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Academia vs Joe Sixpack

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  • Total voters
    51
A recent quip by a fellow poster here inspired me to create this poll. Bear with me, while it may seem patently absurd to some, it is strictly for my own amusement and serves only as a sociopolitical barometer of sorts. Would you rather our governing body be comprised of the faculty of various Ivy league and highly accredited academic institutions (i.e. Harvard, MIT, Stanford etc.) or the first 535 individuals selected at random from your local phonebook?

Sorry the average person is pretty retarded I wouldn't trust them with anything complicated and important. Dumb/average people have a place though and they have equal rights, some jobs require dumb people, and sometimes it's not a good thing to be too smart.
 
Today Horatio Alger would advocate a hero who sucked his thumb in college, working without pay and living like a 12-year-old because he was afraid to grow up. A true criticism of his 19th Century heroes that you never hear is that all they did was work hard and conform, having talent being irrelevant to promotion. So we get people brown-nosing into positions where only talent matters and they inevitably wreck everything because of their natural insufficiency, which no hard work, aggressiveness, or attractive personality can change. No one is wise enough to point out that lack of natural talent makes cheating necessary. That drives the overpromoted brown-noses into it more than greed or dishonesty does. But the people at the very top, in a position to define what virtue is, got handed their positions by their Daddies and that's why they demand a society not based on natural talent, but based on birth and brown-nosing to birth rather than based on worth.

Tying this into the topic, the professors are the worst case of people developing in childish conditions. This made them look on their own professors as infallible father figures. When they themselves become professors, they childishly and slavishly followed the academic leaders. When they become top academics,they only follow fads. So what kind of leaders would we get from people who never matured and only when it was too late tried to learn to think for themselves? Their opinions when invading government are bound to be unrealistic, impractical, biased, and utopian, which disqualifies them from even being a small part of government.


WOW! You really had problems in college didn't you?


My experience was somewhat different, I must say. I had professors who were knowledgeable and communicated the class subject in ways that we could comprehend, I had professors who were knowledgeable yet were unable to teach and I had a couple of profs who followed their political ideology more than the subject they were supposed to be teaching.

This nonsense that "all college professors are liberal know it alls" is nothing more than garbage. Academics are humans, there are great ones, there are good ones, there are mediocre ones, there are bad ones and there are a few who should not be allowed into a classroom with human students -- but every time I read something like the following: "professors are the worst case of people developing in childish conditions" I know that the person writing such a statement rather obviously did not have a good experience in university, for whatever reason.
 
WOW! You really had problems in college didn't you?


My experience was somewhat different, I must say. I had professors who were knowledgeable and communicated the class subject in ways that we could comprehend, I had professors who were knowledgeable yet were unable to teach and I had a couple of profs who followed their political ideology more than the subject they were supposed to be teaching.

This nonsense that "all college professors are liberal know it alls" is nothing more than garbage. Academics are humans, there are great ones, there are good ones, there are mediocre ones, there are bad ones and there are a few who should not be allowed into a classroom with human students -- but every time I read something like the following: "professors are the worst case of people developing in childish conditions" I know that the person writing such a statement rather obviously did not have a good experience in university, for whatever reason.

The whatever reason is probably they didn't attend a university or attended a bad community college (not all CC are bad), which I don't think really counts.
 
WOW! You really had problems in college didn't you?


My experience was somewhat different, I must say. I had professors who were knowledgeable and communicated the class subject in ways that we could comprehend, I had professors who were knowledgeable yet were unable to teach and I had a couple of profs who followed their political ideology more than the subject they were supposed to be teaching.

This nonsense that "all college professors are liberal know it alls" is nothing more than garbage. Academics are humans, there are great ones, there are good ones, there are mediocre ones, there are bad ones and there are a few who should not be allowed into a classroom with human students -- but every time I read something like the following: "professors are the worst case of people developing in childish conditions" I know that the person writing such a statement rather obviously did not have a good experience in university, for whatever reason.
Trying to avoid the main issue I have? The university is an obsolete aristocratic institution (the term "prep school" means prepare for college). In a society that needs class mobility in order to survive, one based on worth not birth, this relic of the Middle Ages must be replaced with highly paid professional education.

The professors not only go through even more years of this childish, depressing, and insulting indentured servitude than their captive students, they also teach in an unnatural atmosphere. Students, desperate for infallible father figures to justify their stunted growth, do not challenge these academics, which isolates them in a mentally incestuous cult with their fellow academics. If the students were paid, the professors would acquire some humility about their sheltered thinking and realize their proper place as educational servants. To promote the present spoiled and conceited ilk to public service can only lead to our domination by theoretical fantasies thought up by those whose academic positions as Masters of Indentured Servitude make them feel the same way about the public.
 
WOW! You really had problems in college didn't you?


