Thanks for linking to speech by my favourite autho...

2008-09-14T17:55:00.000+08:00

Thanks for linking to speech by my favourite author, J K Rowling. It is great!
--- a Harry Potter fan

Well said. I agree with most of your points. The o...

2008-09-09T19:26:00.000+08:00

Well said. I agree with most of your points. The only part where my view diverges somewhat from yours is on morals and character building. I would hope that a balanced exposure to various areas of the humanities, augmented by parental guidance would teach the young to discern between right and wrong.

One-eye giants, a wooden horse with soldiers hidde...

2008-09-09T11:57:00.000+08:00

One-eye giants, a wooden horse with soldiers hidden in its belly, a cruise into hell, an entire civilization fighting over a beautiful woman -- Homer's Trojan War and the wandering of Odysseus, as well as other Classics of the West are flights of the imagination.

Nothing in the modern world ever comes close, not even Tolkien's Lord of the Ring or Rowling's own Harry Potter series, all of which to me are cardboard figments.

There has always been a debate among parents, education pundits, and policy-makers, whether the study of the humanities (the Classics, philosophy, literature and history) is practical (to help you patch a roof leak or a Windows glitch) or productive (to help you find a high-paying job).

Frankly, liberal studies are not immediately useful to help you survive. Rowling herself, with her Classics education, spent years as a poverty-stricken mother, before her books make her a billionaire. As my father used to say, without cash, everything is hypothetical.

What such education does is to provide an intellectual foundation for impressionable young men and women as they move to the harsh working world. Note that the foundation is strictly intellectual, to help you in your thinking and understanding of human life and human affairs. It has nothing to do with building character or improving morals (the gods and heroes in the Classical works are often depicted as rapists and murderers).

An intellectual foundation -- the ability to think things through, to weigh arguments and to create new concepts and ideas -- is valuable in the long run. As I have said in my own blog, it must be supplemented with an additional practical skill. In other words, after a BA, you go on to get a graduate diploma or even an MBA in business studies or a technical subject.

A good example in the ancient world is St Paul, prolific writer of most of the New Testament Epistles (today we call it spamming). In between preaching and laying the doctrinal foundation of the new Christian faith, he earned money as a tent-maker. Spinoza, the greatest thinker of his days, was a lens grinder. It is only in modern times that we see indolent intellectuals who could only utter learned mumbo-jumbo in newspaper columns and passed themselves off as pundits.

By all means, get a good classical education (which also includes Confucian studies), but don't stop there. Grease your academic qualification with a specific technical skill (I recommend either Java programming or car servicing).

Life is short but the classical gods can make yours luminous:

We are creatures of a day. What is someone? What is he not?
A human being is a shadow in a dream.
But when a god grants a brightness
Then humans have a radiant splendour and their life is sweet.

[Pindar, Greek choral poet, 518-438BC]

Comments on Asian Observer: On Education, Wizards, Failure & Imagination

Thanks for linking to speech by my favourite autho...

Well said. I agree with most of your points. The o...

One-eye giants, a wooden horse with soldiers hidde...