Who are your government leaders?
Who works in government?
Who works for non-profits and the UN?
Who teachers your children?
AND
How successful have they been at doing what they claimed they were going to do?
How successful have they been at solving the problems they claimed they were going to?
Answer?
Morons.
I'll say it again for the cheap seats - the liberal arts are the single biggest problem with the US and western civilization.
Taking Lib Arts out of education might as well be like trying to take out all of the sugar in a cake with a knife.
ReplyDeleteYou can scrape off most of the frosting, but plenty of that sugar is baked right into the bread.
In a non-analogy: Culture and social issues are baked into all Liberal Arts - most profoundly Literature, History, and "pure" Art (Visual / music / etc). You can take these classes out of universities and schools, but you can't take the culture and social issues out of the people at the universities no matter what classes they're offered.
In an ideal world, the public sector or government would not deal with any cultural or social issue whatsoever and would remain completely objective and logical. But try convincing a politician of that. A government "by the people for the people" perpetuates the Liberal Arts by its very existence, since cultural / social issues originate with people and their self-established orders.
So to return to my analogy - if you wanted to take that sugar out of the cake after it was baked, you'd need to use chemical means and alter the composition of the cake at the chemical level.
The parallel here would be trying to take the culture and emotion out of a human being and alter them to be objective, logical beings. While we are certainly *capable* of being objective and logical, it doesn't change the fact that we are still feel the pull of culture, identity, bias, emotion, etc.
Therefore, our government "by the people" will reflect this, and our system of education will reflect our government and ourselves.
Did they grade this on a curve?
ReplyDeleteI cant imagine that a social work major is "above average"
Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons!
ReplyDeleteDuly noted Mr. Wolfe that there were a couple surprises on the list. However, the general trend remains the same. Liberal arts majors have lower IQ's.
ReplyDeleteToo explain why some 'worthless' majors would have higher IQs than expected we need only remind ourselves that there are plenty of highly intelligent individuals who have duped themselves into believing the sophistry of others. That or they see the score for what it is and they are confident they can some how use their intelligence to gain access to an 'easy' life.
ReplyDeleteI was dismayed to see that those planning Bioscience careers fell right between Art History and Political Science. Medical science was even lower. I'd be interested to see the same study done with those who had ALREADY declared majors and gone on to the next step (med school, grad school, etc). Having taught college bio lab, I can guarantee there is a lot of weeding-out between those who "intend to major" and those who actually succeed in the field. Those who think that "biology is easier because you don't have to do math" are in for a rude awakening when they have to get molecular.
ReplyDeleteDuly noted Mr. Wolfe that there were a couple surprises on the list. However, the general trend remains the same. Liberal arts majors have lower IQ's.
ReplyDeleteI assume, especially in context, you're referring to the high rank of philosophy majors. As someone who was one before dropping out and joining the Navy (to go back as a Math major/CS minor) I think I know what it is.
You have to take at least one classic in formal logic and many philosophy majors. Checking the program I started it requires Symbolic Logic to graduate.
Given many math programs will give you degree credit for a symbolic logic course from a philosophy department (I've seen one where the formal logic classes were joint classes between the departments) I suspect that's where this originates.
Symbolic logic is tougher than a lot of math courses and certainly is tougher than the gen ed warmed over algebra too many universities allow liberal arts major allow to use for their breadth requirements.
Inconceivable!
ReplyDelete@Wolfe
ReplyDeleteI've consistently defended the idea that History can and should be an academically rigorous discipline. Moldbug exemplifies this with his writing. But the History taught at Universities nowadays?
I had only a single History teacher with any worthwhile insight. Prof JC Weaver created the hypothesis that the rapid take over of North America by British Powers was due primarily to the advanced social technology of Property Law, which they'd developed by living on such a small island. Fascinating idea, backed up by the fact that during most of the westward expansion the Brits were against it - just more territory for them to patrol. He was a terrible writer, but a brilliant man.
As for every other course?
Idiots. Oh, the Classics professors were okay. They didn't really do any new scholarship, they just told cool stories about ancient Rome. But the rest of the professors simply puked up progressive (mis)analysis of modern history, fitting it to agendas.
And 95% of the students in these courses were utter morons, who thought history was story telling about kings and princes.
Modern History is an utter joke, and it's the best Humanities degree out there.
There are a lot of things tht could throw these numbers out of whack:
ReplyDelete1st. rule of psychometrics: the subject's response to the test indicates only the subject’s response to the test. Kids with an IQ of 130 or above often figure it out before their parents and are hound-dog lazy before they reach kindergarten.
Also, "Liberal Arts" is such a catch-all that it often includes real "Arts". Science and art attract the very highest of IQs.
I went to teachers college. I found classmates fascinated with developmental psychology and the transmission of knowledge while others were just terrified of leaving school for the adult world. Both motivations would end up in the same category here.
The terms are too vague to be meaningful, like liberal arts itself.
Check out the Cleveland artist being hailed as the daVinci of this, the digital age, Marc Breed. Creator of the psychedelic peace symbol, male exotic dance pioneer, filmmaker to two of the highest grossing adult films of all-time, civil and first amendment rights advocate, and if that weren't enough, he readily admits to having escaped from one of America's most secure prisons (his golem remains in the prisons archive).And to boot, he has a testedI.Q. Of 152
ReplyDelete