tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post1088522317086695356..comments2024-03-26T06:17:49.527-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: Who Killed the Humanities?Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-81977588926877414572010-06-09T04:21:51.802-07:002010-06-09T04:21:51.802-07:00Thanks, Gray, for pointing out the misspelling... ...Thanks, Gray, for pointing out the misspelling... now corrected.Stuart Schneidermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-39555169465946245202010-06-08T22:17:47.207-07:002010-06-08T22:17:47.207-07:00As a gentle correction: Austen, Stuart; Jane Aust...As a gentle correction: Aust<i>e</i>n, Stuart; Jane Aust<i>e</i>n.<br /><br />This, again, is a fascinating subject to me. I actually had a very good Humanities course in high school with factual history presented as backdrop to the literature of the era. Classical. Canonical and thorough. With Honors English classes and calculus, I was well prepared for college.<br /><br />I was awarded, after much hard work, a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. (Um, and a commission as an Officer in the US Army.)<br /><br />I had the great good fortune of having friends who had excellent classical educations from excellent institutions.<br /><br />I found myself uneducated.<br /><br />I had an outstanding vocational degree in science and engineering, and great worldly experience, but I was not educated. I was lacking; the dullard in our discussions. I didn't even have the Postmodern cant to impeach thier classical ideas.<br /><br />I set about to educate myself. I read Shakespeare, Hardy, Austen, Plutarch, Tacitus, The Bible, Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Johnson, Blake, Milton, Eliot, TE Lawrence, Rumi, Confucius, The Bagavad Gita, Kerouac, London, Orwell, Lacan, Hegel, Dickens, Flaubert, Conrad... All of it; all of it that I can....<br /><br />I did my best, and I am still at it.<br /><br />I wish I had the luxury of a classical education with the earning power, and fascinating life, and ideas, of science and engineering.<br /><br />I am working, and fullfilled, as a defense engineer and musician, but I lean on the classics to understand my place in the world.<br /><br />Finally, I can "hold my own" in discussions with my eminent friends, but it was an uphill climb, and it is not over.<br /><br />The Academy left me lacking: I had to do it myself. I dream about someday, in my dotage, going back for a big, luxurious degree in sociology, or military history, or music theory, or English Lit. And travel--Scotland s'more and more of Asia....<br /><br />But, alas, I must fill my belly, and the bellies of my wife and kids. Someday....<br /><br />--Gray<br /><br />wv: humboal. What you burn when there is no more coal; very Dickensian.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com