primalmommy on wed 31 dec 03
I have to go do my logic homework if i am going to be part of the brave
new logical clayart list.
Thinking about the recent discussion of whether potters need college..
I'm not sure anybody will make their money back out of college any more
unless they learn a specific trade, but I wish it were available for
free to everybody. College to me was one long buffet of "ooooh I should
have majored in that" -- astronomy, botany, language, you name it. It
taught me how little I actually know about anything, how much there was
to learn and just one lifetime to pick and choose. It humbled me.
here's an oldie but goodie from John Henry Newman: (the last few
sentences will sound appealing to the logic brigade)
"If, then, a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I
say it is that of training good members of society. Its art is the art
of social life, and its end is fitness for the world. It neither
confines its views to particular professions on the one hand, nor
creates heroes or inspires genius on the other. Works indeed of genius
fall under no art; heroic minds come under no rule; a University is not
a birthplace of poets or immortal authors, of founders of schools,
leaders of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not promise a
generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of Napoleons or Washingtons, of
Raphaels or Shakespeares, though such miracles of nature it has before
now contained in its precincts. Nor is it content on the other hand with
forming the critic or the experimentalist, the economist or the
engineer, though such too it includes within its scope. But a university
training is the great ordinary means to great but ordinary end: it aims
at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public
mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to
popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving
enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the
exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private
life. It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of
his own opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them, an
eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him
to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a
skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is
irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master
any subject with facility. It shows him how to accomodate himself to
others, how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to bring
before them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an
understanding with them, how to bear with them. "
---John Henry Newman
yers signing off to watch the ball fall in times square... kelly in ohio
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iandol on fri 2 jan 04
Dear Kelly,
Thank you for that extract.
<> So It should be and =
would be if it were not a political football.
As I recall, the best tuition came in the faculty known as "Greats", =
dealing with ourselves. My good friend John had a Third in Greats from =
Oxford. What a mind ! what a whit ! what a raconteur, What a "Puller of =
Pints".
Best regards,
Ivor Lewis. Redhill, South Australia=20
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