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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   26043 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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At the risk of repeating the same points I make every time Tiger Moms come up, I think the traditional elite Anglo work model (largely neglected in the US and UK since WW2) remains the gold standard for producing top-quality elites. A strong emphasis on polymathy, including physical excellence; deep language skills as the no-bullshit zone of the humanities; debate and public speaking as a proving ground.

This is the kind of education I benefited from, and to which I attribute most of my virtues (my vices, on the other hand, I take full personal credit for). Sadly, as a parent I've found it's almost impossible to buy these days; the kind of solid upper-tier English private schools I attended in my youth are now rarae aves, and at best offer slightly more personalised and 'nurturing' versions of what you'd find in any American or European state school. Probably you can still get the old recipe at the right boarding schools, but those come with their own headaches.

deep language skills as the no-bullshit zone of the humanities

Could you expand on what you mean by this?

You can just pull shit out of your ass about what dickens meant by whatever. But if you try that with, say, French, everyone will realize that you don’t speak French.

Mastery of Latin, Ancient Greek, and (to a lesser extent) contemporary languages is something that can't be faked or bullshitted in the same way as argumentative essays. Being able to translate Thucydides or Cicero requires significant time investment in learning large amounts of vocabulary and complex grammatical rules, as well as cross-textual and historical knowledge. Because elite-status in the humanities used to be gated behind being able to do these things, it served as a selection mechanism for the humanities that meant that 95%+ of people couldn't cut it, and the humanities had a way of choosing a genuine cognitive elite.

You can't fake foreign language mastery the same way you can, say, literary analysis

ChatGPT enters the room

Timed and invigilated exams rise up to counter ChatGPT.

Sure. That is of course a solution. But a much more costly one.

Mastering Latin and English?

how do you "master" English? Or any language? I think all of us speak, read, and write it pretty well, but there's always room for improvement.

Watch a few sessions of Prime Minister Questions and listen to how they use the language. That's mastery of the language in my ooinion!

The curricula at modern top public schools in the UK seems to offer students more choice, but at most it still seems possible to have a largely ‘traditional’ education - cricket and rugby, Latin and Greek, classical civilization, literature and math.

Where were you educated?

A medium-sized private school in the provinces of England. Sadly, these places have mostly gone woke, and dropped Ancient Greek for Spanish, Rugby for football, etc.

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