/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17649119]

What's the most /lit/ education you can get in the present day?

[Anonymous No.17649131]

>>17649119
The most /lit/ thing you can do in the present day is to get married in your teens and learn a trade.

[Anonymous No.17649137]

>>17649119
Some nice private/boarding schools as a kid. Or, if you're poor, being homeschooled and just reading a lot.

>>17649131
>tradies actually believe this

[Anonymous No.17649144]

>>17649119
Is anyone here familiar with the Accademia Vivarium Novum? It's a Latin/Ancient Greek immersion school with a Platonic ethos.

[Anonymous No.17649145]

>>17649119
In America, I can tell you the quality of humanities education at very small, somewhat irrelevant schools is better than anywhere else here if you’re willing to engage actively. But even then, it’s mostly not good. I think getting a quality humanities education today is a tall order.

[Anonymous No.17649153]

>>17649119
Born of disgustingly rich and excentric parents who will hire you tutors and get you to do private tours in museums because they're in the board. Just go to oxbridge or an ivy league uni after. It won't really matter.

[Anonymous No.17649161]

Be a lower class prole and read the western canon also write some philosophical musings about day to day life

[Anonymous No.17649169]

>>17649144
>Larp

[Anonymous No.17649190]

The most '/lit/' education is skimming Wikipedia pages of authors and at most completing 'charts' and then reading nothing more.

[Anonymous No.17649205]

>>17649190
This anon gets it. Don't forget the part where you frantically pore over hundreds of threads to write "based".

[Anonymous No.17649254]

>>17649145
As an English major I entirely agree. Our humanities education across the board only seems to be getting worse.

The increasing number of people lacking purpose or meaning in their lives seems to be pretty solid evidence of that. Oddly enough it feels like an appropriate time to begin reexamining mythological and theological fields and exploring them more deeply and bringing their ideas further into the mainstream. Having common parables to reference societally seems to be a decent solution to the relatively modern problem of being so narratively divided.

For example, I feel we ought to even be reading the Aesop fables together because they crystalize abstract ideals; so two people who may disagree on a given subject might both be able to reference different tales that support one point or the other.

[Anonymous No.17649255]

Isnt there that one school where the whole 4 years is spent reading classics?

[Anonymous No.17649301]

>>17649254
Calm down, Wagner

[Anonymous No.17649303]

>>17649254
It will never happen. See, people fundamentally misunderstand what it is that these really civic institutions do. For one, if you’re American the first and foremost purpose of Universities is to seek funding for salaries and administrators as well as commercial allies largely via student loan farming. It’s secondary objective is indoctrination, in the most literal sense possible. When you study something like Theology at Harvard, you’re not learning objective knowledge about theology or even learning how to be a theologian per degree. What you’re actually learning is how to approach the field of theology from the Harvard lens, which is just an appendage of the desired civic lens at large. It’s the same for all fields. You’re not learning a particular or even being educated into a vocation or responsibility like you would’ve been in the medieval universities. You’re being trained into a paradigm and that’s really all you’re doing. So what we think will fix or that, is really pretty irrelevant because the paradigm remains no matter what.

[Anonymous No.17649336]

>>17649303
Shouldn't someone who has this many hot takes on the educational system know how to use paragraphs? Or is that also part of the evil paradigm?

[Anonymous No.17649403]

>>17649336
Paragraphs are called Reddit spacing on /lit/ newfriend. Get with the program.

[Anonymous No.17649411]

>>17649336
Also, if you think that needs to be broken up into multiple paragraphs, I don’t really know what to say.

[Anonymous No.17649426]

All Soul's College, University of Oxford

It has no undergraduate members, Each year recent graduate and postgraduate students at Oxford University are eligible to apply for "prize fellowships" of seven years each.

They must complete an exam which is widely considered the hardest in the world.

Two 'specialist papers': The options are classics, English literature, economics, history, law, philosophy, and politics.

