The Glade 4.0

I should really go back and edit that typo, but the "edited x times" stamps in the middle of an otherwise clean page upsets my OCD.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Why not change your major to something that is not a waste of time?

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

What did you learn from your English classes, Kirra?

Rodahn:

I strongly suspect that your "Creative Writing" Program failed to teach you the single most important skill any writer needs.

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Alcoholism?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

What did I learn, Khross? I learned how to write papers.

But, I don't consider college a waste of time. It was something that was necessary to get the job I wanted. English taught me how to write the papers that I needed to graduate.

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

That doesn't seem particularly useful. In fact, it seems like a glorious waste of time. What good does bureaucratic satisfaction of arbitrary curricular needs do you? What sort of value-added benefit does English provide the product you purchased (a Nursing Degree)? More over, if it provides no material benefit to the product you wanted, why not shift your degree over to the technical college system most states have? You did, after all, pursue a vocation degree right?

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matter of opinion as to whether it was a waste of time, don't you think? To graduate with a BSN I had to write papers in a particular style, I learned that in English. It served me well, because I graduated. And I do need a higher degree because my profession demands it..an Associate degree only provides a choice of certain jobs. Just as LPN works in a Nursing home, RN can work on Med/Surg floor, BSN is more a choice for ICU, MS allows you to go into management or advanced practice. So, my English was not a waste.

Now it might be a waste for you, let's say, because you are naturally gifted in that area. I was not..and still am not the best writer..but If I ever choose to go the route of publishing, I am sure I will need another class or at minimum lots of critiques.

It doesn't affect my ability to be a bedside Nurse though, so I guess that is your point.

I was merely suggesting to Rodahn that if you consider what you are going to college for a waste..change or don't go. If you know how to write a SciFi novel already, it would be a waste, so publish and make money.

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

Not really. I'm still trying to pin down what value your English courses added to your Nursing Degree. For the courses to "mean" something, they must have contributed something because the inane and purely perfunctory role you ascribe to them seems a most capricious waste of time:Of course, that still seems mostly dysfunctional.Hmmms ... Where did I mention "Associate's Degree" in my post? I said you pursued a vocational degree. A B.S. in Mechanical Engineering is also a vocational degree. A B.F.A. in performance arts is likely vocational as well. However, a B.A. in English or History or Philosophy is probably avocational.Ahhh, this doesn't really matter for our discussion. Although, I suspect you might be better in some realms of publishing, etc. than you might think ...It doesn't? Your English classes contributed nothing to your ability to pursue the vocation you desired short of satisfying some bureaucratic red tape? If so, then why should we force you to take these classes? If these classes were the pedagogical equivalent of solipsism, then why should we take them? Or even make them the most common set of classes amongst all degrees?

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Honestly there's probably a big piece missing in the puzzle of technology in learning, in most places, especially when you're looking at K-12. Teachers aren't IT; IT aren't teachers. IT is, in an ideal sense, for infrastructure, like Taly said. Teachers aren't end user support, on the other hand - the literate ones just wind up getting asked to be. Anyway, if you look at learning as a system, with inputs (curriculum, teachers, students, tools) and outputs (like knowledge getting successfully transferred in assessable ways), you can start to look at technology as something that's either facilitating or hindering that process.

Realistically, there's probably a systems analyst in there, somewhere in between the teachers and the IT - whose job it is to know the tools, and what features are valuable to teachers, as well as to serve as sort of a conduit between faculty and IT. Problem is, you're probably virtually never going to see a county school system springing for that kind of layer in its organization.

Then again, my thing in grad school was Instructional Tech, too, and

"He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail." -Maslow

Actually, that statement's probably pretty applicable to our conversation about what constitutes intelligence and value in general, too, come to think of it.

So far I have learned how to analyze a work and determine how the usage of various literary devices play into expression. I've learned how to concisely express myself. I've learned every word in a sentence is precious.

All from teachers who threatened automatic failing grades on papers where length limits weren't met. Writing 300 word essays on Heart of Darkness and Frankenstein was one of the hardest things I've ever done in college.

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The Dude abides.

Khross...I think differently than you.. I don't consider any class I took in college a waste. It's just that, and nothing more. You didn't mention ADN, I did as an example of why I need a higher degree. I do change what I said about not using what I learned in English as a bedside Nurse, it gave me skills to write papers and also helps me in my charting. I believe that the classes I took, to reach the point I am at, helped me with my critical thinking skills.

/sigh

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

I would think you, of all people, would appreciate the value of a well rounded "liberal arts" type of education that gives the student a foundation in many different areas of academic study in addition to their vocational specialization.

I would never trade away even my high school english lit courses. They still add richness to my day-to-day life that I would never have had without them. I could still do my job just as well, but your job isn't who you are. It's just what you do to support who you are. Breadth of knowledge for me is more important to a satisfying life than specialization. Arts and sciences and culture -- understanding the universe and world we live in, and the societies that make it up, and the nature of our species, rather than just performing a function -- this is what makes us more than machines.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Khross is asking a question for no purpose aside from making someone think. College professors sometimes do that.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I have two general thoughts on this subject.

First, colleges are spending the first two years teaching what should have been taught in primary education. Many reasons for this, but it is true.

The second and longer thought has to do with the purpose of a liberal arts education.

It teaches you how to process incoming information. Specifically you learn how to "read". "It teaches you how to deconstruct and reconstruct the information given to you in any number of useful and non-linear ways."

You learn strength of mind. You learn how to learn. You learn how to see something as a whole instead of in fragments.

You learn how to bring information in a non-linear fashion. How to get from point A to point D, without always needing to go through points B and C.

Then you learn how to express your thoughts in a logical and persuasive fashion. You learn to "write".

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Memento Vivere

I have local knowledge.
That sandbar was not there yesterday!

The Internet accomplished these things for me much more than college. What you said would have been truer before the Internet was popular.

That's not quite as true as you might think, Lex. The internet simply exposed to you information. Where and when did you learn how to do anything with that information? Who or what taught you to use that information? And, as a side note, what's the difference between information and knowledge?

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I agree with eveything you said, but want to comment on this one, as it amuses me.

Yes, a part of a good education teaches you this, but it's funny how another part of that good education (math and sciences) teaches you the opposite...that it is unacceptable to get from A to D without first going through points B and C.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

NM

My first thought was....I need Coro..

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

School did, but before college. Knowledge is understanding the information.

In high school courses, typically this is the case. There is a different approach taken in most college-level math and science courses. As was brought up about sixth months ago, when people were wailing and screaming over partial credit, much of the sciences revolve around teaching you how to get an answer rather than teaching you what that answer is.

As one of my professors put it, "These are easy physics problems. We do that for a reason. It's so that you know the answer before you start. You're still supposed to do the problem the way the book is teaching for that chapter. You need to build up technique, so that you have something to fall back on when intuition fails."

There are many paths from A to D. Some pass through B and C, but that path is sometimes much rockier than the path that leads through J and K.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

The best path from A to D for physics and most things is to use Google (or online journals if it's highly technical I guess) and also apply what you already know.

For someone who worked and "got it" in high school and elementary school, you are probably right.

That doesn't mean that ability couldn't be honed further.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

That "what you already know" part is the real kicker.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

It looks like Lex's making an argument that his knowledge is a priori.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko