Category Archives: Education

Education, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Space

You First, Pete

8 Comments

Lileks, on Peter Singer and other misanthropes.

I don’t believe that there’s any inherent good in having people on earth. We’re fond of ourselves, but that’s about it.

Uh huh. Well, here’s a question I find more interesting than Singer’s threnodies: if there was no sentient life on Earth, would Nature still be beautiful? Everyone loves the beauty of Nature, after all. Everyone agrees it’s a Good and Wonderful Thing, although some think some spiritual experience can be distilled from its contemplation. I don’t – I sense the inconceivable depths of time, the wonders of natural systems, and find aesthetic pleasures if they mesh with my own preferences, i.e., I like the colors of a sunset, but do not like the face of a spider. There is no moral component to beauty, no ethics in a great forest. I like them, but they are not my Brother or Mother anymore than the bear considers me a distant relative. I prefer a certain amount of distance from Nature, as in the form of walls and roofs and clothing and medicine and so on, and if this makes our lives “disconnected” from Nature, then talk to the beaver, who gnaws down trees and dams streams. But we cannot disconnect with Nature; we’re part of it. We’re just the clever part that figured out how to arm ourselves against its indifference.

We pay Nature the compliment of being Beautiful, but that’s a hard-fought luxury. Nature requires the application of judgment to be beautiful. It requires people.

That’s just as true off planet as on.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Horror

13 Comments

Here’s an interesting tidbit in a story about Blumenthal’s fabrication of his Vietnam experience. Some people apparently think that this is equivalent:

“It’s appalling that the Attorney General of the state of Connecticut – a highly-educated and trained lawyer – would misspeak about such a significant issue,” Simmons told POLITICO this morning. “Clearly he knows he never was in Vietnam, and yet he’s on record saying he was in Vietnam – obviously to appeal to an audience, and that’s a very troubling disclosure.

“But it’s matched in some respects by Mrs. McMahon who brought the charge — when just a few montnhs ago it was disclosed that she did not tell the truth about her college education and her degree — which is again something everybody should realy know,” Simmons said, referring to a Hartford Courant report that McMahon claimed on documents filed with her appointment to the State Board of Education that she had a degree in education, when her degree was in French.

“I got a degree in English Literature,” Simmons said. “It’s hard to make a mistake about something like this.”

What I find hilarious about this is that both Simmons and McMahon apparently believe that an education degree is of more merit than one in French. I disagree. At least the French major has some knowledge to impart to her students, if they want to learn French. I’ve never noticed that a degree in education teaches doesn’t provide much knowlege of positive value, and much of negative value. I would think that if you were going to upgrade your degree, you’d pick something worthwhile to substitute for French, like business, or even poli sci, not the degree that has the lowest entrance scores of all majors.

As I’ve said before, I’d abolish schools of education if I were dictator. Or at least eliminate government-backed loans for them (though actually, I’d eliminate government-backed educational loans, period).