Comments on Use Well The Days

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I do adore educating Elros and Elrond stories! Thanks you for your kindness in leaving me one!

A most eloquently delivered defense of a STEM curriculum for someone (me) who often needs to be reminded that the world cannot survive on arts and letters alone! I feel like I needed the lecture almost as much as Elrond. And what better environment in which to get your point across than the one we are in right now when the world seems ruled by willful ignorance and anti-scientific obscurantism. The flip side, of course, is that if people like Trump had studied some humanities and thought about it they might be less selfish pigs also. Or, maybe not, Boris Johnson was a classics graduate and he initially believed he could afford to take a chance on herd immunity. 

Very nice title choice which neatly foreshadows the conclusion.

Thank you again. Well done!

 

 



You're welcome! I'm so glad you like it!

I think your comments on Alex's experiences with online learning sparked at least part of it - I certainly wasn't expecting to write little Elrond not liking his schoolwork when I sat down to write. (And maybe some of my own frustration with folks who figure STEM 'isn't useful in daily life' crept out as well...)

(And maybe some of my own frustration with folks who figure STEM 'isn't useful in daily life' crept out as well...)

From my perspective it feels the other way around--since I was in school technology, science and math have been upgrade within the curriculum of most public school and art, theater, music, and things like Classics clubs or language clubs sll but eliminated. But that could be a narrow observation based upon my own prejudices and innate tastes and talents. 



When I was in classrooms for math and science, I had kids tell me in various classes with varying degrees of confidence that they'd 'never use this stuff for real'. (The most epic was the one who said it in a basic level high school math class - he felt he wouldn't even need to math to check his paycheck, which had his peers reaching to the floor to pick up their jaws...)

I never thought that way! I lived closer to the real world than kids do now (cooked from scratch in grade school, plotted several mile bike trips at middle-school age, built bird houses and doll houses, etc.). Kids Google-it these days.

But I do notice trying to get a modest humanities grant is a joke in most public school systems as compared to the money that corporations pour into STEM programs. Earnings tell the story--top earners in the liberal arts end up matching only the bottom earners in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Maybe that is all I was ever worth, but I was not raised to believe that. I grew thinking society needed a balance.

Or worse still--did you ever open a textbook for an MBA course? I have tutored people in those over the years--helping them complete semi-literate Masters-level essays. Those courses are a ridiculous combination of blather, jargon, and shady salesmanship. And yet those people are well paid when they finish school.

This is a great look at the practicalities of Elrond's and Elros' education - particularly the glimpse at Elros as a leader... and Maedhros as a teacher. Above all, in spite of all the painful and downright terrifying things in the background - the long absence of Eärendil, why Elrond and Elros are in Maedhros' and Maglor's care in the first place, the certain knowledge that Morgoth will attack, the knowledge of death - this offers a sense of stability and everyday life that I thoroughly enjoyed.