Experts everywhere have been making robust predictions for the growth of "Stem" jobs (science, technology, engineering and maths) - and so far they don't seem to be wrong. Engineering graduates performed well in the job market last year, with 85.4 per cent landing either a job or further education within six months.

Medical, medical tech, veterinary and dentistry have employment rates up in the 90 percent range.

I don't have any opposition to engineers, vets, or dentists, etc., but I resent the idea that becoming educated is a waste of time and that being employed within the consumer economy is superior.  Obviously employment is necessary for a family, but it is more excellent to have an income and to also be educated than to merely be employed without being educated.  Any departure from Aristotelian-Thomism should be staunchly rejected.  We need intellectual cohesion if we are to make any headway in the restoration of the Kingship of Christ.  The lionization of mediocrity that occurs on this forum (by certain posters) helps nobody.

I don't have any opposition to engineers, vets, or dentists, etc., but I resent the idea that becoming educated is a waste of time and that being employed within the consumer economy is superior.  Obviously employment is necessary for a family, but it is more excellent to have an income and to also be educated than to merely be employed without being educated.  Any departure from Aristotelian-Thomism should be staunchly rejected.  We need intellectual cohesion if we are to make any headway in the restoration of the Kingship of Christ.  The lionization of mediocrity that occurs on this forum (by certain posters) helps nobody.

PereJoseph, if you haven't done so already you ought to read Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Middle-class gentleman). Molière preceded the French Revolution, and so the French aristocracy was alive at that time. "Gentleman" used to be a term reserved for men of the gentry, noblemen. Molière parodies the burgeoning Middle class, the Bourgeois, of the time who had money but not refinement. It's a short play, and he brilliantly exposes daft Bourgeois sensibilities. The Bourgeoisie are the class that replaced the aristocracy, as I'm sure you are aware, and so the lionizing of mediocrity that you spoke of is an inheritance from those wealthy men who envied the superiority of the nobles.

Quote from: ggreg

I just read the prospectus and they don't appear to teach anything practical or useful.

If their goal is to form Catholic gentlemen who can influence Catholic society, educating them in the liberal arts is quite practical and useful.  If the goal is for them to get jobs to further advance the global economy and budding international urban culture, then they could follow your advice.

Quote

Employers want maths, science, business, accounting, finance, computer programming and engineering degrees not liberal arts.  Why don't they teach maths, chemistry, physics, Java and Ruby on Rails?

If somebody wants to not be educated and is only interested in gaining a skill set for short-term employment, they can study those things.  But if somebody wants to be an educated man and therefore contribute something profound to the world, they should actually study the liberal arts.

Exactly,

Quote from: PereJoseph

I don't have any opposition to engineers, vets, or dentists, etc., but I resent the idea that becoming educated is a waste of time and that being employed within the consumer economy is superior.  Obviously employment is necessary for a family, but it is more excellent to have an income and to also be educated than to merely be employed without being educated.  Any departure from Aristotelian-Thomism should be staunchly rejected.  We need intellectual cohesion if we are to make any headway in the restoration of the Kingship of Christ.  The lionization of mediocrity that occurs on this forum (by certain posters) helps nobody.

PereJoseph, if you haven't done so already you ought to read Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Middle-class gentleman). Molière preceded the French Revolution, and so the French aristocracy was alive at that time. "Gentleman" used to be a term reserved for men of the gentry, noblemen. Molière parodies the burgeoning Middle class, the Bourgeois, of the time who had money but not refinement. It's a short play, and he brilliantly exposes daft Bourgeois sensibilities. The Bourgeoisie are the class that replaced the aristocracy, as I'm sure you are aware, and so the lionizing of mediocrity that you spoke of is an inheritance from those wealthy men who envied the superiority of the nobles.

Thanks you for the recommendation.  I've listened to Lully's opera version of it but never paid any attention to the libretto on account of it being written by the author of Tartuffe.  I will look into it, though.  It sounds like it's right up my alley.

A world where they eat food paid for by their father.

