Uzique wrote:
Silly anti-academic Dilbert. I've been gone 4 months and you still haven't got yourself a new argument? Poor show, fella.
Academia is fine, just so long as it has
some real world application - to deserve public money at least.
Or it should be privately funded, take your pick.
Arguing that academia should be govt funded to perpetuate the cosy academic world because its existed in the past - when it wasn't typically govt funded - is a strange argument.
Perpetuating 'academia' solely for the purpose of perpetuating it makes no conceivable sense.
The subjects which should supposedly be continued at the taxpayers expense according to you are almost arbitrary, they have their pretentious 'value' solely because of quirks of history, not value in their own right.
In different circumstances you'd be arguing equally hard that History of Engineering is where its at because thats what all the great leaders studied, or that hipsters should be paid to sit in libraries and wistfully look out of the window as they ponder the historical significance of crop rotation systems before Noah or the long term effect of different bronze alloys on modern society - 'because thats how you develop critical thinking'. Instead of subjects like History of Art and 'Classics' which basically boils down to the pontification of long-dead boy-rapists.
I'd argue that the various agricultural and industrial revolutions have had far more impact on the world and much more modern relevance and in many more ways than obscure texts in dead languages.
Through history the hipsters have spent 10% of their time doing, and 90% of their time telling people about it, whereas the achievers do the reverse. I'd rather the study of doers were funded and perpetuated, and thats where govt money should go. Maybe then doers would begin to be respected and the slackers lose their pretentious 'value'.
