A review of “Voltaire and Rousseau” (audiobook)

Voltaire and Rousseau disagreed with each other on many issues. Nonetheless, they do have at least one thing in common, which is that they were both prominent figures of the French Enlightenment (and of the Enlightenment more generally). Thus, they are covered together in this audiobook despite their disagreements. It is a single unified audiobook covering both philosophers, rather than two separate audiobooks being sold together. Since Voltaire was born more than 17 years before Rousseau, they focus first on Voltaire’s life, and then focus on Rousseau’s life, making little effort to connect their lives.

Some thoughts about general education

“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”

– Thomas Sowell, economist

An anecdote about education vs. experience, from the 1958 movie “Teacher’s Pet” …

In 1958, a romantic comedy called “Teacher’s Pet” presented its audience with some surprisingly deep coverage of the topic of education. In the movie, Clark Gable plays an old-school newspaper reporter with a contempt for formal education, who unexpectedly falls for a journalism professor played by Doris Day. He starts out with contempt for eggheads like her, but grows to have deep respect for them, while they gain an equally deep respect for his practical experience. One of them is a mutual friend (and Clark Gable’s competitor for Doris Day), a psychology professor played by Gig Young. Clark Gable comes to find that his experience commands more “serious” respect among these professors than he thought, and realizes that he is smarter than he believed. At the same time, though, he realizes how much he has missed out on by not getting a formal education, and grows to respect the journalism lessons taught by Doris Day in her classroom.

… with a character in the movie who has to excuse himself from educated conversations

Clark Gable is unfamiliar with certain topics taught by general education, and has to excuse himself from conversations about them when they go over his head, going to the men’s room as a convenient pretext to leave them. At one point in the movie, he thus laments that he has “spent one-third of my life going to, staying in, and coming back from men’s rooms.” It’s a funny line, but it probably describes the experience of many who haven’t gained a formal education, even if their informal education has nonetheless been quite good. If we want to spare our students this unpleasant embarrassment, we should take pains to require some general education of them, at least when they enroll in college (and preferably sooner). That way, they won’t sound like idiots, when people judge their intelligence by whether or not they know certain things. We cannot possibly teach them everything (which would be an unreasonable goal anyway), but we can teach them some things.

A scene from “Teacher’s Pet” (1958)

I can’t decide what to major in …

If you’ve arrived at this page, chances are that you’re either in college, or will be in college soon. Presumably, you know that you want to get a degree, but you haven’t decided yet what to major in. What should you choose?