//Are you still a student ?//

No.

//I gather that they are the people that he was talking about.//

//Then there are engineers who can't to these things but they're still allowed to call themselves engineers.//

So who are these mysterious engineers that aren't really engineers, then?

//The Academics he was talking about were the Navel Gazers & Arts Academics//

No, they're not engineers. They're Arts academics. And frankly, I do find some of them to be a superfluous waste of space. But they are not the sort of academics individual and I were discussing; we were discussing engineers and scientists - academics in the STEM fields. Who, by the way, definitely still count as academics. You're comparing apples with oranges.

TL: we were discussing engineers and scientists - academics in the STEM fields. Who, by the way, definitely still count as academics. You're comparing apples with oranges.

I agree with you there. Science & Engineering (I include Mathematics in that) are valuable & useful pursuits. The Arts are no better than Grades 13 to 15. (Navel Gazers, etc) These are the people that espouse how the rest of us should live & what to believe. When it's boils down, what ever they say is just their personal belief depending on what side of the fence they have been brainwashed to sit on. Most of what they say has no relationship with the real world.

There are university-based Centres for the Study of Chinese and Islamic Civilisations around the country. Australia is a Western country, the product of Western civilisation, its many goods and its many bads. All civilisations have bads, and probably always will, given that we will always live in an imperfect world.

Obviously any course in Western civilization, as with any study of any civilisation, will be a critical study, not a worshipful, uncritical one. I can't imagine any such uncritical course surviving uncriticised in any Australian university, and that would be a wonderful thing. Ironically, that very criticism is a product ultimately of our long and bitter history of the development of the rights of free expression which, after all, is to a large extent, a unique product of Western civilisation. I'm not sure how much criticism there might be in China of courses in Chinese civilisation, or in Muslim universities of courses in Islamic civilisation. Exegesis, yes, but criticism, may not. But that's up to the people in China and Muslim countries.

On the front page of today's Australian, a survey has found that two-thirds of Australians are in favour of such a course, including 55 % of Greens voters. Interestingly, 11 % of Coalition voters opposed the idea. One wonders, what are they afraid of ? Indeed, what is anybody who opposes such a course afraid of ?

Joe

The irrefutable realities of western civilization, irrespective of Arts or Sciences, are that of the disciplines, such as they are, there are only three distinctive social categories, in order of contribution,
there are the 'doers'
there are the 'thinkers looking for a doer'
and there are the 'thinkers waiting to be discovered by a doer'
Anyone outside these parameters are the mentally challenged whose numbers are steadily rising, in part by social engineering.

Donations to further this study are gratefully accepted

Come to think of it perhaps we should study the gradual demise of western society rather than civilisation ?

Obviously there is bias against Western civilisation.
Study of any other civilisation or society would be done without question.

The fact that we are having this conversation, means there is a biased mindset against Western Civilisation in our universities.
But that has been evident for a long time.

As long as only the bad side is mentioned there is no objection, but Western civilisation
like all civilisations had acheivements to be proud of also, Many of them, why is it such a big taboo to menion these things. I thought universities were truth seekers, why hide the truth of Western civilisations acheivments. Thats just a form of re-writing history because it doesnt suit the narrative some people prefer.