Two 'general papers': Each is free-form "Essay" on a single, pre-selected word.

Each year several dozen candidates typically sit the examination. Two examination fellows are usually elected each year. About a dozen examination fellows are at the college at any one time.

Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e. full members of the college's governing body).

Of all Oxford Colleges, All Souls has the most assets per student, at £52,896,000.

[Anonymous No.17649440]

>>17649426
So literally the crème de la crème de la crème de la crème de la crème de la crème.

[Anonymous No.17649443]

>>17649411
I don't even necessarily disagree with you, it's just that your posts are infuriating to read because you write like shit, anon. I'm sorry.

[Anonymous No.17649454]

>>17649336
Go away Steven Molyneux. Nobody likes your "40 pages of carriage returns" blogposts.

[Anonymous No.17649463]

>>17649119
Reading by yourself and publishing research papers/ books in your given subject. If you really want to go to a humanities college, go to a eastern european one/middle eastern, even north african ones can do.

[Anonymous No.17649475]

>>17649443
Yeah? Well, I’m phoneposting so.

[Anonymous No.17649476]

>>17649169
By what metric is that LARP?

[Anonymous No.17649950]

>>17649119
Go to a German University and get free tuition there. They're all more or less the same unless you REALLY want to get into academic life (God knows what compels you to do so).
>>17649426
See this OP? You don't want to end up like this "man", a typical emasculated Oxbridge trust fund baby sophist without anything to show past it.

[Anonymous No.17650004]

>>17649463
>If you really want to go to a humanities college, go to a eastern european one/middle eastern, even north african ones can do.
I know the West is a joke but damn.

[Anonymous No.17650021]

The best metric of finding a /lit/ university is determining the ratio of men to women.

[Anonymous No.17650030]

>>17649119
following /lit/ charts

[Anonymous No.17650038]

>>17649426
This doesn’t seem very /lit/ though. It just comes off as an intellectual pissing contest. It’s simply another way to one-up their colleagues in whatever irrelevant field they are apart of.

[Anonymous No.17650044]

>>17649119
Any other choice besides autodidacticism is begging to be an oversocialized manchild that can't function without his adult day care center.

[Anonymous No.17650049]

>>17649119
/lit/, /pol/, and /r9k/

[Anonymous No.17650083]

>>17649426

[Anonymous No.17650209]

there isn't a /lit/ education, do you know why?
because /lit/ is a lifestyle, you don't stop consuming information and literature after college.
you can be a construction worker or a beggar and as long as you read high quality shit regularly you're living the /lit/ life

[Anonymous No.17650224]

>>17650209
this. never conflate academia with /lit/erary.

[Anonymous No.17650253]

>>17649119
St. Johns Uni maryland

[Anonymous No.17650271]

You will NEVER EVER dine at Balliol College, Oxford before quietly sneaking off with your privately educated (£36,000 per year plus expenses and netball tour fees) English rose girlfriend. Every night for 8 weeks per term, 3 terms an academic year, for 3 to 4 years of your intensive, 3 essay a week, tutorial (maximum of 3 people, including you and a world leading expert who probably wrote the textbook ("Ignore that part Anon, just padding for the slower students at inferior universities! Now lets enjoy the weather and spend the hour outside, discussing my conception of Neoplatonism through the lens of Rawls."), 3 of them a week) filled life changing, world class experience.

No need for job interviews. The finest employers in the Western hemisphere come from London to advertise. Though that doesn't adequately convey the personalised nature of it. No presentations to halls filled with 300+ people followed by awkward business card shuffling. Personalised dinners with your college's alumni. Dinner with Amal Clooney, where she discusses her international human rights work in the Hague on Monday, prosecuting the last of the Eastern European holdouts, and then her work in the backwaters of Mugazumbabwete where she represented a blind, deaf, and disabled, 88 year old in a meeting with a tribal chief. Extremely rewarding, I trust you guys not to publicise it.

