Knowledge for knowledge sake, paid for by others is truely impractical.

Ours are the times of endless free knowledge (mostly), which can be easily accumulated and tailored by the individual towards their own personal quirks.

Sadly, it has become patently obvious, the "disconnected from the practical" knowledge offered by tertiary educators, is no more than a tool for divisiveness of the cultural type.
And that point is the crux of the matter.

Dan

I love the humanities.

However, confining my discussion to politics (my PhD area), my experience as a former student and staffer is that any claim to excellence (in terms of teaching and research) is complicated by the extreme bias towards the left that prevails in this environment.

In addition, given that arts students should also be learning competent writing and research skills, there may also be the problem that there are now too many people graduating with humanities degrees with not enough jobs related to such skills.

Having said that, producing good humanities scholars should be an important goal for any society.

"Across the political map"? Can that be true? People on my part of the map generally regard the Arts and Humanities as a crock at best, treasonous rubbish at worst. I suppose we should be more tolerant, but tolerance is not a trait exhibited by the people turned out by the discipline. To me, they are the cause of all our problems. Although, gawd help me, I have to say that Chris Lewis's reaction is almost reasonable.

Scott Buchanan is obviously miffed at the eminently suitable action of the Coalition (one of very few from them lately) on useless degrees for troublemakers and naifs, naturally unemployable in any worthwhile, productive area; so there's little point in reading further. I would just like to say that all education after secondary level should be 'user pays' - no cost whatever to taxpayers, ninety seven percent of whom do not avail themselves of tertiary education.

I did slip through to the last chapter (all but the first and last are more often than not just padding) to read this: "The humanities preserve some of the deepest principles of Western culture and learning …".

Why, then, are the misfits turned out by the humanities the very malcontents and troublemakers who are trying to tear down Western culture!

"Why, then, are the misfits turned out by the humanities the very malcontents and troublemakers who are trying to tear down Western culture!"

I would argue that too many idealistic people have prevailed to gain teaching positions, the structure of universities is geared to getting more money rather than excellence, and political correctness makes those with more guts less able to speak through our voice.

Now I know I am deemed too left by some on OLO, but I had to control my individuality to get good marks at university so I could do honours and a PhD.

There were a few subjects, and a few teachers that more willing to rock the boat, but most academics I have met are not willing to consider the other side, whether it be the business side or the Coalition.

And, many of the students attracted to the humanities also don't want to know the harsher truth.

One girl lectured me one day about my sympathy to the coalition side, given my working class background.

I would consider myself on the left given my concern is most for lower income people, but I try hard to be balanced, albeit my views will still annoy many.

Thousands of basically very dumb youth doing basically useless courses in so called humanities, they will never use, at university mostly because they can't think of anything else to do, & don't have the grey matter to do anything useful because it is much harder to do. This is a drain on the long suffering tax payer, who has enough problem funding everything else including a useless bureaucracy, consisting of thousands of humanities graduates who could not find a job doing something useful.

A couple of years in a gang camped out in the bush clearing rubber vine & prickly Acacia from our national parks would be a much better education for this mob, & would give them more useful calluses on their hands, rather than those on their back side, sitting in class.

Hell they would have at least done a little something useful in their other wise useless lives.

If people want to study humanities that's fine, provided they do it at home in their own time. That is what the internet is for, not what universities should be for.

Hasbeen,
Exactly what a National Service would do !

the extreme bias towards the left
Chris lewis,
That's because of the extreme bias by the Left towards anything not Left !

Hasbeen's proposal re sending the pointy head academics (etc) out to the bush to clear away the brambles etc to learn about "real life" is of course exactly what was done in China during the "cultural revolution".

Even worse was the situation in Cambodia where everyone with any kind of tertiary or academic training/qualifications was terminated.

Meanwhile those on the right side of the culture wars divide have been making a lot of noise in support of the Ramsey Centre and its stated aim to re-emphasize the very best of the Western humanities tradition.
Similarly the right-wing Catholic outfit Campion College prides/promotes itself as a place to learn about the very best of the Western humanities or liberal arts tradition too.

Phil,

I'm with you. I'm all for National Service. Especially now that China is being recognised by Scott Morrison as a military threat and he has given the green light to ramp up our defences in readiness for an attack by China.

FDR introduced national services in the US years prior to the attack on Pearl Harbour because he knew that they had to be prepared for war against Germany and Japan.

We now find ourselves in that position against China. Did you see today's news where China has told Australia not to interfere in Hong Hong and we would be dealt with if we give refuge to Chinese trying to get out of Hong Kong?

It's now not a matter of if, it's just a matter of when.

No need to worry MR O.

China cannot start something they have no hope of winning.

The more the CCP shows its colours, as seen in Hong Kong and its big mouth warning nearly everyone like the bully it merely is, the more the world will turn against it and/or never trust it.

