Sine Qua Non

greenstate:

somuchdependsupon:

greenstate:

anticapitalist:

dagseoul:

philosophy-of-praxis:

communismkills:

daisysnotebook:

I love philosophy; I study political science and sociology on my own, and I read lots of literature; I take some interests in gender studies, as well; however, I would never spend 100K on those degrees.

For 100K, your degree is job training, not “self-exploration”. The same people who get degrees in horrible topics (see my “disciples I have no respect for” post and the hooplah over it) with zero job prospects are the same people who complain they can’t find jobs.

In the UK, Philosophy graduates have the highest rates of employment.  There’s more to university than learning simply facts, your inability to understand that is your own loss.

as if communismkills is employed.

first of all, $100k? disgusting. even if my tuition were converted into a dollar amount, i’m not spending that in 4 years at a really reputable school. 

but more importantly, and i really feel like i shouldn’t have to say this because it’s so obvious but- no education is a waste of money. you learn so much more than whatever you are able to regurgitate for your final exams. a degree in philosophy can open up a lot of doors. same with political science. and sociology. every subject area has merit. each one teaches a different skill. learning reason, learning how to look at society, learning how to deconstruct and subsequently fix problems. these are important skills. 

also, and i get that not everyone wants to remain in academia, but i’m going to put this one out there too- if you want to TEACH philosophy, you have to have a degree in it. especially if you want to teach at the university level. 

every area of interest is important because every job is important. every person is important. not everyone wants [or has the ability] to be pre-med. if everyone went into business or medicine, who would do any other job? this narrow-minded view that academia is just job training is what is sinking america further and further into this anti-intellectual rabbit hole. 

What Lauren said, plus this:

I have 50K in student debt. I went to a private undergraduate and studied theology and philosophy. I went directly from there to a private graduate school, and got a Master’s degree in English literature. Holding a degree in those two areas have given me important reasoning, research and writing skills. Without my specific experience in those two subjects, I would not be gainfully employed right now. My educational experience has allowed me to be a contributing, productive citizen in the American workforce, and guess what? I’m doing what I love - which is writing. I get paid to research and write, and I’m in a non-academic position. The reasoning skills from my philosophy degree, combined with the knowledge and ability to interpret and criticize gained from my literature degree have, in my humble opinion, given me a leg up.

If you’re going to criticize spending 100K on a “useless” degree, you need to take a step back and wonder what criteria you’re using to determine “useful.” And you should examine that 100K price tag, and wonder why we’re playing a money game with education in the first place - shouldn’t it be the institutions that are charging that much for a university education that should get criticized, not the students who are picking degrees in something “not worth” the price tag?

Let’s think of an analogy, though there is no perfect equivalent for the mess that is the American higher education system. Say you’re a small business owner, and you work in an area that requires you to travel. You’re given the option of two destinations:

Destination 1: You love the country, and would have long term benefit but you wouldn’t see the pay off for a while. But, you’d definitely like the work you’d be doing to cultivate those contacts.

Destination 2: You’re meh about the country, and it would give you some contacts that have immediate pay-off, but these contacts wouldn’t be long term because you’d have to constantly be working on that relationship to keep yourself up to date. It wouldn’t really be an enriching or happy experience, even though it would pay off immediately.

By the OP’s logical system, one should always always take destination 2 because of the immediate pay off, not looking at the long term problems with upkeep (for example, a computer science degree has an initially large pay off for the price, but one has to keep updated or risk becoming irrelevant). I, however, prefer option 1 - sure, I’m not getting paid a lot, but it’s given me skills that will always be useful, don’t need to be updated (or, in the case of editing, only need to be updated every few years when a rule changes), and may not have a pay off for another few years, but in the meantime, I’m having a hell of a lot of fun.*

OP says that students should always always take option 2, because it is the clear “logical” choice, and, sure, if you’re only looking at economic terms, I can see that. But, my argument is that both approaches are legitimate because both benefit the owner of the business and the business itself.

