Comments on: Experience vs. intellect

By: ken johnson

ken johnson — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:08:42 +0000

I cannot help but to completely agree with this article. I believe that, as far as a degree can get you today, life experience will always prove to help you out more in the long run. Just because someone doesn’t have the scrap of paper giving them a degree, does not mean that they do not have the skill required to do the job. It’s possible for people to be self taught and have as much knowledge and skill as people with degrees in certain aspects. But, in almost all fields of work, a degree is what gets you the job opportunity. Those without degrees are held back from being as successful as people who have undergone extensive amounts of formal education. After all, do people even use half of the knowledge that they gain in school growing up? Skills for specific jobs should, of course, require certain knowledge, but the actual amount of formal education for a degree is not necessary.

By: Tracy, txmom2many

Tracy, txmom2many — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:33:41 +0000

As you all know I’m a huge fan of the self-taught man, and I have huge problems with the way the university system is run, but the thing that is striking me most about John’s article is how Americans (humans? don’t know about other cultures) are so impressed with the new, we tend to dump the baby with the bath water. My grandmother formula fed all her babies, and encouraged her daughters to do the same, not because she couldn’t nurse, but because obviously science and technology could do better than the body. Except that it turns out that formula was little more than corn syrup and powdered milk and really not good for little ones. It’s just fascinating to me that we do that over and over and never really learn not to swing to the other extreme first before we realize that tempering the old with some new knowledge would give us the best benefit.

On the education front, I really want my boys to have knowledge, but first and foremost, I want them to be good men. Without the ability to analyze and apply the knowledge, to sift through the enormous amount of it available with some moral sense and wisdom, it’s very difficult to become more than an educated idiot. Reading is a fabulous way of getting the ideas to try out, but at some point you’ve got to put your book down and do something.

By: RES

RES — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:33:31 +0000

For casual reading filling the period between arrivng at my desk and class starting during my junior year I read Livy’s History of the Roman Republic through the Gallic conquest (2nd Century BCE, IIRC) and was struck by the degree that the domestic arguments of that time are still ongoing today. Amazing what a perspective on events one gains through knowledge of History.

True history, that is — as opposed to some of the horsefeathers being passed off as History these days. (mutter mutter Egyptians having highly advanced technical culture … grumble … stolen by Alexander … mutter … codswollop.)

By: Floyd

Floyd — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:19:05 +0000

I almost wouldn’t send my kid to any school other than a Christian university because they are nearly guaranteed to study Western Civ, American history, etc. There are many profs in state schools who do so also, but often those schools don’t even require it as part of general education requirements.

By: RES

RES — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:38:14 +0000

Floyd,
While I share your opinion of the value of a good liberal arts education, I am under the impression that such is no longer taught in this world of ethnic studies, gender studies, navel studies where the byword is “Hey ho Western Civ has got to go!”

Some of the professors my daughter has had seem more concerned about inoculating their students against liberal arts than in teaching them.

By: RES

RES — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:33:32 +0000

It has long been the case that ours is a society increasingly engaged in a cult of expertise. Experts supplant common sense and practical experience as arbiters of behaviour. Blame it on Dr. Spock, blame it on whatever, the sad fact is that experts are far more convenient for television talking heads shows which require naught more than an ability to BS authoritatively in 30-second intervals.

At one time America celebrated the common man above the “expert” — numerous examples could be provided. Nowadays folks forget that an “expert” is merely someone who has mastered the conventional wisdom sufficiently to be anointed by those who’ve invested their careers in that wisdom. Besides, the main advantage of “certification” is that it is safer: if the new hire flops, if the economy doesn’t turn around, well … he had a degree from a top school, all the experts recommended the policy. Can’t blame me.

By: Floyd

Floyd — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:20:31 +0000

I don’t want to overstate the importance of a formal education over experience. Too many time people use the one as a replacement for the other. I know geniuses who can barely write a sentence and I know dolts with Ph.Ds.

Victor Hanson would be brilliant at whatever he did — obviously farming didn’t scratch all of his itches — and we are the better for that (as is he).

I see two extremes in my 11 years as a professor. Older folks seem to rely on their degrees and have trained these young ‘uns to forego history, elders, tradition, etc. and then bitch and moan when these 20 year olds don’t listen to them. On the other ends are these young “Millennials” or whatever who have experiences, but have poor educations in large part, and know nothing about the world. They travel all over the world and don’t know how to process the information. That’s why I think a liberal arts curriculum is the greatest. Through history, philosophy, literature, theology, humanities, etc. they learn to process the narrative of history and place the different cultures in their context.

That can be self taught of course if someone is of a mind to read the right books and has the wisdom to process them. That’s one thing I love about my job. My students obviously have heard of the Declaration of Independence, etc. (and may have even read it), but I get to show them The Federalist Papers, Summa Theologica, City of God, and others of course which they may or not find on their own.