Chris,

Or will the rest pf the world recovering from the economic destruction of the WuFlu pandemic just turn a blind eye in order to avoid a nuclear war with China and Russia?

"Let them have Australia as long as we get peace." is what the rest of the world will say.

It seems to me that what should be taken into account is the largely unacknowledged and only form of mind that is acceptable in the academy, including all of the so called theology and divinity schools - especially one could say Ridley College which sits very much within the Protestant tradition of the left brained spirit-killing word.

Such an understanding is provided by Iain McGilchrist in his magnum opus The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (or more correctly the spirit-killing Tower of Babble in which we are all trapped)

speaking of the humanities, i will have to check the supposed leading Australian politics journals to see if anything anti-China has been published as of 2020.

if kids were taught to think before they went to uni much of the anti family, anti Western nonsense would be rejected for what it is. Devaluing the brilliance of men like Cook and the magnificent engineering efforts by many building this country is a far greater travesty than making students pay for their indoctrination that these days is leading to anarchy and at best self righteous virtue signalling.

The precise purpose of the kind of traditional Christian "education" that runner proposes is to teach or brainwash children WHAT to think, not how to think.

'The precise purpose of the kind of traditional Christian "education" that runner proposes is to teach or brainwash children WHAT to think, not how to think.'

and how did you get so dumbed down daffy?

If Mr O is right Daffy, we just might have a cultural revolution coming to an Oz city near you sometime soon.

Here's a bit more nonsense about tertiary education. As part of their intention to bulldoze through Aboriginal legislation that they know would be voted down if they put it to the people - i.e to give Aboriginal groups unprecedented autonomy and funding - there is a wild idea to have 70% of Aboriginal youth university educated! That's right. 70% of Aborigines to be university educated when we have managed only 27% of the wider population so far.

Apart from that brainstorm, what about the fact that, not so long ago, John Howard had to knock the last Aboriginal 'autonomous' organisation in the head because of corruption and the lack of results for actual Aboriginal people.

The first world war was a bloodbath, because the officers were selected from the aristocracy. The proposed funding of universities is cast in the same mould, to protect and prosper privilege and mediocrity over intelligence and merit. We take money out of education, health? To buy weapons.

All while the rip-offs and rorts that are real estate negative gearing, ns of subsidised super for the wealthy and tax havens like hardly ever forensically examined family trusts, are allowed to take more from the budget bottom line than it would cost to provide free tertiary education on merit, rather than the size of the family pocketbook or the number of cashed-up foreign students, we can sell degrees to?

All designed by a (I'm alright Jack) government who claims we are all in this together? But expects everyone else to take a pay cut, a budget cut? And I know you know that it stinks to high heaven!? Won't pass the pub test!?
Alan B.

lack of results for actual Aboriginal people.
ttbn,
the way things are going there'll be a lack of actual Aborigines. It's only the fact that many lighter than Whites presently identify themselves as Australian Aboriginal that their numbers are that high !
These numbers could probably be cut by 70 % if Govt suddenly stopped the Guilt industry & its affiliates !

A different and far less costly funding model would be, A means-tested endowment for those below $200,000.00 a year, that the recipient directs! And provided on the merit of the exam passing students in every case. Those with lessor scores could be directed to TAFE and apprenticeships, rather than uni.

And would apply equally to all income levels. So the most meritorious get the guernseys rather than pompous privilege!

Those residing more than 100 klm's from a facility, uni or TAFE, would also receive a means-tested, living away from home allowance, fit for purpose! And would kick in for families whose total income stream was below $300,000.00?

Could be rent vouchers and food vouchers, etc. Rather than cash, which could come at the end of every year as a cash bonus if they were both fugal and did well academically? And then could party, buy a car or place a down payment on property?
Alan B.

I think I agree with MR OPINION. After all, they have been buying it a bit at a time. Road and belt for, Daniel Andrew's Victoria. [You can always tell a Victorian, but you can't tell them very much.]

Or Darwin or Freemantle port? Lord knows just how much other real estate they hold or the choicest farmland.

Kinda dumb when the produce we used to grow in those fields, used to earn income for Aussies and some tax for the ATO. And brand new apartments stand empty for years even when there's a housing shortage and thousands homeless!

Now that same produce can sail away giving us neither, It's all lose/lose from here as the treasonous among us take their allegorical, forty pieces of allegorical silver! What, get conscripted and involved in a hot war for that, gotta have rocks in your head?
Alan B.

Alan B.,

I think we are in big trouble re China and we have our politicians, bureaucrats and business people to blame.

Now China is showing its true colours and the whole country is now on tenterhooks about what it has installed for us.

Like I have been saying for a long time: Australia has a Chinese future.

The Chinese in Australia won't be too worried. It will be a win-win situation for them.

we have our politicians, bureaucrats and business people to blame.
Mr Opinion,
The above are merely trying appease those who vote them in & expect everything for nothing !

