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Topic History of: STUDENT DAY OF ACTION : 24 NOVEMBER
Max. showing the last 5 posts - (Last post first)
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Janine |
Jim wrote:
Yes you would, if you believed it had intrinsic value, rather than mere use-value
Good piece Jim but somewhat abstract; farm produce has no intrinsic value, obviously.
Also, education for all is clearly laudable; but at all costs? You make no mention of the pros/cons/need/cost of free and formal third level education for all in the current economic climate - up to 21, as suggested.
Is the fact that we can't afford it relevant?
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Jim |
Thanks Laura, you write:
"If you were a farmer, would you keep growing a produce that would not sell?"
Yes you would, if you believed it had intrinsic value, rather than mere use-value. Education has intrinsic value; it is about the pursuit of knowledge and understanding.
Do you believe knowledge and understanding can only be valued according to what they will fetch on the open market? If so, and if you generalise this belief as a maxim, you end up without any such thing as education because it would never have emerged historically under such a maxim.
Which of the following thinkers produced ideas that, in their day, had any market value: Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Newton, Darwin, Marx, Freud and Einstein. Do you really believe we would be better off without them?
The idea that education has anything to do with making money is quite recent. I believe the reason it's called a Bachelor's degree is that to pursue an education at a university required you to turn away from the world of money and hence made marriage impossible. Men could only marry if they had money.
Businesses only latterly latched on to education as something useful because they began to notice that persons who had turned away from making money and gone off to the wacky world of university were unexpectedly useful at making money. They quickly destroyed the goose which laid the golden egg, however, by turning much of what now passes for education into mere technical training.
If you conceive of education as having only use-value, as technical training does, then of course you would not continue to produce it if it didn't sell.
Best Wishes,
Jim |
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laura piper |
Trevor wrote:
BR wrote:
I am "under employed" at the moment because there is no funding for any projects
But you still advocate free education - up to 21 - for the masses!!
BR, even though you and others have no work for graduates, do you still think its a good idea to keep creating them - for free (until 21) - and with no consideration for the fiscal affect on the economy?
In Ireland where over 50% of the 19 year old population is in third level education, they realised that the academic stock being created was useless (no jobs, you see) - and that the state was funding the skill levels of other countries, to which the graduates now emigrate.
If you were a farmer, would you keep growing a produce that would not sell? |
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Trevor |
BR wrote:
I am "under employed" at the moment because there is no funding for any projects
But you still advocate free education - up to 21 - for the masses!! |
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Prunella Minge |
Part of the reason for the decline in education was when the (Thatcher) Government funding bodies placed greater emphasis on quantity of research over quality of teaching. Universities now push their staff into research and publishing while many students are left to be taught by post-grads (some of whom haven't even been through the relevant undergraduate lectures). Anyone who cares about teaching tends to be demoralised very quickly. So that's one attempt at so-called value for money that has produced the opposite. The whole system should be revised so that students are actually TAUGHT again instead of contained for three aimless years. |
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