Universities do not exist ‘to produce students who are useful’, President Michael D Higgins says
A system of good education
Is a must for a strong healthy nation
It’s not there just to feed
Some industry’s greed
That would not be Mick D’s aspiration
John Moynes
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He’s not wrong
I’m glad someone has finally said it!
Hear hear!
Ha
went to say just that Lil
Hear Hear eile
and here
have a +V too
He’s a nice man, but I have to disagree with him on this one:
It costs €8k per student (on average) per third level student per year; while education should be available and accessible to all, to don’t think that the state should be spending thirty-odd grand educating students in disciplines where there aren’t any jobs.
I don’t know why, but this seemed appropriate:
My eyelids red and heavy are
With bending o’er the smold’ring peat.
I know the Aeneid now by heart,
My Virgil read in cold and heat,
In loneliness and hunger smart.
And I know Homer, too, I ween,
As Munster poets know Ossian.
And I must walk this road that winds
Twixt bog and bog, while east there lies
A city with its men and books;
With treasures open to the wise,
Heart-words from equals, comrade-looks;
Down here they have but tale and song,
They talk Repeal the whole night long.
‘You teach Greek verbs and Latin nouns,’
The dreamer of Young Ireland said,
‘You do not hear the muffled call,
The sword being forged, the far-off tread
Of hosts to meet as Gael and Gall
What good to us your wisdom-store,
Your Latin verse, your Grecian lore?’
And what to me is Gael or Gall?
Less than the Latin or the Greek
I teach these by the dim rush-light
In smoky cabins night and week.
But what avail my teaching slight?
Years hence, in rustic speech, a phrase,
As in wild earth a Grecian vase!
Padraic Colum
“After a full belly all is poetry.”
– Frank McCourt
The unsuitability of modern college campuses for lively debate of discursive options has more to do with the toxic nature of contemporary politics in the context of those modern college campuses than it has to do with enabling students to one day perhaps get a job.