Category Archives: Education

UPDATED: Is ‘Multidisciplinary’ the Academic Equivalent of ‘Multiculturalism’?

Ancient History, Education, Free Markets, Human Accomplishment, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, Propaganda, The West

Looking over the impressive resume and interests of an academic—an acquaintance of a friend— in the applied sciences, the following occurred to me: In the world of the boffins and scientists of research and development (R&D), “multidisciplinary” education is the equivalent of “multiculturalism.”

“Multidisciplinary” education seems to be the buzzword—key to showing how “relevant” and contextualized you and your field of endeavor really are in a hip and evolving world.

My suspicion was reinforced while watching a C-Span segment in which a leading female head of department at MIT engineering waxed fat about what fun she was having designing “work spaces” that “brought together” just about every other department in the world (social work, education).

The aim of all the fun? Coaxing America’s lazy kids into thinking of science and math as fun. (A better, more-sustainable approach would be to teach America’s already dumbed-down, increasingly dispensable secondary-school students that most things worth learning are never plain fun, but are a function of effort and practice, i.e. a good deal of rote. The fun comes when the tough stuff has been mastered.)

Naturally, engineer and physician will collaborate in the design of a prosthetic limb. But the trend observed goes beyond preaching about practical cooperation in bringing beneficial products to markets, something that already occurs spontaneously in the market.

Like “multiculturalism,” the “multidisciplinary” concept is an ideological construct designed to bring about “change.”

What kind of change?

“Intellectual disciplines,” historian Keith Windschuttle has written, “were founded in ancient Greece and gained considerable impetus from the work of Aristotle who identified and organized a range of subjects into orderly bodies of learning. … The history of Western knowledge shows the decisive importance of the structuring of disciplines. This structuring allowed the West to benefit from two key innovations: the systematization of research methods, which produced an accretion of consistent findings; and the organization of effective teaching, which permitted a large and accumulating body of knowledge to be transmitted from one generation to the next.” (The Killing of History, Keith Windschuttle, Encounter, pp. 247-250)

The concept of the intellectual discipline is inseparable from Western canon and curriculum.

Yet this has been the aim—and, arguably, the signal achievement—of the postmodern tradition: to completely dismantle one of the greatest achievements of Western Civilization: the intellectual discipline. (This is why your fun-addicted kids “study” not history, but so-called “social sciences” or “cultural studies” in secondary and tertiary educational institutions.)

Is “Multidisciplinary” yet another one of those clever catchphrases that couches a contempt for the traditional Western notion of an intellectual disciplines?

UPDATE (Aug. 30): CHINA. I’m always amazed that Americans would call China militant, when it is the US that is starting and conducting wars all over the world. Our esteemed reader below sounds a little like Donald Trump, which is not a good thing.

Talkers Fear Losing Top-Dog Status

Celebrity, Debt, Democrats, Education, Journalism, Media, Regulation, Republicans

Louis Story of the New York Times is as good as any female fixture on your typical FoxNews panel. Louis loves Uncle Sam and speaks with a sibilance. Like GOP devotee Ann Coulter, Story thinks that investigating and further regulating Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch—credit rating agencies all—is a good idea, as if that act would alter the reality of America’s debt, public and private. (The first amounts to $15 trillion, the last to $50 trillion or thereabout, I believe.)

Isn’t it interesting that so many sinecured commentators, no matter their brand of political whoring (Republican or Democrat), are furious about the downgrading of America from its status as best, AAA borrower? Is it patriotism that powers the fuming pundits? Not at all; Rand and Ron Paul are true patriots.

SAVING FACE VS. FACING REALITY. Here’s what’s a foot: The media talking heads are props to the politicos. They are all paddling as hard as they can to save face, even if it means not facing reality.

The talkers are a mirror image of the political class, reflecting and reinforcing the opinions—and the reality—of the elites. More often than not, the chattering classes are as privileged and protected as their masters. As long as they play to the “Demopublican Monopolists,” and sustain the respective parties’ constituencies, media “mavens” will retain their perches, their pensions, and their sizable salaries.

But what if they lose top-dog status? The Talkers are upset that as the dop-dog country loses its economic prestige and power in the world, so too will they be degraded in the world. Perhaps they fear, instinctively, a world in which we switch on RT or Al Jazeera to hear what their babes are saying? They should.

Considering the US’s economic vital signs, our professional gabbers are up the creek without a paddle.

Errant, Adulating Adults Enable Stupid Youth

America, Business, Critique, Education, Etiquette, Family, Intelligence, Outsourcing, Trade

On Facebook, Bob Murphy has presented a scenario that annoyed him:

… was at a restaurant in the Boston airport. It was very relaxed, just a few customers. My bill was for $14.85, and I paid with a $20 bill. The waiter gave me a $5 bill as change, then sauntered back to talk to the bartender. Discuss.

My take on Facebook: The young waiter probably can’t do simple math unless he closes the till, or something. The Korean young woman who mans the dry cleaners I frequent does all calculations in her head, as quick as a whip. Just as we were taught at school back in the day (I’m old, I know). Okay, be a pedant, Rob. You wanted a bill (as in an invoice). You wanted the agency to control the change you gave. But this is US youth you are dealing with. The other day, checking out at a big-box store, the same sort of simpleton insisted that the product I was purchasing (I told him the per-unit price) looked too expensive. There was no arguing with this hubristic creature. He would not check himself. He ended up shortchanging his employer to the tune of 90% of the item’s total price. I wanted to pay full price, but the young man kept shouting me down. “No, this looks too expensive to be true.” I knew this was an expensive item. He would have none of it.

