391
Northwestern students blocked from enrollment after refusing controversial antisemitism training
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
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Yeah, you end up "doing your own research" and just falling into right-wing grifts and bullshit because if you lack background in a field, it's pretty damn hard to do actual meaningful research.
College isn't absolutely necessary to learn, but for most people, it really is. Or even if people don't fall into right wing fever swamps, they often cannot distinguish between appropriate sources. You try to teach yourself engineering, and all you end up doing is watching a bunch of infotainment engineering youtube channels.
What information are professors giving you that you can't get anywhere else?
As far as history is concerned, everything they teach should come from a source other than the professor.
Your history course boils down to them walking you through a textbook. If you can read and comprehend what you're reading, then the professor is unnecessary.
But hey, you already realized this, right?
You have a very poor understanding of how to learn history and what historians do professionally. I only have a history minor but know several professional historians. What you're describing is a historian hobbiest. Ironically this misconception is one that a lot of people clear up by going to college.
What information are professors giving you that you can’t get anywhere else?
Oh, please tell me what you learned in history that disproves this statement. I'd love to understand how you came out of those courses thinking you can just take people's word at face value.
Edit: Look, I get it. Part of "learning history" isn't even history related at all. It's learning how to understand the information that you have in the context that it was given. You can't just assume that because you read something in a history book that it's automatically true. Hopefully, it opens your eyes to just how little information we can "know" and how difficult it is to obtain even that. (I assume your eyes are already open to this because you took the courses.)
However, none of that requires college in order to learn. It's honestly something that our parents should be teaching us, because it's relevant to considerably more than history.
It's more the experience of learning from someone that is highly experienced in their field. They can guide you through multiple sources, and help understand your misconceptions and correct them. There's also the advantage of having a question about a source and having someone who can help bring more context, and additional sources, to the discussion quickly. There's just a lot that I personally gained from learning from another professional and I don't think there's a ton of on the job training, or independent study, that gets you that sort of intellectual understanding nearly as effectively.
Maybe my educational experience varies greatly from yours? There's just an absolute ton I learned in college that wouldn't have been nearly as efficient, quick, broad, or dense compared to doing independent study. I think that's probably mostly true for most people in most fields as well. Having the experience of learning from someone that has already experienced many pitfalls of learning a subject is quite valuable.
I think you have some wires crossed somewhere because I didn't say the thing you quoted me as saying here:
I'm not sure how to rebuttal this section because it seems to rest on the fact that I said the aforementioned quote.
I will say I think it's incredibly silly to put the burden of learning a highly specific subject on your parents. There's just no way for anyone's parents to give you a complete understanding of any field out there that's comparable to someone who has devoted decades to a highly specific subject. That's just incredibly naive and honestly gave me a chuckle.