Brunch with Tony Blair and other members of the Lacrosse team, including your rival for your English rose, Uppingham-Mannheim III, who you have come to a frosty respect. Tony was dreadfully gauche but he did raise some chuckles when he talked about the calibre of the current Labour leadership. To this we day we still discuss whether Birckbeck and Brunel on a resume are more embarrassing than 2 failed A levels. Aah.. The high-minded discussions of the men of Oxford...

[Anonymous No.17650274]

>>17650271
t. type of person Ted is talking about in pic related

[Anonymous No.17650275]

>>17649426
>"all souls"
>only a few souls make it

[Anonymous No.17650283]

I've been reading all these recent Oxbridge topics, along with that Oxford copypasta, with some bemusement. I went to Oxford and did a PPE degree. I have also read a lot of bitter posts about poshness but I did see a grain of truth: that the public school upbringing shielded you from feeling offence. It's true. It's always jarring when I come across a /lit/ type in real life, one of those fiercely attempting to climb the class ladder through erudition and intellect alone. It is embarrassing on both sides.

On the one hand, this person, so used to being the towering intellect in their Durham-LSE-UCL (oh spare me about English Literature rankings!)-Warwick social circle (Bristol, Edinburgh, and St. Andrews seem to produce only jolly clowns, not these types), is visibly mortified while realising how much the Oxbridge natural brilliance shines through. What's funny is that they are invariably better read than me. Tolstoy's lesser known works and so on. But they are still visibly insecure, in many cases shaking. Sometimes I use my 3-to-1 tutorial hewn bullshitting technique to pretend that I have read as much as them but I always reveal that I am joking and this terrifies them, as if realising I have been boxing with both hands behind my back. Please, you guys, DON'T come across so try hard.

I now float in and out of fashionable South Kensington, Russel Square, and, when I feel like knobbing that hipsterish girl you cooed over in your 30 person English tutorials as a Chinese teaching assistant failed to draw ANY original thoughts from the class, Camden mileus on these autumnal and winter Friday and Saturday nights. It's quite funny really, my friends and I were academically brilliant, on many occasions being invited for individual wine sessions with multiple tutors from Economics, Law, and English Literature, and being begged to continue on with further study- on one occasion my tutor postponed his meeting with the Presidents of the World Bank and IMF where he would advise them of the Venezuela situation, in order to plead with me to develop a Hegelian line of attack on the similarities of English common law and Constantinople law that I had mentioned in a throwaway comment- and yet, in these fashionable parties, the most easily brilliant and witty people were the Oxbridge colleagues among us who had done so academically badly. Lowly Atillas, lazy Desmonds, narcoleptic Douglases: who knew they were so brilliant? But I guess that's Oxbridge for you!

[Anonymous No.17650401]

>>17650275
Well yes, they let Indians and Women aboard.

[Anonymous No.17650433]

>>17649119
Harvard reporting in
Best option is still a top-tier, face-to-face, classroom-based education where you are a part of a diverse community of perspectives that challenge one another
This is extremely rare as a real experience, but it is there; short of that, supplementing formal education with passionate reading and a general autodidactic approach
Finding worthwhile supplemental bookclubs, or something like Rapture1's private seminars, is extremely difficult, but fill out whatever deficit is still felt
Between those three points--classically strong formal education; personal ambition/discipline; small, dedicated intellectual communities--you hit the lit education sweet spot
Is it a high standard? Absolutely. But it also really is the best

[Anonymous No.17650504]

>>17650271
this is well written pasta. But jesus christ, to think that there are actually people to whom this life actually sounds enjoyable

[Anonymous No.17650521]

>>17649205
based

[Anonymous No.17650536]

I know some girls that come from a really nice family that went to an epsicopal boarding school in Virginia. Seemed extremely based and like it provides the most stereotypically “good” high school experience and socialization. Kinda like what you would imagine what a good high school experience is like in the movies. After that I’d imagine going to a relatively small but prestigious school and then going to an T6 law school.

