garyb wrote:further....
what is a "program"?
it is called "software". it is a set of instructions for "hardware", telling the hardware how to operate.
what is the curriculum in the university called? why are teachers more properly called "instructors"?
In Italy instructors are only those who teach a technique or sports. Teachers are just teachers or professors if a certain position is reached.
as with any system or event, to understand what is really going on, it's good to get to the "root" of the matter. i believe in Latin, the phrase is something like "que bono"(who benefits?).
sorry if I laugh...although written in something resembling Spanish more than Latin, it sounds a lot like when in Roman dialect someone (a girl usually), in a not too elegant way, comments the good look of a guy. The thing sounds hilarious to me because the use an expression that sounds so "gross" and somehow folkloric in place of a Latin citation has a comic effect.
The proper expression is "cui bono" or better "cui prodest" (cui= to whom; prodest= is favorable)
to begin to understand who benefits, or who the system or event was made for, in the world we live in you must follow the money. who funds it and what is their plan/philosophy? unfortunately, NO university is clean, when this test is applied
Those are holy words my friend! I've always thought that the cui prodest is the most powerful anaalysis tool. A famous Italian politician, he's almost 90 now, who has survived with incredible ability to decades of scandals and quite muddy stories, covering several times the roles of prime minister and foreign affairs minister, used to say: "If you think bad you make a sin, but you're almost always right".
But I think that in a system like ours, where Universities only get public money and the independence of their administration (police can get in only if called or allowed by the highest authority of the faculty, the "Rector") and the independence of the single professors is stated by the law, you have a complex reality, where corruption exists together with very honest and quite valid teachers and professors, where the research is independent from economical lobbies, even if not so rich like in the countries that have private sponsors, and where, inside a single institute, you can get in touch with opposite views and theories.
Nothing is perfect, but I think that this is the world we must learn to relate with, it's up to each of us how to do it.
i did NOT say that universities are a waste of time to the programmed, or that there's no good information to be gained or that one shouldn't go or that graduates are stupid or any of that. i'm just telling it like it is, which you validate when you say "Maybe if you had some experience with one you would discover that one can still keep his individuality and critic ability to agree and disagree and to elaborate notions in an original and comparative way".
first off, that's obviously true, and not true. one will have one's veiwpoint changed from the experience, both for bad abd good.
I think that's not a problem. All the reality is the same, just reality. More the stimuli, more the differences, more the conflicts of ideas broader will be your sight. After all any experience can be useful as much as it is not the only one.
second, there's something known as "academic". this type of thought shows that there IS indeed, a process, where thought is brought into polarized focus. school would be useless in this world otherwise. to deny the process is to be dishonest. it's not necessarily bad.
Maybe i know what you mean......I had the possibility to start a career in the university as I graduated with the the maximum "cum laude" but i was not interested at all, I've never been able to teach, i don't feel comfortable with it, I prefer to learn.
of COURSE school is like receiving info from a trancy preacher. a non tracny preacher won't hold attention a
nd will be called a "bad" teacher.
That's a bit too generalizing. I've met teachers of the most different kinds, it has been useful, I could observe the "academic anthropology" pretty well and decide that the only knowledge I was interested in was the one that could generate a contradiction.
finally, i'm not against YOU in any way shape or form, although i obviously disagree with some of the ideas you hold. don't take that personally, those ideas are not your own anyway.
Oh no, don't worry Gary, you disagree a lot with my own ideas too...unless you don't think that also your disagreement is not of yours (but I hope both of us are entitled to the ownership of our ideas, not because completely original, but because coming from some mental work anyway).
I feel comfortable with disagreement, having a discussion with someone I completely agree with would make me feel really stupid!
I strongly disagree with some of your own ideas too, which doesn't make me instinctively like you less at all, and I never took it personally.
the man i like and respect is the one who obviously cares about his fellow man and would make things better if he could, not worse. this is how i see you alfonso, just so it's said. thanks for arguing in public. i think it's a good thing.
I think the same of you. I hate loosing my time, I wouldn't argue if I thought that I couldn't gain something new from the confrontation. I think that even if positions remain the same they both benefit of an integration with their opposites.
Thanks.
