48 PM
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