This all assumes that you aren’t an autistic nerd faggot like most of you are on this sub

[Anonymous No.17650548]

>>17650536
>this sub

[Anonymous No.17650554]

>>17650536
>sub
Go back
Nigger.

[Anonymous No.17650559]

>>17649426
One of their set essay titles a few years ago was "is the moral character of an orgy changed by the participants wearing Nazi uniforms?"

[Anonymous No.17650567]

>>17649255
Yea think it’s stjohns

[Anonymous No.17650581]

>>17649303
So how does one, on the individual level, return to the medieval method of education?

[Anonymous No.17650618]

>>17650548
>>17650554

fuck you nigger

does That make up for saying sub?

[Anonymous No.17650708]

>>17650038
>This doesn’t seem very /lit/ though.
>It just comes off as an intellectual pissing contest.

err., am I missing a difference here?

[Anonymous No.17650724]

>>17649950
> A typical emasculated Oxbridge trust fund baby sophist without anything to show past it.

literally everyone who went to all souls has a wikipedia page.

of all the achievements of Lawrence of Arabia, the one achievement on his gravestone was "fellow of all souls college".

but think whatever is required to cope with mediocrity.

[Anonymous No.17650755]

>>17650283
>Sometimes I use my 3-to-1 tutorial hewn bullshitting technique to pretend that I have read as much as them but I always reveal that I am joking and this terrifies them, as if realising I have been boxing with both hands behind my back

based. but you should refuse all tutorials except the 1-to-1.

[Anonymous No.17650770]

>>17649119
Teach yourself, work a decent job somewhere, have a family.
t. got a /lit/-related degree.

[Anonymous No.17650780]

>>17650724
>I got a wikipedia page!!!!!
Did you create anything? Did you build upon anything? What did you truly contribute to your field, your society, or your family? This is why I call you a woman, all you care about is superficial prestige in the form of asspats rather than truly immortalizing yourself. Go ahead and tell me to cope, I'm not the one paying for it out of my own wallet for the next decade.

[Anonymous No.17650803]

>>17649426
>>17650271
>>17650283
>>17650433
I think I want to burn the universities down now.

[Anonymous No.17650828]

>>17650433
>Best option is still a top-tier, face-to-face, classroom-based education where you are a part of a diverse community of perspectives that challenge one another
you can find this literally anywhere.

[Anonymous No.17650845]

>>17650780
>paying for it

lmao in what 3rd world country do people PAY to do phd? are you american?

you get paid to do a phd. and no one pays more than all souls.

> rest of the cope

yes people in all souls do truly contribute to their field, to society etc. i'll let you browse the list here. i assume you know these people?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Souls_College,_Oxford#People_associated_with_All_Souls

[Anonymous No.17650906]

>>17650780
i think the source of your confusion is you are under the misapprehension that these people are not, in every metric you might plausibly name, the very top in their respective fields.

all souls is not like one of those ivy-league schools, selling status to the daughters of middle management.

this is a college which accepts the top two oxford graduates every year, and gives them seven years each to write a book. your entire career, either academic or professional, is pretty much guaranteed success after that.

[Anonymous No.17651223]

>>17650845
>lmao in what 3rd world country do people PAY to do phd? are you american?
Getting into a "prestigious" University is not free you stupid larping child. No one mentioned paying for the phd but that's another issue in of itself.
>you get paid to do a phd. and no one pays more than all souls.
This part lets me know you're full of shit, since getting "paid" to do your phd is the opposite of sunshines and rainbows.
>yes people in all souls do truly contribute to their field, to society etc. i'll let you browse the list here. i assume you know these people?
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Souls_College,_Oxford#People_associated_with_All_Souls
All these anglos are nonentities to me.
>>17650906
>i think the source of your confusion is you are under the misapprehension that these people are not, in every metric you might plausibly name, the very top in their respective fields.
Being the "top" of a field doesn't actually mean making meaningful contributions to it. A "top" historian could uncover absolutely nothing new. A "top" philosopher does not necessarily have ideas worth transmitting over to the future.
>this is a college which accepts the top two oxford graduates every year, and gives them seven years each to write a book. your entire career, either academic or professional, is pretty much guaranteed success after that.
"Success" by what fucking metric, do they teach you anything valuable or is it merely acclimating yourself to the academic environment and jerking off to the "important" figures so you can attain your "prestige"?

