publicly Castillo bilges

whisked,Bernstein:quenching wishers crania replicates?

John 3:16

http://www.cuttingedge.org/ce1038.html

http://members.iglide.net/jdurr/ProphecyNewsContent/Allen.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd4aJitpRSs&NR=1

“So far as I know, you can light the top burners of ALL gas stoves with a match. ”

Unfortunately, I found out this is not always true. We bought a Whirlpool gas stove last year(we wanted a gas stove because of our frequent winter power outages.) and were extremely disappointed to find out that when the power is off, the gas gets locked off as well. It didn’t mention this in the manual that we could tell, but several calls to customer service confirmed it. I never would have chosen this model if I knew this beforehand and I suspect that a lot of the newer models with electric buttons might have the same “features”

What I think is a problem is the idea of going massively into debt for higher education – and since credit ratings are increasingly used to evaluate job worthiness, security risk and a host of other things, most people, who require heavy loans should think very seriously before they take out debt they may have to default on. Most people don’t have the money that that Geoff has, and a comparatively few people will get the kind of scholarships that let me go to a pricey private college with minimal debt, or that it sounds like JD has. For those lucky enough to fall in those categories, great – go on and do what you love. The world needs more philosophers, theologians and thinkers of all kinds, and they need people who can navigate complex ethical quandries – such as the ones we are facing.

But let’s be honest – these are unusual things. Being able to pay outright for your tuition is unusual, and likely to be increasingly so as families savings are eaten by markets, and no debt scholarships are hard to find. It isn’t impossible, but for the majority, we’re going to have to think about other ways to learn. For most of us, conventional college education as it stands is a rich man’s luxury – because only the rich or the very brilliant will be able to afford to do it in a way that doesn’t handicap them later in ways that are indefensible.

The price can be quite high – I know of people who cannot find any job in their field in public policy because they are held to be a security risk because they cannot pay their student loans. Another person I know cannot get an academic job because he’s behind on his student loans and his university will not release official transcripts. Then there are countless families on the hook for enormous loans in jobs that may not be there. I think the risk of those loans always exceeds the potential benefits, unless you are truly prepared to live with the price of default.

And while in an ordinary recession, grad school is great – I too entered a field where there aren’t as many jobs as there are candidates, knowing that. It is easy, I think, JD, to say that you know that from the perspective of a recent college graduate. But in the course of a graduate degree a surprising number of us acquire things like dependents or spouses, and the prospect of unemployment, and years of shifting around to various adjunct positions looks different in your late 20s or early 30s with a spouse, and perhaps a child or talk of one. I’m not trying to be condescending, merely observing that while all you say is true, the reality of the job market is sometimes harsher than it sounds even if you know intellectually what you are facing. I’m not trying to discourage you – in your circumstances, it probably makes sense, particularly if you can prepare yourself for a future in which your funding dries up (or perhaps you’ll go to a hugely endowed Ivy and that won’t happen – anywhere else, I’d be concerned) before completion. But think about what else you can do as well.

I agree that much is gained by bringing large groups of people together of different experiences – but I think it is a mistake to see the cross-section that colleges pull together as the be-all end all of such groups. They can be achieved many other ways – and colleges self select as much as any other community, as can education. I think there are powerful limits to autodidacticism, but it is possible to get a good critical education in a host of ways if what you care most about is the life of the mind, and personally, I’d not recommend anyone mortgage their future for that. Because it can be had in other ways – and those ways often come with a lower price.

Again, in both the specific situations of Geoff and JD, go for it. For most people, for whom borrowing is the necessity, I’m not sure that would be wise.

Sharon

The only ‘problem’ is that I am absolutely enthralled with what would seem like a very unmarketable degree: Theology and Philosophy. My greatest passion and fulfillment are found in reading and discussing great books. Recently I have become much more aware of the impending societal upheavals which will occur as a result of peak oil, the financial melt-down and other factors, but I feel that it wouldn’t be wise for me to just drop everything and become a nomad, picking up guns and survival skills like Sarah Connor in “The Terminator” series. Why? For one thing, I have a shot at getting into some of the top graduate programs in philosophy in the country, the ones at colleges with plenty of prestige, large endowments and full financial aid. I figure that if those last, spending 5 or 6 years in grad school is as good a place to weather an economic storm as any. I do want to pick up a few skills, though, such as learning to grow food, treat water and first aid, basic plumbing, carpentry, etc. But for now I feel my place is in academia.

For another thing, though, I profoundly disagree with the idea that in times of hardship a liberal arts education is a ‘rich man’s luxury’. The threat of starvation, disease or violence may push the big questions from people’s minds temporarily, but human beings are as much social and intellectual creatures as they are biological. The need to tell and hear stories, ask big questions and try to attain some unified perspective on the world is no less real for not being biological. There have been priests, scribes, scholars and writers in all periods of history, including the most troubling, and the life of the mind has been a source of great comfort in persecution and hardship (think of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, or John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, or Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, to name just the prison diaries that have changed the world). The problem is that academics have become isolated in their ivory tower, only producing research to be read by their colleagues and hapless grad students, instead of reaching out to people in their communities and helping them tackle the urgent real-life questions they face and find a sense of meaning and perspective.

That’s not to say that academia will survive in its present form, or that all academics are guaranteed a job at a school of their choice in a time of hardship. Most of them will not (myself perhaps included). But I maintain that academics IS a worthy pursuit even in the face of societal breakdown, and though I plan to do what I can to prepare myself for hardship (there is not much I can do: I have no house, no savings, no dependents, etc.), I will stick to my present course and just do all I can to take advantage of whatever opportunities come my way.