Look, the adults who employ the youth adulate them, and do not wish to correct them. That’s been my experience. So let them live with the losses these pests incur.

Postscript: Meantime the Korean-owned dry cleaners I visit is making a mint, as other such establishments close down in my vicinity. The owner values every penny; he employs a sharp cookie to front his business. She’s sweet and genteel too.

UPDATE I: US Engineering & Egalitarian Education

Barack Obama, Bush, Business, Education, Europe, Feminism, Human Accomplishment, Israel, Labor, Technology

I heard it said that in the US there are two types of engineers: overworked or unemployed. A tough economy would indeed force increases in productivity: fewer and fewer workers are doing more and more of work. But there’s something else at play. It comports with what Eric Spiegel, chief executive in the US for Siemens, has exposed:

There’s a mismatch between the jobs that are available, at least in our portfolio, and the people that we see out there,” Mr Spiegel told the Financial Times. “There is a shortage (of workers with the right skills.)” … a recent survey from Manpower, the employment agency, found that 52 percent of leading US companies reported difficulties in recruiting essential staff, up from 14 percent in 2010.

German education is known for its rigor and high standards. But more importantly: The Germans run the same sort of schools I attended growing up in Israel, where, because no pedagogue believes all kids are created equal, students are streamed into different tracks.

Wikipedia:

… German secondary education includes five types of school. The Gymnasium is designed to prepare pupils for university education and finishes with the final examination Abitur, after grade 12 or 13. The Realschule has a broader range of emphasis for intermediate pupils and finishes with the final examination Mittlere Reife, after grade 10; the Hauptschule prepares pupils for vocational education and finishes with the final examination Hauptschulabschluss, after grade 9 or 10 and the Realschulabschluss after grade 10. There are two types of grade 10: one is the higher level called type 10b and the lower level is called type 10a; only the higher level type 10b can lead to the Realschule and this finishes with the final examination Mittlere Reife after grade 10b. This new path of achieving the Realschulabschluss at a vocationally-oriented secondary school was changed by the statutory school regulations in 1981 – with a one-year qualifying period. During the one-year qualifying period of the change to the new regulations, pupils could continue with class 10 to fulfil the statutory period of education. After 1982, the new path was compulsory, as explained above. Other than this, there is the Gesamtschule, which combines the approaches. There are also Förderschulen/Sonderschulen. One in 21 pupils attends a Förderschule.[2][3] Nevertheless the Förderschulen/Sonderschulen can also lead, in special circumstances, to a Hauptschulabschluss of both type 10a or type 10b, the latter of which is the Realschulabschluss. German children only attend school in the morning. There is no provision for serving lunch. There is a lot more homework, heavy emphasis on the “three R’s” and very few extracurricular activities.

The secondary school I attended (I grew up in Israel) provided a vocational track, just like German schools do, where kids with no academic aptitude acquired useful skills and graduated with a diploma in woodwork, welding, sewing, etc. The academically inclined were also streamed into grades in accordance with aptitude. You could take math, for example, on different levels of difficulty. We had a special math genius class of 5 kids with super high IQs. Nobody pretended everyone was equal. Kids were kept busy with the kind of work that was best suited to their abilities, not egos.

On the other hand, “evidence of how stupid American students (and teachers) are has been slowly amassing. The creeping cretinism is confirmed by reports like “A Nation at Risk.” Especially indicative are the below-international-average scores of 17-year-olds. One out of four children is dropping out and not graduating. High schools have been so dumbed down that even average students sit bone idle. Fully 50 percent of students with IQs that border on mental retardation manage to pass. Unlike our European counterparts, American universities, colleges and even corporations spend a fortune on teaching students elementary things they should have learned in high school. College professors attest to a decline in the quality of students entering colleges.” (“THE WORM IN THE APPLE OF AMERICAN EDUCATION”)

In the US of Obama’s “Yes We Can” and Bush’s “No Child Left Behind,” all kids are treated as equally able. If a subject appeals to a certain cohort—or selects for smarts—why then, we cancel it; make it fun by sucking out the hard work required to master it; make it girl/minority/Deep-Space-alien friendly. New Math replaces eternal math; social studies does away with history, etc.

Look, libertarians, yes, public schools and unions are a big part of the problem. As important, however, is the country’s progressive pedagogic philosophy, which dominates in private schools as well.

We’ve ditched canon and core curriculum. We’re replaced reason with sentimentality and attitude. We’ve manned our schools with females to the exclusion of strong male role models. I would not wish to be the parent of a young, hyper-active boy drawn to the hard sciences, in schools full of females, bent on promoting every mythical, politically correct orthodoxy that pervades the Zeitgeist.

What Herr Spiegel has observed is the end result of decades of these low or no standards.

UPDATE I (June 21): Abelard Lindsey: My sources confirm your point about HR. But you’re wrong about the MBA managers. They are no better: these are technically clueless individuals, hot-housed in America’s pinko business schools, who have no place screening for technical and temperamental competence. However, America’s most famed corporations have screening processes that go on for days and have a candidate interview in front of many higher-ups. One particularly brilliant friend, a genius who works for Apple, was regaled for days with the intellectual equivalent of a special ops training unit. He loved every minute of it. (I would have crumbled.)

Alas, the largest and richest corporation work a lot like government, the connections between private property and profits having been long since loosened. These giants consist of many fiefdoms, layered with deadwood, and governed often by nepotistic hiring practices. It takes massive failures, as Microsoft’s Kin project surely was, to instigate some corrections (but seldom any firings).