[lbo-talk] Re: education, education, education, education

joanna 123hop at comcast.net
Wed Sep 13 08:29:51 PDT 2006


I don't think you really have to learn calculus to understand the meaning of "rate of change."

Yes, I did learn calculus.

Joanna

Daniel Davies wrote:


>Dennis wrote, quoting some fool
>
>
>
>>> As university attendance becomes more common, fewer capable young people
>>>enter vocational training. Yet our economies still need highly trained
>>>craftspeople far more than another batch of arts graduates.
>>>
>>>
>>A professor of management decides the arts are useless? Incredible. Does
>>this person realize the media, ad spend and entertainment industries make
>>up at least 15% of OECD GDP? With professors like this, no wonder British
>>capitalism is so decrepit.
>>
>>
>
>Yup, and furthermore, I would advise all Americans with modern languages
>degrees and no job prospects to head for the shores of Blighty, where we are
>currently discovering that after about twenty years of "hard headed" types like
>this we have produced a generation of children that can't speak French or
>German and that the Economist magazine was perhaps overselling to us the case
>that "international businesspeople basically all speak English these days". It
>is a national disgrace.
>
>
>Otoh, Carrol wrote:
>
>
>
>>>Andre Gorz back in the '60s (when he was still a marxist) passes on a
>>>
>>>
>>delightful anecdote. He was visiting one of the elite technological
>>schools in France. At one point he raised the question, "What do the
>>students learn her that they couldn't learn on the job?" Answer, after
>>some thought, calculus. Next questio, "Would they use calculua in the
>>jobs they were training for?" No.
>>
>>
>
>this is a bit tangential to Carrol's point, but for god's sake learn basic
>calculus everybody. It is not as if it is difficult (although as far as I can
>see, American universities make the most astonishing meal of it, teaching
>"calculus" and "multivariate calculus" as different courses!), and it is
>unbelievably frustrating to the rest of us to have to spell out what we mean in
>any discussion of rates of change with respect to things (I doubt it is any
>more fun for you lot to have to keep taking things on trust). Not knowing
>calculus is like not being able to dance; you are going to spend your whole
>life trying to organise things so that your inability is never exposed and this
>is no way to go about your life.
>
>dd
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