I must admit that I didn't watch the whole persecution, ... I mean presentation, but this straw man is not only bloated but begs numerous questions. For instance, did the study test for communication skills? You may have factual information and intuitive knowledge about a subject, but poor verbal skills trap that knowledge inside the airtight shell of your body.
Now for the corpulent man of straw. When did advocates of liberal arts training ever claim that verbal skills were equivalent to knowledge in all vocational fields? A knowledge of grammar is equivalent to a knowledge of grammar, and logic is equivalent to a knowledge critical thinking, and rhetoric is .... Well, you get the point. But who of our number ever claimed that a liberal arts education is equivalent to knowing how to program a computer?
3 comments:
Also, suppressed evidence fallacy:
This guy presumes the classic conclusion of the models of education that are prevalent in many schools today, and that reigned supreme for most of the 20th century: that the primary missing piece of the puzzle is information.
But we live in a day when the average person has far more information than they can process. Anyone who is "not informed" about a particular subject is about 5 minutes and a couple of Google searches away from being over-informed.
But the benefit of an education based on the Grammar-Logic-Rhetoric trivium is that it gives the skills needed to sort through, process, and work with the information at hand. A classically-trained person can discern what information is relevant, what information is overtly false, what information is fallacious, what information is germane...
He is right that we need information. But his mistake is that we generally already have it.
Great comments Ed! Classical education is even more relevant in the information age.
Matt: this just in, from Neil Postman...
"If children die of starvation in Ethiopia, does it occur because of a lack of information? Does racism in South Africa exist because of a lack of information? If criminals roam the streets of New York City, do they do so because of a lack of information?
"Or, let us come down to a more personal level: If you and your spouse are unhappy together, and end your marriage in divorce, will it happen because of a lack of information? If your children misbehave and bring shame to your family, does it happen because of a lack of information? If someone in your family has a mental breakdown, will it happen because of a lack of information?"
(“Informing Ourselves to Death,” paper delivered at a meeting of the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik) on October 11, 1990 in Stuttgart, sponsored by IBM-Germany.)
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