[Anonymous No.17651238]

>>17650845
>lmao in what 3rd world country do people PAY to do phd? are you american?
Getting into a prestigious University is not free you stupid larping child. No one mentioned paying for the phd but that's another issue in of itself.
>you get paid to do a phd. and no one pays more than all souls.
This part lets me know you're full of shit, since getting paid to do your phd is the opposite of sunshines and rainbows i.e. enial tedious busywork not unlike working in a cubicle.
>yes people in all souls do truly contribute to their field, to society etc. i'll let you browse the list here. i assume you know these people?
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Souls_College,_Oxford#People_associated_with_All_Souls
All these anglos are nonentities to me.
>>17650906
>i think the source of your confusion is you are under the misapprehension that these people are not, in every metric you might plausibly name, the very top in their respective fields.
Being the "top" of a field doesn't actually mean making meaningful contributions to it. A "top" historian could uncover absolutely nothing new. A "top" philosopher does not necessarily have ideas worth transmitting over to the future.
>this is a college which accepts the top two oxford graduates every year, and gives them seven years each to write a book. your entire career, either academic or professional, is pretty much guaranteed success after that.
"Success" by what fucking metric, do they teach you anything valuable or is it merely acclimating yourself to the academic environment and jerking off to the "important" figures so you can attain your "prestige"?

[Anonymous No.17651246]

>>17651238
*menial

[Anonymous No.17651286]

>>17649950
>Go to a German University and get free tuition there
Does this apply for international students and for graduate programs? I've always wanted to do Medieval Studies in Europe

[Anonymous No.17651289]

>>17649119
>education
>/lit/
The most literary life one can live is to work as a wage slave starting at the age of 15 and living a life of ignorant joy.

[Anonymous No.17651338]

>>17649161
/thread
>>17650021
lol

[Anonymous No.17651395]

>>17651238
this sounds 100% like a justification for your own scholastic failure. if this is so, i suggest maintaining your initial model of the world.

pretty much everyone gets paid a salary for a phd. like, unless what youre studying is complete garbage. getting a high salary is a pretty good metric for whether smart people care about what you're doing.

(p.s. if you don't know of isiah berlin, michael dummet, evans-pritchard, blackstone, salisbury, t.e. lawrence, parfit, srinivasan, or bernard williams -- then you're too far gone.)

[Anonymous No.17651400]

>>17650271
anon, I'm a Durham student (THE oxford rejects uni) and honestly the pretentious rich kids are the worst part of this god-forsaken place.

My previous uni where I was with other state-schooled kids was far far better than the prestigious pretentious hellhole

[Anonymous No.17651417]

>>17650283
ey mate don't u dare chat shit about durham or i'll knock ur fucking teeth out

[Anonymous No.17651597]

>>17649119
Unironically, none. When it comes to literature, higher ed is fucking dead bro.

[Anonymous No.17651617]

>>17649131
Tradegies will forever cope about not being smart enough to go to school or for being too lazy to do it because they're scared of homework

[Anonymous No.17651634]

>>17649426
Nothing /lit/ about that at all. It's just a pissing contest.

[Anonymous No.17651667]

>>17649336
Anon can't refute so does the Reddit method of correcting their writing or grammar kek

[Anonymous No.17652541]

Knowledge does not guarantee understanding, but undergoing certain kinds of life experiences that you did not anticipate, nor desire in all authenticity beforehand, can help get you there.
If one undergoes modern architectural education, full of enforced bad-faith, cognitive dissonance, lies, and deception, and manages to reflect on the implications of what they have undergone, then they might be able to say, that they had a dialectic experience.

