Post: #1

It's sometimes proposed in the manosphere that Donald Trump cut all funding for non-STEM majors (except maybe accounting, medicine, and law), so we can get rid of some of these feminists and leftists from the universities. However, I think it's also wasteful that even the students in STEM majors have to take a lot of electives in the social sciences, humanities, etc. to ensure they get a dose of social justice as well. I would favor getting rid of all that.

At my alma mater, a bachelor's degree requires getting 3 credits apiece in information technology, arts, global understanding, literature, social and behavioral science, western civilization/world history, and synthesis or capstone experience. I think they could safely cut all that stuff and save 21 credits.

For their electives, students usually end up taking whatever will get them an easy A. Or it serves as a way by which students can justify being indecisive about their majors for the first couple years. Why are they in college, if they don't have some idea of what their passions are, or what they want to do with their lives? Maybe they should be in the workforce, finding out what they like and don't like to do, and saving up money for college, so that when they do make up their minds, they'll be in a better position. Men can delay marriage and kids till their 30s or beyond, so for them, there's no rush to get a college education. And young women, of course, should be focusing on marriage and kids when they're in their prime, and postponing college till later, rather than accumulating a bunch of student loan debt.

At any rate, the majority of general education classes consist of useless knowledge or propaganda. For example, information technology classes tend to be pretty lightweight and focus on the history of computing or using various software applications that students may already be familiar with, or could learn just as easily through a tutorial. History tends to be heavily biased by the social justice narrative. The first two semesters of psychology don't teach much of interest or value, such as the red flags of borderline personality disorder, which every young man needs to be aware of. Literature theoretically has potential, but the class discussion is only as good as the teacher and students make it, and the kind of literary analysis they teach you to do is usually not all that enlightening.

Foreign language is theoretically useful, except that college (or even high or junior high school) is a little late to start teaching it. It would be better to start in kindergarten, since the capacity to learn a new language diminishes with age. But which language to teach them, to best prepare them to meet the challenges of manhood? Polish, Russian, Spanish? Debates continue to rage about the tradeoffs of various travel destinations, in terms of hotness of chicks, ease of banging them, etc.

I like the career studies certificates, where 100% of the classes are directly related to a particular career (e.g. accounting), and therefore you get it done quickly, with a minimal number of credit hours required. I think the degree programs should work more like that.

The general education classes I would keep would be written communication, oral communication (especially public speaking), quantitative reasoning, and natural science.

I would add another semester of statistics, two to three semesters of economics (macroeconomics and microeconomics, and a junior-level economics elective such as money and banking). Learning statistics helps students detect methodological flaws in studies that are used to back up leftist public policies. Economics helps students debunk fallacious arguments for socialist and interventionist policies.

I would also add a semester of constitutional law. It's better to study law than politics or history, since by learning law, you learn about politics and history anyway. Students need to have a good foundation in constitutional law, so they can know and exercise their constitutional rights, and see how politicians and their jurists have perverted the meaning of the constitution over time.

I would also add a course on logic, so students can better identify logical fallacies. This will be a good substitute for teaching them philosophy or religion, since logic will debunk much of what they've probably been taught about philosophy and religion. I would also add an accounting course, since this will be very helpful to their understanding of financial statements and the transactions that flow into those statements, if they're ever in charge of running a business or department.

Some would say that all students should be required to learn computer science, but I don't find that it's usually taught all that well in college. Usually, they teach some programming language that's been obsolete for several years, and the exams require the students to memorize stuff that programmers would more typically refer to online sources for, rather than knowing by heart. If the goal is to give students practice in solving problems logically, electrical engineering might be a better choice.

What about high school? Much of what I said about college classes is also applicable there. Replace social studies with law. Shift the focus in English from literature to composition, so students don't arrive at college with such poor writing skills. Extend the length of class periods from 45 minutes to 90 minutes (comparable to college classes), to reduce the amount of time spent during the school day going from class to class. For those students who won't be needing trigonometry and calculus in their careers, consider replacing it with statistics, or simply not requiring them to take any more math after geometry.

