On Mr Ayers and Mr Obama
Or the Curious Incedent of the Dog Barking in the Night
Missing the point, is the problem on both the right and the defenses from the left.
The point isn’t Mr Ayers regrettable (and alas not-regretted) past. It isn’t how close in bed where Mr Obama and Mr Ayers and what did who know when. That is a political wart which will not change the election. But …
The point is they both miss the point on education. Badly.
Mr Obama in a commencement address earlier this year spoke to college grads of not giving themselves to money and career but “doing something for change”. Mr Ayers also sees education as a platform to educate “children for freedom and against oppression”.
Alas, that ain’t the problem. The problem is the scarcity of good engineers and scientists coming out of our schools. It isn’t “more poetry and freedom” that needs to be taught, it’s path integrals and Riemann surfaces. It’s tensors and logic and PLL amplifiers. Mr Ayers (and Mr Obama) are brought up looking in the wrong direction for the “problem” and … that is the problem with their association.
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The engineers and scientists will only be as good as the ethics they learn and implement from the poets and prophets.
Dan,
Are you saying we today’s shortage in education isn’t in the sciences and engineering but instead in poetry and … (?!) prophecy?
Does that mean we should be teaching Prophecy 101 in our colleges?
No, I was taking poetic license.
I’m saying that we need well-rounded individuals. We need folk who can farm well, not more agribusiness managers and scientists. We need folk who can reason well. We need folk who can live within their means, personally and societally. We need good teachers. We need good social workers.
And yes, we need engineers and scientists, but we need well-rounded engineers and scientists. I’m just saying that we need a bit of it all.