"Students of the past are trained to enter into worlds that are sometimes vastly different from their own; the mental apparatus one must develop in order to do that produces, in historian Samuel Berner's words, 'a heightened sense of complexity', allowing a person to hold in reserve a bevy of competing truth claims and narratives."

So what you're saying here is that universities promote cognitive dissonance?

cognitive dissonance
noun Psychology
noun: cognitive dissonance

the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

AKA Madness.

And that's why we should bulldoze them.
Because they're nutcase factories
More focused on indoctrinating fragile young minds than educating them.

Universities have become breeding grounds for Pro-Marxist / Anti Democratic ideology.
Staging grounds for political insurgency groups like ANTIFA.

Universities now create more problems than they solve.
When this happens its time to get rid of them.

Universities are intellectual pedophiles.
Instead of violating young peoples bodies, they violate young peoples minds.

Instead of violating young peoples bodies, they violate young peoples minds.
Armchair Critic,
Very well summed up !

Almost everyone entering uni is to a point, idealistic. And old enough to think for themselves. Think critically?

Yet many come out as privileged puppets allowing others to think for them? None more so than those who find their way into politics without so much as a year of real-world experience?

And like many commenting here simply parrot the party line or the thinking of their indoctrinated parents? Or big pharma? Or the party line?

How many doctors question what they are told to think on statins, HRT, Or nuclear medicine, sometimes described as alternative or complementary? Particularly here in Oz?

One remembers only too well how much derision was applied by the medical fraternity, as two medical researchers in W.A. were pilloried by the medical fraternity, to almost a generic man, as the noble prize winners proved conclusively, that stomach ulcers were caused by bacterium.

Or how many politicians ever question the anti-nuclear rational of a controlled from without, party?

I could go on and on! But I think you get the picture?
Alan B.

If you start closing down the Arts faculties that will put me with my three Arts degrees in a minority.

That'll put me in a small privileged group of highly educated smart people.

I like the idea! Bring it on, the sooner the better.

Sociologist, Salvatore Babones, predicts that people like him and the humanities in general will be following the dinosaurs.

ttbn,

Yep pardner .......... we're headed for the last roundup.

I thought more on this.

I asked myself "Why do kids go to university reasonably well rounded and well adjusted, from reasonably good homes and come out like an ANTIFA activist spouting Marxist ideas and communism?"

I asked myself 'If a university educated person acknowledges this:

- That: "Students of the past are trained to enter into worlds that are sometimes vastly different from their own; the mental apparatus one must develop in order to do that produces, in historian Samuel Berner's words, 'a heightened sense of complexity', allowing a person to hold in reserve a bevy of competing truth claims and narratives."

- Then what is the problem?
- What is the bigger picture?'

I'd argue the problem is this:
1. Firstly acknowledge that your stuffing so much info their brains that they are developing cognitive dissonance.
2. Secondly, accept that this means they can't process all the information they're given in a well-rounded way.
3. And thirdly, that this alludes to the obvious issue that they don't have a 'solid foundation' with which to process all this information objectively without themselves buying into it.

Therefore in my opinion the problem is this:

They need a 'solid foundation' with which they can process the information they learn without being affected by it.

That solid foundation is this:

Ethics 'Everybody has the right to live however they choose so long as it doesn't have a negative and detrimental impact on others'
- And it's based on the Harm Principle.

Teach them that first, and maybe they won't lose all sense of themselves trying to process all the Marxist based information that universities are attempting to cram down students throats and indoctrinate them with.

These kids are going into battle, in the war of ideas, without having the tools to mentally defend themselves.

This is what I would say that I think is wrong, on the face value of things.
I'm not and have never been a university student, so must admit I only have the benefit of limited information from the outside looking in to guide my opinion.

Armchair Critic,

I totally agree with you.

I've completed four degrees across three of Australia's principal universities and I can tell you who the problem students are.

They're mostly in the vocational programs like engineering, architecture, law, medicine and business. They're a real bunch of troublemakers.

They are always carrying on about Carl Marks this and Carl Marks that. Drives you insane!

We need to get rid of all those vocational training students off the campus so that universities can stop being super technical colleges for the engineering, architecture, law students etc who are easily brainwashed.

It's good to know we have people like you who are on the ball. There should be more like you.

Humanities will never disappear from any decent university.

Some people really talk bs.

Chris,

People do humanities because they want to be educated and knowledgable and understand what it is to be human.

People do Sciences because they want to study how the physical world works.

People do the vocational courses like engineering, law, architecture, medicine, etc. because they want a job.

Personally I think the vocational courses can exist outside a university and should be taught in super technical colleges.

Keep the Arts and Sciences so that a university is a place of learning and depository of knowledge.

People do humanities because they want to be educated and knowledgable and understand what it is to be human.
Mr Opinion,
Who employs such people & what exactly do they get paid for or don't they make their living out of their "expertise" ?