Thesis: the average 18 year old student in, say, York in AD 800 (the middle of the so-called "Dark Ages") had read more, knew more languages, was better trained in logic, could read more music, knew more mathematics and astronomy than the average student from a university today.
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Replying to @WT05320523
Well, based on good data. I know the curriculum of AD 800, and it was FAR broader, and more rigorous, than today.
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Replying to @johnpauldickson
Wow! Care to share? A simple camparison of the same degree now vs 30 years ago confirms the trend. Albeit its not true for all study areas. But wow have we become shallower thinkers over a 1000 years or do we have less time to study properly?
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Replying to @WT05320523
We have become much shallower. Every student in 800 had to do grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy BEFORE they even started the scholarly subjects of history, natural science, or theology.
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Replying to @johnpauldickson @WT05320523
And it didn't do them much good because most of what they thought about those subjects was wrong
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I know it's a waste of time to dunk on people whose real interest here is cosplaying this fantasy of intellectual elitism but the idea that it's objectively necessary to understand astronomy before studying physics is absurd, like laugh-out-loud nonsense
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And they didn't know ANYTHING about actual astronomy They had no understanding of what stars and planets actually physically were What you mean by astronomy, the capacity to chart the motions of heavenly bodies, is much closer to what we call astrology
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And the important thing here is that astrology is false And therefore the ability to generate a simulacrum of what the night sky looked like on a certain day in history, while aesthetically entertaining, is mostly useless and irrelevant
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This aesthetic cosplay bullshit is of no value, it's stuck around for so long because so much of education is just about cultural gatekeeping
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Arguably that is its primary function
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Replying to @Cybren @arthur_affect and
Which school do you get your toddler into?!! Oh you better go to college otherwise you’ll be flipping burgers!!!
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