Could somebody do a TL;DR, please? I am interested, but I am not sure where the article gets to the point?
Would liberal arts help some African child in a remote village? I am asking because I think I wouldn't last long in such an environment, despite of my capability to read...
In the experiment described in the article, the ability to read was a prerequisite for the course, not the desired outcome. The desired outcome was to teach a method of reflection that goes beyond your first immediate reaction, and show people that thinking about what you do can be useful. The effects on the test population were continued education, employment, prevention of violence, and the confidence to demand better working conditions at the workplace. This for only a half-year's work and a cost of 2000USD per person. If you do not consider that valuable enough to read, what are you doing reading its comments?
The only indicator that it might be worthwhile to read is a couple of people here claiming it is important. But there are also people who claim reading the bible is important. I was simply asking for some convincing reasons to invest my time into reading that article.
I suggest you not only read the article but also the book it is about. It is one of the more important books I have read.
Knowing that a tidal wave is headed your way when you've got safe ground that's reachable, is actionable. You can take action to change the outcome.
Knowing that, say, that within the next century the sun would go nova, or a local star would go supernova, for all practical intents, is not actionable in any manner that action could be taken which would preserve civilization / the human species.
I suspect, like most projects, it didn't meet both of those criteria. However, if it did, I would be extremely interested.
It sounds like it was successful to me.
Also, pay alone does not determine if one is poor. It is not possible to avoid having people who are "relatively poor" as measured by absolute income. But it is possible to take better care of people and reduce real problems like malnutrition, even if you have phd's waiting tables because there are too many of them.
I'm just saying, education has been improving steadily over the last century yet the wealth gap has increased. It's clearly only one element of the solution.
I am currently homeless and most homeless people are not penniless. Most of them have too little income for a middle class lifestyle but do have some kind of income. I would like to start a business at some point which would not be aimed solely at homeless people but which I think would probably have high appeal for them. In other words, I expect them to be a significant percentage of the customer base. Treating them like customers instead of charity cases in a business aimed at adding value to their lives for a reasonable fee would improve their situation, not necessarily helping them get off the street but helping make life more bearable while on the street. Also making life more affordable for folks who are barely hanging on, thus likely preventing some people from slipping into homelessness. Charities have their place, but there is a reason why the expression "charity case" is basically insulting.
1. Answering the first quesiton directly:
No, that's not the solution proposed by the article. The goal was to get the poor involved in politics, in the largest sense of the word. At the end, he reported that almost everyone in the first class was either in school or employed full-time. No mention of managerial roles, or what they were training to be. One tried to start a union, so she is not heading towards a managerial role.
There are plenty of programs out there that do try to train people in technical skills, like nursing, engineering, or management, but this was _not_ one of those programs. This is a way to help the poor break out of the vicious cycle of poverty themselves by giving them the tools to think about their situation. Who knows what they'll do with those tools.
2. Answering the second question, allowing for your premise:
Robots, programmed by all of these engineers we wouldn't've had otherwise, and the people that are too poor to be helped, or unable for other reasons. This is what we call a _good_ problem.
3. Making fun of you/sarcasm:
OK, sure, lets not help the poor at all, because what if we're _too successful?!?_ That would be horrible! We'd starve to death in dirty streets, because people would be too busy nursing, engineering, and managing each other, and not realize there was no food!
4. Rejecting your premise and addressing the second question:
Who's going to do the blue collar jobs? Mostly the same kinds of people that do them now, except they will have more political empowerment, and a greater capacity for reflection and critical thinking. I know a few educated people that choose to work as farmhands, so it's not impossible, and I myself enjoy an "honest day's work" (speaking as someone with the privilege of an education in the humanities).
Can you imagine how awesome it would be if we had a society of critical thinkers and moral philosophers, instead of the reactionary, anti-intellectual, gullible, fundamentalist society we have now[1]? Can you imagine if the lowest common denominator weren't so low? I'm not saying it would be a utopia, but for at least the last few hundred years, people have been dreaming of a time when machines had taken over every menial task, and humans could spend their time as they wished, free to follow pursuits of their own choosing.
[1] I'm not trying to say 100% of society is like that I'm just saying that significant fractions of the American population at least show one or more of these characteristics, and I don't think it's making for a better society.
I agree that education is a must, but it's also about addressing the social structures we currently have in place and recognising that they will fight tooth and nail to keep things the way they currently are.
> And the implication of everybody being well educated is that everyone will have white collar jobs or prestigious blue collar jobs. If everyone is well educated then who will want to take a job as a street cleaner when they've just spent $80k on their education? The solution is clearly not limited to just educating everyone, is it?
While the latter part of your statement is the same as the beginning of what you just said, I took the former to mean that educating everybody would cause additional problems, not that it wouldn't solve all the problems we have. If you didn't mean to imply this line of thinking, or if you have abandoned it, then great.
To address this new point, did you see anything in my comment that suggests I want to keep our current social structure? The very act of empowering the poor into participating in politics (again, not just in the election sense) on a large scale will change the structure of society. And then, instead of the privileged deciding what the poor need and pushing potential solutions, we would probably start to see the poor creating their own solutions, and further changing our societal structure. I imagine that their solutions would work better than those that came from outside, and they might even be highly resistant to recommendations from a model society (some didn't even trust that this education would help, since "the white man wouldn’t let you up no matter what.").
It's like the various Housing First problems out there. Most of the homeless have a host of other problems (addiction, mental illness/disorder, lack of education, etc) but these programs get them an apartment first, and merely make the other services available. And from what I've read, they work. People stay off the streets and clean themselves up, for the most part.
That said, there is _no_ reason we can't educate everyone in the humanities and do other things, too.
In other words, our entire society needs to be re-educated in order to solve this problem, not just the poor.
>we would probably start to see the poor creating their own solutions, and further changing our societal structure.
Indeed we would, but we would also see a great deal of resistance to it from the powers that be. This needs to be addressed with equal importance. What's the point of bringing people up when others will just try to push them down more? We need to bring them up and make space to accommodate them.
In terms of educating the rich, what exactly do you propose to teach them and how do you suggest convincing them to give you the time of day?
That is a completely different issue from arguing about definitions themselves. We can indeed hold opinions on what constitutes a true Scotsman, and even argue about which of those opinions is correct -- so long as it's the subject of the conversation.
You can't change definitions in the middle of a discussion. But you can certainly hold, support, and defend the consistent opinion that something is not a REAL education. It's not the word "real" that makes something problem. It's changing your mind.
More specifically, NTS is moving the goalposts based on irrelevant criteria.
There are times when the goalposts are in the wrong spot, and it's appropriate to stop the main argument, take the time to get your definitions straight, and then move back to the main argument with appropriate goalposts. If you realize that two parties are using different definitions, it's completely appropriate to argue about which definition is correct (possibly "the correct usage for these purposes" rather than "universally correct") before returning to the larger argument.