Walking in the Streets of Athens, Greece; On University.

I'm gonna try to record a video for you
while walking you the streets of Athens here got Melissa standing next me off-camera of course so I'm gonna talk about the importance of university education for non-specialists I think there's this really kind of dangerous false assumption which is of course convenient for professors and convenient for administrators University that University education in a given field only exists for research scientists and research specialists in that field like for example if you have a University Department of Anthropology that they it only exists to educate be one a student out of a hundred who will go on to a PhD in that field like really really realistically if you look at any anthropology 101 class a bunch of teenagers Melissa you were you were 17 when you started University so bunch of 17 year olds in a classroom studying anthropology and nobody's really designed in the course of education they're thinking what are we teaching a bunch of 17 year olds it's going to be meaningful to them for the rest of their lives meaningful or useful or both people design the whole course of philosophy education the undergraduate level for the one student in a thousand who will go on to get a PhD if you have specialized expertise whether that's becoming fluent in Latin or Greek or German and doing original research in that field is very fundamental it doesn't make sense so look guys we just watched this video from tofu goddess Liana but she's reflecting on the failure of her education in a cosmetology she is reflecting on the fact that she is now a beauty school dropout and there are some things we can relate to there because we are collectively baking school dropouts who went to a private college to learn how to bake bread and it was a disaster we have wrong videos on that and she even comes to the conclusion after going to beauty school and dropping out that really it's the life of the mind that manager it's a more intellectual path more intellectual than learning how to do hair and makeup that she wants the secret I'm into so I gotta say that the first conversation the first conversation I have with tofu goddess actually made a really really positive impression on me I think it was like a three hour conversation or something if not it was long long Skype call I had with her this is what four years ago or some crap okay I couldn't have been that long ago three years ago and you know she really seemed like someone who had very sincere motivations to be involved with vegan activism she seemed like someone who had a very pragmatic constructed attitude towards vegan activism someone who didn't want to waste her time didn't want to be a martyr and Street protests didn't want to do counterproductive and stupid things and you know just you know she just seemed like a smart highly motivated focused person and I think we've all had to come to the conclusion over the last three years that that is just not the case and she had to decide that she was not cut out for the particular university education she was enrolled in she had to decide to switch her major to philosophy and I think it's fair to say just based on once you sit in public YouTube videos that she had to decide that university education was really not for her in general she decided that you know the whole the whole system didn't work for her she said the university ruined her life so and so forth now when you think about getting a BA in philosophy what do you think about what is that course of Education exist for you can tell I'm moving the phone around cuz the the sidewalks are so anyway is what this the historical charm of downtown Athens Greece that's what I'm sharing with you here in the background in the British Empire right up to World War one there was a very different understanding of what university education in philosophy existed for why anyone would take this course philosophy didn't exist to train that one student in a thousand go on to be a researcher specialist to the PhD you could say that right up to World War one the British concept of being a bachelor even thing with the word Bachelor in philosophy was probably of being a born wealthy gentleman either going to inherit land thus be a landed aristocrat thus be involved in animal husbandry farming would have you I mean let's be clear here the life of an aristocrat historically did not just mean wasting money and going around on a yacht on permanent vacation being an aristocrat meant that you were involved with food production and war you know military service and it's for that reason of course that the aristocratic culture of England in many ways comes to an end with what were one not before and not after but you know education of philosophy boredom preparing these young men to live a more meaningful life yet so light would have been preparing these young men to lead a more meaningful life during their years of running the family business so I mean the point being whether they inherit land or with maybe they were from a wealthy bourgeois family where they'd be inheriting the parents company these would be young men who already knew at age 17 what their future career would be how they would how they would earn a living but what they didn't know and what they would be in university to learn was how to live a meaningful life and of course in that British Empire period there was a consensus among the instructors as to what a meaningful life was what that meant in practice that it meant being familiar with Cicero now today I don't think there is any such consensus I don't think anyone would feel confident telling a 17-year old look kid if you want to know what life is about for lead a meaningful life you've got to hit the books and read Cicero you've got to get a foundation in the Latin and Greek classics you've got to read for example the history of the church fathers and how Aristotle relates to the development of Catholic and Protestant theology something used to be clear the philosophy I actually like that I appreciate in ancient Greece was taught with very different motivations very different preoccupations in a Christian cultural context even though you're often dealing with exactly the same text so the question I'm asking for you here is isn't university education failing us all by no longer for even taking any interest in this goal and I can't call it a democratic or public spirited goal I think it was before an elitist and aristocratic goal of preparing young gentlemen to lead up meaningful life and you know all these ridiculous subjects in the humanities again we can even think about what is the meaning of the humanities but you know there was a time when whether it will be art history or philosophy classics or indeed the study of politics which was also called the study of great it's another interesting little history within academia the teaching of the greats it's a British tradition meaning that you read the greatest thinkers the most influential minds and so on when there was an understanding that this wasn't preparing you for the same job that the professor was doing in class not everyone was going to study Latin in order to be a Latin tutor that's ridiculous not everyone was going to study philosophy to be a philosophy professor or a PhD philosophy researcher that's ridiculous that there was some purpose for university education linked to a meaningful life to being a refined person whether or not that was spending your whole life on a farm because again an aristocratic manor is it's a farm with a big house on it those would be people who you know owned orchards and raised pigeons and pheasants and all this kind of stuff it would be a life where you get your hands dirty whether or not it has two aristocratic involved that was a matter of preparing students not to be better soldiers in the army not giving the military training but preparing them to lead a meaningful life where they would be confident ultimately in laying down their lives to the Empire alright guys and so to end this video there in the background I think I've got it I think I've got it on camera am i way off wow that's a hard shot to get I just barely have visible behind me nasha use IAM and above it the yeah there it is there it is the corner of our sacred fortress of the mountain the Acropolis I mean really people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know