Originally posted by Bon
That's going to get you places in the real world ? You're going to sit down and think about all the techniques you know when you write somthing, evaluate the effectiveness of each one on how it creates meaning, then purposely use techniques to put across a message ? You've got to be joking.
Just for good measure, what's all this talk about the real world? We all seem to talk about maths and english and their irrelevance to the REAL world - but what sort of real world is there out there? Is the world not full of people like us, who similarly have the ability to think, and perceive, and analyse, and create?
Why, then, assume that what we are studying is not relevant to the real world?
This 'real world' which most of you seem to attribute no thought to, to me is filled with people who want to understand it. THAT's why we have the English literature, the Dante, the Shakespeare, the Livy, the Catilinarian Speeches. That's why we have Newton's law of gravity and Planck's constant and Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. Both literature and maths as disciplines describe how people in the past have sought to understand humanity and the cosmos.
Sure, maths may not be everyone's thing. English may not be everyone's thing. But there is something in this world for each of us which is our thing - our way of seeing the world. Acknowledging what other people enjoy, instead of condemning it without reason may be the best way.
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"Don't worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein