Daily Kos

View Story | 56 comments

  •  If you filter out generalized business degrees (4.00 / 2)

    I wonder how the BA vote splits out...

    Drop by Mackerel Street: Lit & Photo Blog

    by decembersue on Mon May 16, 2005 at 08:08:47 PM PDT

    •  "Generalized" (none / 1)

      that's a polite way of saying what Paul Fussell put more bluntly in his classic "Bad, or the Dumbing of America," in 1991:

      A new subject of study was devised, and it was called "business."

      snip

      The goal was to widen access to "educational opportunity," and in pursuit of this end, verbal inflation was called on to promote to university status numerous normal schools and teachers colleges, business academies, secretarial institutes, provincial theological seminaries and trade schools.

      Thes are the places that now award "college degrees" to the majority of young Americans, but the degrees measure not the development of intellect, but the rude command of techniques likely to fit the recipients uncritically into ready-made niches of American middle-class society.

      snip

      And even if you've "majored" in business, chances are you'll be too illiterate to be very good even at that.

      Fussell is not just any old elitist misanthrope -- he's a combat infantry veteran, author of the widely acclaimed war/literary study "The Great War and Modern Memory," and a longtime English professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

      He's such a keen bullshit detector, I wonder where he's been for the last four years.

      The Republicans want to cut YOUR Social Security benefits.

      by devtob on Mon May 16, 2005 at 08:52:52 PM PDT

      [ Parent ]

View Story | 56 comments