Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!tmsoft!masnet!rose!david.lloyd-jones
From: david.lloyd-jones@rose.uucp (DAVID LLOYD-JONES)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Distribution: world
Subject:  Language Use
Message-ID: <4bb36214a43427f8f148@rose.uucp>
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 13:02:00 EST
Organization: Rose Media, ON, CANADA
Lines: 44

To: olshause@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (Ronald Olshausen)
>Orga: Indiana University, Bloomington
>
>one-dimensional, workaholic employees. In terms of America's
>industrial competitiveness, we are surely better off with a multitude
>of high-tech drones, rather than well-rounded, educated, and cultured
>individuals with interests outside their profession.

I once spent three months chatting-on-Mondays with the senior
management of Mitsubishi Motors, seven guys, roughly equivalent to
the Division Heads of General Motors.  Not the Board of Directors
but the people who actually ran things.   (This chatting thing was for
the sake of their English and for the sake of their exposure to the
world.  They hire a distinguished visitor (I qualified as a recent
member of the Professional Staff of the USCongress) pay the person very
well, and wring them out pretty thoroughly over three months.
then  on to the next professor, writer or whoever...)

I assure you these guys, high level metal benders, are also your
"well-rounded, educated and cultured individuals with interests outside their
profession."   And not just because of the program that had brought me
into their use.  Japanese workers at all levels have hobbies, studies
and interests outside work.  The "drone" of American mythology is an
American invention.

>
>But in the long run, such an education is not an education at all, but
>rather an indoctrination into High-Tech Corporate America. Perhaps I'm
>just an idealist, but I still believe Education means an introduction to
>the finer things in life, like literature, philosophy, and history...
>things even the most cerebral of students might get a 'C' in.


You may think this is idealism.  Empirically, on the results, I'd say it's
operational common sense.

                                                -dlj.



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