Things Out of the Past You Would Like to See Revived

[David Horn]

(08-17-2019, 08:32 AM)sbarrera Wrote:

(08-01-2019, 04:34 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: 4. more reliance upon the liberal arts in education as a means of improving the lives of adults who might get something out of them other than vocational opportunity. The tragedy is not the welder who has a liberal arts degree; the tragedy is an accountant or engineer who sees the world only as economic metrics even if those metrics are people.

I often regret that I did not get much of a liberal arts education. I feel like I missed out on learning the classics and getting a full appreciation of Western culture. Most of what I do know is self-taught but there are many gaps - that is obvious to me. But then, with my tech degree I have been able to do well for myself in the economy, so my life just underscores this whole issue of how in the modern world the citizen has been transformed into a plug-in economic unit.

I'm a techie too, so my liberal arts education was also limited.  I've tried to fill in the gaps, but even areas I though I knew reasonably well, I still find  intriguing new material -- some downright shocking.  

The NY Times is running a series of stories called the 1619 Project.  The stories run the gamut rom familiar to surprising.  This one is in the second category: In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.  We all assume that modern capitalism rose in the industrial north.  This article argues effectively that it arose in the plantation south, and many of the assumptions from that time still apply.