Most of the Chinese living in Australia have little support for their old Country and love and enjoy our freedoms.

Mr Opinion,

I studied Arts at Sydney Uni back in the 1980s under such luminaries as R.Ian Jack, Aideen Cremmin and Sybil Jack in History; Stephen Gaukroger, Paul J. Crittenden and others that I dis-remember in Philosophy.
My memory is a blank on the English department as it is on Anthropology although I enjoyed anthrop. very much.

One of the great benefits that come to an Arts Graduate of Sydney is the lifetime pass to the Fisher Library!!

Mr Opinion,

Your "room full of books" analogy is weird. Why do you have to finish reading all the books in one room before you move on to the next? It seems so anomalous in the information age!

I am ASTOUNDED by your claim that "In fields like engineering, law, architecture, business, etc., knowledge is basically finite. Graduates are only taught what they need to work in the profession of their choice. As such they come out of university believing that one can know everything."
You're wrong on all counts:

Knowledge is not finite. There is a huge amount of it beyond what students learn in uni, and it's increasing all the time. And (at least in engineering) nor is what students are taught restricted to what they need to work in their chosen profession. Engineering probably includes more transferrable skills than anything else.

Engineering graduates nowadays don't believe they can or do know everything. But they do have a good idea of where they can find out more. And nor do they underestimate the significance of what they know. Most problems, including some that many people would consider unsolvable, can be solved without having to know everything.

Engineers know that predicted results depend very heavily on assumptions. You think you better understand the world, but it's a case of GIGO:
GARBAGE IN: You assume a much higher rate of migration from China to Australia than the statistics show.
GARBAGE OUT: You spout racist crap about us becoming "a Sino-Australian nation".
GARBAGE IN: You think a nation's flag must take ethnicity into account (even though the only ones that currently do are Ireland, Israel and a small minority of African and Caribbean countries).
GARBAGE OUT: You make the ludicrous proposal of replacing the Union Jack on our flag with it's Chinese equivalent, despite the fact that no part of Australia has ever been a Chinese colony, we don't share a legal system with China, and most Aussies can't speak Chinese.

If we ever change the flag, it will be to emphasise our independence, not our links with another country.

Dear Josephus,

I totally disagree with your comment that the Chinese living in Australia have little support for their old Country. It does not make sense in light of the historical, sociological, anthropological and archaeological evidence. The millions of Chinese of the diaspora believe that they belong to a superior race and civilisation that can be traced back 5000 years (a period contemporary with the beginnings of Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations). Once each year all the Chinese of the diaspora come together with the Chinese New Year festivals to partake in a celebration of their connection to each other and their ancestral homeland by recognising that they are all descended from the grassroots kin system of the original Chinese civilisation. Don't count on them being Australian when it most matters.

Dear Is Mise,

I did the first of my three Arts degrees at Sydney in the 80s too. We were probably in some of the same classes. Foxy, you and me now makes three of us on The Forum with Arts degrees. Hopefully there will be others. Keep your fingers crossed.

Dear Aidan,

You have just demonstrated that you have the typical level of education that one expects to see in an engineer. Why do you think I decided to do Arts degrees after completing my engineering degree? Most engineers I have worked with over a long period acknowledge that they have only been educated to perform in their chosen profession. If I want to know about the past, or about a particular culture, or about social behaviour, etc., the last person I would approach for an explanation is an engineer. In a nutshell, engineers are anti-intellectual and illiberal. That's what makes them engineers.