*This is not to say that a degree that requires a lot of upkeep can’t also be enriching and rewarding - certainly not. But for the degrees that often get pushed as “the only logical option,” a lot of keeping up to date can be an even more expensive hassle.

I feel like I lost a little bit of my train of thought there, so I hope that makes some sense. I’m tired and on vacation.

i absolutely loved this response, especially the bit that i bolded for emphasis. 

in the case of private institutions, aren’t they doing exactly what free market capitalists say should be working? they’re all competing with one another, and yet very few of them have a small enough price tag for people to justify going there without taking out massive loans or getting scholarships or [GASP] pell grants. isn’t the market supposed to lower their prices? but they’re in generally the same range. and they keep going up. sure, some are $29k a year, some are $39k a year, but let me tell you, when you’re poor it feels unreasonable anyway and it all looks the same. 

i can only talk about what i know best, and that’s art schools. when i decided to go back to school [i dropped out of state school at 20 when i realized i had no idea what i wanted to study and i felt like i should take time to figure that out], i was 25 and married and paying for my own education. i looked into every american art school, every canadian art school, and british art schools that weren’t in england. it costs me less than half of an american art school’s tuition to go abroad and go to art school in scotland. why is that? art is useful. everything you look at is art. so why are we charging more for art school and discouraging people with incredible talent from attending? 

a large part of the reason i left the states is because i just couldn’t justify being there anymore. nothing is working. no one is working. it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why turning people into commodities makes for a less educated, less productive society. it takes away peoples’ responsibility to one another. it turns people into little finance-major machines who feel like their education needs to get the most bang for their buck and has to be able to get them the highest paying job the fastest after graduation. that’s not education. 

God have I missed greenstate so damn much. Welcome back, Lauren!

helvetebrann:

A B.C. man who performed a botched circumcision on his four-year-old son on the kitchen floor of his home has lost an appeal of his conviction and been found guilty of a more serious charge.

The B.C. Court of Appeal has stayed the man’s conviction for criminal negligence causing bodily harm and convicted him of aggravated assault.

Court heard the boy was born premature at only 2.5 pounds and could not be circumcised at the time, nor did his parents request it.

But the court found the boy’s father “changed his world view” over the ensuing years.

“He came to understand that there was great utility in keeping the laws of Moses, including that of circumcision,” the appeal ruling said.

The trial judge found “that the accused decided that because so many disasters had befallen his family, he had to ‘make things right with God.”’

The man, who had no medical training, tried to do the circumcision in 2007 after doctors refused to do it on the grounds the operation would require a general anesthesic, which couldn’t be justified on a boy that age.

Court documents say the man gave alcohol to the boy, referred to only by the initials D.J., and used a blade that was not as sharp as a surgical instrument. To stanch the bleeding, the man used a veterinary powder suitable only for livestock.

The boy was taken to hospital four days later and required corrective surgery, including a proper circumcision. The surgeon testified his penis would have healed to be badly deformed.

Among her reasons for convicting the man, the trial judge, who is not named, noted that the man had tried to circumcise himself a few years before he undertook the procedure on his son.

His actions caused “his foreskin to bleed in nine places, requiring the assistance of 911 and sutures in hospital,” resulting in an infected penis.

“The accused was aware of the dangers of performing a circumcision on his son,” the trial judge wrote.

The man, who was not named, was charged with criminal negligence causing bodily harm, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon for the incident with his son.

He appealed his conviction, arguing his religious beliefs should have allowed him to do the procedure, but the Appeal Court rejected the appeal.

“The accused’s religion did not demand that the circumcision be performed by the accused himself, nor did the trial judge find that religious necessity dictated that the circumcision be performed immediately so that the accused was left with no alternative but to perform the operation himself,” the appeal court ruling said.

“Thus, it is not the accused’s religious beliefs that are at issue, but the rights and best interests of D.J. with respect to whether he should have been subjected to an attempted circumcision by his father in the circumstances and conditions under which it was attempted.”