I also think that it would be good to include some kind of work/study component. Young people need to learn the soft skills involved in getting and keeping a job, and get some experience they can put on their resumes so they can hit the ground running when they graduate.

Post: #2

Add - Tax code and managing money / Martial Arts / Home economics

For the girls - Fashion / Female finishing classes

Remove - Religion / Anything to do with normalisation of a fag lifestyle

Post: #3

History, philosophy, and literature are vitally important to a genuine education. The problem is simply that those fields have been infused with SJW bullshit and need to be reclaimed for civilization.

Post: #4

You want to know a dead major? Rhetoric. They used to teach this to high school students so they wouldn't be fleeced by the politicians and media.

This goes along with your idea of teaching logic.

A basic logic requirement, so people can have legitimate intellectual debate without getting lost in the muck. And at least a little rhetoric, so people can identify all the other shit besides logic that persuades them through emotion and confusion.

This will replace all that feminist garbage about logic being an oppressive tool of the patriarchy. If you can't speak simply and clearly, back up your arguments, think on your feet, identify casual fallacies, and defend your position without appeals to emotion both in writing and in speech, you shouldn't graduate.

Post: #5

Since I homeschool a son, this is a non-theoretical question for me. What I cut is probably just as important as what I added.

A boy should be educated in character, intellect, and vocational skill. Even if he ends up in a "white collar" job he should be able to handle a screwdriver without looking like a jackass or a miter saw without cutting his finger off.

What I use:

• Math: Saxon math through Calculus. Saxon was the staple before "Whole Math" started taking over. It teaches algorithmic multiplication, for example, with plenty of drill. Lattice method might have been a sidebar or "exploration", I can't remember, but there wasn't much of it.
• Science: Reversed the order typically taught in school, and kept it high-level until calculus. Started with physics, then chemistry, then biology, since in modern history that's the order in which major discoveries were made. School tends to neglect the hypothesis-generation part of science, so I tried to give more attention to the creative and speculative portions of it while still maintaining the skeptical and experimental mindset.
• English: Started with phonics (not "whole word" reading), and included at least some grammar. Other than that, I made sure he reads something of his choosing daily and writes a paragraph about what he read each day. (He chose well, so I haven't had to provide a lot of direction.)
• History: Worked from ancient history forward at least twice, each time increasing the complexity. Original review was basically simple stories. As he got older, it got more in depth. If I had to start over I'd do it three times in 4-year cycles and get a little more focused/specialized each time. (For example, first ancient history year might be general and cover the entire known ancient world. Second pass might focus on Egypt or Mesopotamia or Greece or Rome. Third pass might focus on a specific city-state, or a particular theme such as Jasper's Axial Age across all civilizations.)
• Foreign Language: We started him in Spanish as the most practical, but he wasn't interested. So we let him choose and he chose German. Not the most practical, perhaps, but so be it. I think it's important to take his interests into consideration.
• Arts: He has been exposed to visual and other arts, and took piano lessons for years, partly because he admired and looked up to his (male) piano teacher so much. Expose the boy to a variety and see what clicks with him.
• Self-Defense: He took MMA and wrestling lessons for about a year, but just wasn't interested in continuing. Oh, well. At least he's been exposed to it. I also took him shooting a few times, but again he just didn't get into it.
• Hands-on skills: Every time I have a simple task, I get him involved somehow. The "school" equivalent would be reviving shop class.
  

As he got older, he got more decision over what to do. We prioritized western civilization because that's HIS civilization. But I think a Chinese should be able to focus on China and an African should be able to focus on Africa, etc. Once a boy has the basics of his people down, he can (and perhaps should) branch out.

What I cut: Lots of Jewish literature: The Diary of Anne Frank, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies and the rest of the B.S. passing for "literature"

Edit: And Beguiled just reminded me, we covered logic and critical thinking, especially using Anthony Weston's materials.