[Anonymous No.17653105]

>>17650559
topkek

[Anonymous No.17653196]

>>17649119
Private tutors and being an autodidact.
Universities are a scam, especially during Corona where you are heavily limited in meeting other people. Might be still worth it, but it's a gamble and should be seen as that.


>>17651286
Yes. If you want to study in Germany stick to the old universities in the small towns: Heidelberg, Tübingen, with max 150k inhabitants.
Before you do that, jerk off and think again.

[Anonymous No.17653199]

>>17649119
An education in SEX baby

[Anonymous No.17653319]

>>17649255
>Isn't there that one school where the whole 4 years is spent reading classics?
St. Johns College, in Anapolis or Sante Fe, your choice.

I toured Sante Fe campus many years ago as a prospective student and it had a certain charm to it.

While I didn't get a very good grasp of the schooling based on the classes I visited at all, I ultimately decided against attending because I was sceptical of the value of an education which revolved wholly around "The Western Canon", considering what little I had already read of it up through high school did not impress me.

But yes, it is precisely what a "classics"-oriented curriculum would and perhaps even should look like, for those who are wholly dedicated to the idea.

[Anonymous No.17653330]

>>17649336
You sound like you possess a very small penis. Very small.

[Anonymous No.17653334]

>>17649144
The concept is really interesting but it does sound like a rich men larp. And, in my experience, rich people often lack depth. I also feel like discussions in there most be like an echochamber since all students come from the relatively same milieu.

[Anonymous No.17653359]

>>17653334
>And, in my experience, rich people often lack depth.
Most people lack depth. Has nothing whatsoever to do with socioeconomic status.

[Anonymous No.17653374]

>>17650581
Well, medieval universities used to train people in either theology, law, or medicine all obviously with a religious bend but I guess what you really want to know is how to get a “good” humanities Universitiy education, right? My answer is I don’t know but I presume reading books, good books, classic books would be more or less a prerequisite. A classical education is the most you could strive for so unironically start with the Greeks I guess.

[Anonymous No.17653376]

>>17650433
>Best option is still a top-tier, face-to-face, classroom-based education where you are a part of a diverse community of perspectives that challenge one another
Spoken like a true Harvard drone.

[Anonymous No.17653384]

>>17649255
>>17650567
>>17653319
This is the place Ezra Pound shit on his BBC interview.

[Anonymous No.17653391]

>>17650253
It's literally not a university.

[Anonymous No.17653400]

>>17653384
Who cares. He died over half a century ago. It's irrelevant to the present discussion.

[Anonymous No.17653408]

>>17653196
>Yes. If you want to study in Germany stick to the old universities in the small towns: Heidelberg, Tübingen, with max 150k inhabitants.
Before you do that, jerk off and think again.
I'm not the anon you're responding to, but could you elaborate on that please?

[Anonymous No.17653435]

>>17651617
Once youre more than 4 years into a trade it becomes difficult to either stop working or go part time just to study. I like making money =(

[Anonymous No.17653457]

>>17653435
It also becomes harder and harder to learn to the point where you just don't have the capacity to get educated.

[Anonymous No.17653502]

>>17653457
>muh neuroplasticity
Lel okay. If you werent reading Plato in grade-school youll never make it.

[Anonymous No.17653705]

>>17649119
Reading Goethe and Plato

[Anonymous No.17654623]

>>17649205
unbelievably based

[Anonymous No.17654637]

>>17650618
No

[Anonymous No.17654661]

>>17649131
>how to maximize self importance with minimum effort

[Anonymous No.17654668]

>tfw studied computer science because i liked computers
>my education made me realize how much i hate computers
>completely unemployable because i dont want to have any skills related to the field
>worthless degree

I wish I had a nice proper humanities education so bad. I will never get rid of the regret.

[Anonymous No.17654801]

>>17653384
Source?