Faking It (The Undereducation of an Overachiever)(nytimes.com) |
Faking It (The Undereducation of an Overachiever)(nytimes.com) |
I spent almost my entire school career seeing how much I could get away with, writing fake personal essays, falsifying scientific "evidence" (as if 7th grade science fairs matter), manufacturing fake "drafts" which were really my first and final version but deliberately messed up, doing my homework as the teacher came around to collect it. Manufacturing saccharine, bullshit, fake answers that teachers always swallowed. Reusing essays from freshman year of HS for university English class. (Haha.)
I rebelled against being forced to do so many stupid things, that it became a game. Nobody ever noticed, so I realized that I couldn't respect or listen to people I could fool and conquer so easily.
You can do it in non-liberal arts. It's still easy.
The trick is, you have to be smart enough to do the real work to fake it. You don't necessarily have to know the given facts, though.
I was the same way in highschool. ;)
But it never happened. Go figure.
Institutionalized schooling just hobbles anyone who doesn't fit the mold, one way or another.
Taking it seriously is one way. Taking nothing seriously is another.
We have methods to kill Paula Beans in their tracks. Liberal arts does not.
Is this anything new?
The liberal arts are just as good at stopping bullshit from coming through. That they rarely choose to do so demonstrates how cowed many people in the liberal arts are, and that's an entirely separate discussion. But there's a simple test in the liberal arts wherein when somebody doesn't make sense, you ask them to clarify, and repeat the process until they make sense or admit they were faking.
Actually, the "physical arts" have another test - it either works or it doesn't.
> But there's a simple test in the liberal arts wherein when somebody doesn't make sense, you ask them to clarify, and repeat the process until they make sense or admit they were faking.
Nope - they call you racist, Republican, fascist, etc., and you lose.
The idea of the liberal arts is that they're not rankable collectively. While there's an objective bad to be found, good is to some degree subjective, and each person can decide what they value. So you're allowed to value deconstructionism if you'd like, or state that meaninglessness is the point of art, and I'm allowed to disagree with you and call your work bullshit.
Where did politics come in? Are you legitimately trying to make a point, or are you just trying to blindly spew your dislike of the liberal arts? If so, tell me so I can directly address that instead of making tangential arguments.