Post: #6

We shouldn't forget the values that are inculcated without being verbalized, the meta-education. Here are six that need to be gotten rid of according to teacher and reformer, John Taylor Gatto.

Confusion

Class Position

Indifference

Emotional Dependency

Intellectual Dependency

Provisional Self Esteem





Anything else by Gatto is excellent.

Post: #7

Cut all public funding, period. Let the schools charge whatever they want, and teach whatever the students demand.

Now it's up to the schools to convince their customers (students) what they teach is worth it in long term knowledge but also to make up for the cost and time of learning.

Don't need to get rid of lesbian feminist Himalayan basket weaving classes. If someone is prepared to pay $X of their (daddy's) own money, I'm all for giving it to them.

We shall see what classes are left standing after a generation.

[Caveat -- yes, young students are probably too dumb to choose correctly. So what? Which is a why a good educator had better learn to sell his brand of wisdom, and have some testimonials to back it up]

Post: #8

College too late to learn a language? I think there are plenty of members here who would testify otherwise, although I suppose you may have meant the average brain-dead college student.

Post: #9

(02-15-2017 06:52 PM)britchard Wrote:  College too late to learn a language? I think there are plenty of members here who would testify otherwise, although I suppose you may have meant the average brain-dead college student.

Did those members learn in a college classroom, or by some other means? I took four and a half years of French (in 6th, 8th, 9th, and 10th grades, plus one semester of college), and the last time I ran into some French chicks, every time I tried to translate my thoughts into French, Spanish words kept coming into my mind because that was the language I had studied most recently. Their boyfriends then showed up and I thought, "Oh well, it made no difference anyway."

Reading or listening to French is another story; that I could probably handle.

Post: #10

As far as adding or increasing scope:

Better choices of literature. My father grew up reading books like Atlas Shrugged or 1984. I can't even remember which books I was forced to read throughout high school in college. The only ones that come to mind are Siddartha and Things Fall Apart. I also remember some Kafka.

Computer science, information technology, software development, etc. I learned how to type in grade school and use browsers. In college I had to take a computer course which taught us Microsoft Excel and Access. I also had plenty of work with Word and Powerpoint in a number of classes. I'm going through Codecademy now and it would've been extremely helpful if I had a class that at least exposed me to the basics of how computers work and how websites and software are developed.

Shop classes. I took wood working classes in middle school and high school. I wish I could've learned more applicable skills. We had classes to work on cars, introductions to welding and metal work, and a few other options. The problem is that the number of prerequisites caused you to only take those classes if you were going into those fields after high school. The only kids that took them were the "rednecks" who were going to be diesel mechanics after graduation. It would've been extremely helpful if there was a class that gave you a basic overview of a variety of fields to increase general handiness. I can usually figure out how to fix things, but I'm not as handy as I'd like to be.

Home economics, cooking, cleaning, sewing, etc. In 6th grade we had to take a quarter of home ec. I remember learning the basics of a handful of skills. We even used a sewing machine to make a little cloth bag. While I don't ever intend on sewing anything in my adult life, it was helpful to learn the basics of things I normally wouldn't have been exposed to. The cooking information was helpful though. This section should be more focused on girls while boys are focused on the shop classes. Luckily I date girls who are able to sew things up for me, but most girls are useless when it comes to cooking, sewing, or anything learned in this section. Guys should be able to cook and maintain a respectable bachelor pad too.

Personal finance. This should be a requirement in middle school, high school, and college. I took a personal finance class in college which was an elective. Most people aren't exposed to it which is why most people are in a lot debt and live beyond their means. Being exposed to fiscal responsibility at a young age would do wonders for most people.

Get rid of:

Anything that doesn't make a living. 16th century underwater basket weaving is certainly interesting, but not a good reason to go into high five or low six figure debt. Cut out 90% of liberal arts degrees. Interested in psychology, but don't want to have to get your master's to only become a teacher? Go into marketing. It's applied psychology and professionals in sales and consumer behavior are always needed. Or maybe you love playing piano. Instead of going to school for musical theory with a focus in the baroque era, focus on your second love of biology and study music in your spare time.