"And the tempter coming said to him: If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. Who answered and said: It is written, Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God." -- Gospel of St Matthew IV, iii.

Your judgmentalism knows no bounds.  It has no basis, and knows no bounds.

My critical comments have your own words as their basis.  I'm not blind and won't take your excuses for their true meaning.  Your protests of good intentions don't change objective reality.  To use one of your own phrases, "Deal with it."

Pere wrote:

"And the tempter coming said to him: If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. Who answered and said: It is written, Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God." -- Gospel of St Matthew IV, iii.

That is, of course, a glaring non-sequitur.

Has anyone ever told you that you argue much like a Jєωιѕн Rabbi?  Because you do.  

… has anyone even heard of this place [Fisher More]? …

I have. In the not-distant past I had very extensive contact with Doctor James A. Patrick, the gentleman who founded the college (and was its Chancellor) in its first incarnation: the College of Saint Thomas More. Dr. Patrick is a man of deep cultivation and a scholar with a truly extraordinary breadth of learning. He is a serious Catholic, of course, albeit sadly of the devout Novus Ordo type (he merits our prayers, needless to say).

Dr. Patrick is not affiliated with Fisher More in any way. What the state of his relations with the folks who run it is not something I know nor am in a position to inquire about. You may have noticed that the present management is more than a bit coy in referring to him in the material they provided Rorate Caeli. Should you come to decide that going to FM is what you really want to do, you might consider writing them and asking plainly what the story is.

… It would stink if they closed, Fisher More seems to be a great (if not the best) option for people like us.

I am curious what you mean by "people like us." In common with everyone who thought about higher education prior to the day before yesterday, both Dr. Patrick and the current management hold that a true liberal education, founded in the classics of Greco-Roman literature and thought and expanding to include their genuine successors in the Christian era down almost to our own time, is appropriate only for the few: specifically, (1) those who aspire to a life in the academy or in those trades and professions that depend upon or nourish that life; and (2) those with the native gifts and aptitudes and practical conditions of upbringing to make such aspirations realizable in more than fantasy.

To speak plainly, few who comment here at CI can be counted as "people like us" so defined. Nor is there anything to be ashamed of or to apologize for in that situation.

Incidentally, with the foregoing in mind, ggreg is absolutely correct to discourage idle fantasies about studying the liberal arts in preference to the hard sciences or engineering or chartered accounting. Fewer people are suited by nature for such liberal studies than are suited for football or basketball stardom. In fact, perhaps the only thing rarer than a natural-born scholar is a southpaw with a great slider and curveball and a killer split-finger. If you are one of the latter, the world is your oyster. Make a hundred million bucks, and then spend the next forty years reading Xenophon and Sophocles and Tacitus and the Italian Renaissance scholars and preparing a series of learned studies for a new generation of translators on the differing vocabularies and linguistic structures of Cicero's Latin vis-à-vis that of Boethius or Anselm.

Quote

"And the tempter coming said to him: If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. Who answered and said: It is written, Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God." -- Gospel of St Matthew IV, iii.

That is, of course, a glaring non-sequitur.

That's begging the question.

Has anyone ever told you that you argue much like a Jєωιѕн Rabbi?  Because you do.  

Haha.  No, I can honestly say that this is the first time that I remember anybody telling me that I resembled a Jєωιѕн rabbi in the slightest, especially in the way that I argue.  Usually I am told that I am a wannabe Torquemada.  Otherwise I am told that I lack sensitivity and scare people off for being overly frank.  Or else I am too arcane and talkative.  There's criticism from just about every direction, but this one is a first.  Hilariously, you yourself have made allusions to the Inquisition and to the strawmen scholastics of the anticlerical rationalist revolutionaries' caricature in your little sideswipes at me.  Given the colorful variety of accusations, then, you will forgive me for thinking of my manner of argumentation as being successful.

But I will humour you.  Could you please tell me why, in your opinion, I "argue much like a Jєωιѕн Rabbi" ?