RoR: Forum

Post 0

Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 12:29am

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I didn't stumble across this book until I was 27. I'm mad as hell and disgusted beyond belief that, considering all the accelerated classes that I was in growing up, NONE of her works were part of our mandatory reading.

Instead, SHIT like Paradise Lost and William Faulkner's tedious crap was what we had to read...

I sometimes wonder if there wasn't some concerted effort to immobilize the minds of the best and the brightest in our society by the liberal (and conservative) establishment to keep us all more docile. I can't help how many of my highly intelligent cohorts growing up have become mentally and emotionally disordered through ivy league universities, from all the postmodern, despairingly nihilistic horse-shit being drilled into their heads.

Just had to get that off my chest.

And oh yeah, ever since, I give away copies of Ayn Rand to all those people I care the most about, as well as Steve Chandler's Reinventing Yourself.

O.

Post 1

Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 12:29am

Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 5:41am

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Hey, Paradise Lost is a great poem as poetry. As you may guess by my verses/article "Errors of Modern Science," I am enamored of iambic pentameter, even in the form of blank verse.

There is something about good art that can even transcend the content. Orion is right, the subject of Milton's poem is without merit. But one can derive some pleasure from its purely esthetic values.

I should add that the work is uneven, and has long boring stretches. I don't think I would want to struggle through Paradise Lost again. But every now and then I like to read "Lycidas."

(Edited by Rodney Rawlings on 5/13, 2:40pm)

Post 3

Friday, May 14, 2004 - 8:09am

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Hi Orion,

I'm sympathetic to your plight. I too am in the same boat. The faculties are usually too busy railroading gullible, unsophisticated students to actually help us prepare for the real world. My education dollar would have been better spent going at a trade school while pursuing my own intellectual development.

Like the great scientist Ben Franklin said (paraphrased), we must take responsibility for our own education.

I find the value of the general education programs offered by today's university to be dubious at best. I think they should more appropriately be considered indoctrination programs.

However, there's no denying that a specialized field of study is useful. For my own children, I think I will have them fulfill their general ed. requirements at a community college where the indoctrination is muted, and then let them pursue their specialized studies at a regular college or university.

Upon further reflection, the Fundamentalist Christians evangelizing on campus were equally absurd. It was like there was this mad competition to see who could railroad the students first: the christians or the liberals.

Eddie