Only losers "follow their passion" for the sake of "following their passion". I love reading history books but I would never dream of majoring in history. You need to focus on marketable skills that add genuine value to society and the marketplace at large.

Post: #11

Just eliminating any mandated courses that push political propaganda would go a long ways.

Post: #12

I'm pretty heavy in stem and I think it would be best if we were made to do martial arts, many people I work with cannot hardly pick up a box of paper and martial arts gives the best overall work out in my assessment of it.

Post: #13

A true "liberal arts" education built around the trivium and quadrivium and heavy on the classics would be a good starting point. Worked pretty good for a thousand years. That would cover a lot of the rhetoric, logic, and character instruction not currently covered.

One specific thing: I would expect kids to graduate high school knowing at least basic calculus. For three reasons. First, calculus shapes the way you perceive the workings of more practical, everyday sorts of math (for example, understanding more intuitively what maxima, minima, totals, and rates involve). Second, even a smattering of calculus involves knowing all the lower branches of math (arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry). Third, calculus (for me at least) was far more about the logic and problem-solving skills than just moving numbers around - solving puzzles rather than doing math - which is a skill transferable to other areas of thinking.

Post: #14

Quote: College too late to learn a language? I think there are plenty of members here who would testify otherwise, although I suppose you may have meant the average brain-dead college student.

You can learn a language to beyond mere fluency long after college, don't be fooled by the woes of those who were unable to perform and quit when things became difficult. I know several people who picked them up laye 20s and early 30s and mastered them. Various difficulties as well, simplest to hardest.

Post: #15

Gender studies and most art majors are gone.

History needs to be taught differently, not eliminated completely. History is seen too much as memorization of facts and dates, when it's very different from that.

Post: #16

I would make philosophy compulsory.

Sometimes I fear that we are becoming too 'utilitarian' in the West, focusing too much on subjects like math/engineering with a view to getting a good career. A worthy pursuit of course, but let's not lose sight of some the more abstract ideas. I think you need a healthy balance.

There are a lot of bullshit degrees out there - Business Studies/Commerce being one of the worst.

Post: #17

For HIGH SCHOOL graduation in the US, I would require passing national exams as some other countries do. Standardized tests including multiple choice and essay questions.

Basic Statistics, Logic
US Civics
Functional literacy (able to find specific information in documents)
Writing

Lots of other things could go on this list (science, history, foreign language, arts) but I'm less sure about requiring those.

Post: #18

For high school:

DELETE:
-Foreign language. Practically, no one gets anything out of learning just enough of another language to still be unable to speak it.
-Literature. Force-feeding kids fictional stories they're not interested in serves no purpose.
-Advanced algebraic mechanics, advanced trig, calculus, etc. These are better suited to be learned in college only by aspiring mathematicians, engineers, and the like. They are a waste of time for ~99% of the population.

DE-EMPHASIZE:
-History. It's good to have a broad context/narrative of how we got here, but memorization of the finer details is pointless.

REVAMP:
-Phys Ed. Good idea in theory, but completely worthless as currently executed and only remains in existence to keep otherwise useless individuals employed. Separate the boys and girls, and have them do some actual fucking exercise instead of changing clothes to play some pointless game of 12 on 12 co-ed volleyball.

FURTHER EMPHASIZE:
-Writing. And change the focus from sapping students' creativity via idiotic "how to write the perfect 5 paragraph essay" templates, to communicating ideas clearly, concisely, and logically.

ADD:
-Basic probability and statistics (with heavy emphasis on correlation and regression)
-Logic
-Basic finance
-Basic handy skills (e.g. how to maintain a car)
-Interpersonal dynamics. The textbook would be a compilation of all of Heartiste's non-political posts.

