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A Humanities Halliburton: The Govindaraj Sisters' Minerva « Generation Bubble - The Diigo Meta page

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forestfortrees
Forestfortrees bookmarked on 2009-06-23 humanism humanities education work economics economy2.0 critical theory critique
  • “To really be prepared for a job — any job — you need to have some understanding of who you are and what your history is, and where you want to go. You need to be able to think clearly and write a good English sentence, to have a good critical awareness, and that is fostered by a liberal arts awareness.”
  • There’s a specter haunting humanities, the specter of worker productivity. Technology marches ever onward, demanding that skill development keep pace. Expectations of having to retrain at regular intervals in the future only motivate university students to maximize the amount of know-how acquired in the present, meaning the humanities, which emphasize general over specialized knowledge, only get more and more marginalized.
  • Minerva resembles a sort of humanities Halliburton, an outsourcing option that today’s streamlined college course offerings all but cry out for
  • The German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel wrote, “The owl of Minerva only takes flight at dusk,” which essentially means one can never understand an event’s significance until the event has completely transpired.
  • No, the humanities’ survival depends on their withstanding all compulsions to profitability, and not on their adapting themselves to whatever humble capacity corporate imperatives ordain for them. The success of Govindaraj sisters’ Minerva is, ultimately, symptomatic of a creeping technocratic hegemony. This, friends, we must resist.

This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 23 Jun 2009, by Jeremy Price.

  • 23 Jun 09
    forestfortrees
    Jeremy Price

    humanism humanities education work economics economy2.0 critical theory critique

    • “To really be prepared for a job — any job — you need to have some understanding of who you are and what your history is, and where you want to go. You need to be able to think clearly and write a good English sentence, to have a good critical awareness, and that is fostered by a liberal arts awareness.”
    • There’s a specter haunting humanities, the specter of worker productivity. Technology marches ever onward, demanding that skill development keep pace. Expectations of having to retrain at regular intervals in the future only motivate university students to maximize the amount of know-how acquired in the present, meaning the humanities, which emphasize general over specialized knowledge, only get more and more marginalized.
    • 3 more annotations...