[Hold My Own]

(NLT)

[Fundy] Not cool [/Fundy]

What does this even mean!

[El Scorcho]

Just a question is this topic about intelligence in general or intelligence at Liberty and the promotion thereof?

It was more of a rambling and incoherent thought than it was a topic. However, I was generally speaking about attitudes towards intelligence and intellectual types at LU. At least that's what I was talking about at the outset. As the thread evolved it became more of a discussion about LU as a teaching university vs. LU's potential as a research university.

Scorchy pretty much said EVERY professor at LU thinks they are a lot smarter than they are

I said no such thing! I did say that for a bunch of smarty pants professors, they sure do have a lot of trouble using their computers.

[FlamingYalieWahoo]

Thanks for the clarification Scorch. BTW the funniest thing I've ever seen concerning intelligence was at the beginning of an article about the various types of intelligence. On the first page was a picture of Albert Einstein standing up in a row boat in the middle of a lake paddle in hand. The caption was something to the effect of "this was one of the smartest men in world?"

[Cider Jim]

Scorchy pretty much said EVERY professor at LU thinks they are a lot smarter than they are

Actually, HMO & Scorcho, an education is also supposed to reveal how much a person doesn't know. In other words, Ph.D.'s are experts in a very small area of knowledge, but many are as 'dumb as a hammer' on subjects outside of their areas of expertise.

And here's another verse for you:

"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up" (I Cor. 8:1).

[FlamingYalieWahoo]

I just read this little piece by Thomas Sowell over at NRO "Too Many Go to College "- what do you all think, especially in regards to LU?

Stanford, Yale, and Princeton are all in the process of considering whether to increase the number of students they admit.

Meanwhile, Professor Richard Vedder of Ohio University and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington, says that there are already too many people going to college. My own experience in academia leads me to agree with Professor Vedder.

Wanting to be in college is not the same as wanting an education. Among the other reasons for wanting to be in college is that it is a social scene with large concentrations of people of the same age and the opposite sex.

It is also a place where immaturity is not the handicap that it can be in other places, ranging from home to the workplace. In college immaturity is the norm, accepted not only by peers but even to a large extent by those in charge.

An academic campus can be a refuge from the realities of the world, not only for students but even for members of the faculty. Max Weber referred to some of his fellow academics as “big children in university chairs.”

There are, of course, many students and professors who are in the academic world for the very serious purpose of acquiring knowledge and deepening one’s understanding of the world and oneself.

Most of my own academic career was spent in places like Cornell and UCLA, where there were scholars with distinguished reputations in their respective fields and where the student body was significantly above the national average.

Even so, there were still quite a few students, especially at UCLA, whose interest in the life of the mind was, to put it charitably, limited.

More important, the negative effect of students who are not serious can be detrimental to the education of those who are. I found this to be true in each of the five colleges and universities where I taught, as well as in each of the three universities from which I received degrees.

The sizes of the classes and the campuses can also have an impact. Too many people do not think through the consequences of admitting a larger number of students, including some who may not be as well qualified as the others.

When I taught an honors class in introductory economics at Cornell — a seminar with 15 students, compared to a couple of hundred students in the regular class — my department chairman urged me to expand the honors class to 30 students, “so that more students can get the advantage of the small class.”

It never seemed to occur to him that expanding the class would destroy the advantages of the small seminar.

At both Douglass College and Howard University, where I taught the full year course in introductory economics, the second semester classes were a sheer delight because the less serious students dropped out after their experience with my grading standards in the first semester.

It was not just that the remaining students were better than the ones who left, they were better than they themselves had been in a class atmosphere that was different when influenced by less serious students.

At Amherst College, one of the classes that I taught as a visiting professor was made compulsory for graduating seniors, against my wishes, and just a couple of students with bad attitudes managed to dampen some of the other students, who were outstanding in themselves.

A graduate seminar that I taught at UCLA was a great experience the first year I taught it, largely because of one outstanding student who raised the level of discussion for the others. But, when I taught it the next year without that student, the results were so meager that I never taught that seminar again.

At the end of one class session I told the members of the seminar: “I have a decision to make and you gentlemen have helped me to make it.”

With that, I went on leave for two years to run a research project in Washington.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

[Fumblerooskies]

Let's see...increase class size from 30 to 120...eliminating THREE SECTIONS...THEN pay the professor for ONE extra contact hour. Professor now must teach additional classes to reach his/her load...cutting down the need to hire new faculty...

...CHING CHING (sound of cash register).

Someone once said...follow the money trail...and you will ALWAYS find your answer.

[FlamingYalieWahoo]

Here's another interesting tidbit concerning the size of universities. If you look at US census data for a lot of geographic areas the number of people with Bachelor's degrees is surprisingly low. The data for Campbell County for people 25 and older holding a Bachelors or more in the year 2000 was 14.6% (out of approx. 52000) and for the state of VA as a whole - 29.5 of 7.6 million. A number of areas have more than their fair share - Arlington County its 60% of the population.

[mechildress]

I can name a few of those professors. I won't mention any here, but many of them are in the same department (English).

[Cider Jim]

That's hitting way too close to home, MEC.

[FlameDad]

Scorchy pretty much said EVERY professor at LU thinks they are a lot smarter than they are

Actually, HMO & Scorcho, an education is also supposed to reveal how much a person doesn't know. In other words, Ph.D.'s are experts in a very small area of knowledge, but many are as 'dumb as a hammer' on subjects outside of their areas of expertise.

And here's another verse for you:

"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up" (I Cor. 8:1).

nail on head

[El Scorcho]

Scorchy pretty much said EVERY professor at LU thinks they are a lot smarter than they are

Actually, HMO & Scorcho, an education is also supposed to reveal how much a person doesn't know. In other words, Ph.D.'s are experts in a very small area of knowledge, but many are as 'dumb as a hammer' on subjects outside of their areas of expertise.

And here's another verse for you:

"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up" (I Cor. 8:1).

nail on head

Maybe everyone missed the part where I said that I didn't say that. Come on, people. HMO was being facetious.

[Hold My Own]

Actually, HMO & Scorcho, an education is also supposed to reveal how much a person doesn't know. In other words, Ph.D.'s are experts in a very small area of knowledge, but many are as 'dumb as a hammer' on subjects outside of their areas of expertise.

And here's another verse for you:

"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up" (I Cor. 8:1).

nail on head

Maybe everyone missed the part where I said that I didn't say that. Come on, people. HMO was being facetious.

Are we still talking about how Scorcy said he was 1000% smarter than EVERY prof on campus????


I thought this thread would die already...guess Scorcy keeps getting smarter and the profs keep getting dumber



PS....yes I was being facetious...I love message boards!

[rogers3]

FYW- Thanks for pointing out those accomplishments of some LU faculty. I went back to college after a 12 year hiatus and I really looked at things differently. My father-in-law is a long time prof at LU (philosophy) and along with him, I found a good number of faculty that I respected... and I wish that they were given more time to put effort into work outside the campus walls. Something else that you mentioned is the value of the small group setting; the upper level classes that afforded that setting were, by far, the best learning environments (along with peer led class settings.) While Dr. Falwell did tend to put more emphasis on the end and less on the means, I believe that Jerry Jr. will begin to slowly lead the school along a slightly different path.

[thepostman]

If anybody questions the intelligence here at LU all you have to do is go over to this thread (http://flamefans.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7034) ....then you will see the truth