Post: #19

I would agree that learning "just enough" of a foreign language isn't very useful and doesn't get retained. But a key benefit of learning another language (particularly one related to English, like German or French) is what it teaches you about your own language. I learned far more about grammar and etymology and structure/rhetoric in four years of German than from my "communication arts" (aka "English") classes. The latter classes were already completely useless sewers of proto-SJWism in the mid-1980s - when I started German in ninth grade I had never explicitly learned cases, tenses, etc. despite being in the gifted track for English, but by golly I knew all about things like nuclear disarmament, the protest poetry of the 1960s, assorted social ills, progressive futurism, and the civil rights movement. Plus, learning to think in a foreign language (essential to actual fluency) helps you think more clearly in your own language - on your feet and on the fly. It occurs to me now that if I surveyed my younger coworkers, the ones who have the most trouble expressing themselves and their ideas coherently and concisely in extemporaneous speech would probably be those with little or no foreign language experience. You get out of the habit of verbal diarrhea when you have to think through every word you say and the structure in which you use it.

The etymology part is more important than it might seem. Learning a related language, you find similarities with your own language: cognates, word formations, etc. If you know the foundations of words you can see their meanings more clearly and more deeply, recognize how concepts are interrelated, and grasp the heritage/pedigree of different ideas. Without this foundation, I imagine a man misses a lot of subtext and meaning and "deep structure" in everything he reads, hears, and watches - anyone who's read "The Foundation of Magic" (suggested in one of the book threads) will get what I'm saying here.

The catch is, as Delta suggests, that learning "just enough" isn't enough. To get the benefit you have to stick with it a while or else structure the classes to be far more intensive and immersive than they were when I was in school (which is in itself a desirable educational improvement). I think of foreign languages the same way as I described calculus in an earlier comment: whether or not it's immediately useful to your daily needs or job tasks is irrelevant, because the principal benefits are in the generalized thinking skills these subjects enhance or impart.

As for Phys Ed, just imagine if that hour was spent teaching kids MMA, marksmanship, weight training, or other solid physical skills instead of treating it like "directed playtime". It would be awesome.

Post: #20

^Even if that's true, learning a foreign language to improve your English communication is self-evidently inefficient, as you could just spend that time directly learning the ins and outs of English. That's why in my proposal, I suggest eliminating literature study (which as you mention usually amounts to SJW propagandizing) and replacing it with more emphasis on writing.

You allude to younger coworkers often being unable to express themselves coherently and concisely. I argue that's due to the way writing is taught in schools. Most English teachers are scatter-brained lunatics who reward flowery language, forcing in obscure words, and length. Kids are never taught to communicate their ideas in the most efficient, comprehensible way possible. Simply making a habit of the advice in the linked essay would go a longer way toward improving one's communication skills than learning fluent German.

Post: #21

I disagree. Intensive study of your mother tongue has no comparative aspect - you're only seeing it from the inside no matter how closely you look at it. That comparative aspect alone ought to make the learning more efficient, simply because it allows one to see around the habitual and familiar usage of the mother tongue to the structure underlying it. It's analogous to analogies: an analogy is not the thing it describes, and it may not even be anything like it at all except for the salient point of comparison. The purpose of an analogy is not identification (this is identical to that) but to use that salient point of comparison to step outside one's knowledge of something familiar, taken for granted, threatening, sacrosanct, etc. and see it in a different way or see different aspects of it. In this case it's stepping outside the familiar usage of language one has been immersed in since birth, to see how it can be used differently, to understand how the words form and combine, etc. and do so explicitly rather than intuitively based on native immersion.

I'll confess to being a bit of a sperg about this subject, but I can't help but see the benefits to my own thinking from learning other languages. And I'm not alone in this, given how central the teaching of Greek and Latin were to a proper education from ancient times until around 1960.

"You allude to younger coworkers often being unable to express themselves coherently and concisely. I argue that's due to the way writing is taught in schools. Most English teachers are scatter-brained lunatics who reward flowery language, forcing in obscure words, and length. Kids are never taught to communicate their ideas in the most efficient, comprehensible way possible."

I'll check out your linked essay. If it is good, I will inflict it on the inarticulate underlings with great glee and zero mercy.