My experience was somewhat different, I must say. I had professors who were knowledgeable and communicated the class subject in ways that we could comprehend, I had professors who were knowledgeable yet were unable to teach and I had a couple of profs who followed their political ideology more than the subject they were supposed to be teaching.

This nonsense that "all college professors are liberal know it alls" is nothing more than garbage. Academics are humans, there are great ones, there are good ones, there are mediocre ones, there are bad ones and there are a few who should not be allowed into a classroom with human students -- but every time I read something like the following: "professors are the worst case of people developing in childish conditions" I know that the person writing such a statement rather obviously did not have a good experience in university, for whatever reason.

Or never went to college and as a result doesn't know about it except what the right wing nuts cakes tell him.

My experiences were very simlar to yours. College is where I grew up because the atmosphere academic and social gave me the chance to grown out of my singular view of the world into a more expanded view of life.

College is 40% education and 60% socialization
 
following an earlier attack on university professors, the "academic elites", I posted the following

WOW! You really had problems in college didn't you?


My experience was somewhat different, I must say. I had professors who were knowledgeable and communicated the class subject in ways that we could comprehend, I had professors who were knowledgeable yet were unable to teach and I had a couple of profs who followed their political ideology more than the subject they were supposed to be teaching.

This nonsense that "all college professors are liberal know it alls" is nothing more than garbage. Academics are humans, there are great ones, there are good ones, there are mediocre ones, there are bad ones and there are a few who should not be allowed into a classroom with human students -- but every time I read something like the following: "professors are the worst case of people developing in childish conditions" I know that the person writing such a statement rather obviously did not have a good experience in university, for whatever reason.

I have cut part of the reply to my comment but the remainder is sufficient to show a complete and utter lack of knowledge about university education, it does nothing but reinforce my earlier statement.
Trying to avoid the main issue I have? The university is an obsolete aristocratic institution (the term "prep school" means prepare for college). In a society that needs class mobility in order to survive, one based on worth not birth, this relic of the Middle Ages must be replaced with highly paid professional education.


Yeah - I really 'enjoyed' the daily task of correcting the notes and report my PhD Chemistry boss submitted to our superiors - the man was a good chemist and a decent supervisor but he couldn't write three words without mis-spelling two of them.

Far too many "highly-paid professionals" are unable to communicate with anyone outside of their profession, far too many of these "highly-paid professionals" have zero knowledge of the world outside of their chosen profession and often exhibit a weird willingness to accept the most absurd beliefs simply because they don't know enough to realise the absurdity.

Yes, we need engineers and chemists and physicists and computer scientists, just like we need attorneys and car salesmen and postal carriers, and all of them and all of the rest of us need to learn about stuff outside of our narrow little workaday world. Being really good at one very specific task does not automatically make a person a qualified citizen, does not create a person who should be telling other people how to do their jobs.
 
Or never went to college and as a result doesn't know about it except what the right wing nuts cakes tell him.

My experiences were very simlar to yours. College is where I grew up because the atmosphere academic and social gave me the chance to grown out of my singular view of the world into a more expanded view of life.

College is 40% education and 60% socialization
How could you grow up if you were living like a teenager and barely scraping by on part-time jobs? You're just trying to justify sacrificing your youth by claiming it made you mature.
 
How could you grow up if you were living like a teenager and barely scraping by on part-time jobs? You're just trying to justify sacrificing your youth by claiming it made you mature.

How could you possibly know what my life experiences were before or after. Were you there? Please stop placing your values and views into my life I don't do it to you and you have no right to do it to me. I meant exactly what I said and there is no way for you to know one way or the other.
 
Yeah - I really 'enjoyed' the daily task of correcting the notes and report my PhD Chemistry boss submitted to our superiors - the man was a good chemist and a decent supervisor but he couldn't write three words without mis-spelling two of them.

And so he got a spelling monkey. Identified a problem, identified a solution, enacted solution, seems all rather fit to me.

Far too many "highly-paid professionals" are unable to communicate with anyone outside of their profession, far too many of these "highly-paid professionals" have zero knowledge of the world outside of their chosen profession and often exhibit a weird willingness to accept the most absurd beliefs simply because they don't know enough to realise the absurdity.

This door swings both ways. Though can you quantify this "far too many highly-paid professionals are unable to communicate..."? Or is it something that you've made up?

Yes, we need engineers and chemists and physicists and computer scientists, just like we need attorneys and car salesmen and postal carriers, and all of them and all of the rest of us need to learn about stuff outside of our narrow little workaday world. Being really good at one very specific task does not automatically make a person a qualified citizen, does not create a person who should be telling other people how to do their jobs.

The intellectual, the academic, may not have all knowledge under their belt; but what they have demonstrated further than most others is the ability to think, adapt, and understand.
 
People who are honest, humble, and actually give a damn about America's future and well-being.
 
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